Ep20 The Resilience & Healing of our Brains with Sofia Carozza

"Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison..."
~ 2 Corinthians 4:16-17

The last 50 years have seen incredible development in neurobiology and our understanding of the human brain. Yet we, as people of faith, know that humans are so much more than just a "brain in a body"; in fact, we are a deep and mysterious unity of mind, body, soul, brain, and even our relationships. How can we better know ourselves and our place in God's plan by better understanding our brains?

Join this fascinating conversation with Sofia Carozza, a neuroscientist and theologian. Pat & Sofia discuss mental health and healing, especially with regards to childhood adversity (experiences of violence, neglect, poverty, serious illness, etc.). These difficult circumstances in childhood can affect the very structures of our brain, but one's path is not determined by those experiences; rather, we can know healing and restoration through profoundly simple means like healthy relationships grounded on love!

Sofia Carozza is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she is completing a PhD at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. In her research, she is seeking to understand how early experiences of adversity shape the biological and psychological development of children. Sofia completed undergraduate studies in neuroscience and theology at the University of Notre Dame where she was the valedictorian of the Class of 2019, and she has an MPhil in basic and translational neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. Sofia is also the co-host of The Pilgrim Soul, an engaging and insightful podcast.

Chapters
0:00: Introduction
3:27: Highs & Hards
8:42: Formational experiences of mental illness & healing
17:30: The call to understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences
22:58: Choosing faith over cynicism in the face of suffering
26:21: Research on childhood adversity & neurobiology
37:15: Adaptability & neuroplasticity
47:58: Approaching suffering with healing & hope
52:41: Challenge By Choice

Transcript

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Introduction

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Also, what I saw was that the presence of Father Aldo and his close collaborators, two of whom were these beautiful religious sisters, mediated a grace and a resurrection and uh an impossible newness of life in the midst of that that captivated me. The way that they looked at their these children changed the children.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Welcome to This Whole Life, a podcast for all of us seeking sanity and sanctity, and a place to find joy and meaning through the integration of faith and mental health. I'm Pat Millet, a Catholic speaker, musician, and leader, and I'm happy to bring you this podcast along with my bride Kenna, a licensed marriage and family therapist. This is the stuff she and I talk about all the time doing dishes, in the car, on a date. We're excited to bring you this podcast for educational purposes. It's not therapy or a substitute for mental health care. So come on in, have a seat at our dining room table, and join the conversation with us. We are so glad you're here. And we would love to hear from you on Instagram. You can follow us at This Whole Life Podcast. You can visit our website at This Whole Life Podcast.com and you can send us a message through the website. You can shoot us an email, you can follow us on Facebook, all kinds of ways that you can help us create a community of good spiritual, physical, and mental health with one another. Which brings us to our conversation for today with our esteemed guest. We're really humbled and excited to have a conversation today with Sophia Carotza. Sophia is a Marshall Scholar at the University of Cambridge, where she is completing a PhD at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. In her research, she's seeking to understand how early experiences of adversity shape the biological and physiological development of children. Sophia completed undergrad studies in neuroscience and theology at the University of Notre Dame, where she was the valedictorian of the class of 2019. And she has an MPhil in basic and translational neuroscience from the University of Cambridge. In addition, Sophia is a co-host of a podcast of her own. She's the co-host of a podcast called The Pilgrim's Soul with her sister Julie and their good friend Adriana. And we'll put a link in the show notes for you to listen to that. And I can't encourage you enough to check out that great podcast. Sophia, thanks so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you with us. How are you?

SPEAKER_03 3:21

Thank you for having me. It's a joy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Thank you. I'm excited about our conversation.

Highs & Hards

SPEAKER_01 3:27

If you'd be willing, like we always do at the beginning of this whole life, um, starting off with a high and hard. Uh, ladies first, anything that's more been going on for you lately?

SPEAKER_03 3:37

Sure, yeah. Thank you. I had a very high high this last weekend. I had the gift of going to Oxford, which is pretty close to where I'm based in Cambridge. Um, and I went to go stay with a friend of mine who's a Franciscan friar, a conventual friar there. And he and his community welcomed me so generously into their house of studies. Um and they have a chapel that was once an Anglican convent, um, but is adorned with beautiful images of the Blessed Virgin. And when you enter into the space, it just feels saturated with prayer. So it was uh a stunning place to celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation. Um, and yeah, to feel renewed in my vocation and my relationship with the Lord and uh set sort of on mission in these these final weeks of Lent. Um so I'm very, very grateful for that high. The heart has been uh these last couple weeks of Lent have been very humbling, I think. The Lenten practices and uh devotions and penances have really revealed to me my my poverty. And so um, yeah, I think I can see the Lord at work in that difficulty and bringing me a necessary uh awareness of my pride and attempts at self-sufficiency, but it has been quite hard.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

Not negative, it sounds like, but uh certainly difficult. Um yeah, yeah, that that kind of revelation is always tricky for us sinners in uh being faced with our own, like you said, attempts at self-sufficiency. So yeah, thank you for sharing that with us. Yeah. Um yeah, I uh I I think my high recently was that um Kenna and I were asked to do a series of events in Indiana at a parish that was it was the first parish that I worked at in youth ministry around the integration of mental health and faith. So we had a chance to speak with parents and then with the youth, uh, middle school and high school youth the following nights, and then um a whole morning of kind of training and reflection for staff and volunteers from various parishes around this area. And it was just really a beautiful opportunity for a lot of reasons. One of them is that um going back to this parish is kind of like a homecoming for me in some ways, that it's where the first roots were kind of planted in ministry. So a lot of folks that um they were volunteers with me when their kids were in high school, and now their children are starting to have children. So there are kids of the kids that I knew in in high school. Um, and just uh just a great chance to go back and kind of renew some connections. We got to see some other friends as well in the area that are a little bit older that we just don't see as often and got to catch up with them. And uh our children were with my parents in Iowa while we did this, which was great for my kids and my parents, hopefully, because they love spending time together. Uh, but that meant that Kenna and I had this kind of privileged time to work together, but also to just like relax and celebrate and have a little bit of um kind of protected time with one another. And it was while it was less of a vacation than I thought it might be when we went into it, it was still just beautiful and really special. Um, so that was definitely a high. The hard is that we went south to Indiana, which is not like Texas or Florida, but it's still it was like full-on spring, right? So it was, I think, 60 degrees the day that we left. And then we drove back to Minnesota. We picked up our kids on the way and came back to Minnesota, and it was as if we had driven back in time about two months because we came back and it was just the dead of winter. And it yeah, it continues to be the dead of winter to this day. And I I know this, I live in Minnesota, I choose to live here, and I do love it, but it just this is the time of the year that it gets really difficult to live here. The the the the harsh part of winter in December, January, where it can get down to like negative 20, negative 30, things like that. That's difficult, but this feels just crushing when the rest of the world is is looking toward Easter and lilies and flowers and new life, and we're celebrating, you know, um, by the time this episode is released, it'll be the Easter season. And hopefully the snow will be gone by then, but it's no guaranteed.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

So guaranteed.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

We have to really let the liturgy lead us into resurrection because nature does us no favors around this part of the country, and that's okay. So, but if that's my heart lately, it's not a bad life that I get to lead. So um still quite blessed in the midst of ice and snow. It's okay. Amen. Amen. Well, um, yeah, I I've been excited to talk to you for a while now, Sophia, because of um, you know, the work that you're doing in your research and your podcasts, and just the way that you uh kind of bring the truths of science and our faith to bear on one another and on the world.

Formational experiences of mental illness & healing

SPEAKER_01 8:42

But before we get too deep into the the current kind of extraordinary things that you're doing, I'd love to hear about where your journey of mental health uh began. You know, what what were your experiences of mental health when you were younger? What was your understanding of what mental health even meant, maybe, and what kind of has led you down this path in your life that you've been called to?

SPEAKER_03 9:05

Thank you. Thank you. It's always a gift to reflect on my personal journey and uh to do the work of remembering how it is that the Lord brought me to where I am today. So I'm I'm grateful for this, this prompt. I I grew up in a very beautiful family, um, but one in which we didn't necessarily talk about mental health explicitly, um, despite family history on both sides of a variety of difficulties. Um, and I I inherited some predispositions that that uh meant that from a from a young age I struggled with uh interior darkness and difficulty, um, in particular sort of an anxious concern about uh about myself and about uh others' perceptions of me and things. And it, you know, it stayed merely a facet of my personality until uh my early adolescence. I went through a I have a rebellious streak and I went through a phase of um rejecting much of what my parents had endeavored to teach me and form in me. Um and I think it was rooted in a good desire to learn um what these things were for me and to not merely inherit them passively. Um, but I started looking for answers to those those questions of who I was and what I was made for and what my value was and and who it was that loved me. I started looking for answers to those questions in uh places that couldn't answer it in in the party culture and in a sort of relentless, desperate pursuit of self-perfection. Um and where that led me was uh was a real place of darkness and difficulty. I developed uh an eating disorder and started experiencing profound periods of depression and anxiety. Um, but the perfectionist in me saw these things as uh failures and flaws that I needed to hide from others. And so it turned into a self-reinforcing spiral that um, yeah, that that led me to a place of really questioning if my life was worth living and if there was any reason for um for hope. At this point, I I was living abroad. I spent a year of my high school experience abroad in in Milan, away from my family. And I think this is one reason that that it spiraled out of control in this way. I didn't have their their love to buffer me from the consequences of my actions. And uh, in a sense, that was such a mercy because I was able to see and verify in my life that um the way that I was living was a path that led me to death. It didn't fulfill my desires, it didn't give me what I was looking for from it. Um, and my desperation made it clear to me that I needed something else. I that I needed salvation. Um and at that time I wouldn't have articulated it necessarily in that way, but but I saw around me uh a a few people, friends um at the school that I was attending who weren't scandalized by my darkness or put off by my difficulty, even when it was physically apparent because with the eating disorder I'd I'd lost a lot of weight. Um they weren't scandalized by my difficulty, but drew closer to me in that, uh, not in an endeavor to fix me, but to a desire to share what they'd discovered in life, which was that it was beautiful and a gift, and that uh acceptance of oneself in one's imperfections is the path that enables us to to live a full life and not through um the project that I had embarked on. So it was really through wanting to be with them. These friends were Christian, and it was no accident that that they were the ones who were able to love me in this way. Um, that unlike my friends from back home in the States, they had encountered Christ and and were following him and receiving the meaning of their own lives through his gaze. So through wanting to be with them, I started practicing my faith again. And uh it blossomed from there because as soon as I started taking a few steps toward the Lord, um I rediscovered the beauty of life, life in general, reality, uh, and and beautiful things within it, from the mountains to my studies to to friends, but also the beauty of myself, the gift of my body, um, and a reason for hope in my everyday, which is not to say that this did away with my my struggles uh with various forms of mental illness. Um some of those continue to this day. But what they gave me was a certainty that it was worth it to pursue a path of healing, and the certainty that there was a divine physician that if I wholeheartedly surrendered myself to his proposal for my life, that that he would uh one day bring me healing. A healing, of course, that's only going to be complete in on the day of eternity in heaven. Um, but that I could begin to experience the hundredfold that he promises to his disciples now, today. So it's been uh a beautiful journey, but one that has convicted me of uh the essential need to talk about and share these things. Um, because the there is almost nothing harder in my experience than isolation in uh or perceived isolation in this place. And conversely, there's almost nothing more beautiful than the way that our vulnerabilities and woundedness can become seeds of communion uh with one another, fellow, fellow pilgrims on this journey. So I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here and to start from my own personal experience and discussing what is a topic that, as you mentioned, concerns me a lot professionally, but from the from the from the start, because of my own personal experience.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

That's beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing that that part of your journey, Sophia. That's it's there's so much that's profound about both some of the various causes or some of the things that contributed to the different forms of mental illness that you experienced, but then also some of the various things that led to healing as well. That um it it sounds like there wasn't one kind of you know magic bullet, so to speak, not one immediate thing that fixed everything, that it was obviously in large part to your kind of reversion, conversion to the faith, and to letting Jesus into that place of healing. Um, but that even that was precipitated by the relationships that you had in your life, by these friends that were that were loving and merciful and present and intentional with you. Um and maybe maybe those relationships might not have been so effective if you didn't have a sound family relationship foundation to build upon and um to kind of grow from there. So I I love your your ability to bring together a lot of those different elements where I think a lot of times it can be tempting to oversimplify some of the causes and also the cures around mental health. And I think the reality sometimes can be far more complex, but also offer much more substantial healing when there are multiple different things that God offers us to bring about wellness in our lives. So I'm glad you were able to bring that together. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_03 16:22

Amen. Yeah, thank you. It's very true. I wouldn't, I wouldn't have made made this path without the love of my family and a good counselor and the sacraments, especially. And it's hard in the moment to understand where it is that your healing is coming from or can come from because it's a journey with a lot of ups and downs. Um, but it really is through the Lord through all of these different faces and signs and experiences. So it's uh it's a profound experience of mercy.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

And that's really a great way of bringing it out, even the the Lord through all of these different faces and experiences. It's it's not that, well, God was present in the church, and then you also had good friends. No, no, like the Lord is present in those people, in his image and likeness, in in the relationship itself, God is present, um, where two or three are gathered, you know. Um, it's in good counseling and the good kind of human aids that the Lord gives us, that He is also present. So just all those different kinds of healing that all come from the healer, but in just different kinds of um expressions. I I love that ability to kind of bring that out. Yeah.

The call to understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences

SPEAKER_01 17:30

Yeah. In the in the work that you do now, I mean, so much of it is is around the idea of adverse childhood experiences, the kind of ACES acronym that you hear sometimes in professional circles. Um, when you started looking at mental health as not only something that concerned you personally, but something that maybe you were going to be called to professionally as a scientist, what was it that led you down that particular path in looking at childhood experiences and how they kind of um would affect uh human thriving?

SPEAKER_03 18:03

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. It's a memory that I cherish because that it occurred sort of contemporaneously with a really profound time of of falling in love with the Lord. And so I look back on that that time of discovery of my call to studies and discovery of my relationship with the mystery as as sort of the birthplace of my vocation. I it was a summer when I was about 19 years old. I spent down in Paraguay, in Asuncion, uh, the capital of Paraguay in South America, and I was working or I mean I say working, I was there to learn from them. I was volunteering at a community foundation for the poor that was begun by um an Italian priest and missionary named Father Aldo Trinto. And through his encounters with his parishioners, he had um not without an idea of saving them, but just sharing life and sharing their needs, he had uh founded a palliative care clinic, a food bank, a house for young pregnant mothers, uh clinic for people with AIDS, basically every form of accompaniment of the marginal marginalized you could imagine. And I went to go work in the orphanage and the school for underprivileged children that he was running. And um during my my brief time there, I was struck by first the profound human suffering of a scale and an intensity that I had been shielded from until until that point and a cry of human misery that um that left me often in tears at the end of of the workday. Um I mean, attending daily mass in the chapel in the heart of this complex, you would hear the cries of the dying, and there would it there would often be a funeral. There would often be a funeral at that daily mass, and um it was an intensity of suffering that um opened my eyes to the reality of the human condition, that that's what I was living spiritually every day without the Lord. But also what I saw was that the presence of Father Aldo and his close collaborators, two of whom were these beautiful religious sisters, um mediated a grace and a resurrection and uh an impossible newness of life in the midst of that that captivated me. The way that they looked at their these children changed the children. Um and I remember particularly a a couple faces of kids who had been welcomed off the slums, um, who'd grown up without families and perhaps had reached the age of what looked like seven or eight, um, but but couldn't speak or couldn't uh relate to children in a way that would be normal for a child of their age. Um and yet what I saw over the course of the summer was that the love of these sisters enabled them to grow, to begin to to be a child for the first time. Uh and it was beautiful to see, it was captivating to watch. And I knew as I was witnessing this, that something was happening not just on the level of the spirit and the mind of these children, but also their brain, that there couldn't be this profound of a difference in behavior and relationship without something structural changing within their mind within their brain. Because I had begun my studies of neuroscience at that point, and so I'd learned the the rudiments of how the nervous system works. And uh and so I was fascinated by this and knew in that moment that I wanted to understand how, how it is that love between us can be inscribed in our biology and can change from the very physical foundations or substrates of um of who we are as human beings. beings. And so that's where this question was born in me of how is it that adverse childhood experiences shape the development of the human brain in ways that can can limit us or can make us uh can give us particular gifts that are suited for for those kinds of environments. But also conversely, how is it that love and sources of resilience can heal us through engaging our neurobiology? And that's what I ended up studying in my my senior thesis as an undergraduate and in my master's. And now I'm finishing within about five weeks or so, God willing, my PhD on on precisely this question. And it's been a gift to devote so many years of study to um to a question that I find so important.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

It's such a beautiful image. I mean the just the even in the brief time that you're painting the the picture of what that place was like

Choosing faith over cynicism in the face of suffering

SPEAKER_01 22:58

I'm I'm struck by the the the path that you went down as a result of that experience. I think there are so many that look at that kind of suffering and would choose or maybe feel led down a path of theodicy maybe something like that looking at suffering and saying well if this suffering exists then everything I've heard about a loving God can't be true. Right? That that those two are mutually exclusive. And that's certainly a a tempting frame of mind in the midst of that kind of suffering for any of us that that we go through but you you were led down a different path one that led you to understand the love of God and that that suffering far from being meaningless actually g is given meaning through the love of God channeled through this good priest and these sisters and all the good folks that help these children. What what was it that that kind of led you down the path of love and faith rather than skepticism cynicism it's a very astute observation.

SPEAKER_03 24:04

I suppose the most truthful answer would be the grace of God how it reached me was insofar as I understand it was the gift of recognizing that the suffering that I saw around me was the same suffering that was within me. It wasn't at all different from the darkness that I knew from my struggles with mental illness and from a variety of personal challenges. That was the same need. It was the same cry that was in my heart that I was hearing and there was an answer. I had I'd verified in my life that the cry of my heart is not echoing in an empty world but actually takes flesh in the cry of the crucified one on the cross to the Father, begging that I might be restored to him and not in an abstract way like concretely through through friendships and through the church and through in particular that summer the experience of Eucharistic adoration in this same little chapel in the middle of the palliative care clinic um seeing there a gaze from the one who made himself so vulnerable as to be given to us in a broken piece of bread um a gaze of profound embrace of everything that was in me and everything that was in this foundation. And I don't think anyone I don't know even some journalists who would come to the foundation who were atheist or they couldn't deny that there was a life there that should be impossible. And this is the life of the risen Lord um a light and a joy and a freedom that pervades a context that those from the outside looking at it objectively would be tempted to say the only thing that's present there is death. And so yes I think um the the grace of the Lord really opened my eyes to judge um what I saw happening around me and in and within me and through that process of judgment coming to a very clear conviction that his mercy is the final word on all of it and that he this mercy is present in extremely tangible ways.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

I love that yeah

Research on childhood adversity & neurobiology

SPEAKER_01 26:21

so so what what would have led you then to taking that experience and really uh bringing it into the scientific realm? Um you mentioned a little bit of you'd already begun down the path of neuroscience but what have you learned from your work with adverse childhood experiences? What is your research brought to bear into this specific topic?

SPEAKER_03 26:45

So I think it was my deep curiosity about the created world that led me to want to study neuroscience in the first place and when I discovered this passion for childhood adversity I had an intuition that the biology would tell us something that could then be fruitful on the level of the mind and the spirit for those who are trying to understand themselves and others after experiences of suffering, which is in a sense all of us. Now what I've learned in my studies on the biological plane of the impact of early adversity on child development is that the biology can tell us some things, but much less than perhaps we are inclined to think or would like to believe so I'll start with the the positive of what what we have learned. We have learned that exposure to early early life experiences of things like deprivation of maternal care or inadequate resources or um an impoverished environment or the presence of harmful things like experiences of violence or abuse can result in differences in the formation of the brain. And the differences are subtle and they're not present in everyone who's experienced these uh adversities, but there are structural and functional differences. So differences in um the size and shape of different brain regions and differences in how they tend to communicate with each other and respond to environment uh the environment um and so there are these structural and functional changes in the brain after experiences of it early adversity that seem to be associated with certain kinds of psychological differences that we tend to see as well. Things like um you might encounter a child who has difficulty paying attention if he's grown up in an impoverished environment or a young woman who has experienced um serious violence or victimization and might respond more fearfully to threatening things in her environment. So the brain seems to play a role in the way that these early experiences form us on the psychological level and and this is consistent with what we know about how the brain develops the brain is a a dialectical organ, I like to say a situated organ. And it's an organ that's essentially in dialogue with other people. The way that early brain development happens is through the body of the mother in the first place and then through inner loving interactions with the mother and father and other close loved ones who are in the child's environment that this is what drives the birth of new neurons and their connections with one another and the organization and refinement of neural circuits. And so it makes sense that depending on how your early relational landscape is is different, that this brain development would go a different direction. Now neuroscience does also seem to show though that as I mentioned not every child show these shows these differences and also these brain differences can't fully explain what we see on the psychological level whether that's the initial difficulties that a child might have as they're navigating an adverse environment or the fact that a lot of people who go through adversity don't show later difficulties or recover from them or find meaning within them. These are all outcomes of early adverse experiences that the biology can't tell you very much about and so I think I am I'm concerned by the perception that the biology is the most truthful or insightful level at which we can be talking about the impact of early adversity on child development. I think it's an important variable to consider in the equation but it's definitely not the most important nor should it be our starting point when we're trying to help kids who have experienced adversity.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

That's fascinating. Yeah I I I certainly want to spend uh much more time on the kind of positive aspects of your research and the ways that you've you've understood what childhood experiences, how they affect people, what types of healing are possible afterward. But it's really interesting I think to hear someone who is um so committed and so gifted in the natural sciences to acknowledge the limitations of the natural sciences, you know, to to look at biology clearly for what it is and also to do it true justice by seeing it for what it is not as well. In the in the world of science, academia neurobiology are there ways that um others would glorify science as the solution to every problem as the only solution and that if you perceive reality to be a different way that there's a there's a disconnect in the ways that you interact with your colleagues professors things like that.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

Yeah it's unfortunately rare I think within neuroscience to be explicit and public about the limitations of our work but I think to do it justice we need to be transparent about its limitations because its beauty goes together with its limitations. And as soon as we try to turn it into something that it's not, we lose the beauty of what it is. And I think for me it's very clear that neuroscience is limited precisely because of my theological gaze on reality and on myself that I would never reduce myself to mere synaptic firing or brain activity. I understand myself as a child of God redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. And so when I look at my research participants, this is how I look at them as well. And I'm not explicit about this in my scientific writing I can't be but I am explicit about it with my colleagues some of them think I'm slightly batty as the Brits would say but um but it I'm very transparent about the fact that for me the human person is not only a biological being and not only a biopsychosocial, which is a concept that we use in in developmental science, a biopsychosocial being, but I would say a biopsychosocial spiritual being and a relational one. And so yeah so I think you can't interpret properly the results of our science if you're not willing to be open to the existence of these other levels of the human person. Because otherwise you have no way of accounting for the fact that neuroscience cannot give you a full explanation of what it's trying to observe. But it I do get some pushback um and the idea primarily that well neuroscience is just limited in its methods. And as soon as we get better brain scanners and better mathematical analyses, then we'll be able to explain everything. So it's just a matter of time until we can advance a fully material account of reality. Sure. To me this is deeply dissatisfying and so I try to provoke my colleagues into thinking about their own human experience because I I think very few people scientists or otherwise would look at their own lives and say yeah the material is really all that there is here. And so I think by recalling us to the truth of our experience I think that we can move science in a more human direction.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

It makes me think of um one of the one of the people that I love most in this world who I've never met is C.S. Lewis and uh when you talked about going to Oxford it made me think about the day that Kenna and I got to spend at the kilns at his home in Oxford we went to the bird and the baby the eagle and child pub and different conversation for another day. But um one of you know everyone's familiar with the the Narnia series and screw tape letters Mere Christianity but he also wrote this space trilogy that is so strange and beautiful and it's just weird. It's it's his faithful take on science fiction, you know um and the third book in particular is just totally different than the first two. It's called That Hideous Strength and I'll put a link in the show notes um for you to check it out listeners. But it it's essentially it adds up to being a parable about the dangers of what he would maybe call scientism you know about trying to do exactly what you're saying. Well as long as soon as we advance to a particular stage in academic technological development then we will be the true masters of nature. We will overpower, overcome creation and we will get to determine our own destiny essentially and it takes some really fascinating turns uh it culminates in a very stark reminder that nature will not be overcome and that nature is ultimately has power and strength that we as humans cannot tame. And he I there was an essay that he wrote as well kind of around the same time that he wrote these uh the the trilogy acknowledging the the desperate need for good Christian scientists um but people who were not approaching science with the with the secret intent to sneak faith into their science but they were just genuinely people of deep faith who brought that understanding of reality into science. And he was very he was very quick to say now if they are going to do good work their science must be completely honest. So they can't try to cut corners and get away with things merely because they're nice Christian people you know but um but he was uh someone that I thought was kind of maybe a prophet even in seeing some of the struggles that you've perceived in your work as well. Um definitely and by the way the hero of that space trilogy uh ransom was a professor at Cambridge where you were finishing your PhD. So it's appropriate connection for us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

It is it is he was a fellow at my college here as well in Cambridge so I love the space trilogy and you're right that's a perfect example of it.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

It's so it's so strange and beautiful like many of C.S. Lewis's things

Adaptability & neuroplasticity

SPEAKER_01 37:15

but to get back to more of maybe the fruitful parts of your research um obviously that it sounds like uh correct me if I'm wrong that there's this important kind of uh both and in the work that you've done that on one hand it is true that early childhood experiences can be very influential in the future experiences and responses of someone on a psychological level and um it sounds like also at the same time it's true that someone who goes through adverse experiences as a child is not doomed to a difficult life full of suffering and an inability to relate to other people and the world around them.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Is that is that a fair assessment or how would you kind of uh specify that absolutely I think that's succinct and truthful I think the way that I see that latter point, there are two aspects of the indeterminacy I would say of an individual's response to early adversity to the there are two aspects of the fact that children are not doomed by adversity to a difficult life of um of harm or of maladaptive behavior. And I think one is in the first place understanding the responses to early adversity not as necessarily injury or dysregulation or brokenness of psychological systems or of brain systems, but as adaptations to the early environment that there are a lot of neural and psychological differences that kids in poverty, for example, or growing up in violent environments show that make sense on on an evolutionary scale as strategies for for navigating those environments. So for example, um I mentioned that those who experience violence early in life often show heightened responses to threatening stimuli in their environments later on. We can think about how helpful this would be if you're trying to avoid those precise situations that early in life might have caused you a lot of harm to be more sensitive to displays of anger on somebody else or to be less instinctively trustful of other people can protect you. And so this is not necessarily a broken brain or a broken mind, but an adaptation. And the same is true of things like impulsive behavior for example that we might we might medicalize and say is ADHD, but could be arising in a child because he or she doesn't have enough to eat at home. And in that kind of a context there's some interesting computational modeling work that has shown that impulsive behavior can help you attain what you need to survive. And it's so it's a wise strategy in a sense if you don't know where your next meal is going to come from. Now it's not wise if you're now in a safe classroom and you're expected to sit still and listen to the teacher. But if your your brain and your mind have been shaped that way for your success early in life, it can be very hard when the context changes to change your behavior. So that is the first strand I would say of research that helps us see that children are not condemned or doomed by early life experiences of adversity, but manifest a great deal of resilience and creativity and adaptability that is helpful for it might confer skills that that help them succeed in difficult circumstances that their more affluent or privileged peers would not be able to succeed in. The other is a beautiful line of research on the ongoing plasticity of the brain. So the capacity of the brain to change in its structure and its function across the lifespan. And this was a discovery that a few decades ago in neuroscience rocked the neuroscience community because we thought that brain development stopped decently early in adolescence and that after that your brain was fixed. You couldn't have new neurons, you couldn't remodel connections it was just one long slow decline of neurodegeneration till you died. But what we've discovered is is exactly this that through adulthood you can form new neurons and new connections and extinguish old um behavioral and neural responses that there's a capacity for change that I would say opens the door on the biological level for grace to to um to make us grow and make us heal, even in our bodies. And now there's also interesting research on okay, well, what helps our brains change and learn new ways of responding to our environment and the research seems to show that neuroplasticity is favored by companionship, by relationships with other peers, um, and by the basic practices of taking care of your physical and mental health all those things that are helpful for things like you know your cardiovascular fitness and keeping away anxiety and depression are also things that are correlated with neuroplasticity. And so I think this is a way we we can see that on the biological level these changes that our community and the Lord want to exert on the psychological and spiritual level um yeah are are taking place through changes in our brains as well.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

And it's it's really beautiful to see that I think it confers a gaze of immense hopefulness that it's it's never too late to begin again that every day can be the start of uh of change of conversion of healing and that we can help each other in this I I'm so struck by the the simplicity of those agents of healing that you identified in in relationships in community in um attentiveness to physical and mental health I it makes me think of um one of my favorite old testament stories is the healing of Naaman uh oh yeah the the leper who the he's the Syrian leper he's super powerful but there no one there's no one in his nation that can help him so someone tells him to go to this prophet of the Israelites and he goes and he's told to bathe in the Jordan River and he looks at his folks and is like are you nuts? That is and he says like the we have rivers that are three times more beautiful than the Jordan River. Why would I go bathe in that ugly river? It's just it's too simple you know it it's too it's too base it's too tangible and kind of mean almost um and his his wise servants tell him like if the prophet had told you to do something extraordinary something wild you would have done that because Because it would have seemed to be a a fair way to assess the problem, to deal with the problem. Um, and of course he bathes in the Jordan and is completely restored and healed. And I I suspect that I I think there's even with the knowledge that I have gained over the years, there's still something in me that is grateful to hear that such a simplistic, seemingly I guess, simplistic response to trauma and pain and adversity um is being now proven to be accurate by scientific means as well. That it it genuinely is relationships that can offer healing and wholeness to us. It really is being attentive to our physical and mental health. And um, I say that those things are simple, but my fear, I guess, is that in first world culture that many of us live in, those things are actually not that simple sometimes. You know, I think we we oftentimes live in a world that is um slowly but surely moving us in the direction of isolation. So maybe community isn't a simple thing for many of us. Maybe it's something that we have to actively fight in favor of, you know. Um maybe some of the ways that we've arranged our lives don't contribute to good, simple practices for physical and mental health. Maybe those take real genuine intentional efforts. Um, but it's really beautiful to point out something so seemingly accessible for us that can bring about such good throughout the lifespan, like you mentioned.

SPEAKER_03 45:27

I love the connection to name and the Syrian, and I'll definitely use that in the future. And I think you're right. I think the answer is is simple and it can be difficult because of the cultural milieu in which we live, but it's not. I do see a temptation, I think that's Gnostic, a temptation to think that it has to be something esoteric and that science is going to uncover this secret knowledge about what we need to do to fix our lives. And as soon as they give us the answer, then the brokenness of the world can go away. Um, when that's not at all what it is. Salvation is in plain sight. This is what it means that the church possesses the fullness of revelation and what she tells us to do for our good is what we need to know. And it's beautiful to see as you as you articulate it. It's beautiful to see that science is not uncovering radically new answers to this. It's putting flesh and bones on what we've already received as the path to our fulfillment.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yeah, that kind of uh multiple sources of revelation, I suppose. The kind of truth that we've received from creation is now being revealed, even in biological ways as well, that that it's being backed up and renewed. And maybe, you know, for those of us that live in a world that implicitly, sometimes explicitly tells us that that you and I are nothing more than a brain in a body, and that's it. And we are our brain, and our body just takes our brain from place to place, you know, that uh even the science that has contributed to that kind of a mindset over the years is now starting to reveal, well, that there may be more to it than that, you know, there may actually be a type of fulfillment and humanity that does come from interaction with others.

SPEAKER_04 47:15

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 47:16

Well, um I'm curious about, you know, as we start looking toward wrapping up here, um what uh what you would say this type of conversation would have to say about the reality of difficulty and suffering that any of us experience in our lives, um, whether or not we went through adverse childhood experiences or difficulties as a child, um, maybe anyways that, as you mentioned, far from being a broken brain, just ways that we have all adapted uh to different experiences in our lives, and maybe those adapt adaptations at this stage are no longer helpful to us. Um what

Approaching suffering with healing & hope

SPEAKER_01 47:58

uh how might we look at suffering hardship difficulty through this kind of a lens of healing and hope?

SPEAKER_03 48:06

Yeah. This is a question I've pondered a lot, uh primarily because of a desire to live my own woundedness in in light of the resurrection. And so to understand uh and be converted in the places where my wounds are inhibiting my relationships with others or my flourishing, but also to not fall victim to the idea that I need to erase them in order to live the life that the Lord wants me to lead, but instead to allow him to glorify, glorify those wounds. And I think that there's absolutely a continuum of woundedness. You know, it's not like people who experience severe early deprivation or violence are experiencing something categorically different from the rest of us. It's not. It's on a continuum. And so the same principles I would say hold for all of us that we adapt to our early wounds, our early experiences of receiving less than the love that we are made for, which in a broken world, even parents as exceptional as my own, who are the greatest parents I've ever met in my life, um, can't shield their children from woundedness because this is this is a fallen life. Um, and so yeah, so similarly, we adapt to these early experiences of of um less love less than the love than we're made for in ways that don't necessarily set us up well to flourish and to love others um in the environments that we find ourselves in now. Um and yeah, and so I would encourage your listeners to um to try to get to know with the help, um, if they're in counseling, of a counselor, um, and if not of some prudent reading and listening, um, to get to know sort of the primary ways in which woundedness might have occurred in their early life, not for the purpose of looking back uh and and focusing on oneself, and certainly not for the purpose of pointing fingers or uh pinning blame on anyone, but rather for uh the window that this can open into the way that we live and move in the world today, um, opening a window that reveals what's being determined or driven by shadows and half-truths and um lies that we may have believed about ourselves that um the enemy is using to limit the grace and the freedom with which we are living in the present moment. And um, so from my own life, the the experience that most clearly comes to mind is uh a wound that occurred early in my life that convinced me that I was a very difficult person to live with in the home. Um, and over the course of many different living situations between study abroad and uh college and things, uh, being very fearful in all of my living arrangements, fearful of sharing myself and fearful of taking up space, fearful of being vulnerable, fearful of being a burden. And this made me respond in ways that actually alienated others. It didn't make me not a burden, it made me very difficult to live with. Um yeah, and it was through yeah, through engaging in this kind of prayer and explicit work in counseling and with my friends that I realized how this lie was affecting the way that I was living. And the fact that it was a lie, the the fact that um I am in fact good and uh created good and meant to be a gift to the communities that I live in and that this was possible. And the freedom that I've experienced through identifying this wound and begging the Lord to glorify it has been beautiful because now I find myself not only personally free in my living situations, but attentive to the people that I live with in ways that they might be feeling less than free or less than um comfortable being burdening me with their needs or that kind of thing. So I see how the Lord has glorified this wound and made it an instrument in the service of communion and an instrument in the service of the freedom that he wants to give others. So that's the kind of movement that I see all of us, regardless of whether we've experienced um serious childhood adversity or not, can take with respect to our personal history that that's incredibly freeing and beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

That's beautiful. Thanks for sharing that. And um, you know,

Challenge By Choice

SPEAKER_01 52:41

but before we started recording, you mentioned how that kind of a movement might be a really beautiful opportunity for a challenge by choice for this episode for our listeners. So to kind of wrap things up in a nice little bow, how would you put that in in terms of someone kind of going through that kind of a process themselves of seeing their wounds, um, but allowing the Lord to touch and restore and to uh bring resurrection to those places in their lives?

SPEAKER_03 53:12

In this Easter season, what comes to mind is the story of Saint Thomas and the encounter with the risen Lord, uh, wherein faced with Saint Thomas's skepticism, the Lord invites him to put his hand into the Lord's side and to touch his wounds, and that it's through this encounter that Thomas overcomes his incredulity and discovers, verifies in his life that the risen Lord is in fact the one who died for his salvation, that he is present in the flesh. And so that the wounds are an essential aspect of of the risen Lord. And so I would I would invite your listeners as a challenge by choice to go into a time of prayer, um, whether in Eucharistic adoration or elsewhere, with this scripture passage and with a list that uh I can provide as a PDF, you can put on your website of core wounds or ways in which our early experiences might have left their mark um on us. And to ask the Holy Spirit to draw your attention to one of these wounds and to ask for light and insight into how it might be um a mark on your heart, a way that it's shaped your moving and living in the world today, um, and to to ask the Lord to glorify that wound. And so identifying, um, being open to ways in which you might be asked to uh to convert and to change your way of responding um to this wound, but also to be open to the fact that uh rather than erasing it, what the Lord wants to do is to transform it into a place um of receiving his love and becoming a vessel of his love to others. So that's been a very transformative practice for me in in understanding my personal history. And so I would warmly share it and commend it to uh to your listeners.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

And I can't uh second that challenge by choice enough. I um, in God's providence, he led me to do this challenge by choice ahead of time. Um, Kenna and I always do the challenge by choices, listeners, that we uh propose to you because we're not going to propose something that we're not willing to do ourselves. Uh, but it was through the course of um uh a course at Notre Dame that I've been going through lately about mental health and faith that this exact practice was one of the exercises for one of our weeks of of uh learning. And I I genuinely sat down in adoration, Sophia, and I was thinking to myself, like, this is just not practical enough. I don't know where to start. Uh and it really was. It was it was looking at those seven core wounds that you identified and looking at, okay, what which of these seven core wounds really affects my life day to day the most right now? And one of them immediately jumped out among the others. And then I sat down and prayed for it, prayed with it for a bit, and um started going back through my life earlier and earlier and earlier throughout um moments where this wound had been pricked or touched or just flared up. And I finally got all the way back to middle school to an event that I hadn't entirely forgotten, but it certainly was not front of mind day to day. And it it's that version of memory that we would call maybe implicit memory sometimes that it was it was motivating a lot of my behaviors and my responses completely outside of my conscious choice, you know? And it was an amazingly fruitful time of prayer. It brought up a lot of great opportunities for connection with Kenna and her opportunity to to receive me, to be merciful, to understand me on a deeper level. So if you're listening out there and you're thinking, well, that doesn't sound very practical, I am the first exhibit to show you that it really is. So please do. Praise God. Amazing. It's a great opportunity. Yeah. Well, Sophia, um, what are the ways that uh folks can continue to hear from you or uh connect with you outside of this podcast episode?

SPEAKER_03 57:07

Oh, thank you. It's been such a joy to be with you and to learn from you today. Um, and if any of your listeners would like to carry on the conversation, I co-host a podcast called The Pilgrim Soul, which you can find on any podcasting platform or at our website, pilgrimsoulpodcast.com. If you would like to get to know my research, if you put my name into Google Scholar, you can come across some of my papers. Um, but yeah, I always welcome uh prayer intentions and messages through our podcasting email as well. So if there's anything that you would like to follow up on from this episode, please know that I would be very happy to continue the conversation directly.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

Thanks so much, Sophia. Thanks for making yourself present and available to our listeners. Thanks for all the good that you're doing for our world, for our church, and bringing truth in so many different forms to bear on the healing of people around the world. And uh we can't wait to uh hear from you down the road and all the good that you'll continue to do. So thank you for being with us.

SPEAKER_03 58:10

God bless you, and thank you both for your ministry.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Yeah, God bless you. So, all of you out there, thanks for listening to This Whole Life, and we will see you again next time. God bless you.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

This whole life is a production of the Martin Center for Integration. Visit us online at this whole lifepodcast.com.