How The Constant Fear of Being An 'Outlier' Is Controlling Your Christian Life & Fueling Perfectionism Anxiety | 031

In Part 1 of this powerful two-part conversation, Lenee’ Pezzano sits down with Dr. Ashleigh Moreland, a neurophysiologist, therapist, and founder of the Re-Mind Institute, to talk about perfectionism, anxiety, the nervous system, identity, faith, and the God who goes after the one.

Ashleigh shares how, in science, outlier data is often excluded so the results look cleaner — but Jesus does not exclude the outlier. He goes after her. Together, Lenee’ and Ashleigh explore what happens when perfectionism becomes protection, when the brain starts scanning for threats, and when love, safety, and worth become tied to performance.

If you have ever felt like you have tried everything — prayer, journaling, counseling, worship, discipline, repentance, and “I’ll do better next time” pep talks — but still feel stuck, this episode will help you understand that your struggle is not evidence that you are broken beyond repair.

It may be evidence that somewhere along the way, your nervous system learned to protect you from pain — and now God wants to meet you there with truth, safety, love, and renewal.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

How perfectionism can become a safety strategy
 Why your brain may constantly scan for threats
 How past experiences shape your present view of God, yourself, and others
 Why fear of punishment can distort your relationship with God
 The difference between the brain and the mind
 Why renewing the mind is more than behavior change
 How Jesus comes after the outlier instead of excluding her

This is Part 1 of a two-part series with Dr. Ashleigh Moreland. In Part 2, we will continue the conversation into what it looks like to practice coming to God just as you are — and how His fathering heart begins to reshape the way you live, love, parent, lead, forgive, and surrender.

Take the Grace Scale Quiz and find Lenee’s book, You Will Make Mistakes: Discovering God’s Grace in the Midst of Perfectionism, at leneepezzano.com.

Connect with Dr. Ash here:
- ReMIND Institute

- Facebook

- Instagram

- LinkedIn

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Transcript

How The Constant Fear of Being An 'Outlier' Is Controlling Your Christian Life & Fueling Perfectionism Anxiety | 031 

Let's talk about the one. Not the capital O one, the lowercase one. That's you. The one who feels like the outlier. The one who's tried prayer, the journaling, the counseling, the diet changes, the worship music, the discipline, the striving, and the I will do better next time pep talks, and still feels like something isn't shifting.

The one who secretly wonders, "Why does everybody else seem to be getting better, but I still feel stuck?" The one who feels like the data point that doesn't fit neatly into the chart. The one who feels like the black sheep. The one who wonders if maybe they're too complicated, too sensitive, too anxious, too inconsistent, too much, or somehow not enough.

And today, I want to tell you something that might just begin to untangle that belief. 

[00:01:00] Jesus does not exclude the outlier. He goes after her. Do you know the scripture in Matthew 18:12 -14 that says, "If a man has 100 sheep and one of them be gone astray, does he not leave the 99 and go into the mountains and seek that which is gone astray?"

Maybe you caught it. He goes into the mountains. And mountains in scripture can carry a lot of meaning. Mountains can be places of encounter where, like Moses, he received the Ten Commandments, or where Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount, where people receive revelation, perspective, consecration, and closeness with God.

But mountains can also represent the thing that feels immovable, the obstacle, the fear, the unbelief, the circumstance that feels impossible, the stronghold you keep praying about but 

[00:02:00] can't seem to move, the pattern you keep repenting over but can't seem to break, the place where you feel buried and hidden, overwhelmed or unreachable.

And yet, here's the heart of God. He will leave the 99 and come find you inside your mountain. Not because you performed well enough to earn rescue. Not because you finally got your act together. Not because you became easy to understand. But because the one that's you still matters to Him. And here's what makes today's conversation so powerful.

My guest, Dr. Ashley Moreland, is a neurophysiologist, therapist, and founder of the ReMind Institute. In her scientific work, she studied human behavior, the brain, and neuroplasticity, and 

[00:03:00] she shared something in our conversation that literally stopped me in my tracks. In science, in our world, when data does not fit the pattern, it can be treated as an outlier.

Let me say that again. When data doesn't fit the pattern, it can be treated as an outlier. But here's the kicker. You know what researchers often do with outlier data? They exclude it. They remove it so the data set looks cleaner. But Dr. Ash said because she spent so much of her life feeling like the outlier, she became emotionally attached to the outlier in the data.

She wanted to understand that person who did not respond the way everybody else responded. She wanted to know how to reach the one who had tried everything and still felt stuck. And then she realized Jesus goes after 

[00:04:00] the outlier. And that's the heartbeat of today's episode. And this is only part one, folks, because the conversation with Dr. Ash was so rich that we're going to make it a two-part series so you can breathe and have some time to take it all in. 

So make sure you come back for part two, where we will continue the conversation into what it looks like to actually practice coming to God as you are, and how His love changes the way we relate to ourselves and others, and how this healing begins to reshape the way we parent, we lead, we work, we forgive, we surrender, we live, all the things.

Hey, sis. Welcome to the Redeemed Perfectionist Podcast. I'm your host, Lenee’ Pezzano. And if you're wondering who I am and why I care so much about this conversation, it's because I was that sheep in the mountain who thought she needed a performance review, but actually she just needed a Shepherd. 

[00:05:00] Three things you should probably know about me.

Firstly, I know what it's like to love God deeply and still feel like He's disappointed in you. Secondly, I know what it's like to use perfectionism as a way to feel safe. Worthy, accepted, and in control. And thirdly, I know what it's like for God to gently reveal that the root issue was and always has been fear.

And I don't mean the healthy respect of God kind of fear, but fear of punishment that kept me from intimacy with His heart. I knew Him as the Lion. I had to learn Him as the lamb. And you might be listening today and thinking, "Yeah, I've tried everything, and I still feel anxious," or "I love Him, but I'm still afraid of Him, and I wanna rest, but my body doesn't know how.

I wanna stop striving, but control feels safer than surrender. I know the Bible 

[00:06:00] says I'm loved, but I don't feel lovable, and I keep scanning for what I'm doing wrong, and I keep bracing for punishment. I keep trying to perform well enough to feel safe, accepted, and worthy." And maybe underneath all of that is this quiet fear.

What if I'm the one who doesn't change? What if I'm the exception? What if everybody else can experience peace, freedom, and healing, but not me? But, sis, the question I would pose to you today is this: What if the part of you that feels like the outlier, is not the part God rejects, but the very place He wants to come find and take you out of?

What if Jesus does not look at the outlier parts of you and say, "Ugh, too complicated," but He says,

[00:07:00]  "That one is mine, and I'm gonna save her from the mountain"? Dr. Ash says in this episode that perfectionism often forms when the nervous system learns at a very young age that performance equals safety and value and love or acceptance.

She describes how the brain begins scanning for threats and then how control becomes a strategy and how the stress centers of the brain can stay hypervigilant. And if you've ever felt like your mind is always assessing and grading and preparing and managing and fixing and apologizing and bracing, then this conversation is going to help you understand why.

And more than that, it's gonna help you see that your struggle is not evidence that you're broken beyond repair. It may be evidence that somewhere along the way, your nervous system learned to protect you from pain- And now God wants to meet you there with truth, safety, love, and renewal. 

[00:08:00] I want you to know that you are not too complicated for God. I want you to feel hope that healing is possible, even if you've tried everything and still feel stuck. And I want you to begin asking a different question. Not what's wrong with me, but, Lord, where did I learn that I had to perform to be safe, accepted, or loved?

And how do you want to renew that place in me? Because when you stop seeing yourself as the problem, you can now begin to shift your focus to the pattern. And when you can see the pattern, you can bring it to the light. And when you bring it to the light with Jesus, you no longer have to manage your healing through shame and striving and self-condemnation.

You can begin to partner with Him. You can begin to understand what's happening in your brain and your body and your 

[00:09:00] nervous system and what's the deepest beliefs you have and what's your view of God. And then instead of trying to punish yourself into freedom, you actually can begin to receive the love that makes freedom possible.

Because God does not want to wait to love you until you change. He loves you so that you can change. So as you listen today, I want to invite you to do one simple thing. Pay attention to the places in you that feel like the outlier, the places that you judge, the places that you hide, the places you've tried to fix, manage, explain, or exclude.

And then instead of shaming them, ask the Lord, would you meet me here? Because that's probably the mountain where the shepherd wants to come find you. And if the episode speaks to you, please subscribe. Share it with a friend who feels like she's tried everything and still feels stuck. And come join us inside the Redeemed Perfectionist Facebook community.

[00:10:00] We're all learning together how to break up with perfectionism and discover God's grace. Now, let's get into my conversation with Dr. Ashley Moreland. 

MUSIC

Dr. Ash, welcome to the Redeemed Perfectionist podcast. It's so good to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here and excited for this conversation where we get to tie in real lived experience with walking with Christ. Yeah. And I can't wait because there's so many questions that, for me, combine the supernatural, way that we're wired in our identity and the Lord with the natural and the, the physical realm, and you do that so well.

So I'm excited to get into it, Dr. Ashley Moland is with us today, folks, and she's a neurophysiologist, a therapist and founder of the Re Mind Institute. where she helps women break free from anxiety and perfectionism and survival driven patterns.

[00:11:00] That's gonna be a big deal today as we talk by addressing the root causes in the nervous system and identity. Blending neuroscience, psychology, and Faith. Ashley supports women to untangle who they had to become to feel safe, accepted or loved, and reconnect with who they truly are in Christ. Her work focuses on healing the internal belief that worth must be earned through performance, helping women experience lasting peace, emotional freedom, and a deeper sense of identity that is no longer driven by fear or pressure.

Dr. Ash, this is gonna hit well with our audience today. one of the things that. I recognize as I continue to do this work is that some people feel like they have to choose between neuroscience and faith. Yeah. But your work integrates both.

[00:12:00] So why is that so important? Well, I mean, I look at it as we are living on the earth and we're told to be in the world, not of it. And God has put people around us. And I was a scientist. I was an academic for 12 years myself, and it really, this was even before I was a Christian. And actually earlier in my life, I had a lot of religious trauma.

And I think science was my way of trying to gain some understanding and some clarity and some control that makes in the world I wanted to understand because things didn't make sense to me. Yeah. And. I even used to joke that science was my religion. And what really came down to it for me was this revelation that even as a scientist, I'm only exploring and researching God's divine creation.

And honestly, it were things like I did human research, which means that 

[00:13:00] we controlled experiments right down to the minute detail. We would control things like education status and family history and your health status, and like age, gender obviously. But every single variable we could possibly think of that would influence the way that we operate as humans.

We would control for either through our recruitment or statistically in the backend. And. I could never explain why some people would go up, some people would go down, some people would not change at all. And I really had a heart to understand that because I always myself felt like the outlier. Mm. And what I mean by that is I always felt like I was the black sheep.

I always felt like I was an alien on this planet. Like I didn't quite fit in and I was late diagnosed A DHD. So, when I was finally diagnosed a DHD, I was like, oh man, there's some things that start to make sense for me here. But it wasn't until I learned about the story of God going after the one.

[00:14:00] Yeah. and I'm like, man, everyone else, do you know how scientists treat outlier data? They exclude them. Mm. Oh, wow. Literally we exclude outlier data. Wow. So that we have a data set that is nice and neat for us to be able to interrogate and explore and find answers. And, because I spent my whole life feeling like the outlier that broke me, and I just went, no, I want to understand the outlier.

I wanna know how do we reach them? How do we take them from non-responders to responders? How do we go after them in this data set? And it just seems like I was the only person getting emotionally attached to the outlier in the data. Wow. That was the Lord. Yes. Mm-hmm. And I can totally see that now.

Yeah. And so, I find that so much of my work is in those people, not. Intentionally. It's not like I write this in my 

[00:15:00] marketing or anything like that, but it's just such a divine intervention where the Lord sends me people who do feel like the black sheep, who do feel like the outlier. And often I hear the story of I have tried everything.

I've tried the medication. I've done psychology. I've tried everything. I've changed my diet. I eat organic. I meditate. Like I do all of these things. Yeah. I spend all this time in prayer and worship and yeah, nothing is shifting for me and I don't know why. Mm. And so then we go, okay, now let's sit with this because do you know who goes after the outlier?

Jesus. Mm, yes. Mm. And so the reality is, even though I have all of this expertise and all of this training and all of this, understanding I can't fix you. Yeah. I can't heal you, but what I can do is. Use my gifts and partner with the Lord who knows you so intimately that every other scientist and every person of the world would just go too hard basket.

[00:16:00] We are just going to exclude this or let's find a way to manage it. Right, And yeah. And there's more for us than that. There's more, right? We're overcomers. Yeah. Literally. Literally. Yeah. We can literally be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Yes. And that's actually what Re-Mind Institute stands for.

So Re-Mind Institute, even though we operate in the secular space, and I have many clients who are Christian, I think it's just the way that the world goes. Mm-hmm. But I have many clients who are not, and that is so encouraging for me to be able to bring biblical principles and actually in the very name and the foundation of my business is biblical, that we will be transformed by the renewing of our mind.

Yeah. And. Understanding that the mind and the brain are different things. Yes. Yeah. So let's unpack that a little bit because you and I talked a lot and by the way, for the listeners, 

[00:17:00] I originally connected with Dr. Ash over the topic of ADHD. And I, of course, am in a season where I'm starting to realize that is certainly my life.

And I'm not formally diagnosed yet. I don't know if I'm gonna be, but I certainly relate to everything about ADHD and it's making life make sense for me. But then I love, and I'm fascinated by the intersection of that with perfectionism, with faith. And so, we talked a little bit about just what led to.

For me, the perfectionism so many of us was, it was just a way to control the world around us because we felt threatened. Um, and this was, what we thought we had to do and what we thought we had to become in order to be accepted and underneath of it was just we didn't feel loved or worthy. And so, we felt like we had to perform for all that.

Yeah. And so, you had talked about that idea that, the threats, right? So, a perfectionist, we're walking 

[00:18:00] around the world and our brain is constantly scanning for the next threat, for the next threat, and assessing and grading and critiquing the world around us so we can control and minimize the risk that's coming in.

But that does something to us from a, just a physical standpoint. It keeps the stress centers of the brain really active and hypervigilant. And that neurologically results in that front part of the brain that's responsible for executive functioning. It downregulates that. Yeah. And it results in this set of symptoms that we see consistent with ADHD.

So, let's talk first about the physical brain and what's happening, and then we'll move into, it's not the same thing as the mind. Yeah, absolutely. So, I think you've just absolutely nailed that and I love that we've had one conversation guys. 

[00:19:00] So for context, we only met and had one conversation, and we are diving deep into this and I love that there is so much alignment.

Yeah. what I observe in perfectionism and I have a, an online course that is literally about overcoming perfectionism and control. The very first module is all about how perfectionism is protection. And that control is a safety strategy. So what happens in our nervous system is we learn at a very young age through our early life experiences.

So, for me in my life, I won't speak on behalf of my clients or on behalf of anyone else, but by sharing my story, it might hold a mirror up to you for yours. And so for me, in my early life, I learned really young that my parents were happy. When I performed. And so what that looked like is if I got good grades at school, then I got praised, I felt seen, I felt valued, 

[00:20:00] I felt worthy if I raced BMX from when I was four years old, if I won BMX race, I felt seen, I felt loved.

I felt worthy. Yes. And so, I, the, outside of all of that, I had quite a traumatic childhood. And I grew up with an alcoholic father and a very, passive mom. My mom protected us. and she did amazing. But she was surviving herself. Yeah. And when adults are surviving, they're not present. Right.

They're not engaged. They're not relational in the way that we would want to have our mind and heart and soul nurtured, right? And so, I can see that they were doing their best to survive. But what it meant is that as a child, I was starved of emotional connection. And the only time I got that emotional connection, the only time I was fed was when I performed.

And so, it was like oxygen to me. I needed oxygen. 

[00:21:00] And it was absolutely crazy because I didn't realize how dysfunctional this was until I was actually at university. And I remember getting 98 on an assignment, 98%. And the only comment was, good job. And I re, I took my assignment. Now anyone else who wasn't afflicted by perfectionism and control and this sense of if I am not performing, if I'm not perfect, then I'm inherently unlovable.

Yeah. I'm not worthy of the air that I breathe. Right. I took my assignment that I got 98% on to my lecturer's office and I said, you either need to give me some feedback on where I lost the two marks, or you need to give me the two marks back because good job is not feedback. Wow. And I wanted an explanation.

Wow. Anyone else would be happy with 98? That would be thrilled with 98. that is an amazing score. How did your teacher respond? 

[00:22:00] And he looked at me and was just absolutely baffled, right. And he goes, mate, this is awesome. Like, I don't know what you're upset about. Right. And he was absolutely baffled.

And that was the first time that I ever really had a concept that maybe this was. A bit extreme. Mm. But the problem was if I wasn't performing, if I was, and this is striving, right? Like I wouldn't try new things because I was bad at it. Yep. And if I was bad at it, then it felt like I would be rejected. I would be abandoned.

Like I would be not worthy of love. Yeah. So, I would stay in my lane. I would only do the things I was good at, but then I would sacrifice myself, abandon myself, and harm myself. And also I would even say to an extent, harm others. Yeah. In order to perform and strive and achieve because I needed it.

Right. And yet we can never arrive. 

[00:23:00] No. No. There's always, because we're not perfect. No. There's the horizon. But there was never gonna be anything in our brain that. Connected that.at the time, like we no really believed we had to get there. Right, right, right. Yes, absolutely. And so, what that meant is the, like you said, the threat centers of my brain, just navigating daily life.

I'm not even talking about actual failure or actual anything happening. Yeah. I'm just talking about navigating daily life from sunup to sundown. My brain was constantly scanning for threats in the environment where a threat was being something less than perfect. That's right. That's life. That's right.

And so, what happens is when we are constantly striving and when we have that, that conditioning that we need to be perfect in order to be loved, and it's very performative, that will show up in our faith as well. Yep. Where we think that if we have 

[00:24:00] sinned or we've made a mistake or something has happened, I used to think that God was an angry, bearded man in the clouds who was gonna beat me up absolutely every time.

I had such a fear of punishment that when He, I always say this, that the 1 John 4:18, perfect love casts out fear. When He began to show up in a way to cast out the fear, I thought it was a counterfeit because I thought it was too soft. I saw him as the Lon and no grace whatsoever. That wasn't even a concept I could even understand.

Yes. Yeah. And also, like I think as a child, literally the mind is a meaning maker. That's what our mind is. It interprets, it makes meaning, and so without context and without wisdom, the word fear makes me as a child, think, afraid. Yeah. And so, to fear the Lord I thought meant I had to be afraid of him.

Yes. Because he was scary. Yes. and I didn't have wisdom and I didn't 

[00:25:00] have anyone in my life who could mentor me or lead me or guide me through that. And I also wanna just reiterate that by no means were my parents trying right. To create a perfectionist. They weren't going out there thinking that they were, um, causing me harm.

Right. That's right. They thought they were being a loving, encouraging parent to celebrate me when I won BMX races to make a big deal and celebrate me when I got good school reports. But this is what is most scary. I think, if we talk about spiritual warfare in this and really bring in that spiritual wisdom and element, something that is the scariest thing and.

Most grief-stricken thing that I navigate with clients who are parents is that no one wakes up and thinks, how can I instill these thoughts and 

[00:26:00] wrong identities in my children? Right? we will outsource that and say, it was Satan. We will outsource that and blame demons. We will be praying against all these things without realizing that actually it was our lack of understanding of how the enemy would use our tongue as his mouthpiece.

Right? How it's, it was our lack of wisdom to actually not understand, oh my gosh, this is how their mind is formed. Correct. And if we don't understand how to build a house. Then how do we know that the door's in the wrong place, right? How do we know that we need windows in bathrooms? Do you know what I mean?

Right. Well, because a child there has to a level of wisdom. Sure. and a child. We are getting hit. All of us, adult and children alike, get hit with input sensory data all day long, input all day long. And we, without guidance, to your earlier point, we are going to conclude things a certain way and interpret things a certain way.

[00:27:00] And if nobody is teaching us how to interpret it properly and line it up with truth of God's word Exactly, then it's going to get twisted and Yeah. And that's exactly what happened. and I feel you, it was just constantly like, oh, this person reacted this way and it was negative. I must have done something wrong.

It must have been my fault, and therefore I gotta figure out how to fix that so that I don't get rejected. And, um Exactly. Yeah. And this is the interesting thing is that even though people will often come with a very isolated challenge, for example, I'm struggling with anxiety, or I'm struggling with perfectionism, or I'm struggling with grief or burnout or whatever it might be, we have individual specializations that go into the ins and outs of that particular thing, but.

Every single thing starts with a foundation, which I call the re-mind method, the foundations of healing and growth. And what that is it helps people 

[00:28:00] to understand their nervous system. Mm-hmm. It helps people to understand the mind and how the mind and the brain are different. The brain is the physical hardware that will drive the body, but the mind is the software, it's the input.

Yes, it's good. And if I have assigned meaning, like this is just audio, it's not video, but let's say I'm holding up a bottle now. 9.9 people out of 10 would look at this bottle and simply see a bottle. The meaning that they assign to what they're seeing in their eyes is simply a vessel that holds water that you drink from when you're thirsty.

However, if someone has had a past experience where they were beaten by someone with this bottle. Their mind doesn't assign the same meaning. Mm. Their mind assigns a meaning Where that is a weapon, and this is what I really want people to understand, is that your past experiences dictate the meaning that your mind assigns to your present experiences.

[00:29:00] Now, the res reaction, the way that my brain activates, the way that my nervous system activates my body to prepare for either something that is safe or something that is threatening, is going to be very different when my mind sees and interprets a weapon, when my eyes look at the bottle, compared to when my mind sees and interprets a vessel holding water.

Yes. When my eyes look at the bottle, and this is what I see in relational trauma, Even what we were just saying about God, my mind perceived God to be an angry, bearded man in the clouds relationally. How would that influence the way that I surrender to him, the way that I can trust him, the way that I feel safe and vulnerable in him, the way that I can trust, that he's going to provide and love and care for me, right?

[00:30:00] As opposed to if I cast my eyes on the Lord and see kindness, gentleness, grace, mercy, compassion, forgiveness. Yeah. My goodness. Yeah. The difference of that in my body and therefore, what happens on the other side of brain activation? Right. Behaviors, actions. Right. Right. And so the way that I am going to act in my life, the way I'm going to behave towards people who have wronged me or towards my kids who are not listening to me or towards my marriage where there's troubles or challenges Yeah.

Will completely change. And this is what I think it does a disservice when people, see the science, let's say when people see the science of neuroscience and neuroplasticity and try to say that neuroplasticity is the answer to changing behavior. Right. Without understanding that we can change the brain.

[00:31:00] All we like, we need to change the input to the brain. Absolutely. And that's what renewing the mind is all about. Oh, that's so good. And I think of the scripture as a man thinketh, so is he. Yes. That's belief system. It is. and that sits below, that's code. Yes. Yep. That's right. we And what are some of the beliefs that might come up for people who are perfect?

Yeah. Who are struggling with perfectionism, where perfectionism is very dominant in their life. What are some of the beliefs that sit beneath the surface? If I'm not perfect, I'm not safe. Right. If I make a mistake, I'll be rejected. Yep. I'm not worthy. I'm not enough. Yeah. I can't, nothing I ever do is enough.

Right. I'm not loved. And even beyond I'm not loved is I'm not even lovable. Right. Shame, I'm less so we get into the roots of shame. Right. That's exactly. Shame and trauma go hand in hand. Yeah. It's not just the behavior, 

[00:32:00] it's that I'm a failure. I didn't fail. It's not, I failed. It's I am a failure. That's how shame interprets things.

Exactly. Yeah. And this is what I was going to say earlier is that belief systems are at one level. And I've studied lots of different modalities. I really wanted to delve deep into understanding the mind, understanding how the mind is formed, how the mind works, how we can change the mind and work with the mind.

And also, I also think it's really important to understand the weapons used against the mind. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And this is really interesting because I think like, gosh, what would be the biggest advantage if I was in a war? Yeah. What would be the biggest advantage that I could have over my opponent? It would be to know their attack.

It would be to know their strategies. What are they going to do? How are they going to do it? What are they going to use to do it? And so when I think about this as a spiritual war, I think, well, 

[00:33:00] hypothetically now, I can't speak on behalf of Satan, and I'm not going to try to, but all I do is I'll go hypothetically.

If there was an enemy whose job it was to steal, kill, and destroy God's plan and purpose for my life, whose job it was to alter my identity, to cast doubt over things, to derail my mission, how would he do that? Hmm. What would he have me believe about myself? Right. Right. He'd mess with the mind. We know that he would.

Exactly. And this is the biggest, I would say the most underrated thing in actual spiritual warfare is truly understanding the mind. Yeah. And when I look at this, my children currently are 9 and 12. No, wait. Oh my gosh. No. 10 and 12. No, nine and 12. They, their birthdays are coming up, so I'm like, wait, where are we at?

[00:34:00] Yeah. 9 and 12 and. I just think, gosh, I don't want to accidentally give him access to my kids. Mm-hmm. as a parent, we can be very discerning around what they read, what they listen to, what they're watching on tv, who they're hanging around with. We can be very discerning around those things.

Mm-hmm. But actually, if we don't understand how the mind is formed and how relationship is the biggest contributor, we can watch a movie and know that it's fantasy. But when the people who you are in closest relationship with don't understand the interaction, interplay, and dynamic of how that interaction is forming your identity and your mind.

Yeah. They are your biggest threat. Yeah. And it, it's so profound. I've got goosebumps just thinking about it. Well, I 

[00:35:00] mean, the Lord knew what he was doing when he said, take captive every thought and make it obedient to Christ. Yes. Yeah. I mean there are, I, we talk a lot in groups that I'm in about ruts and so that's back to the software, the wiring, if you will.

Yeah. So, our belief system, because of what's been wired, it's a rut that exists. And so, our thoughts are always gonna go through that pattern or that rut, I think of an old vinyl record. Mm-hmm. And it's got ruts in it, and you put that needle into the record, and it plays a song when it just, it goes through that rut.

And that's, we're singing certain songs, certain belief systems, but we gotta change the rut. To play a new song. and that, that takes work on our part for sure. The Lord doesn't just come and magically put a wand on our head like, I wish he would and just fix it. We have to partner with him in relationship and be renewed.

Exactly. Yeah. And I, again, coming back to this relationship thing, [00:36:00] I had a belief system that I wasn't worthy of love as, I just explained. And when I look at how that played out in relationship, it meant that if someone came along who really wanted to love me, who was patient, who was kind Yes.

Who was generous, yes. I was looking at that going, that's not, first of all, that's not what love looks like to me. Yeah. Because I grew up where love was harsh. Yeah. Love was, not that it wasn't patient, it wasn't kinds Right. Yeah. and especially being punished for things and being told, I'm doing this because I love you.

Yes. There were so many little things. And someone could come along who would put me on a pedestal, ready to love me, ready to nurture me, just wanted to honor me. And I would look at it and go, oh, what a creep. Yeah. No way. Yeah. Friend zone. Yeah. Yeah. But then someone who was a bit naughty, a bit emotionally unavailable would keep me at a distance.

Yeah. Someone who loved me through hurting me. Yep. 

[00:37:00] Bad boy was what my mind exactly. Was what my mind correlated with love. Yeah. And my thoughts, actions, and behaviors would go, oh my gosh, it's hot. Yes. Yep. I wanna pursue that. Yes. And right down to the things that I would say yes to and the things that I would say no to would be influenced by this programming beneath the surface.

Same. And that is so important, but. In our relationships. It's then how we show up and perform. Because I thought that I had to be a perfect mum. Yeah. Yeah. So, what does a perfect mum look like? Right. Well, a perfect mum feeds their children this and doesn't feed their children that. And they're always there for every pickup, and they're always there for every concert, and they're available every single night.

And they never yell and they never do this. And so I had this scorecard of perfection, parenting that was also a threat to me. Wow. I was married or I am married, my second marriage, what did a perfect wife have to look like? Right. Wow. She should always look put together,

[00:38:00] the house should always be clean.  Dinner should be on the table by 6:00 PM And do you notice the underlying word? Should, should, should, should, should. Yep. And it was just performative. It was just a report card. And when the Lord really unpacked this in me and went, what if you weren't performing? 

First of all, I was like, I can't do that. Because then I'll be a terrible mom, or Oh my gosh, I can't do that because then, insert horrible, threatening, scary outcome here. And actually, God was just like, what if that wasn't bad? So how did he start showing up? Like how did this start to unfold for you and when did it start for you?

It started during COVID. I, so I still wasn't a Christian yet. And so I say that, I say I wasn't a Christian yet, but looking back, I can see how the Holy Spirit was speaking into me and I had a, an awareness. 

[00:39:00] Yeah. I've al I would al have always considered myself a somewhat spiritual person, but God and I had beef.

Yeah. I was like, nah. So, I was more, Because I'm a feeler. Mm-hmm. I feel things in my body and that's intuition. I used to call it intuition and same things like that. yeah. Yeah. And so I had to repair relationship with God. But during COVID, my grandfather had passed away, and he was a big source of religious trauma in my childhood.

Mm. And audibly, I heard you have to go to church. Mm. And this just unraveled. I won't go, I won't go into the whole story. I'm happy to, share it another time, but just for time. But time, in the interest of time, I won't go into it, but I went to church to cut a long story short and over a period of about six weeks, it happened very fast.

It was like a snowball and I would open the Bible. The very first thing 

[00:40:00] actually was I opened the Bible for the first time in my adult life. And. It. I saw, love your neighbor as you love yourself. And I became enraged. Ugh. Oh. Because my neighbor, I used to have neighbors who were very easy to love. They would bring in my bins, they would help me, they would mow my lawn.

Well, they moved out and I got new neighbors who would regularly keep me up until three o'clock in the morning and would park across my driveway and do things that made it very hard to love them. Right. And I just went, how am I meant to love them? How am I meant to love people who are hard to love?

And it was like this big injustice, they don't deserve to be loved because they've done this. They're not performing. Right, exactly. And then you can understand now also how I then unraveled. And what about how you love yourself? Because I always believed that anyone who loved themselves were 

[00:41:00] egotistic and full of themselves and thought they were better than everyone else.

And that loving yourself was this ego-fueled, negative thing. Yeah. And so, I was like, I don't wanna love anyone I actually care about, I love me because I don't love me. I hate me. Right? I'm harsh towards myself. I'm brutal towards myself. I, if I, I don't, I would never, I would always treat myself more harshly than I would treat anyone else that I cared about.

Sure. And so, I thought, I would never wanna love my loved ones the way that I love me. And so, He really just took one line and started there and just snowballed me on this whole journey of unpacking this and going, okay, Lord, what would it look like if I loved me? How you love me? Yes. Show me how you love me because I wanna love me like that.

Even before I ask my husband to love me, even before I expect my kids to love me, even before I want anyone else to love me, show me how you love me and 

[00:42:00] how you see me. Because I wanna see me the way you see me, and I wanna love me the way you love me. And it was amazing. Yeah. What was that like? It was terrifying.

Yes, it was. I mean, I find that's been the hardest part for me. For sure. I can, yeah. I feel like I can love anybody else more quickly and tenderly than I can love myself now. That's changing. Yeah. And I'm still on that journey, but yeah. what did that, there's a process in this. You don't flip a switch and just turn on love for yourself.

Mm-hmm. What are some of the steps and things you had to do to get there More and more. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's, re Mind Institute is short self-paced courses, so they are very targeted. But I have run for six years now, I've run a program called Rise and Thrive, and this is intensive, so it's 30 hours over 10 weeks.

It's really deep. But we go into identity, we go into understanding our early life experiences. 

[00:43:00] We go into understanding intergenerational trauma and how our grandparents and our parents and how these things have been passed down. Literally like handing an identity Batten Yeah. And going, this is how we do this.

Yes. This is how we treat ourselves. This is how we, it's just conditioning and programming. Yeah. And we, first of all, we have to have awareness of it because if we don't have awareness of it, we can't change it. The problem with having awareness of something is that it's uncomfortable. Hmm. And God gave us a nervous system, which is obsessed with remaining comfortable.

So, it wants to be safe and it wants to be comfortable. And this is why some people can, can know that they have a problem, but the idea of change feels scarier than simply just tolerating the problem ongoing. Yep. And this, so the self-paced courses anyone can do, they're just available online. But this 10, this, it's 

[00:44:00] 12-month program, but the 10 weeks intensive is by application only because I use a very non-scientific scale.

It's literally the, I can't do this anymore scale. Mm. And I say to people. on the, I can't do this anymore scale. On a scale of one to 10, where are you? Because if you're anywhere less than an eight, you are not ready for this work. Because the pain and the discomfort and how much grief comes up and how it feels like a punch in the stomach.

And how, like to look at with no filters. Yeah. To look at the truth of who we are, what our shortcomings are, what we've been through, how we've contributed to our own pain. Yeah. Is ugly. Yes. And yet the redemption is that we see his love through all of it. Yeah. Even in our ugliness. Yeah. And so, was that built on the process he took you through, I'm assuming?

Yes. 

[00:45:00] Yeah, yeah. Yeah. it's entirely been, I always say to God, oh, I, I am very good at learning from my mistakes and I'm very good. I'm a, I'm an experiential learner. Yeah. So that means I need to experience things myself. I need to walk through the fire. And people say to me all the time, I have had people ask me all the time to write a book because I've had so much trauma in my life.

Mm-hmm. Like crazy stuff that people would go their whole lives without even experiencing one of these things, let alone an entire life of them. Yeah. And I always struggled. It was like, God, why are you doing this to me? This isn't fair. If you loved me, you would've spared me all of this pain and this suffering.

But now I see like, okay. I see what you're doing there because I am an experiential learner, but can't I learn from other people's mistakes instead of my own? can't I look at someone to put their hand on a hot stove and just trust that's hot instead of me having to feel it and burn myself and go through the healing 

[00:46:00] process and like, come on.  Maybe that's part of the wisdom you're gaining and eventually you'll get there. Yeah, right, exactly. So, the e everything that I do with clients, like obviously I'm trained, like I, I'm professionally trained and have qualifications in this stuff, but the work that I do with clients, it's not like I can't describe it because I'm not following a framework.

I'm not following a process. Right. I'm not following, I even say to people when they sign up, I have a, a 10-week guide of what I wanna go through with you, but we're not gonna stick to it. Right. Because this is God's plan. It's not my plan. Right. And if something's coming up now, then we are gonna go there.

Right. And even just, like I said, I've been running this for six years and in last Wednesday was session eight of our current cohort. And something that happens almost every time. I've had people go through it four times. Wow. Because it's always different. Yep. And they're always different. 

[00:47:00] And I'm always different because God's always working in me.

And there was something that was so profound it was blowing my mind as it was coming outta my mouth because it wasn't me teaching it. Mm. I was just the mouthpiece. Yeah. And I was learning as I was teaching because this was concepts I had never even heard of or learned or seen or read before. Mm. It was just coming out of me as it was unfolding on the screen.

'cause I'm also a very visual learner. So, I draw things and all this sort of stuff. And oh my gosh. it was mind blowing, oh wow. I just go, God is so good. He meets us exactly where we're at. And he knows, I do keynote speaking and if I had a hundred people in the room or a thousand people in the room and I asked them to close their eyes and just prompted them to bring something to mind Yes.

That was hurtful or that caused them pain, and I asked them to notice what they noticed in their bodies. People would say the same kinds of things. Like they'd say, oh, my throat feels tight, or My tummy feels sick, or My shoulders are tight. 

[00:48:00] I've got tension in my neck, or my heart's racing. Or they would describe the same sorts of things in their body.

Yeah. But every single one of them has a different scene playing in their mind. Absolutely. And that's between them and God. So, I don't even need to know. Nope. I don't need to know what has happened in your past, what you've navigated, what you've been through, because God knows Yeah. And he can transform that.

Yeah. I'm just the tour guide. That's it. Yeah, that's right. And I went through, that's, I discovered inner healing. and I had two women. I would travel two states to the west of me and meet with them, just to meet with them. 'cause there was nobody local who knew how to help me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And they would just be my tour guide, but it was really between me and the Lord.

Yeah. They had no idea where the Lord was gonna take me. And. Oh my goodness. That was the beginning of such incredible experiential learning and revelation. Yes. And healing. It was not theoretical. They weren't teaching me a [00:49:00] concept other than here's how you're wired, here's what's possible, and let's invite Holy Spirit in.

And exactly. And I could do it because I was safe with them. And I think that's one of the things that I tell a lot of people. If, if you have a, a large sense of God is angry with me or a fear of punishment in the beginning, it's okay if you struggle to show up just as you are with the Lord. Because right now that's not a safe association in your mind.

Yes. So, for me, I had to get with friends, I had to get with other people, and then I felt safe with the Lord. But when it was just me and the Lord alone. I couldn't just talk to him. So, then it kind of translated into I'd start writing. and I've been a writer my whole life, and so I would just write, I could safely write everything.

But talking to him, I really struggled. Yeah. And that's only been in the last year or two that, that all new layers of grace have entered in and healing has begun. and now I'll sit 

[00:50:00] down and I'll pretend like he's sitting next to me on the couch and I'll pretend like we're holding hands or I'll picture him as a, the father that I would expect a father to be.

Yeah. And things like that. There's ways to, to practice coming just as I am.

And that is where we are gonna pause for today. ' Cause if you're anything like me, even that phrase, coming to God just as I am, it sounds beautiful in theory, but for a lot of people, it can be terrifying in practice, especially if your nervous system has learned that love is conditional, especially if you've associated God with disappointment, punishment, or pressure, and especially if you've spent years performing instead of receiving.

So, in part two, we're going to pick up right here and continue this conversation with Dr. Ash. We're gonna talk about what it looks like to let the fathering heart of God reshape how we show up in real life, whether it be in your parenting or your marriage or your career. 

[00:51:00]Because healing does not stop at just understanding the pattern.

God needs to meet us in it. 

So, make sure you come back for part two, and in the meantime, ask Him this simple question: " Lord, where am I still afraid to come to you just as I am?" 

And before you go, I want to invite you to take the next step. If this episode stirred something in you, if you heard yourself in the outlier, the black sheep, and the one who's tried everything and still feels stuck, maybe head on over to my website and take my Grace Scale quiz.

It kinda helps you gently identify where perfectionism might be shaping the way you relate to God and yourself and your healing, because not all perfectionism looks obvious. Sometimes it looks like obedience, and sometimes it looks like discipline, and sometimes it looks like overthinking, over-repenting, over-apologizing, or just never feeling fully at peace with God.

[00:52:00] And if you already know perfectionism is a deeper pattern in your life, I would invite you to grab my book, You Will Make Mistakes: Discovering God's Grace in the Midst of Perfectionism. That book was written for the woman who loves Jesus but feels exhausted trying to become the version of herself she thinks He will finally be pleased with.

You can find both at my website, leneepezzano.com. I'll see you in the next episode.