Episode 239 - Dr. Janelle Hallman, "Fostering Wholeness"

“I don’t work well with people who have it all together.” - Dr. Janelle Hallman

On this edition of Restoring the Soul, Michael welcomes his colleague and one of Restoring the Soul’s Intensive Clinical Soul Care Specialists, Dr. Janelle Hallman.

Janelle is a Licensed Professional Counselor, ordained minister, professor, author, and speaker on issues such as redemption, healing, and wholeness. Her passion is to counsel, facilitate, teach and share realities about God, life, and the human experience in a way that transforms and touches a person’s deepest heart. She loves working with any individual or couple seeking greater wholeness.

Dr. Hallman has served as an adjunct professor at Colorado Christian University. She is currently an adjunct professor at Denver Seminary and regularly supervises, trains, and consults other therapists, pastors, and lay leaders.

Dr. Hallman received her MA in Counseling from Denver Seminary and her Ph.D. in Counselor Education and Supervision from Regent University. She loves beauty, babies (being a grandmother!), nature, reading, and absorbing spiritual masters.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:12

Hello and welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty. Thank you for listening. On this edition of the podcast, Michael welcomes one of restoring the souls intensive clinical soul care specialist, Dr. Janelle Hallman. She's an ordained minister, Professor, author and speaker on issues such as redemption, healing and wholeness. Along with her work at restoring the soul, she's currently an adjunct professor at Denver seminary, where she supervises trains and consults with other therapists, pastors and lay leaders. And we know you'll enjoy Michael's conversation with Janelle keep an eye out for her take on what it is about intensive counseling that brought her to restoring the soul. But before we listen in on their conversation, I wanted to take a moment to encourage you to let us know that you're a listener of the podcast, and from listening, your life has been impacted in positive ways. You can send an email to info at restoring the soul.com or write up a quick review on Apple podcasts. Let me highlight two recent reviews that mean a lot to us. The first says I liked this podcast and I don't consider myself a Christian was truly born atheistic, but would call myself spiritual at this point, and intrigued with much of the wisdom of the Bible. The next one says I always feel softened and strengthened after listening. And my thoughts are also sharpened and more integrated with my feeling side. I learned so much from the stories people share about their lives on restoring the soul. Thank you. We're certainly grateful for everyone listening today. And those who have taken the time to let us know that they're out there. Please be sure to keep us in your prayers. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael John Cusack. Dr. Janelle Hallman, welcome to the restoring the soul podcast. Thank you. It's great to be here. Tell me about what it was like to grow up in Seattle in Alaska. You were young. Yeah. But that's, that's wild country? Well, it is. And so I moved when I was four. And that's actually one of my first memories is when my family was driving from the airport that we flew into in Alaska, driving to our new housing. And I remember looking out the window because it was literally wilderness that we were driving through, and kind of asking myself, you know, what, what is this about because, and I don't have a lot of memory. I have a few before that time. But I had grown up in West Seattle, which was, you know, small, beautiful little cottage houses close together. So I know that this was my first experience of really just seeing this wide open space that also looked not real inviting. It's very scraggly. Where I was the forest isn't a lush forest. It's more underbrush than anything, but I just remember my eyes were probably like plates just going, where are we move into? Yes. How long did you live there? Six years. So most of my, you know, later childhood. So as little kinds of things did you do? Oh my gosh, we played outside. That would be the main memory and it was safe enough that my brother and I and our little friends we'd run through the woods, we would find old forts. We would find animals we paid attention to the plant your salmon as they were spawning and going upstream my dad did. And he would take us with him and we would take a boat over to the beach and we would hike up the mountain and he would get himself situated in the middle of a raging waterfall. And we would sit on the side watching the salmon jump upstream while my dad would catch them in a net. That's amazing. How did you think that shaped you? Who you are today I think it really planted a sense of adventure in me. I love adventure I love challenges too. And so challenge to me is kind of got the same edge as adventurer. Certainly love for nature. absolute love for nature. But yeah, there was just it was Oh big in Alaska, you know, we had whales swimming next to our boats. We would go on the beach and collect crabs and clams. And so it was it just seemed like it was constant kind of discovery, exploration adventure in that so much a part of who I am I love to learn, I love to explore. In another life, I may have been a scientist, I love science, I can see that. Yeah. So it's interesting that you bring up learning and scientific discovery as a kind of adventure because it really is, you know, there's this, this open field of inquiry. And I never thought of it as an adventure. But it really is, it really is. And you love to travel. That's very adventurous, or some of the coolest places you've traveled to. Oh, my gosh, the first thing that jumps in my mind is Mozambique. It's the only time that I've been to South Africa. And I absolutely loved it. Loved it. Got to go to Asia several times in the last five years had never been to Asia. Absolutely love it. Still have relationship with people. But to Eastern Europe, you when you were a professor, remember you went to Poland, right? You did some teaching there, right? Yeah. All over West, Western Europe, I've certainly been down into Mexico did some teaching and speaking down there. Just I love to travel. And so my dad was with the airlines. That was the job he took when we went up to Alaska, okay, so because he was with the airlines, we could fly for almost free. And we traveled all the time back to Seattle. And then my parents love to travel. So we went to the Caribbean when I was a kid growing up, we went to Mexico. So that is the cross cultural experience that I was exposed to really early. And it was another type of adventure. I've just been in these different places, meeting different people, I have absolutely treasured my opportunities for travel. So what's it like for you to sit down with people, and they are of a different culture, race, ethnicity, or even missionaries that might have lived abroad for a long time because of your early exposure to different kinds of people? Right? I love getting to know different kinds of people. But I do know that, that when I sit with someone who is who is has a lot of differences for me, that I kind of put on the hat of student, I want to learn and listen because I don't know, you know, I don't know everything about their culture and just influences you and I have to take a licensure state record course for multicultural counseling that doesn't make us experts, you know, in other people think absolutely not. But yeah, but let's see, I love to learn. And to get to know a person from a different culture or a different race, to me is kind of got that same hint of adventure and exploration. And I'm curious. And the bottom line is, I just love people, and I love story. And so getting to sit with people who have very different stories and very different backgrounds to me. It enriches my life. They're a gift. It's a gift. One of my favorite parts of restoring the soul is that in the almost 20 years that I've been running the ministry we've worked with people from I think it's now over 60 countries. Some of them are come as expatriates, some are missionaries, but many are actually nationals or indigenous to the country they're coming from and that's been really fascinating that intensive counseling especially lends itself to that because you can go in so deep. Yes. So you've been a psychotherapist, a counselor, an educator, a speaker and an author. And you've been doing that for 25 ish years. But your background prior to that is really in business and the marketplace. Right. So talk a little bit about what you've done, and then ultimately how you got into counseling. I have the strangest resume. In terms of what I've done. I was a legal secretary actually, I was a medical transcriber right out of high school I learned the language of pathology so as a pathology transcriber, which allowed me to be hired eventually as a legal secretary, went ahead and got a paralegal certificate because I wanted to just dive in more. And that led me to make a decision to go to law school, which I didn't have a college degree, so I had to get a college degree to go to law school. So I went back to school got a degree in economics with a minor in Political Science because I was headed towards law school and on the day that I had to decide to say yes to law school, I decided that what wasn't the best direction for me. And at that point, I became a computer programmer and developed a program for electrical contractors that allowed them at this point in time. This is everyday stuff. But this was over 30 years ago, that allowed them to digitally design and electrical installation and develop a price, the pricing of that installation at the same time, so they got a pricing estimate, at the same time. So yeah, so I I learned computer language, and I had friends who were programmers who said, Janelle, you'll never be able to do this. Well, my naiveness, I think, is what allowed me to do it. Because I didn't really know what the obstacles might be, it was an adventure. It's an adventure to say the least we had time I would, I would want to talk about this for an hour. But like, I get this picture of you with a slide rule, walking into a Home Depot and just kind of coming out of the store and putting together this engineering computer thing. But suffice it to say to our listeners, that Janelle is very smart. And as you've heard, she can wear a lot of different hats. And I really think the reason why I asked this question is that counselors are not just touchy feely people, that that restoring the soul, we actually think really hard and integrate the training that we have. And oftentimes it's life experiences outside of the counseling classroom or the formal counseling training that are just as valuable. Absolutely. So you have this rich, diverse background, and it's one of the things that, that I really appreciate and respect about you. So how did you go from Melinda Gates, Jr. To? To? That's that's, that might not be a respectful thing to say, but how did you go from being a a software tycoon and developer to Denver Seminary where you were getting a counseling degree? Yeah, it's good question, because it really was a major life change. I had gotten involved in a support group, local, in Denver. And it was really large, there would be 50 people who would show up on our at our weekly meetings. And while I was there, just listening to other people be transparent about their struggles, their pain in their life, it really awakened me to What is God doing in my life, and I had felt kind of spiritually dead for years, probably because I was working with computers. And it was killing my soul relation. Yeah, maybe. But it was such an awakening for me and kind of a renewal for me to realize, God cares about our life, he cares about our emotional well being he cares about, you know, our struggles. And so it really launched me into my own journey, in terms of some healing that I needed. But I also just fell in love with the people that I was with and fell in love with that kind of environment where we offered each other unconditional acceptance, and really radical grace and support. And so I eventually decided to become one of the leaders of the support groups, and then got involved in their educational branch and started speaking at churches, a lot around how to walk with people who hurt, etc. But what started happening is that a lot of people within this group, were calling me up and wanting time to talk, and I loved it. I love sitting with them. But I realized at one point, I am spending all of my extra time hanging out with people that I love. But I thought, hmm, is this sustainable for me, because I had a little child, so I wasn't working at the time. But I knew that I wanted to get back into work. And I thought maybe I should look into becoming a counselor, so that I could actually do this full time and earn a living. And so that is what led me to going back to school to get my Master's in Counseling. So kind of the story of you were doing it. And there was demand and people were being helped as a lay person, and with a very busy life. So why not do it professionally. Right. And so when you went to seminary, you were still involved with that support group, both in the leadership and on your own journey. So how did that process of getting trained as a counselor at seminary, how did that encourage or discourage your personal journey of becoming whole? Oh, that's an interesting question. Let me pause there. I didn't think that was where the question was going. Because most people so you and I are more mature in our years and so You went to seminary later in life with all this experience. And so, most 23 year olds go to seminary thinking this is going to be great. And I'm going to get my degree, and I'm going to go out and help people. And they don't realize often for many years that their own junk gets in the way. So if you had been actively engaged in that process with this group, and what you're teaching out of your own life, so I guess I'm, I guess I'm just wondering what that was like to go through this training program and to have your own life be plowed up, instead of it just being an academic experience as if you did go to law school, right? Well, indeed, during seminary, my life was plowed up on many levels. But I already had some kind of framework of knowing that God is present, and that he's working even in the midst of my struggles and difficulties, frankly, seminary at some level, while it did really equip me for the licensure and the professionalism, it really, I felt like it lacked in terms of this type of integration that I just mentioned, that God is present in our suffering, and that there is deep intimacy that can happen with God, through our pain that was already set because of my support group involvement. But I never heard that at all, from any of my classes, or coursework, for the most part in the whatever integration was present in my program. And again, this is a lot of years ago, and I'm not criticizing Denver seminaries counseling program, because they have a fabulous program. But this was a lot of years ago. And they're really we, you know, the integration would just simply be sharing some Bible verses, you know, that are nice things to say about Jesus or whatever. But it never really touched that deeper place in our soul, and what we really experience internally, especially when it comes to shame, and condemnation, so while I knew I was getting great material, I was still left kind of wanting. Yeah, but you know, there's more here. And that has always been my sense is all the theories out there all of the techniques that have been created, you know, in psychotherapy, there's more, which is really the relational, the intimate point of where two people are meeting in the counseling room, but also where God comes in and meets us. I didn't really get that much from seminary. So I've had to learn a lot still. Yeah, and I agree with you, Denver Seminary is a tremendous program. In terms of its clinical training, here's a little shout out, I think it's one of the top programs in the country, I agree. And you were a full time professor there. In recent years, yeah, now, doing some adjunct work. But it's so rare for any counseling program, I can count on three fingers, not one hand, but three fingers, the programs that really initiate and intentionally do that kind of work of integrating your internal journey with theology and Bible and what's true about God and the Kingdom of God with then the psychological theories. And again, most, most of the time, people just have to get beat up for a long time in the career, and hopefully find their way with that. But that whole idea of just giving you Bible verses that often does more harm than good, where people come really hungry for real hope. And more and more, a lot of the people that come to restoring soul, and I know that you've worked with, they've tried all the pat answers and the easy things, and it hasn't worked. So there's this, there's this approach that you have. And this is why of course, you're here. That really is a depth orientation of working in our hearts, and with with who we are as whole people. So with that, I want to have you talk about what is it about intensive counseling, in particular, that brought you to restoring the soul? And what are the uniquenesses that you see happening? What are the ways that intensive counseling kind of ignites change in people in a way that's different from what you did for many, many years in traditional weekly counseling, right? The first thing that comes to mind with intensive counseling is that I as a therapist can actually relax a little bit more because when you only have 50 minute sessions, it's like there is a pressure and it's just a reality to that kind of model, which I'm still not sure why we stick to that model so much because the person that invented it had ADHD and a small bladder, evidently, 15 minutes. Yeah, yeah. Well, of course, the Freudian the psycho analyst would see their clients four or five times a week. And so that fifth The minute session worked fine for that model, which really mental health counseling emerged somewhat from that mom, right? Yeah, but we only see clients once a week. So, so Right, yes, we step into this 50 minute session, and there's pressure, there's immediately pressure, that something kind of happen, that there's some contact made, you know, with the client, or maybe a light bulb goes, goes off in their head, or they have some experience, you know, with the intensive model, there's immediately an invitation to relax, because time is not so much the pressure. And what I have found, and I'm still feeling into this is that when I'm in this more relaxed state, I am, I am more open, I am more welcoming, I am more attuned to the client. And the client, I think, begins to feel this spaciousness. And then they relax, and then they relax. And in that relaxing, some of the defenses can begin to crumble, I don't have to fight anybody's defenses, you know, there is a place to, to just be open. And then there's this wonderful dance of me kind of then offering pieces of gold to the client. And they, they are open enough to just simply receive. So that's one thing. But the other thing is that we can do a deep dive, we can actually have experiences together, because I'm very experiential. In my therapy, we can have experiences together or kind of work through a certain protocol together. And I don't have to constantly be looking at the clock, we can let the depth happen. And so a three hour block of time, frankly, we'll get done with three hours and go whoa, that went fast. It's like we could do for five hours. I mean, that's how rich it is, is just Yeah, to just be able to swim around. And then the other thing is that they come into the office the very next day. And so all that was swirling in them and stirring in them from the day before, is still present. They're still either an openness, or they may notice that they're shutting down and getting tight. And so we face that. And we walk through that, and it's day after day. So the depth is profound. And the shifts that can happen is profound. And in that second day, in third day, it says if there's, for every day, there's a month of traditional gasoline, because, you know, we talk about people going to counseling weekly. But I read a statistic recently, that if you took all the counseling sessions of all time and added them up, and don't ask me how they got this number, that it's 1.5 sessions that people do, from people that go to long term therapy to people to go to the emergency room, because they're having a panic attack to just normal practitioners. And then when people do engage long term, life gets in the way, and there's vacations and they make twice a week and some people don't have health insurance. And so it's a lot less than that. But that's what's so powerful to me. When I started doing this back in 1998. Were on day two, you've already established a very strong alliance and trust and safety. And it's just fun. Yeah, yeah. People tell me why asked me why I do intensive counseling, and it just feels like play. And yet, in a way that's very intentional, strategic, and the results are not like play. But it's transformational. Right. Right. And I mean, the relationship, right? The this intense encounter that I'm having with my clients every day, you know, for two weeks is my preference. I love two week intensives. There is a there is something that even happens between us, because of my commitment. And philosophy really, is to just provide this safe place for my client, where I am solely attuned and focused on them. And I come with compassion, Grace, gentleness, kindness, and I just want them to swim in that. And so the power of that piece, to have this relationship, this, I'm gonna use the word attachment because it really is there is a bond and attachment that's formed that in and of itself is transformative for both the client and me, right. There's a gift in that. So yes, I'm with you on the play, because it's like, there's deep joy. There is deep joy and love in this opportunity. And this can sound like maybe saying something that we think that clients want to hear, but it's really not that we actually had this conversation with our staff a week ago, about ending What it means for us as therapists to end well and to create positive and good endings, because there are very few good endings, and whether we lose someone through death of a loved one, or a relationship breakup, or even with COVID, you know, not seeing people for long periods of time. And I think about summer camp when I was a kid and going to camp and creating these bonds with the counselors and with the other kids, no kind of moment of closure. So there really is a bond and a real connection, we're probably the only thing I don't like about intensive counseling is that there's real caring. And I always like to say that the caring is free, you know, what people are paying for is expertise, experience, truth telling, and a professional presence, but the caring is free. But that's really real. And I know that I will often underestimate the power of just a caring relationship, whether it's a friend, family member, or my own counseling work, that it's easy to focus on that one nugget of telling me what to do, right. But it's what we called in graduate school, a corrective emotional experience, right? Where the relationship is part of what heals. That's right. It's huge. And so you were you said, that's what I don't like about intensive counseling, but I'm not sure you ever clarified that. Oh, well, we don't like saying goodbye at some level. Yeah, thank you. I don't like the fact that there's this deep immersion for two weeks. And then this need to say goodbye. So no, Friday afternoons are oftentimes sad for me. Yeah, it's exhausting. Because we we put ourselves all out. But it is sad. Yes. And the part I miss about traditional counseling is that ability to journey long term. And I think there's something in me that's wired to be able to go deep for a shorter amount of time. Yeah, I want to back up, you said that you do a lot of experiential work. And I think that's one of the real uniquenesses that you bring to our team. Everybody here has a different experience and skill set, and gifting. And you even do work in the past, and presently, that are experiential weekends. And so talk a little bit about what it means that you do experiential work is that a trust fall in levitating? I wish we could do trust falls here, we'd have to apply for insurance, right. But it is along that line, it's just not that big in terms of requiring a group. So a lot of the experiential work that I do would be what's called Building mindfulness or awareness, where we may practice just noticing, noticing our body noticing our emotions, doing different meditations, of bringing, bringing self compassion in how do I begin to speak in a self compassionate way to myself, or welcoming God into our emotional experience, which requires letting or allowing ourselves to sink into the emotional experience we're having right now in this moment, and then inviting God in and letting go of that need to fix or change? So so that's what I mean. So it's not us talking. I'm not talking to the client during that time. I'm leading them through an experience or a process, something that's a process or an experience, as you said, but it's very action oriented, not homework, but write up and pay attention in the moment in the moment what's happening in dealing with that, right. And I think that's so big to talk about, because we I so I've done now, almost 200 podcast episodes, people keep telling me, you know, you don't talk enough about the intensive. So I want to, I want to have you back and others and just talk about what are these intensives. But one of the things that's very different from traditional counseling versus this is that people get traction very quickly. And so I had been in counseling, I've had a lot of good therapy and counseling that has been really helpful, and healing. And then I had a lot of bad therapy, where the counselors weren't bad, but they were just good at talking. And they were good at connecting the dots in the story and then reflecting feelings. But especially with some of the changes in the field and what we've learned about the brain and the body or our somatic self. There's actually a way that people can experience dramatic change in these experiential moments and in this two week intensive and get traction and actually begin to move forward like in that moment, and then every day from now forward. These experiences are and can be really dramatic. Very, very, I mean, I worked with a lot of people To just give them permission to feel what they're feeling, and then noticing where it is in their body is huge. That's huge, because we're not given that permission often, or at least we don't believe we have that permission. But we also resist feeling certain emotions because they're so difficult. And so to just give yourself permission to feel something that's uncomfortable noticing where it is in your body, that's a huge experience, right? It is it that in and of itself can start shifting something. And I've said this myself, as a client, you know, that will if I begin to feel this, it will absolutely overwhelmed, right, it will be like jumping into Niagara Falls, and it's going to sweep me away. But in these experiential moments and sessions, there's a way that you can be with people feeling and feel a teeny tiny bit of, I have this knot in my chest, and oh, maybe that's a big part of or related to these feelings, I think you're gonna overwhelm me, and you can learn to feel just a piece of it. That's right. And I think it's huge to be doing that with another person. Because now you're not alone, feeling the emotion, because that is tough, it is tough. But to be able to know that there's support right there, and you're in a safe place. It's, it's, yeah, it's just huge. And how most of us learn how not to feel feelings, or how we come to believe that it will overwhelm us is that we are alone, or we've been told yes, in contrast to permission to feel and be who we are, we've been told that we we can't feel we can't be who we really are. We've got to dial ourselves down, especially certain kinds of feelings. Yeah. So along these lines of the kind of work that you do, who is your ideal client, who's the person that you just really not just enjoy sitting with, but the person or kind of client that you feel like you're most effective with? Somebody who is very, very hungry. And which would imply I mean, I just think of the Beatitudes, you know, hungering and thirsting, actually, it would be everybody who is, is within the Beatitudes, you know, someone who comes with that poverty of spirit who is in mourning, who is hungry and thirsty, who longs for peace. Those are my favorite clients, I don't work well with people who have it all together. And generally, at restoring the soul, people who have it all together, don't really enjoy the time here. Or they might go away disappointed, right. There's not just the depth work that we do. But there is a a theology and a way of being I like to call it clinical contemplative spirituality, where there's a way of being that we're inviting people to going back to what you started out with, in the midst of their pain, and that that's the place in the poverty and the pain, where we, as my friend Ian cron says, those are the places where we bump into ourselves, and we bump into God as he really is. And so I also spend a lot of time in private practice working with high functioning, successful people who wanted me to give them tools for how to live better, and how to be more successful. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? There's a time and a place. I want to meet with a dietitian or a trainer to learn how to be more fit and not go up and down like a yo yo. Right? So there's a place for that, but, but the real place of inner transformation is in the place of that brokenness. Yep. So Janelle, I'm really excited to have had this conversation with you so that people listening to this podcast can learn not just about you, if they would consider coming to restoring the soul, what you're about and how you do work. Also just talking about intensive counseling and the ministry. So look forward to having you back on, I definitely want to have you talk about trauma and the work that you do there, as well as the whole breadth of work that you have done and written about over the years around gender issues. Thank you, Michael. It's been great chatting. So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in our intensive counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change and half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com You