.png)
Therapy, Coaching & Dreams
Therapy, Coaching & Dreams is cohosted by Dr. Jim Shalley and Dr. Selden Dee Kelley III, a therapist and a coach who love talking about how inner work can help you live with more awareness, purpose and freedom.
Therapy, Coaching & Dreams
S1E19 When The Divine Feels Like A Conversation Within
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
We explore how addictive behaviors can be signals from unbalanced inner energies, how to hear what the unconscious is asking for, and why old issues resurface even after insight. We close with a grounded view of integration, spiritual connection, and practical next steps that honor both emotion and choice.
• masculine and feminine energies across dynamic and static styles
• addiction as unconscious coping when a part lacks voice
• bold moves, dreams, and adjusting outer life to inner truth
• interest, insight, integration as a practical sequence
• triggers as teachers and faster recovery as a sign of growth
• asking what energy you wish others would bring as your inner cue
We trace the path from interest to insight to integration, showing how emotional learning completes what the mind knows. A heated moment at a car wash becomes an x-ray: not being believed triggers old wiring, and the body surges to protect. Integration doesn’t look like perfection; it looks like noticing faster, breathing sooner, repairing better, and choosing differently. Dreams and bold moves help translate unconscious signals into aligned action, whether that means renegotiating roles, shifting work, or creating boundaries that let spontaneity thrive without chaos. The goal isn’t to silence parts but to give each a seat at the table.
We also open a wider lens on meaning and the divine. Clients bring every kind of belief, from God-within to God-everywhere to none at all. Rather than forcing a box, we use humble curiosity as a bridge to connection. That stance mirrors inner balance: making space for difference without abandoning truth. If you’ve ever wondered why old wounds flash back or how to turn triggers into teachers, you’ll find language, tools, and stories that make the inner landscape livable, honest, and hopeful.
If this resonates, share it with someone who needs relief and a reframe. Then subscribe, leave a review, and tell us: what bold move is your unconscious asking for today?
You can connect with the cohosts through their respective websites:
AFCCounselors.com (Dr. Shalley) / https://www.inyourdreams.coach/contact (Dr. Kelley)
Welcome to Therapy Coaching in Dreams. My name is D. Kelly. I'm here with Jim Shaley. Hi, Jim. Welcome back, Dee. Welcome back. Welcome back. Um, we are exploring the inner landscape of personality. We've been looking at a model that considers both masculine and feminine energies and dynamic versus static approaches to how we live and how to find balance in the midst of all of that. The last few episodes we've been considering some questions from our listeners, and we're going to dig into a few more this week in the hopes that we can address not just the model in its form, but how it practically works out in people's lives and the kinds of questions that they have when they're trying to work through a variety of things. So I'd like to start with one that I thought maybe we could handle quickly.
SPEAKER_00:I'm not sure I like this. You're starting to laugh before the question.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there you go. So this first one was you made a comment in one of the episodes that it's not healthy for a 40-year-old to get high all the time. Oh. And so the question is, so what is the healthy number? Like what age is it?
SPEAKER_00:Well, all the time seems to be while you're sleeping, while you're awake. That's a lot.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, but specifically a 40-year-old, so uh is there another age where that works well?
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's be politically correct here. It's an individual choice. So if you if you need to get high all the time, you know, there'll be consequences, good and bad, as with any behavioral choice.
SPEAKER_01:So I think maybe the person is just looking for permission.
SPEAKER_00:So Well, then I would say I can't give it, but you can hang you can take it.
SPEAKER_01:So though I would actually like to take the question a little bit further. We have said that Transformers and Transformers being that feminine dynamic energy, again, not male or female, anybody has access to that energy. But one who is dominated by that personality style when they are coping in health in unhealthy ways, that they tend to be prone toward addictions. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. That's not at all to say that a person in any other portion on this personality style matrix can't struggle with addictions. Anybody can struggle with addictions.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And you And lots of times addictions come come into play when you're trying to cope with certain certain styles that you might have.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like if yeah, like if I'm too much of an initiator, I'm stressed out, I could drink too much, I could do I you know smoke too much pot, something, something to make up for that excessive excessive energy. So Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And addiction has been taking a lot of directions, like addiction to shopping or finances, money.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And it's just that transforming energy that you usually get in touch with when that starts to happen. So if I'm a driver and I find myself stopping on the way home to drink too much, that's the unconscious way, from my perspective, of the transformer to time to show itself. It doesn't like the pressure, it doesn't like the expectation. So the that's why I say if you can paint a picture of the where the energy is being expressed, that's a form of it. So if I stop and drink too much, basically that's the transformer inside inside of the initiator. Trying to get a voice because it doesn't have any voice. Right. Yeah. In a person's mind. And it's it can't get the initiator to realize I'm too stressed and I'm too much pressure and too many of these things. So then I stop on the way home and I have too many drinks. That's basically saying it. That's why it's, again, so important to pay attention to those expressions, because it it balances us all out if we have the fortitude and the ability to stop and take a look at it.
SPEAKER_01:But it's also probably, I'm guessing you would say an appropriate perspective that often those addictions as a way to cope are coming out of the unconscious. So we're not aware of it when it initially starts, much like dreams arise out of the unconscious and paying attention to those things that startle us, frighten us, cause us to do behaviors that we weren't really expecting, absolutely alert us to the fact that the unconscious is trying to speak.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And I think with dreams, or even in my frame, a bold move. So if you take the idea the transformer wants to stop and have too many drinks on the way home from work, whatever that is, I'm looking for a relief. I'm looking for an escape. I'm looking for some other energy. And so the adaptive part is okay, what needs to happen? Maybe I need to make a bold move, or I have a really disconcerting dream. So I may need to shift some choices I'm making. But that's that's can be challenging if you have a family, if you got to provide, you got bills, all that stuff can inhibit that ability. So then it's easier just to stop and and have a drink or whatever the metaphor is.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because you think you're containing the consequences. You've contained it to my little experience right now, which with an addiction is never the case because it affects a work system, a family system, a relationship, a marriage.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but think it, yeah, on some level, it's addressing it when the real challenge might very well be, I need to I need to change jobs. Or my marriage is really, really difficult. Again, some kind of what I would say bold move, the unconscious is trying to cause happen. And oftentimes when we don't make the bold move, we you know get fired from a job, we have an affair, but something happens back to what we talked about before. Some trauma happens that kind of motivates us to get into a better frame. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Speaking from experience, you can do the bold move and still get fired from the job.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, but did that turn out good?
SPEAKER_03:Oh, so good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So in that situation where I don't know if the right word is aberrant behavior, but behavior that maybe you wouldn't even think you would normally do, when you realize, oh man, this doesn't feel like me, then the question is, what's the outward trying to reveal of the inward? So let me try and figure out the expressions of myself that I haven't been paying attention to. And that's the movement toward health.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So that was a great description of how the transformer side of me can come out and i expose how I'm not dealing with a particular issue. And I might also add that when the outward conflict that I'm trying to avoid isn't addressed as the inward conflict that I'm not paying attention to, that that's often when those kinds of aberrant behaviors get expressed is I see the conflict, I'm trying to avoid it, but I'm always paying attention to the outward stuff and I'm putting blame everywhere else. And it's not that the blame goes on me, it's that I'm not paying attention to the inward conflict that has me projecting that all over the place. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. It's it's like one of the easier ways to diagnose it is if I have a problem and I think what would I like for someone to do right now for me? If somebody outside of me could come in and do something, what would relieve my angst? And typically that's the energy that you have to access.
SPEAKER_01:It's a great way to put it. Um back though, one last issue before we move on to the next question, and that is the transformer. The transformer's energy is very spontaneous, a high energy, looks for change, but is also aware of people and people's opinions. If it's not the transformer energy trying to get a voice, what is the driving force that causes transformers to move down the pathway of addiction?
SPEAKER_00:They've probably have felt judged or well, judged. In other words, their energy is way too expressive, and so they feel shut down, they aren't getting promoted at work. Something something's affecting because they can't see that they're not necessarily disciplined enough at times. And so they'll get pushback about that, and then that could cycle them back around to to being more excessive in their drinking.
SPEAKER_01:So that's great. I would probably break that up into two parts. That's good because I probably didn't say it well enough. So that's good. I I would say that the part you just described is sometimes self-imposed, but it's also sometimes that the world that the transformer is in, whatever their local network of friendships or relationships, uh often don't know what to do with the transformer because they're not bound by the same social norms, it seems, as others are. And because their cultural environment doesn't know what to do with them, sometimes that leads to trying to cope with that feeling of aloneness that can lead first to like the one step toward addiction.
SPEAKER_00:The second go ahead. They will feel misunderstood.
SPEAKER_01:Right. Right. Yeah. Great way to put it. I think the second piece is that the spontaneity that naturally comes with a transformer is like, oh, there's this here. Yeah, let's try that. Oh, let's do that, can often lead to that chemical shift in the brain where, oh, that was fun. I want to do that again. I want to do that again. Oh, I want to do that a lot. That their natural tendency towards spontaneity and enjoyment of the moment can lead to a chemical addiction that is tough to break because that's the natural approach of spontaneity and it would be interesting to know if a transformer that had the bias of of being a strong transformer had more of a dopamine rush need.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. That would be interesting to know that they're looking for that, whereas other styles wouldn't be as much. But the transformers are probably looking for that that fix. It'd be interesting to know. I mean, we're all kind of addicted to our to our screens and our phones and stuff, but it would be interesting to do a breakdown of of that to see if transformers are more likely to be stuck in that. The other thing is that we've talked about in earlier episodes, they're usually in relationship with a stabilizer.
SPEAKER_01:And so that's sets boundaries.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, absolutely. And that's and that's if they can appreciate it, but oftentimes they will feel mothered, and that will actually push them to be more excessive and avoid being home, avoid the responsibilities. Not that I know anything about that.
SPEAKER_01:I'm just saying that's absolutely true. I think that that is I mean, a transformer who is self-aware, it just is a very attractive personality style. The energy with boundaries, wow, it's like a magic formula.
SPEAKER_00:It's really true. It's like it's like again, finding that edge as you age, you find it a little bit easier. But it's finding that that edginess of should we go up that, should we go up that trail or should we go down that? Should we go around the trail or yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And a transformer says, we got time to do both. Let's just go. Yeah, that's true. Let's shift gears a little bit. One of the things that uh came up in one of our previous sessions was a statement that studying this framework helps us to understand ourselves and the divine better. How does it do that?
SPEAKER_00:Uh well remember, you asked not to hear these questions ahead of time.
SPEAKER_01:This is your own fault.
SPEAKER_00:Let me defer to you. That's got to get into a conversation about how the divine is expressed and how do we how do we how do we what's the divine mean? What's you know so I you know, you're the pastor. Sound a little tongue-tied, Jim. Well, if I gave the honest response is I mean, you can integrate traditional Christianity or evangelical Christianity in the sense that the divine lives within, and then people that are more expressive would say the divine is uh is everywhere. We're in s we're inside of the divine, and so the divine is a connection. And so in my mind, when we when we connect to our true selves, that's that's the image that God made in us. So in in in that sense, we're connected to the divine. Thanks. I appreciate that. I think that for me. So you actually you actually understood what I said? I just wanted to move on real quickly.
SPEAKER_01:One of the things that I think is important to acknowledge is that in the work that we do, we have clients who come in with a broad spectrum of viewpoints on the divine.
SPEAKER_03:Very true.
SPEAKER_01:And to step into a singular framework in regard to that can leave individuals feeling lost, not knowing what we're talking about. Some people have no experience with a church, a synagogue, or a temple of any sort. They were raised devoid of any of that kind of experience. Others have like tested the waters in so many different ways and come with very strong biases out of bad experiences or great point. Yeah. So I I think that part of this question. Of course. So I think that that I in in the midst of this framework that talks about appreciating people that don't enter into life with the same perspective or the same way of personality guiding them through certain decision making, we have to recognize that the experiences of all of the people with whom we interact are wildly different from us from each other. I mean, when I do premarital counseling, I I am sometimes stunned that this couple is together. How did you find each other? Why are you still together? But great to work on where we go from here. It's so true. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:So I think that is the challenge because you may have an old your own personal view, but in our work, it really is a sense of you have to entertain all kinds of possibilities. So that's why the question is like there's a probably a bias in the question. And so in the response, do you do you engage in their bias or do you try to expand it? And yes, I I believe that the divine lives within, and our framework is trying to access it in a pretty balanced way. I mean, if you use the the Christian scriptures about in moderation in all things, where the Apostle Paul talked about that, well, that's kind of what we're saying. There's a moderation in each expression that we have, and how do we live that out? And I think connecting to the divine is the way that happens. And and yeah, we can have a discussion about how you define the divine, because even using the word divine, some people would say back in the old days it would be new age or you're watering it down. When in my mind, God can handle all those things.
SPEAKER_01:I might have mentioned this one time before, but one of my favorite ancient Hebrew sayings is that the only thing you can say about God is that you can't say anything about God. Because it's because as soon as you say something about God, you've put the divine in a box, and the divine can't be contained in any box we might create. And that Hebrew tradition certainly has some very specific characteristics that not everybody that would come to talk to me or to you would hold. But I do greatly appreciate that commitment to recognizing that the divine is a larger than anything we could conceive in terms of the creative force of the universe, the way in which we're all connected. And I will say that I do have a bias in that regard, that there is a connection between all of humanity and all of creation that sometimes peaks through in powerful ways, and sometimes we don't pay attention to it at all. But more and more as you listen to the stories of people's experiences, it's tough to deny this connection that to me speaks to the divine. To that end, I eventually land in a place that the best way for me to understand that connection is first to become more and more self-aware of how that connection exists within me. And then I have this appreciation that it might exist in you in a different way, but is there. And if I'm looking for connection, my connecting bridge is to say, as you've often tried to teach us, this is how I think, but I could be wrong. I would love to know how you think or how you come to that conclusion or what's inside of you that leads to whatever it is that we're discussing. That to me is the bridge to the collective divine as well as the divine within for me. So that's great.
SPEAKER_00:That's perfectly said. Yep. Thanks, Jim. You have to really, you have to really take a deep breath and realize we all experience life differently. And conversations and asking questions, that's where we connect. And we've gotten away from that a lot, it seems like. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Let me take this one step further, because this was the third question that came in. And it was just very simple. Could you give us a little bit more of a description of what an integrated person looks like? So when you have somebody you're working with, what are some of the clues that integration is happening? You can see it in the way they live it out. And I'd like a very black and white answer.
SPEAKER_03:So everybody Well, they will wear certain clothes all the time.
SPEAKER_01:Appreciate your humor, like the things you like.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Yeah. Yes, they will agree with most of the things you say. Oh, they're completely integrated. Oh man, that's a great question. It's just a nuanced of you the individual, without I mean, it feels like I'm punting a little bit. The individual feels something. Like the other day, I had a situation in at the car wash where this guy kept yelling at me to put my car in neutral. And it was in neutral, but it had it moves a little bit. So he thought that I was, I was in gear, and it wasn't. And he kept yelling at me. Finally, unconsciously, I just I screamed. I said, it isn't neutral. And I was like, later I thought about go, okay, that was a little bit over, a little bit weird. So even when you know it, there's these unconscious triggers that can happen that you just respond out of frustration or whatever. And I think that's why you have to build into all of this some sense that there is no perfect way of being. But after that episode, I thought, how could I, excuse me, how could I have reacted better? I reacted to his energy. And that's what we always do. And so being aware of your own energy and what you're bringing to the table is so important, but that just takes practice. I mean, I, good Lord, I'm 73 years old. Should I have had that reaction? No, it was hilarious. Later I went, okay, that was interesting. I still have my moments where getting yelled at can just initiate this crazy response from me. So I don't know if that answered the question very clearly, but it's an individual journey. If I react in a way that surprises me, how long does it take me to ask the question, okay, what what happened there? And I think that's the journey. There's no, in other words, there's no template to where, well, I'm in the middle and And every given moment, I know where I need to be. No, it's it's it's experiencing, it's experiencing life, and using that as the framework to be be more aware of it. Well, that's good. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. It's an interesting bridge to the last question for today, and that was why do we hit the same problem again and again? Like I I feel like a person might say, I've gone to therapy. We've talked about the issues that I face. I've worked months to try and work through some things. And then five months later, something triggers me, and I go, well, I thought I dealt with that. In in a we talked earlier about a religious framework that is often the case in religious frameworks where I thought I took care of this. I went through what in Christian language would be the confessing and forgiveness and surrender model. And here I am again facing the same thing again and again and again. Yeah, and that's that's the integration of the head and the heart.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. A lot of people will have an intellectual ascent and they understand it and all of those things, and then the emotions kick up and then they get sabotaged because the emotions are still there. And that's why on the ongoing process is to realize I understand intellectually, but emotionally I still get triggered by it. I can still be affected by it. That's why I say the insight is only the beginning. There has to be movement that changes the brain. And so what is the movement that I really do understand the dynamic? Well, I start catching myself more often. I'm I become more aware of when I'm being triggered. I take a deep breath. That commitment is so important, and I make a different choice to respond differently to it.
SPEAKER_01:I love the three words that go together for me, and that is interest, insight, integration. Like that's kind of the progression. Oh, I'm intrigued by this. I'm interested. And then there's like an aha. Oh, now I see how that works, but it's very intellectual. And then there's the and then there's the integration that brings the emotion in. And here's where I think dreams are so powerful. When I get triggered during the day about what I think is an old issue, but there's still unconscious emotion that I've not addressed. That trigger, whatever it is, a smell, a scene, somebody in a car wash that yells, when that trigger happens and it touches something that sure, maybe I've addressed, but the emotional weight of that event of the past, family of origin, looking back to looking to look forward, to move forward, brings to the surface once again something that just needs to be processed. It's not that doesn't need to be that traumatic. It just is, it came up again. And so I'm remembering a grief of having lost my parents and something reminded me of it. I'm remembering an anger over getting looked over on a job promotion. And I dealt with it, but something triggered the emotional weight, and it shows up in my dream, or I had a reaction to it. The integrated person goes, oh, okay. This is just a reminder that I still carry some of that emotional weight. That's perfect. And that emotional weight is essential to our survival for whatever we face in the future. So I don't need to condemn it. I just need to go, oh, that's what that is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there it is. There it is again. Yeah. Yeah. As I thought about the situation at the car watch, as simple as that or as inconsequential as that might be, for me, it's like when I feel like I've done something and I don't get credit for it, I didn't, or they don't understand that I've already done it, that can trigger me. It's like I'm I'm ahead of you. I uh it isn't neutral. But if you keep accusing me that I didn't know, or I I feel stupid, or I feel like I'm not enough, or I did something, yeah, it still triggers that. So that's that's the great point. It's like, yeah, that emotion still lets you know that there's still a wound in there, but you can say, oh yeah, there it is again. I tell people that all the time. It's a reminder, oh yeah, it's still there. Okay. Am I handling it better than I used to? Of course I am. Yeah, the black and white thinking, excuse me, the black and white thinking really is I'm going to get to a place where I've solved it and it goes away. And it's is life is just not that fortunately or unfortunately, not that not that simple.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And I think people forget that our psyche is built for survival. So that if something was traumatizing or difficult or painful in the past, that particular situation, that story, is used inwardly to protect us from things in the future that will bring pain or danger. Absolutely. That's great. You're right. And so sometimes it's important for us to tell the same story again. I was harmed by my teacher, boss, parent, sibling, whatever it might be. And that situation was traumatic, but the psyche uses that to protect me in the future, and it alerts me when there feels like there's a danger moment again. So not being believed triggers an emotion that is protective. And to go, oh yeah, I know where that's coming from. Thank you, body, for protecting me. However, you can relax.
SPEAKER_00:We've got this. And uh a lot of people won't won't uh m remember this quote, but remember danger, Will Robinson, danger. Yes, lost in space.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Which is an essential piece of survival for who we are.
SPEAKER_00:Again, the growth is it protected me. Do I still need to be protected that way?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Absolutely. And I use that phrase in in therapy a lot. Do you still need to do that? That's great.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. And a great place for us to stop. Jim, as always, it's been great to be with you. I hope this has been helpful for the listeners. And again, if you have any questions, we'll hope you shoot them off. This has been a joy for us to dig into some of these. Absolutely, do you talk to you next time. Great. Bye. Well, that's it for this episode of Therapy Coaching and Dreams. If you're enjoying the podcast, we'd love for you to share it with someone who might appreciate it as well. And if you are interested in working with either of the co hosts, you can do so at their respective websites, Dr. Shally at AFCcounselors.com, or Doctor Kelly at inyourdreams.coach. Thanks for being here. And until next time, keep growing, stay curious, and take good care of yourself. Yeah, no, that's good stuff.