Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Soul. I'm Michael John Cusick. Let me ask you this question: What if your struggle to feel close to God is not so much about how much faith you have, but about how your soul learned to attach to love? That's the question that we're going to be exploring today. And I want to welcome to the podcast Dr. Jeff Holesclaw. Hi, Jeff.
Geoff HolsclawHey, thank you for having me on.
Michael John CusickOh, I'm delighted to be talking again. You were kind enough to have me on your podcast when Sacred Attachment came out. And I've been a big fan of your book from a distance. More recently, I've been able to dive into it, and it's really, really good stuff. So thank you to you and your wife Sid, your co-author, uh, that poured so much into it.
Geoff HolsclawYeah, yeah. Well, it's been a delight, and we've loved the reception, but more importantly, like we just love bringing this idea of attachment to the church and to people. And so we just love it.
Michael John CusickYeah, yeah. And um, I have not said the title yet, so I'm going to hold the book up for those that are watching on YouTube. It is called Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You Into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection. So this conversation is about the soul. It's about the science and spirituality of attachment. And obviously, many of those themes uh uh are themes that I wrote about in Sacred Attachment. But one of the things I loved um about your book was the fresh terminology that you used. And there's a lot of people writing in this area right now, and it's kind of like repetition over and over again. And so one of two things makes it different, either the personal stories that are connected to it or fresh language. And, you know, your your your program that you teach in at uh Western uh Western Seminary in Holland, Michigan, they're well known for fresh language and fresh ways of looking at things. Is that right?
Geoff HolsclawYeah, oh yeah, yeah, especially with the Eugene Peterson Center and the kind of the arts and the things they do. They're a small, small school, but doing a bunch of great things.
Michael John CusickYes, they really are. Uh I'm referring to everybody I can who asks about counseling programs or the D-Min program that you're involved in to check out the programs. So here's here's my starting question. Um I've learned that people that are doing work at the intersection of spiritual formation, um, theology, psychology, and in particular attachment and neuroscience, they don't get there by accident. And in other, in other words, you don't people don't just develop an interest in this without first having gone through something. So tell me about your journey of going through something and how you personally came to live in this space professionally. Where do the personal and professional intersect for you?
Geoff HolsclawWell, I think that um well, one, you know, Sid and I wrote this book together, so part of it is her story. But for me personally, it goes back kind of way before I had any of this language. I was in college. I remember uh very vividly I was like uh living on my own or living out of the house. I had these like two guy roommates, we're living off campus, you know, and I'm doing the good evangelical Christian thing, having a devotional, going to church, going to classes, all the things, which is great. Um, but I remember I just in the in the middle of the ordinary day, I'm in the kitchen, and I it was kind of like just one of those God moments where God just spoke to me, um just saying like this, these words exactly. You know me as a savior, but you don't know me as a father. It was just like God just dropped that on me. You know me as a savior, but you don't know me as a father. You know, and like uh I was raised Bible Baptist, like kind of fundamentalist, right? So Jesus as your Lord and Savior was like the key thing, right? Jesus died for your sins, Jesus loved you, all that stuff, which I believe. And then kind of in the background, you kind of know like the doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, Spirit, uh, but we certainly didn't talk about the Holy Spirit at all in the traditions I was raised in. We were more of the father, son, and holy scripture kind of Christians. And then we really didn't talk about like the fatherhood of God that much. And so I think, and that really kind of spoke into, you know, maybe what we could call like a father wound, or like I had always been kind of craving. My dad was always there, but he was very distant. We didn't have a very close relationship. So I think I was always looking for other uh men as mentors, um, male role models. And and so there that was kind of like one of those pivots for like the next 10 plus years. I was like, oh, I I need to know what it means that God is my father. And I have to learn that for myself, not just as like a doctrine. Uh so that's really kind of where it started with me. There's some other kind of uh when we got married uh and the some of the traumas that uh Sid kind of like went through and started dealing with as we got married, you know, you have that whole new relational dynamic, which kind of brings up stuff. So that's part of the story too, where it really that's where the nerve starts started coming in. But the long kind of spiritual development was way back in
college.
Michael John CusickSo tell me really briefly, you have um a lot of different hats that you wear professionally. Talk about your academic role, talk about the podcasts that you do. Uh you also host uh an annual summit. So I uh usually we kind of tag these things on at the back end, and I'd like you to talk about them on the front end, not to necessarily to establish credibility because your book speaks for itself, as well as your foreword from Dr. Jim Wilder, and I want to talk about that as well. So just tell a little bit about the world that you live in vocationally. You started out as pastors and co-pastors at a church, but that you do so much more than that now.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. Well, yeah. Well, I want to start with the pastoring. That's where um I felt called uh early on in my life, like in high school, I was like, oh, I'm gonna be a pastor. I didn't really know nobody really knows what that means, right? Uh, but you kind of figure it out. Uh and so that we've been doing that for about 20 years. And then as part of that journey, one of our mentors, um, I was co-pastoring, but really I was like the younger member of that co-pastoring team. He was like 20 years older than me. And then all of a sudden he's like, You should get a doctorate. Have you ever thought about getting a doctorate in theology? I was like, why would I ever do that? So there's this kind of like and God just kind of kept opening doors. And so I did, I got a PhD in in theology and I started teaching in seminaries. And so there was kind of this early call to being a pastor, but then slowly this kind of academic life uh in seminaries and teaching um started kind of progressing. Um, and and so I kind of did both side by side for for quite a while. Just about a year ago, we stepped down from our uh pastoral, we were part of a pastoral team, and we stepped down from that about a year ago to kind of pursue all this stuff. But then right at about that same time as when we launched this doctoral program at Western Theological Seminary, which integrates um kind of all these conversations. Um, and then I don't know. I'm just I uh before we jumped on, you kind of asked me my Ennegram type, and I'm a three and I love networking, but I'm also a big nerd. So I kind of like I take all those hats of the academic life, but the pastoral life, a deep care for the church. Um, and then I'm just like really nerdy with all these things. So I'm always trying to find ways. So that's kind of how the podcast launched. I just want to have conversations and then this idea of a summit. What if I got all these Bible scholars I know from this one area of my life? And what if I had them also kind of hanging out with these like therapists and psychologists from another area of my life, and then my wife's a spiritual director and a life coach. And what if I got those? What if I just got all those people together? And so that's kind of where the Attaching to God Summit uh came across. Um, so I'm always trying to integrate things in my life, um, kind of intellectually, personally, and uh professionally.
Michael John CusickSo and so the podcast is called Attached to God, or is it Attaching to God?
Geoff HolsclawAaron Ross Powell Attaching to God, yeah.
Michael John CusickAttaching to God. The summit is called Attaching to God Summit, and that's an annual or biannual event that people can find online. Right. Uh and then just very briefly, because I literally tell people all the time, I had a man contact me from another country who said, I've been at the intersection of theology and attachment with my MDiv. And where do you recommend I go? And I said, the program is at Western. So talk about this cohort uh of neuroscience spiritual formation.
Geoff HolsclawYeah, well, I think I think you know Chuck, Dr. Chuck DeGrode also, right? Yeah. So we became friends.
Michael John CusickGuest on the podcast.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. So we became friends. He's also here in Grand Rapids. Um, and uh we were just kind of talking, and he was like, Hey, you like all the stuff you and Sid do, like, would you want to host a doctoral program, a D, uh, a doctorate of ministry program? And I was like, Well, actually, I've been thinking about it. So it's really um it's the intersection of spiritual formation and what I call relational neuroscience. For those like in the weeds, it's the interpersonal neurobiology of someone like Dan Siegel and Alan Shore, all the stuff that you're kind of into, um, all those kind of things. And so we really wanted to create a place where uh therapists and pastors could be in a program together who really care about all these kind of same things and they can kind of help bolster, and it's been a such a great kind of interaction with all of our students. Um, and we're really kind of pulling from the ancient tradition of spiritual formation, which is a huge field, obviously, right? And then all this uh neuroscience and attachment. And so we really feel like putting attached, attaching to God at the heart of like the spiritual formation journey is a way of integrating those fields of neuroscience and and psychology as well as faith and theology. Um, and that just is like the perfect kind of overlap for us.
Michael John CusickAaron Powell That's fantastic. And it's a doctor of ministry. And as far as I understand, you don't have to do uh Greek and Hebrew languages, which many D-Min programs require that is that is correct. Right. So you do not have to have a D-Min. And if you're a listener right now, check out this program. I know there's a very limited number of people that can come to it, but I I just have tremendous respect for it because of you and Chuck and the seminary itself. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate that.
So one of the things uh that I also love about the book is your emphasis on joy. Um about 2019, when we were all wearing masks and pillowcases over our head, Dr. Jim Wilder had the courage to drive down the mountain from Evergreen to Lakewood, and uh we sat about seven feet apart and actually recorded a face-to-face podcast. He was like, nope, I'm good. Don't worry about it. So I got to meet him. Yeah, I got to meet him for the first time, but then he and I spoke at a conference together, the True Face conference, uh last October, and we got to interact just a little bit. But he did a whole uh experiential exercise in front of about 400 people around joy as uh the the I that just around the simple idea of I like and I'm delighted to be in your presence. And I love the fact that after your preface, you and Sid told the story about just joyful connection. Like that's a very biblical category. And we oftentimes forget when we're talking about attachment, like this is all about joy. So talk about joyful connection and feel free to uh share anything about how Jim has impacted you in that way, because I know that's his like that's his big thing.
Geoff HolsclawOh, yeah. We we learned all that stuff about joy from Jim. Uh that was part of what got us into all the work we're doing, is when Sid uh was kind of working through um kind of some of her trauma, she came across Jim Wilder's work as well as Carl Lehman and um just that connection with joy. And I've always really loved um Jim's kind of work because he looked at the literature, I think, from like the lens of faith and really emphasized things that were always there, but that other people didn't bring up. So um, and this is not a total characterization of like the field of psychology, but a lot of times it's looking at the problems, like it's it's finding a problem. How do we move from a deficit to fixing the problem? Um, and and that's totally, you know, people go to therapy, right? Because they have a problem. They feel like their life is. But uh he was looking at the literature coming especially from Alan Shore, which says, well, little children don't grow because you solve their problems. Uh well, they don't grow socially and emotionally because you they're they're cold or they're hungry. Uh, and those things are good and you need to supply their needs. But he's but Alan Shore, and then I th and Jim like just popularizes, he says, actually, children grow social and emotionally the most when they have joyful experiences that are expanding their nervous system, where they have these encounters where they kind of like bounce off the top of their window of a tolerance where you're playing with them. Uh, and that that's actually what kind of starts growing and integrating their nervous systems. And without that, then they're, you know, that's a huge problem. And so Jim kind of took that and said, hey, this joy piece is a major, and he was kind of way ahead of the curve uh by 20 years. Now I think people talk about joy and gratitude all the time. But he was, he, you know, he was bringing that to the fore a long time ago. So that's absolutely foundational. And then we kind of just kept diving um in the the attachment literature uh even more uh in our book. But that yeah, that joy piece is so foundational. And it's it's really what we it's one of the cornerstones of our work. Uh we pastorally, we you know, we'd always do gratitude and joy um kind of things for pastoral meetings, congregational meetings. We were always trying to set the temperature and trying to raise the level of joy uh in the different environments where we are.
Michael John CusickSo we'll we'll segue through this conversation. And as I as I mentioned at the beginning, I don't have um a whole list of questions, just generally that opening statement that I made. Um but you do say in the book that we don't primarily relate to God through our beliefs. And on the one level, that's just a really obvious thought. But I think that we often, as we talk about faith, is your faith is what you believe, and you talk about how it's not belief
but attachment. Just talk about the difference between those two.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. Well, uh attachment w going back to that joy, um is Jim would define joy where he says, you know, joy is being in the presence of someone who delights to be in your presence, or it's this idea of being wanted, um, of being um Yeah, not just accepted or tolerated, but really delighted in. And so if that's kind of like the foundation of attachment is finding someone who delights to be with you, and you delight to be with, and that is available to you. Um, and and then is available to you in the ups and the downs of life. So that is um kind of like the attachment bond, that's the formation of the attachment bond. And so what would that mean? What would it mean for that to be true of God? Well, a lot of times we, you know, we can say true things about God, and we can even say true things about what we think God thinks about us, like I'm forgiven, I'm I I'm loved. But how do we move to that next level of, well, not just what I'm thinking of God or what is God thinking of me, but what am I feeling toward God and what is God, what do I think, or how do I feel about God's feeling about me, right? Moving down to that level of that embodied kind of affective level. And I think, you know, sometimes we use that language of like, how do we move from our head into our heart? Um, and I think the attachment, and I know this is the work you do too, I think bolstering secure attachment is how you move from your head into your heart. Like I used to, I spent a lot of my uh Christian life uh as a believer, but also as a pastor, of like, well, I don't know, it just kind of happens. Like the integration of your head and heart just happens someday, somehow, eventually. Um, and not that we can make it happen, but I think there is this sense in which, well, if we deepen our attachment with God, like that is how we uh move from just what do we think about God to having this deep sense and feeling of God's delight for me.
Michael John CusickYeah, I'm glad you mentioned that phrase of the head and the heart, because I've, you know, I've I've been part of ministries that say we're all about the heart, not the head, and yet they never provide uh an experience of that. It's more like teaching about the head and the heart. And so one of the distinctions I make is that you can't move from the head to the heart unless there's relational safety and that it only happens relationally speaking. And this comes back to the notion that's in your book that we relate to God from our nervous system. Again, I I love the language, but I think you said it that way that it's our nervous system that relates to God. Truly, our heart is in it. But if our nervous system is overwhelmed, flooded, hypo-aroused, hyper-aroused, that it's that part of us that's going to be relating to God. So, what do you guys mean by we relate to God from our nervous system?
Yeah, well, there's a lot of different ways to kind of talk about talk about it. Um so we won't get into all the details. But so we just use in the book, we just use the language of like, well, you can sh you shift between connection and protection. Yes. Uh and so and those aren't and protection is not necessarily a negative thing, right? God has made us as embodied beings um to protect ourselves when needed. And so we have a whole, you know, an alarm system, our nervous system helps us to do that. And that's good. It keeps us safe when there's danger, it helps us to, you know, go find food when we're hungry. Um and then we also have this like connection system. So you some would call it like the social engagement system for Stephen Porges and others. Um, but it is when you uh your body is like um ready to connect with people. And the and your body really is processing information and engaging with the environment in very different ways. And we don't have to go into all the details, but it actually, you know, you're you're dealing with the world in a different way if you're primarily in protection mode, and you're dealing with the world in a different way if you're in context in connection mode. And so we we just kind of talk about how are we fostering ways of being in connection with ourselves and our environment so that we can connect with God, or how do we use uh our connection with God as a way to connect with other people? Um, but so often because of sin, we have these sinful patterns uh or chronic patterns of being stuck in protection mode. Uh and sometimes we even think of those as virtues, right? But they're just very sophisticated kind of defense mechanisms. And so our whole sometimes our whole spiritual life can be kind of a very kind of advanced kind of protection environment. Um, and then um we need to kind of do that work. Uh and that's why we get stuck in our spiritual lives because we don't realize that that's kind of what we've done. Or we get stuck in our spiritual lives because while the early kind of um joy and love of salvation and conversion of connecting with God, it kind of ends up sliding toward our insecure attachment strategies uh without us knowing it. And then after a while, it just kind of gets all that joy, love, and um that newness of life kind of gets it drifts back into these insecure strategies and we kind of get stuck spiritually.
Michael John CusickYeah, before we go on, I just want to again really affirm just the very simple paradigm of connection to protection. You know, because people know intuitively when they are feeling connected to themselves, connected to others, connected to God, it's experiential. And when people feel uh that sense of protection and they're shifting into that, although you pointed out and point well taken, it's not inherently bad, setting boundaries, you know, running when a cyber tooth tiger comes after you, that kind of thing. That typically protection creates distance or it it creates guardedness, some kind of reactivity inside that then makes us uh potentially moving out of connection.
Geoff HolsclawUm, just as an example, just before those podcasts, um my wife and I got into uh um well I noted I noticed that in the conversation I moved from contact connection to protection in the conversation. We're going on a family vacation. It's our first family vacation where our son's new wife is going to be joining us. And so there's like a new dynamic, right? And she was um bringing up that there's like a dynamic that she and I have together when our adult children are around. Um and I could I could feel myself shifting out of, oh, we were just having a nice conversation and connecting about other things to now I want to defend myself. And there really is a sense in which when you move from connection to protection, you lose uh like compassionate curiosity, uh, which is how can I be curious about what this other person is offering? How can I be curious about myself and how I'm how can I have compassion for someone else in their situation? How can I have compassion for myself, right? Rather than I go into my defensive strategies, which is well, it's probably mostly her and not really me. She's blowing something way out of proportion, and I'm I'm sure, you know, she just probably needs to get over it, you know, like or whatever, right? Like I'm going into my defensive strategies, and I could I could definitely feel that shift. Now, before early on in our marriage, I didn't feel the shift. I wasn't aware that my nervous system, my whole engagement shifted. But now I was and so I just told her, I'm feeling pretty defensive right now. So we should talk about this later.
Michael John CusickAnd how did that go? Was that great?
Geoff HolsclawIt went great. That's that's part of what we've built into our marriage is you know understanding that when you shift into uh protection, you're not going to end up with a very good conversation about just about anything. So that it's it's good to pause and recalibrate.
Michael John CusickAaron Powell Yeah. I'm glad it I'm glad it turned that direction. Let's camp out here for a minute. So you described the protection. Protection as a person can get defensive, they can get reactive, that might become like anger. Uh I do a lot of interrupting in my marriage. What's what are other other ways that protection plays out relationally that you most often see in in your work and in
your pastoring?
Geoff HolsclawYeah, well, the the the defensive strategies, the protection strategies, um, and this goes back to the attachment then, they fall into a couple kind of broad categories. Um, because when we're young, you're small, you're trying to figure out how relationships work, and you just kind of adapt yourself to the environment. That's why we use this language of landscapes of the soul, is whatever environment you were raised in is how you ended up adapting. And so if you're raised in a jungle, you kind of using that language, uh, you adapt yourself and you kind of have all these survival skills. And so when you go into protection mode, you pull from the most readily available trusted survival skills. It's kind of like uh if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And that's that's what happens in production mode. Instead of having some sort of nuanced responses that fit the situation, you just go to the tried and true response. So someone like me, uh, which would be more um avoidant, which we call the desert, you know, we talk about some of the tried and true defensive kind of mechanisms are I prioritize rules over relationships. So, like what is um the rule that we should all be following? And if someone doesn't follow the rule, then you know it's your fault for not only not following the rule. Um whereas somebody in the jungle, they have kind of the reverse response, which is relationships over rules, uh, as I'm willing to kind of break all the rules so that I can keep and maintain this relationship. Also, another defensive strategy, this is the one I would go into, which I was in my mind early on in our marriage, I just blurted all these things out loud, and we then we'd have a long X, you know, long fight, right? But in my mind, I still went to the this other defensive strategy when I'm in protection mode in the desert, which is to blame other people. Um, and it's related to that other one, like the rules are clear, and I didn't break the rule, so someone else is to blame, right? So you blame other people for the the failings of whatever relationship. And then related to that one, if you blame other people, then the best course of action is just to solve the problem yourself. So I need to do it myself. People aren't reliable, people uh they move too slow, they're not efficient, they don't do it right, and so I'll do it myself. So those are kind of the protection strategies I go into. I'm gonna do it on my own, I'm gonna prioritize the rules. Uh I generally blame other people. Maybe I won't say that out loud, but in my head, my heart, I'm like, they're really to blame, not me. Um and so but in the jungle, the rules or the the defensive strategies are almost the opposite. So it would be more often than not, uh, people in the jungle would blame themselves because the relationships are so important. The quick way, the quickest way to repair a relationship is to take all the blame uh on themselves, exonerate the other people of any wrongdoing so that then everybody can feel bad or feel good, except for, you know, except for themselves. Uh, and then we can kind of move on because we want this relationship that they value the relationship so much. Uh so uh blaming themselves for everything. Uh and then really they they always go to their people. So they need their people uh to kind of help them get out of kind of a problem or something like that. So those are the kind of the some of the quick ones um that that we've experienced and that we kind of uh wrote about in the book.
And then you talk about the the the pasture, uh which is the more of a disorganized style. So talk talk about it. Oh war zone. Sorry, I miss I missed that one. I was I so yeah, so it's the anxious attachment is the jungle, the avoidant is the desert, the chaotic is the war zone, and then pasture is secure. Right, right, right. Okay, got it. Okay. I must have been confusing pasture with Lewis Pasteur, who invented penicillin, and you know, that was a good thing into a bad thing, so that must have been my subliminal. No, just kidding.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. Well, uh and you could probably um talk about this uh even more clearly than we did. But the the disorganized attachment is um it kind of lacks a strategy of the chaotic or fearful attachment. Um and so it kind of pulls from all those negative defense mechanisms. It can switch between um or the defensive kind of postures, it can switch between them rapidly so that they don't even understand why they're doing what they're doing. People who are close to them feel like very confused, like one day you're like this, or one minute you're like this, and then the other minute you're doing the exact opposite thing. Uh and so it's very um, those um protection strategies can be very kind of chaotic uh and disorienting to everyone involved.
Michael John CusickSo you guys don't stop with just attachment styles with other people. You then take those four landscape categories um and you plug them into what God looks like. So the anxious attachment between us and God, you talked about jungle
god and the desert god and the war god, and then secure as the pastor god. Unpack those.
Geoff HolsclawYeah, well, uh the joke has often been that God created us in his image and we immediately returned the favor and created God in our image. Uh-huh. And this is kind of a a way of uh filling that out a little bit. And so kind of to make a long story short, if someone like me raised in the desert, um, I could have an early kind of conversion or a conversion um experience, salvation experience where I do feel for a time like God's deep love and acceptance and forgiveness of me. But um, and this is kind of backed up by the research too, but long term, um I will kind of assume that God interacts with me as if God is in the desert with me, uh, such that God is maybe distant and aloof, that God is always concerned about rules over relationships, that God uh really wants me to figure out my life on my own. Uh or, you know, and we can kind of, and we put like spiritual language over that, like maturity means um being able to obey God without um God always interacting with you. Like it's just kind of being wise or independent or something like that. It's prioritizes independent. Um and also in the desert, you know, this idea of blaming others, like God's always blaming the people. Uh and so we can kind of create this whole image of God who then reflects like us. And when I started getting this language in ministry, it really helped me kind of understand how some people will kind of plateau and stall and then really stop in their spiritual life. There was um someone who, you know, they just told me, like they're like, I believe that what God wants for me to do is to learn how to grow up and not have to ask God uh about everything that I'll just know what to do, uh, or something. And this was kind of this like ultra-independence. And it kind of made me sad because they were basically saying, like, I'm not really going to find uh a robust, loving, interactive relationship with God. I'm gonna kind of give up on that. But he didn't kind of say it that way. He actually stated it as in like, this is a positive spiritual development in my life. And I was like, I think you just changed your expectations of God to fit the desert, and you've uh kind of lost the growth uh in your life. And so we talk about how God wants to draw us into the pasture, which is this kind of loving, interactive, joy-filled uh experience of God. So God wants to draw us into the pasture, but too often we also try to drag God into our attachment strategy, whether that's jungle, desert, or war zone. And there's this like tug and pull. Uh, and God loves us so much that he gives us freedom that if we want to insist
that God really is like a desert god, uh, and we want to change him into that image, uh, then you know eventually it's kind of like, well, God's like, well, that's not who I am, but you know, um, and then we kind of get stuck uh spiritually. And so I think that happens um in the jungle also. So if the jungle is more of the ancient uh anxious attachment, this is the idea that maybe God wants to relate with us sometimes, and other times uh he doesn't. We are like, I thought I was doing all the right things in my spiritual life, so why isn't God answering my prayers? Uh or sometimes, and I'm in a more charismatic church, so we're at a vineyard church, but I think the charismatic or Pentecostal tradition kind of is like jungle where it's like, well, I need to go to that worship experience. I need to go to the worship service and get that real, like juiced up, like, oh, God is present. But then if a week goes by and I don't get another one of those experiences, then I feel like God has abandoned me. So then I have to go to the conference. It's all right, so there's always chasing after the presence of God, um, trying to do things the right way, hypervigilance in your spirituality, which matches the hypervigilance of your relational attachments that come out of your anxious attachment. Um, and then for Warzone, which is much more tragic, and that comes from like abuse or trauma. Um, you both love God, but you also fear God. You also feel like maybe God's playing tricks on you or out to get you, that God wants to ruin your life and things like that. Uh so that's where there's a really deep kind of spiritual wounding that then gets projected onto God when really God's like, no, I I came and to bear your wounds and to deliver you from these things. I'm not the one perpetuating this this kind of harm.
Michael John CusickTwo things strike me from all that you're saying, and thanks for unpacking each of those landscape metaphors. One is that when you have pastors and Christian leaders, whether from the pulpit or from other places, that have not done their own work, they're going to perpetuate uh this, which then inculcates in us a theology. And so, you know, I talk to so many people, and I'm sure you do too, that in their suffering and their abuse and their trauma, they are hearing, you know, God um either, you know, his his permissive will, his perfect will, that that certain things fall into this category of God did that. God wanted that suffering in your life, and then claiming Romans 8.28 or something like that to say it's all from God. But really, and just comment your thoughts on this, that if we're projecting our attachment experience and the view of God that we have out of our attachment wounds, that becomes really dangerous. And we really need to have caution that um unless we're really aware of our story, that our our understanding of God can be very, very uh unhealthy and inaccurate and unbiblical.
Oh, absolutely. I was whoever's not watching on video, I was like nodding the whole time when you were uh talking about that. So um I'll say from the positive side, like you named kind of the whole the center of Sydney's work, which is could we just help pastors live out of a secure attachment and cultivate environments of secure attachment in their churches so that we would speaking, we would all be telling the truth about who God is rather than these distortions. So, but the opposite, which is what I think a lot of us experience, and I've seen this too in pastors, is that we can have a whole theological system, I think, that kind of reflect like an anxious attachment or an avoidant attachment, and we call it and we kind of cherry-pick certain parts of scripture and we say this is good theology, and maturity means getting really good at living in a desert or something like that. And it's like, well, it, you know, God wants us all to survive, so it's always good to have survived the the families and you know, churches that you came from, but God's really drawing us all into the pasture. And I I do agree that there's a lot of um tragically, there's a lot of um church leaders that create just a whole system within the church that just is protecting and feeding into kind of in an insecure attachment rather than and that people get sucked into that orbit and then they call it maturity rather than moving, helping move people forward, you know, following the Good Shepherd into the pastor, which is what I believe you know Jesus wants for us. It's so often churches don't function that way. And it's just it really breaks my heart.
Michael John CusickYeah. You know, one of my hopes for certainly your book and my book, Sacred Attachment, and so many of the books, whether it's you know, Chuck DeGrode's material or Adam Young or Dan Allender or Andy Colbert, you know, any of the people that are writing about the inner life and especially about attachment and neuroscience, real good integration. Um I feel sad that
this whole concept of deconstruction and people walking away from their faith, and I know that there's a healthy deconstruction. Um, there's a lot of baggage that we need to let go, and there's a lot of um beliefs and ideas about God and community and and about ourselves that that need to be literally blown up and therefore deconstructed. Having said that, so many people's struggle with faith and not wanting to continue to be followers of Jesus are rooted in attachment issues and not just, well, the church has taken this position or something like that, or uh the very real church abuse that's out there. Oftentimes it's like, what's wrong is Christian culture and that needs to be critiqued. But what is even deeper than that are people's attachment styles, that if that could be addressed, they could realize that whatever brokenness or messiness or unfavorability is inside of them that they think disqualifies them from God. Understanding their attachment style and the way that you and others are talking about it actually gives permission and freedom for people to bring that to God and to be embraced and wanted in
the midst of that.
Geoff HolsclawI totally agree. And I think a lot of times churches will maybe disciple only one kind of attachment style uh into maturity, and then like the other one. So if you have a so if you have like uh a church that's really good with doctrine and teaching uh and maybe works of service or something like that, they uh maybe can disciple someone in the desert pretty well because it's a very head-oriented, it's very action-oriented. And then everyone who is anxiously attached or uh you know in the jungle, like they're like, I I don't feel like I'm growing. I like I feel kind of like they're not gonna be connected to because they're more of the heart or kind of social emotional. And then you can kind of have the flip side where it's like churches that are very, like, very strong on community, very strong on uh welcoming and belonging, um, but maybe a little lighter on discipleship, you know, and there's there's people. So for us at coming at this as a pastor, we I was just like learning about attachment, uh, learning about these different attachment styles and strategies, and then how people grow in them. I was like, we need churches to have kind of a diversity or at least a broad understanding of the different discipleship pathways so that everyone can kind of be growing together. But too often we have people who kind of um look at someone else on a different discipleship kind of trajectory because they're in a different landscape, and then they judge them and they're like, how come they're only doing this? Or how come they care about that? Uh and then likewise, you know, you get all this judgment rather than compassion. And so a lot of our hope for just kind of thinking through attachments and attachment theory and bringing it into the church is to help kind of foster compassion. How do we help people understand themselves and have compassion for why they do what they do, why they care about what they care about, but then also other people who maybe are coming at the world from a totally different kind of perspective. So often, and to take it to a marriage, because that's like very practical in one sense, but this happens in churches all the time, is if I was raised in a desert, I approach um relationship situations, parenting situations as if it was a desert. And my wife's doing the same thing as if it's a jungle, and we're looking at each other and we're like, why do you respond the way you do to the same event, like our child acting out? Why are you are you responding in such a, in my view, such a bizarre and unreasonable way? And meanwhile, she's looking at me and she's like, You are so weird. Why do you like focused on all the stuff you're focused on? It's like, well, we're looking at the world totally differently. And this happens, you know, and then you judge each other and then you get in a big fight. Um, but this happens in churches too. Like maybe you don't get into big fights all the time because we're a little more civil when we're at a church building. But the same thing kind of happens. We have these judgments, maybe a little bitterness. Uh small groups don't are okay for a while, and then they break up because someone wants to talk about their heart all the time, and someone just wants to do a Bible study in a theology book, right? And it's just like, can we honor each other's stories and their pathways a little bit more? And I think this language uh really helps.
Michael John CusickYeah, I love that. Um back to the Enigram, which we talked about beforehand. It's almost like that just how you can understand a person's individual number on the Ennegram, understanding their attachment style is also a more nuanced way of understanding how they would likely connect with God and grow in their relationship with God.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. Yeah.
Michael John CusickSo throughout the book, there's a big theme of uh identifying people's felt need or felt experience that I'm somehow not doing enough for God, that I'm somehow not changing enough, that I'm somehow not believing enough, and that, you know, at the end of it all, God's disappointed with me, frustrated with me, as my financial uh my guy that works in financial services, he said, my deal is that I always felt like I wasn't a good return on God's investment. And what you guys do is you go beneath that, obviously beneath behavior, and even beneath attachment styles, and you talk about implicit memory. So talk about how implicit memory, if you'll talk about what it is and how that plays out in terms of why we're doing what we're doing and why we can't change through our own effort or just through trying harder or more belief.
Geoff HolsclawYeah. Well, there that's that's a big topic. Uh impli implicit, you know, memory or belief. Um I kind of use I don't think we put this in the book. Um now I can't remember. But I use this idea of uh being on stage and the things that are happening offstage. We our kids were in musical theater uh when they were in uh middle school and high school. And I was never a theater person, but right, you learn all these things. And like our explicit memories or conscious life is kind of like what lives on stage. Uh that's the things we're saying. Um, but then there's all these things happening offstage, which are the props that are getting ready to come onto stage, and then the costumes and what people are wearing and the kind of makeup, and these are things that are being prepared off stage, but then they eventually come on stage. And I think a lot of our implicit uh memories could could be kind of like that. Like we learned early on, we adapted to relational patterns. We talk about how um we're all little scientists and we're we run experiments to see how the world works and we're gathering data. And then from that data, we create these kind of mental models of uh that kind of forecast uh future events based on past data. And so um the that gathering of data, especially at an early age, all becomes implicit, like it's not something we're consciously thinking of. And so it kind of populates all the off-stage kind of props, all the off-stage costumes that then come on stage in surprising uh kind of ways that we're not ready for. Um, and so that that kind of colors our um our spiritual life, but also our personal life. And so the way we talk about it is it kind of comes from um, as children, we're we are asking three kind of fundamental questions. Um, and this comes from the internal working models uh kind of research and things, but we kind of just popularize it a little bit. And so the first one would be something like, are people available to me? Uh is that first kind of core attachment question. So and and that's kind of a for us, it's a little more practical way of saying, like, do I belong here? Uh like certainly we want to know if we belong. How do you know if you belong somewhere? Well, it's when you have a problem and then you find out whether people are actually available to help you or they're not. Like people can say, oh, you belong here. We're so glad you're here. We're, you know, we want you to be here among us in a group or a church or at work or wherever. But you don't know that until you have a problem. And then you find out who shows up or not. So the so the question is, is are people available? Kids, when they're infants and children, like they all they can do is cry, and then they find out when I cry, is someone available to help me? Uh and then they kind of figure out how does that work? How does my crying or talking or asking for needs uh do it are people always available? Are they sometimes available or are they never available? Is kind of the way that we get these answers. So uh so that's uh that's one kind of question. And we and we project that to God too. Like, is God really available? Do I really believe? Uh, do my actions kind of show a pattern of really believing that God's available? The second one is this question of will this distress be alleviated? Um, and that's really a question of like hope. When something bad is happening, do I have a sense that it will get resolved? Or am I really, do I deep down believe like this is um never going to get better? Uh and that gets connected to that first question, which is if people are available to us in a timely and in a In an appropriate matter, um, in an appropriate way, then you also start believing, hey, even though something hard is happening now, I believe I will get through it. And then the last one is uh how do I use my agency? Now, certainly kids and children and usually adults aren't even saying, like, well, how today am I going to use my agency? Um, but there is that sense of when I put like energy or effort or something out into the world, how is it responded to? Uh, what kind of feedback do I get from other people? Do I get feedback of, oh, I really wish you would never do anything? Do I get the feedback of I have to do everything on my own, I never get help? Or do I get the feedback, which would be the secure attachment, which would be something like, I can do things on my own and I can get help when I get overwhelmed, right? That's the positive kind of model that God built for us, which is God wants to foster some sort of independence in us and a capacity to exercise our freedom and agency, because those are good things. But we are not meant to live alone. And so can I ask for help? Can I work with others and collaborate when needed? So that would be the good use of our agency. Um those are some of the implicit things that are always kind of coming out that live off stage that then rush on stage. Back to your question, uh, like when we get into protection mode, that's when you start finding out what your implicit kind of systems are. Um when I get into protection mode, do I think people are available? Uh, and what am I doing to to get them to notice me? Or what am I doing to am I angry at people or am I despondent or or things like that? And that's where all these kind of emotions kind of go up. I felt like I I just threw out a whole bunch there. I don't know if that was getting at your question there.
Michael John CusickNo, that's beautiful. So an implicit memory would be if I'm feeling uh abandoned or rejected by my spouse, um, and I check it out with them and they say, no, that's not what was happening. Uh it's very likely that there's something going on inside of me that is implicit memory that was reading what was happening in the present as actually rooted in the past related to my attachment style. Right.
Geoff HolsclawYeah.
Michael John CusickYeah. Thanks for unpacking all of that. So here's the question that I'm sure you hear all the time, and you do address this in the book. Once again, I'm going to just say for people that might have uh scrubbed forward, the book we're talking about is your book that you wrote with your wife Sid, Landscapes of the Soul, How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You Into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection. How do people go from the landscape they find themselves in, anxious attachment in the jungle, avoidant in the desert, uh chaotic in the in a war, to this pasture? How do they do that with others and how do they do that with God?
Yeah. What we say is that you have to run new experiments. So I had mentioned before that these implicit memories or these mental models get created because we're running experiments about how relationships work, how the world works, how do how do I work with it, all these things. And so and we and we call that faith. So you have to Jesus came, you know, and and all the gospels say he came announcing a message which is repent and believe, you know, the kingdom is near. He didn't come saying, uh, God loves you and I love you. Which is it, I I always want to like ponder that. Like, God loves you and I love you is what Jesus was doing in one sense, but that's not what he was saying. Uh he was he was, in a sense, asking us to run a new experiment. Uh repent of all those old ways, those old implicit memories. And of course, you know, when you start doing this work, it's like I have to keep repenting because I keep remembering I keep living out of my old self or these old mental models. So Jesus said, repent of all those things and start believing a new way. But uh, and then Jesus calls people to follow him. So it's like a it's a process. So so we say you have to run new experiments to create a new secure attachment with God. And what do those experiments look like? Well, it goes back to those like, do I believe God is available? Or um, do I believe this distress will be alleviated? Or what am I using my agency for? Uh and so in the book we talk about how we can kind of read the three temptations of Jesus kind of through those same questions. Um, but it's really cultivating uh faith, not in the what we like doctrine or like what we could list is true about God, but doing the practical face of faith of am I uh relying on God for my needs? Uh so then how can I ask for prayer? Uh am I obeying God in the things that I know are clear that the scripture does clear clearly teach? So that's using my agency. Uh do I have a horizon of hope that's much bigger and fuller that rely that believes that God is going to do something, that God is really making all things new. And so it's kind of continuing to move into that space. And so at the end of the book, we kind of talk about spiritual practices and things that you could do. But it's really the main thing is I always encourage people is to cultivate faith by running experiments. So uh, and that means different things for different people, like we all have different lives. But if someone's in the desert and they're not very good at like um relying on God for um practical needs or certainly deep emotional needs, so then running a new experiment would be like starting to pray to God and just speaking to God about those things. Uh whereas somebody in the jungle um who feels like they're always wanting constant assurances from God, like maybe running a new experiment would be stepping out in obedience, even if you don't necessarily feel like God is near you or with you, like just having that faith uh to kind of to move forward, or it's maybe serving somebody in a kind of a risky way, or right? So there's all sorts of things that we could all be called to do, but it's are we taking a practical step of running a new experiment? And then we have to gather that data. And we always say that you never got to where you are in your attachment landscape on your own, and you're never going to grow out of it on your own. So you really need a community of people. When you run an experiment, you step out in faith, and then you have to process that with people and you have to get feedback and you need to kind of learn from us. You kind of need a community to do that with, also. So those are kind of some of the things that we need to do to develop a secure attachment. And Jesus is meeting us where we are and helping to move us forward. So, you know, he's the this is why we we call the secure um landscape, the pasture, because you know, Jesus is the good shepherd, right? So we wanted to kind of link those two things. Like we move to the pasture only as we follow the good shepherd. And so he's leading us all throughout this process.
Michael John CusickYeah. Makes me think of literally Psalm 23, that that laying down in green pastures, quiet waters, restoration of the soul, that's that restoration is all towards secure attachment. You know, I absolutely love, I love, love, love the the phrase of a new experiment, uh, try a new experiment, create a new experiment. There's something about that that it feels very childlike. Like uh when Jesus said we have to become like little children. I imagine that if a really, you know, Robin Williams type teacher in a classroom was really excited and said, hey kids, we're gonna run a new experiment. Nobody would be sitting there bored. Everybody would be like, hey, let's do it, let's jump in, let's figure it out. And it feels very um invitational, it feels compelling, and it feels doable. Like, okay, this isn't about succeeding or failing, it's about relearning something. And it really is about that.
Geoff HolsclawYeah, absolutely. So I it and you hit it on the head is like we're supposed to become like children, we're called to be in a new family. Jesus says we're to be born again. So, you know, those are if we're in that childlike state, and a lot of us um when we learn new hobbies or we're passionate about something, like we're running new experiments too. That's how you learn. So children who learn how to walk are running new experiments. It's like I'm no longer sitting, I'm now standing. And then there's like quite a bit of following that happens to that, but it's usually couched around kind of the community of caregivers who are helping you in the walking process. But then other times you feel like, oh, I've mastered this walking thing, and then bam, you're down. Uh, and then you need kind of that support. But that's um all kind of learning and growth is through that process of experimenting. Uh certainly the kind of deep learning that transforms us. It's it's just kind of taking a little bit and then trying it out and learning more and adding uh onto that. But you can only do that, and I know you know this, but you can only do that when you have that secure attachment uh and that like safe haven. You know, right? So we have this place that we can go out from and then we can come back to. So yeah, it's been I'm glad you enjoyed it. When when we were kind of writing the book, we're like, oh, I think fa calling faith the process of running new experiments. That makes sense to me. So I'm glad it makes sense to other people.
Michael John CusickWell, in the the uh the late great author, who's one of my favorite novelists, he was a philosopher, Kaim Potok, who wrote, My name is Asher Lev and The Chosen and several others. I got to sit down with him in 1996 and spend three hours with him interviewing him, that became an article in the Marshall Review. And he said that God ran a great experiment in creating the world and that the uh book of Genesis, especially chapters one, two, and three, is this great experiment. And it shocked me when he said this as a former Orthodox rabbi who became a conservative rabbi. He said that God's great experiment failed. And, you know, and what he what he meant by that was that his hope for relationship and for Adam and Eve to not walk away, you know, it was a failure on God's part versus a failure on humanity's part. But I I love that to think about that, that God experimented. He did not he did not we could argue, you know, um omniscience all day long. Did God know that they would eat the fruit? But but he had a hope in his heart that they would make a different choice and that God was vulnerable in that regard. Uh and that even our vulnerability, that's just an interesting point. We so often talk about vulnerability as something that's bad, but it's inherently part of childlikeness and inherently part of trust. Close with this, if you will, uh Jeff. What are the top three practices, very specific or concrete practices that is your pastoring and teaching graduate students to foster a connection and an attachment with God where a person can begin to embody a sense of safety?
That's great. Well, the first one would be like cultivating joy and gratitude. So that goes back to when we were talking about Jim Wilder. So this is what we're always uh trying to do. Uh it sometimes shocks our uh doctoral students when the first week when we meet, we end every um lecture day. So the five days when we're together, we always end it with like playing a kid's game, like just some sort of goofy game. Uh, and we're really trying to kind of bring joy and gratitude and playfulness. Uh so that would be kind of the the baseline is no matter where you are, if you're like in the anxious jungle or the avoidant desert or the chaotic kind of war zone, is taking small steps to cultivate joy, uh, whether that's through gratitude or play, it really kind of starts uh resetting the nervous system. It helps you kind of get better at moving back into that connection. Uh maybe when you're chronically stuck in protection mode, it kind of helps. So just kind of creating those joyful uh gratitude practices help us kind of move from protection into connection. So that'd be the first one. We kind of do that all the time. Um this another one which we've done is in whether it's in small groups, um, maybe this could be in a family uh or in different ways, like at churches, is we talk about river and wilderness moments. And we're thinking specifically of Jesus being baptized, but then immediately being driven into the wilderness. Uh, which one, the baptism, you know, the heavens opened and the voice of God comes down is like a very clear, like, God is delighted to be with me. That's literally in the words. This is my son in whom I delight, right? Um, but then immediately after that, it's followed by this season of not feeling God's delightful presence. Um, that doesn't mean that God's not there, but in the wilderness, uh, Jesus had to rely on the words of God to then answer kind of the temptations. And so we actually started a check-in process with the youth group uh that we were involved in, as well as some other adult groups, where we would just say, hey, in the last week, share a moment that felt like a river moment where it was clear that God was at work, but then also share a moment um that felt like the wilderness where I didn't see where God is. Sometimes you could call those the spiritual traditions, sometimes call those like consolation and desolation kind of moments. Yeah. Um, but we're trying to link it to the story of Jesus and just be like, it's not because God wasn't a part of those wilderness moments. It just you didn't know exactly how God was a part of those. And we're just trying to normalize in a whole group that river moments and wilderness moments are normal. And so you're just like, and you could have the same in one week. You could you could have both moments in one single day. Uh and then to see that other people have, oh, you had a joyful moment, but I have a wilderness moment, but we can still be in community. Like we don't have to uh fall out of community because I'm not feeling God's presence in ways that I understand, but you are. Uh and so it really kind of creates uh that. So that would be the two main ones.
Michael John CusickAaron Powell I just want to insert that the beautiful thing about that is that yes, it's the story of Jesus, the river, and then the wilderness, but it's also that very idea of stopping to have to think about that is very ignation in terms of the examine. That idea of, you know, what looking back through my day, what were the river moments? Looking through uh my day, what were the places where I missed the sense of presence of God? Um That's exactly what we're doing.
Geoff HolsclawWe're just being sneaky with the exam without uh without uh you know calling it that because not everybody wants, you know, some of that language uh could be misunderstood. But yeah, that's exactly what we're that's exactly what we're trying to do, is have them just kind of reflect and have an exam in uh in their moments. Uh so those would be the kind of the two main ones.
Michael John CusickUh and then I said three, so I'm gonna push you for three and then we'll wrap up.
Geoff HolsclawThe um the the third one uh would be sil was something like silence and solitude. And I'll just say like moments of silence. Um I'll kind of so there's we'll just kind of put to the side like this all the spiritual stuff. If we just want to talk about the neuroscience or uh but I would say so someone uh so it kind of helps silence the solitude, helps kind of know what's in your heart or this implicit kind of memory systems. Um how does it do that? Well, for someone in the desert, they are generally more disconnected from their body and their emotions, and so prolonged times of silence. Um at first, someone in the desert will be like, Great, now I can't like I have a spiritual reason to get away from people, right? So, in one sense, they'll be glad, you know, for a whatever, a short retreat or just kind of silence. They'll feel like, oh, this should be easier for me. And at the beginning, maybe it would be easy, but then pretty quickly, someone in the desert's gonna start becoming more aware of just their own body. And then some emotions that they're usually avoiding or that they had suppressed or some way uh will start kind of coming up. And so they'll um the work that they will find themselves in is starting to deal with, like, oh, I have a body and I'm uncomfortable and I'm just sitting here and I'm not doing anything, and my to-do list isn't getting finished, right? All this achievement-oriented stuff. So then they're dealing with something in their their life that they're usually avoiding. Someone in the desert or in the jungle, rather, uh, who's more uh anxiously attached, they also will kind of spiritualize as be like, oh, I have like a spiritual reason to be away from people. And again, they will probably feel like that's a good thing. They'll quickly realize that they brought all the people with them, right? Because they they're so connected that even if, especially if I'm just sitting here not thinking and just trying to be quiet, now I'm thinking of what my children's are, uh, the coworkers, and I have all I have their whole swirl, I have my whole swirl, I brought their whole swirl. And so their work is something like um learning to notice that big swirling mess, and then to be able to say, but that's not all of me. Like there's part of me that could say no to that, or there's part of me that can step back and observe that and say, I don't have to be so caught up in those things, or, you know, and that's a lot of work. Uh and so um I think it was David Wallen in his book on attachment and psychotherapy. He says someone in the in the jungle is someone who kind of like has uh a body, but they've kind of lost their mind, their ability to kind of, and the language would be like mentalizing or stepping back or metacognition or whatever. Right. And so silence and solitude is gonna help them like say, hey, I have there's part of me that doesn't have to be wrapped up in all my emotions and all the other people's stories. Like there's a part of me that's just me, and I need to cultivate the just me part. Someone in the desert, they have to, they have too much of a mind that's disembodied and they need to work their way back toward their body. And so silence and solitude is a practice to help them become integrated. So it's really working toward in a silence and solitude works toward integration, but in very different ways for different people. So that was a long explanation, but uh I would highly recommend trying to find even five, maybe ten minutes, you know, every couple days and just kind of sit with yourself and then work it out.
Michael John CusickThat's fantastic. Uh, my good friend Ian Cron will often say that silence and solitude are the places where you're most likely to bump into yourself and bump into God. Uh so thank you for adding that on top of the others. Hey, this has been a great conversation. It's good to get to know you and your work better. I just want to uh, as we wrap up, say to all of our listeners, remember this that on your darkest day or your longest night, love has you. So take good care.
Geoff HolsclawAmen.
Michael John CusickSo 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 in half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more, visit restoring the soul.com. That's restoring the soul.com.