Episode 374 - Dr. Alison Cook, "Boundaries for Your Soul"

Welcome to another episode of "Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick." Today, we're diving deep into the conversation around emotional health, spiritual formation, and the journey toward wholeness with our special guest, Dr. Alison Cook, psychologist, author, and expert in Christian spiritual and emotional integration.

In this episode, Michael and Alison explore her acclaimed book, "Boundaries for Your Soul." Together, they unpack what it truly means to set gentle, healthy boundaries within ourselves—not to exile or repress difficult emotions, but to get curious about them, listen to them, and ultimately befriend them as part of our God-given humanity. Drawing from Internal Family Systems (IFS) theory and Christian theology, Alison Cook explains how our inner world is made up of many different “parts,” each with their own stories and struggles. Through personal stories, practical takeaways, and a deep dive into the concept of the “Spirit-led self,” this episode invites listeners to consider a new way of relating to their internal experience, dealing with conflict within, and embarking on a path of true healing.

Transcript

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I want to welcome to the podcast, Dr. Allison Cook. Hi there. Hi, Michael. I'm so happy to be here. We've actually had a conversation before today, but I'm so happy to have you on the podcast. So I want to just jump right in to talk about your book, Boundaries for your Soul. I thought it was called Boundaries for the Soul, which I've been telling people for almost three years. And in reviewing some of the material, I saw that distinction, which is actually pretty important. Not just the soul, but. But this book speaks to a particular soul. Yeah, that's right, it is. It's your own God made soul. Right. This Mago Deia that we all bear inside of us, that we're trying to navigate as we navigate this external world, this life that we're living. You are a psychologist and also trained theologically. What led to the writing of this book where you brought together ideas of the soul, the deepest part of, of who we are and our whole person, but also with the idea of boundaries and these different parts of who we are? Yeah, so I had studied both religion and psychology sort of on this quest to figure out, okay, if I know who God is. But I felt very alienated from my own soul. And so I was trying to figure out both. And it was toward the end of my doctoral work that I met my co author, Kim, and she introduced me to this model of therapy. She started talking about it called internal family systems, IFS for short. And if anybody's seen the Pixar movie Inside out, it's a great depiction of this idea. But it's this idea that we have sort of a family of parts that live inside every human soul. We're multifaceted, we're multidimensional. Anytime, you know, if you think about man, one part of me, you know, wants to do this, one part of me wants to stay home. You know, we have these inner conflicts all the time. And this model just for me really brought together what I had been looking for, which is how to understand myself in partnership with the God who made me. Now, the approach itself is deeply spiritual. It's not specifically Christian. And so what Kim and I decided to do, because we thought it was just so. It just melded so well with a Christian theology, was to integrate the therapy model with a Christian faith and theology, which is how boundaries for your soul was born. And it's just this, of understanding your emotions, understanding various aspects of your personality and understanding how to navigate yourself. And so with boundaries in this sense of just the best example, you know, when you're when you're angry or when you're sad or when you're overwhelmed. These are all just normal human emotions. But we do have to learn how to not let our anger overtake us in any one moment. We have to learn how to set a gentle boundary with it so. So that we can operate well in the world around us. And I love one of the main ways that you two wrote the book is that it's seamlessly woven together where it's not like there's a chapter or a paragraph on psychology and ifs and then there's a chapter on theology, but that it's really quite integrated and that in many ways I think the book is really a book about discipleship, about how to follow Christ with all of these unruly or seemingly unruly thoughts, feelings, experiences of turmoil inside of us. And too often those are two different ends of the continuum. But you really brought that together. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. That was our hope. And we really did kind of create this amalgamation of. We use our own words, sort of. For example, we talk about this spirit led self as this place inside where the Holy Spirit lives. But the Holy Spirit is living through you, specifically you. And so you actually are navigating. It's not God out here and me over here. It's. I actually have the Holy Spirit. We know this, we believe this, but what does that really mean to navigate ourselves knowing we have access to this Holy Spirit who lives inside of me and inside of you. Yeah. And we'll probably unpack this more. But there's also this aspect of with all of these different parts, befriending those parts and then inviting the Holy Spirit or inviting Jesus to attend to those parts. And that's what I meant by discipleship is it's really a way to bring these worlds together that seem so far apart often. Exactly on that line. I want to talk about the subtitle because most of the time subtitles are throwaways. But in your book, the subtitle is really important boundaries for your soul subtitle how to turn your overwhelming thoughts and feelings into your greatest allies. And many people would hear that and scratch their head and say, wait a minute. Overwhelming thoughts, overwhelming feelings. They can be my allies. We can be on the same team. Don't I have to kill them or get rid of them? So talk a little bit about that. And then that takes us into this idea of parts. Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of us, especially if you were raised in an evangelical or a Christian community, I know for me there was many great things that I got out of that. And also one of the things that I learned was that emotions are bad and that we need to sort of sideline our emotions. And over time, I just came to realize, both as a psychologist, but just also then theologically, that it's just not a healthy way to approach emotions. For example, we know that Jesus had a full range of emotions. This was not a passionless man that we see in the Gospels. This is a man who got angry, who grieved, who felt deeply. And so, of course, we do it made in God's image feel deeply. What I loved about this approach is it gives us. One of the things I'll say is what happens with emotions is when we don't tend to our emotions, when we try to push them aside, that's when they tend to get bigger and bigger and bigger until they explode. So that's when problems occur, is when we haven't been tending them all along the way. And that was my story, is I just sort of sidelined all of my emotions, just, you know, put them aside, and then until one day, you know, they sort of overtook me in a form of a panic attack. And I talk about that in the book. And I had to learn how to have a healthy relationship with these emotions so that I could stay in harmony internally. So, yeah, and the thing about emotions is they're really great cues. They help us when we're in a healthy relationship with them. Emotions help us detect injustices, they help us detect sorrows that we need to grieve. They help us stay in alignment as whole people. So it really was life changing for me to learn to have a healthy relationship with my emotions versus seeing emotions as my enemy. You and I are therapists, so we of course know what it means to have a relationship with emotions. But many people might be going, wow, having a relationship with my emotions. That sounds weird. What are a couple practical ways that you think about having a relationship with our emotions? Yeah, great question. So, for example, just starting with simple awareness, noticing anger is a big one. A lot of times we feel like anger is a bad or scary emotion. So what I mean by relationship is beginning to notice it. Where does it show up in my body? What does it feel like? You know, in my stomach? How do I know that I'm angry? That relationship is an understanding of something. It's a. Oh, I recognize that feeling as anger. And then we talk a lot in the book about getting curious. I don't need to try to do anything with it other than get curious about it, understand it. And so in that way, the metaphor of kind of as I would another human in front of me. So if someone's angry in front of me, I want to try to understand it. Those emotions show up, and we want to try to understand them. We want to try to learn what it's about with curiosity, with compassion, because they're usually there for a reason. So that's what we mean by it. And this is a form of having a relationship with yourself. This is a part of yourself. Right. We talk about having a relationship with ourself, but what do we really mean by that? And that's what the soul, although we can't see it, it's sort of like, you know, I have a relationship with my leg. I can figure out how to move it. Well, I don't. The parts of my soul are sort of mysterious because we can't see them. But emotions help us define that landscape that is so vast and unknown in many ways. Yeah. In Matthew and Mark, the passage about gaining the whole world and losing your own soul, in the Gospel of Luke, that's translated as self. So the words soul and self are really often interchangeable. In the Hebrew, you talked about a healthy relationship. And that makes me think that it's not that we don't have a relationship with our emotions. We have a relationship with them one way or another. We ignore them, we stuff them. And that's like giving the silent treatment to your spouse or something like that. Or you can attend to them and let them actually communicate with you. And there can be an interaction where our emotions can inform us. We can speak to those emotions because they represent parts of us. In the book talking about conflict within and this turmoil. There's this quote, and I was glad that it was pulled out as a sidebar, and it says that internal conflict is growth trying to happen. I absolutely love that. That's like one of those. I want to make a poster or a T shirt or something of it. But talk about that, how that internal conflict is actually trying to give birth to something or growth trying to happen. Yeah. And we hate it. Right? We hate that internal conflict. And yet it is typically two parts of ourselves that are sort of duking it out for it. And Paul gives us the best, you know. You know, one. He talks a lot about this in terms of. One part of me wants to go this way, one part of me wants to go that way. And one of the ways I illustrate it from my own life in using. Is your audience familiar with the enneagram or will that sort of pull us outside of. Okay, I have a very strong Enneagram 3 part that is often in tension with my Enneagram 2 part. They're both very, very, very close to home. And I often have a lot of conflict between the two because they often have different agendas. The three part of me wants to just put, you know, tunnel vision. Let's, let's go, let's get this done. Efficiency. The two part of me is like, but wait a minute, we need to help this person over here. And these two, you know, whether it's, you know, I need to be there for my kids or but, you know, we need to work, you know. And so these two parts of me get in, get in this tension and it feels very chaotic inside. And so as I've learned over time, to quiet my soul, right? Which is part of what we learned from David in the Psalms. Learning to quiet our souls and pay attention. Both have a valid point of view. There's a great point of view to staying focused, getting the job at hand done, keep working. There's a really valid point of view to man. But these folks over here need my attention. Both are really valid. And so it's taking that deep breath and again, it is like parenting, right? They show up. These are sort of like parenting our internal family. Okay, let's hear out those sides. Let's weigh and let's make a valid choice here. Is the work more important or are the needs of my family around me more important at this moment? What really is? And so then that forces me to go into a higher order. Part of my functioning, my executive functioning or myself, my spirit led self to go, you know, even taking a deep breath and then inviting God and okay, Lord, what is the need right now? Right? Because it could be that I actually need to set boundaries with my kids and they need to, you know, they're actually in a, you know, or I could need to be setting boundaries with my work. And so this is what we mean by you. You use the word discipleship, which I love, is self. We also talk about this idea of self leadership, actually taking the time to make a wise decision in that moment instead of sort of just feeling chaotic, kind of trying to do it all and then blowing up later because we didn't slowed ourselves down enough to notice what this internal conflict was all about. That's, that was sort of a day to day example. But that's what we mean when we talk about these internal conflicts. The more you kind of get to know yourself in the way, the easier it becomes. Yeah. So self knowledge, which in certain Christian circles is seen as something negative, that we just need to focus on God, that. That self knowledge really is an important part of growing on the inside. Absolutely, absolutely. And it's self knowledge with God knowledge. Right. We talk a lot about that in the book. Inviting. You know, that for me, that deep breath of. I notice the inner conflict. Deep breath of inviting Jesus into that. So in partnership, we talk a lot about working in partnership with God's spirit, with the Holy Spirit. We have a part to play in that, which is learning these different aspects of ourselves. And then we invite Jesus into it. And there's just a really powerful ability there in that intersection of bringing ourselves into connection with the Holy Spirit, that it gives us this freedom to see more clearly, more creatively, more in line with how God made us. And it's not really difficult, it's not simplistic, but it seems simple in the sense that so much of my story has felt like I need to do this heroic action for God or this heroic flexing of my muscle to somehow then get God to turn a key that will bring about this internal, peaceful life or unaddicted life that I want. But the simplicity is I just have to show up. And the hard part for me, even as I went back and reread the book, is do I want to tell the truth to myself? Do I want to face this feeling? Do I want to actually enter into my internal experience? Or do I want to go buy something at the store that I don't need? Or do I want to eat something? Because that kind of distraction or diversion takes me away from that. And then I don't have to show up in that simple way where nothing's required of me. That was just so perfect. Exactly. And that is exactly what we so often do when we have. When we sense that internal conflict. We have all of these mechanisms for numbing, for just shutting ourselves down, and they're just so easy. And, you know, it works for a while. I often describe it to, you know, we live in a culture where we, you know, it's like, go, go, go, go, go. Shut it down. Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom. You know, we live between those two spaces as opposed to really, this more wholehearted way of being engaged with these aspects of ourselves. And yes, sometimes that means facing the pain, facing that inner tension, facing. Facing the discomfort in order to get a little deeper into what's really going on. Yeah, I love how you said that because you Used the word wholehearted. And I don't want to pass over that. I think most people would hear that and go, yes, I want to be wholehearted. You know, I want to love God with all of my heart. My neighbor is myself. And we often think that that's more energy, more intentionality, more effort. But it's really about saying there's parts of me that aren't whole. There's, you know, more than one and maybe a hundred different parts. And to be wholehearted is to tell the truth about the presence and all of those parts there and to not even have to do anything about bringing it together, but just begin to tell the truth about it. I love that. Yes. And to be honest with ourselves and with God. So, for example, this, you know, the one where I share about the two. The. I call it the three part of me and the two part of me that sort of. The more achievement goal oriented part of me and the more helpful, compassionate part of me. It took me years that. That felt very. The wholeheartedness didn't come in fixing that. Right. And I think that's to your point. It doesn't. The wholeheartedness doesn't come with this magic zap of the I am now cured. The whole hardest came in the wholeheartedness came in the acknowledgement of, oh my gosh, these two parts of me don't really get along. Okay, I can now work with that. And if you think about raising children again, it's the best metaphor. The goal isn't peace and harmony all day long, that that's an unrealistic goal. The goal is just to make sure that every. Throughout any given day that each different voice is being honored. Is being, has. Is being tended to, is being. You know, it's. It is work. There is an element of work to it, but it's also beautiful work of tending a garden, tending a family, and bringing disparate pieces into a harmony. And if you think about that idea of harmony is another we talk about a lot in the book. Harmony is a lot of different parts playing together in a. In a lovely way. But the work of that is a lot of tending to the different parts sections one by one by one. It doesn't all come together magically on a dime. The phrase is overused, but it reminds me of the phrase of holding two seemingly opposite things in tension. The idea of paradox. And I'm also struck by how this whole idea of internal family systems, or the three parts of us that you talk about in the book, how this relates to so many Other aspects of growth and therapy and healing. So I was on the phone earlier doing a consult with a therapist in another part of the country. And we were talking about how they were doing internal family systems work with trauma. And so a person was saying, well, my body, my nervous system is, you know, feels like it's on fire and my heart's racing. And then there's another part of me that feels secure and loved and held. And then there's a part of me that feels very young. And that kind of thing with addictions to say, there's a part of me that wants to go and act out. And there's another part of me that wants to be faithful to my spouse and get to work on time, you know, that kind of thing. So those two opposites, which. There's this seems like maybe a human tendency and not just a Christian tendency to say, I've got to kill one of those or I've got to somehow master one of them before I can be okay. And that. That's the truth that sets us free that Jesus was talking about. Yeah, one of the. Yes. And I love that. The two things we know as therapists. One is the minute you can be honest about an honor, There's a part of me that desperately wants to go use right now. There's a part of me that desperately wants to binge right now. There's a part of me that desperately. You've got a little bit of separation from that part of you. That is where we can actually start to bring healing in. When someone is. Is what we call an IFS terminology blended with or taken over by. These behaviors are normal. This is all, you know, this is. We call it ego syntonic, which is the. Which is a convoluted way of saying where behavior becomes. We can be blended with it and we think. Think that this really may be destructive path is. Is really okay. This is just how I am. Whatever that destructive path may be, we've sort of. We've sort of told ourselves a lie. So. So that honesty of just, oh, this behavior is still here. I wish it wasn't. Deep breath. It is. Is actually the start of healing. That little bit of differentiation or ego destiny, getting it a little bit different, a little bit separated out from us, even if we can't yet completely rein it in. That honesty is the very, very, very first step toward healing and toward beginning to see change. And there's so much now, as you talked about so much work that they're seeing about how that actually works in the brain and in the nervous system and how that actually gives us more control in that tiny little window of awareness, we have a lot more capacity to begin to actually change these behaviors. It starts with that honesty, though. We talked before I hit record about your book and Andy Kolber's book, Trisofter. And I know that you're friends with Andy and I am too. But as you're talking about this kind of stopping and seeing the window, the word compassion comes up in my mind. And your book and Andy's book and a number of other books, both from secular, but more and more in the Christian world are really opening a window into this idea of compassion and non judgmental acceptance. And it seems so foreign to so many Christians. But I want to just throw out a verse, it's one of my favorites and I'll share this with people sometimes and they'll go, I never read it like

that before, but it's in Colossians 3: 22:17

10, and it says, as God's chosen, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. And I think for most people, that's one of the hardest commandments in the Bible. To obey is to, is to give yourself the same kind of gentleness, patience, kindness and compassion that the Lord gives to us. Have you seen that? I think it's absolutely the hardest part of the, you know, the whole love others as yourself commandment. It's easier in many ways to try to apply that to the love others part than to apply, as you call the fruit of the spirit, the love, patience, peace, joy. That's also, it's not just fruit we put on, on the outside toward others. It's. It's actually cultivating that fruit in our inner being toward ourselves. I mean, I often find myself saying to clients, we don't change in the context of criticism. It's not an effective tool. We change in the context of compassion. That applies both to the people and if you think about it, the people who, who are showing you compassion as you're hurting the most or as you're in need are the people that touch your heart. And it's true of our internal world where we have these inner critics that are trying to beat us into submission. And I see it all the time, almost the first question, you know, I have this part of me that does whatever the thing it does, lashes out at someone or binge watches the Netflix every night. How do you feel about that part? I hate it. That's that inner critic, that's that inner judger. That isn't even coming yet from anybody on the outside world. It's coming from inside going, I hate that I do that. I hate myself, is what we're saying there. And so we got to work with that part to go. And in ifs, what we tend to do is we try to peel it back and go, I would. That part of you that's just so angry that you do are still doing this thing, would it be willing to give you a little space? Would it be willing to bring. Let. Let us approach that part of you that you don't like with compassion. We have to get permission because we all are so conditioned to just hate those parts of us we don't like. And it's not effective. It leaves us at war with ourselves. That's literally being at war. It's like, I do this thing. I hate. I do this thing, and then I hate myself for doing this thing. So that is that internal war. That's not a healthy way to be. And so to flip it and go. And that's not how Jesus approaches us or other people. And so is how can we learn to invite into that space? And the first thing I'll hear from people is, I extend compassion to that part of me that's doing this awful thing. How can I do that? Then I'm going to keep doing that thing. It's like, actually, that's not the way it works. It's not the way it works. And, you know, it's kind of like, do it. Getting this buy in. What if. What if? Extending compassion, learning about that part of you that's acting out, meeting it with love and compassion is actually the key to helping that part of you grow and change in a healthy way. And it's really a paradigm shift for most people. Yeah, I just. Everything you just said is so good because it's so counterintuitive. It really does go against so much of the unhealthy teaching that we hear in Christianity. So, Alison, let's talk about the three parts of the you as it's talked about in the book. And these. These words are taken right from ifs, Right? Yeah. So these are from the actual model that Richard Schwartz, Dr. Richard Schwartz founded. He identified three parts of the soul through his work with multiple clients. Just over years, he began to observe three different parts. He calls them managers, firefighters, and exiles. And what that really just means is that we all have what we call manager parts. And these are the parts of us they want to have us present well in the world. They're the Parts of us that produce, perform, achieve, they get us up in the morning, out of bed, and they want us to look good to other people. And they're not bad, but they are only one third of who we are. And then the second category of parts he called firefighters. And these are the parts of us that want to shut down pain. And they're the parts of us that want to numb, that want to, you know, binge watch the television, that want to down the bag of cookies, that want to take the, you know, drink one too many glasses of wine, whatever it is, to put out the flames of pain, which is why he calls them firefighters. They put out the flames of pain. Now, as I said to you before, that most people tend to bounce between these two. We work hard, and then we shut down. And both are important in moderation and in a healthy way. But they both get extreme. And when they get extreme, it's because we're ignoring this third category. And the third category are what he calls exiles. And these are the parts of us that we want to push away. And they're the parts of us that carry painful emotions, that carry loneliness and fear and sorrow. And they carry the burdens of our trauma from the past. They carry the painful memories from long ago, from today. And as we develop, you know, most of us bump into, whether it's a big T trauma or a little T trauma, most of us pick up the burden of pain at some point in our life. We don't know how to deal with that. And so we exile those parts of us somewhere into the system. And then these manager and firefighter parts come in to cope. And so what he talks about is that a healthy soul at the center of all this is the self, the soul, or what we call the spirit led self. A healthy soul knows how to, again, this idea of relationship bring each other of these three aspects into the proper balance. So, for example, we don't want to always be living out of our pain or out of our loneliness, but we also don't want to be denying it or exiling it. We want to be aware of it. We want to understand it. We want to be able to speak on behalf of it. So that when I'm lonely, I can, in a healthy way, go to, maybe a firefighter, even in a healthy way, to say, oh, I need some comfort instead of numbing out, I can comfort myself. What's a healthy way to comfort myself? Or if I'm feeling sad, but I need to go to work, I can hold two things in tension and say, There's a part of me that is feeling sad. I can honor that. And I'm going to deploy another part of me that's like, and I got to go to work today. I can hold a place for both of those two things. Intention. So this is kind of another way of looking at the things we've already been talking about. A healthy soul. We have a healthy relationship with each of these different sides of us. Once again, the idea of not trying to stop managing or stop being a firefighter or to bring back all the exiled parts so that, you know, the five year old part of me is dominating my life, but to integrate them and to have that balance. Exactly. And this is a process. Especially if there's a lot of trauma there, what'll happen? Those exiled parts will really start to overwhelm and people will say, I don't know, I was just acting like a three year old. I don't know what happened to me. And it's that part that has taken over and kind of hijacked the system. And so this is where this idea of healthy boundaries comes in. It's like, we don't want to re exile that part of you, but we want to learn to set a healthy, gentle boundary so that that part of you finds a healthy place inside of your soul where it's acknowledged, but it's also not taking you. And those parts that we're referencing, they really are parts of us. And they may not be, at least at this point in history, anatomically observable through an MRI or something like that, but they really are parts. When you said three year old, it reminded me of. In 2003, I was diagnosed with complex PTSD before that was a thing. And I had some very prominent dissociative parts. And prior to that, my wife was always saying, I feel like I'm living with a teenager. And, you know, little did we know that she was. Because those parts were really exiled and had been relegated to the point where I didn't even know that those parts of me were there, but they were very, very wounded. At the beginning of the book, you. You use a Nouwen quote. And I love Henry Nouwen. He's the most quoted Christian that nobody has ever read his books. Kind of like CS Lewis or many people. But. But there's this wonderful line in this quote, the epigraph. It says, a part of you was left behind very early in your life. The part that never felt completely received. It is full of fears. Meanwhile, you grew up with many survival skills, but you Want yourself to be one. And that's really the goal of the book, right, is how to help people. People be one whole within themselves. Yes, exactly. It's, it's going back to that, getting that three year old part of you that experienced some. This tragedy that no 3 year old should ever have had to bear. And now that you're an adult and with the help of someone who is trained and equipped to come alongside of you to free that part of you that is tucked away in a corner of your mind. Now, there's a lot of, you know, Andy does a great job of talking about this. There's a wonderful book called the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk, who talks about what's happening actually in memory. You know, we, with ifs a lot of this. Where are these parts? You know, and there's a lot more in the neuroscience of where we're actually going in the brain. A lot of it having to do with memory and where these things get stored in our bodies. But the truth is they do that. You know, the truth is, whether you understand all that or not, when there has been a wound to your soul, that the pain of that gets stored in your body. And so to go back in time and free that part of you and release that burden, this is the work that Jesus does. He frees the captives, he frees us from those burdens. And so it's just amazing work to get to be a part of, to help people find that freedom for that specific. You know, so many people I work with, I work with a lot of Christians in ministry and in leadership where they're functioning so well, but they're like, there's just this part of me that is still stuck back, you know, when, you know, my dad abused me or when I was bullied or when. And I, and it's like, let's go after that part because Jesus cares about that part of you too. He cares about every part of you. And yes, that is the work of this, that is, it's, it's bringing that part back in, healing it and restoring it into the, the, the, the, the state that it was meant for. So this conversation reminds me of in Matthew 18, where Jesus is talking about, unless you become like a little child, you will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. And he's not talking about going to heaven, but the fullness and the abundance of heaven coming to us and in us. And so your book is this invitation to engage with these different parts of us, most or many of which are younger Parts. And so it's really a way of entering into the kingdom of heaven by holding all these different parts of us in tension. Yeah, I love that. I love that. And these are the parts of us that bring us a lot of these parts that have been exiled and the ones that have been traumatized and the ones that carry the heavy burdens once freed. They are the parts of us that bring that childlike sense of wonderful, that bring the joy, that bring those beautiful qualities that Jesus was talking about when he talked about letting the children, the faith, you know, just the childlike innocence, that love of Christ. So it's great work. Oh, I love it. Because as you're talking, I just have pictures in my head of the work that I've done sitting with a therapist, but also the people that I've had the privilege of sitting with. And when you do this kind of work, it of course is hard, but it's. It's in many ways effortless because it's not about striving and as a therapist having to figure something out. It's. It's more about just kind of relating to those parts and emotions in the same way that we talked earlier in the conversation about a person having a relationship. So it's really, really transformational. In the book you wrote, every part of you has the potential for tremendous good. And so I just want to kind of peel back one more layer on this. Somebody might be thinking, that sounds nice, but how could my anger have the potential for tremendous good? Or how could my depression? Or again, that. That craving for. To act out with an addiction. Yeah. I work some in addiction recovery centers, and that is the first question they'll say. They'll say, you're telling me this part of me that reaches, wants to reach for the drugs has potential for good. And this is one of the hardest things for Christians to get their mind around. But the idea is that the part itself, as part of the original soul that God created, if we look at the whole idea of restoration, that the part is valuable and that the part has capacity for good, and that it's taken on strategies that are unhelpful and usually for survival, usually for some sort to cope in some way, we want to change the strategy, but the part itself, self, we want to restore to its proper state. And the best example for that, I talk about this in the book is a client I had. And actually Dick Schwartz talks about this as well. With people who self harm. It's like, how could that be a good part of me? And I talk about A client who I worked with, who that part of her that was self harming, that was cutting her, was trying to help. And she understood that it was actually trying to numb. She had so much emotional pain that by converting that into physical pain, she was actually helping herself survive in that moment. And so the minute she began to honor that part of her as trying to help, there was a little more freedom to go. I can pick a different strategy in that moment. So we started shifting to, okay, let's shift you instead of hurting you, let's get you some, you know, some other things. You know what, what are some other strategies you can do in that moment? Because there's a lot of force and a lot of power that this part of you has. Same with angry parts, they pick up really rotten strategies. But there's something in the anger, in the part that's carrying the anger that might justifiably be holding real important information about an injustice that has occurred. So we want to change the strategy. We want to help that part. Pause just long enough to pick a strategy that's going to be more helpful, more in line with what the Holy Spirit wants, more in line with an effective way of approaching the situation. So that's kind of what we mean when we say the part itself is valuable. It's picked up really unhelpful and even destructive strategies. And if I'm hearing you correctly, that at whatever point that that strategy was picked up, that it's generally to help the person survive or to function in that stage of life, but that strategy ultimately comes to not serve them and work for them. Correct, Exactly. Makes me think of the line from G.K. chesterton that my book title was revolved around, where Chesterton said, the man knocking on the brothel door is knocking for God. That there's this part of him that is looking for transcendence, for comfort, for intimacy, for connection. The strategy is awful and it leads to a host of problems. But there's something beneath that that's actually legitimate and good and needs to be understood. Yeah, exactly. That is the real. And it's tough. It's tougher with some strategies than others to get to that place of compassion. But it is. If we believe that we are really made in the image of God, we believe that these parts are ultimately capable of being restored fully to their proper state. Now, you know, there's also the question of evil. You know, certainly there's that question of we can certainly be influenced by the enemy of our souls. And that's, that's certainly a piece of it, and I don't want to minimize that. So, Alison, as we wrap up, you've been working with people for a long time in a lot of different capacities, and you've seen a lot of different kinds of struggles and presenting problems and human brokenness. What's the one thing that you'd want to say to people to give them hope? And you can't say Jesus because you know that's the right answer, but there's a question that we need to ask. And so, like, what's the one thing you've learned in your career as you've sat with people, as you've written, as you teach, that you think people need to hear more than anything else? No pressure. I wish I had something lofty, but what really comes to my mind is you can heal. There's no pain that is so deep. There's no brokenness that is so great that you can heal. And that. That is the work of, you know, I always say it's. It's Jesus coming in. The Holy Spirit coming in is really just the beginning of the work. We tend to focus on it as the end. And I get that theologically, but psychologically, it's the beginning because you can heal with the help of God's spirit. And it's not necessarily an easy journey, but it is a beautiful journey. And I would want every person to get the benefit of going on that journey to becoming more and experiencing more of that deep down in your marrow, hope and joy of. Of that healing journey. Thank you for that. You can heal. It's not an easy journey, but it's a beautiful journey. And that is evident in your book and in the work that you do. So I'm really, really grateful for, for you taking the time today and for more people who haven't already heard of boundaries, for your soul to be able to pick it up and let it influence their lives. So, blessings to you. Thank you so much. Michael. Thank you for having me.