Episode 383 - Christine Wolf Hoover, "Soul Adventuring: Embracing Bravery, Joy, and Healing"

Welcome back to Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. In today's episode, Michael sits down with Christine Wolf Hoover, a licensed professional counselor from Texas and author of "Soul Adventuring: Your Guide to Living with Bravery and Joy." Together, they explore the idea that our faith journey is an invitation into risk, bravery, and joy, not just a checklist of spiritual practices.

Through honest conversation and stories drawn from her clinical experience and personal life, Christine breaks down the barriers of toxic positivity, sharing how embracing vulnerability and facing the hard places in life can lead to real transformation. You'll hear practical wisdom on navigating trauma, setting boundaries, and improving emotional health, along with fresh perspectives on classic ideas like "doing the work," regulating your brain, and cultivating joy.

Transcript

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Hi, everybody, it's Michael. Welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Soul. Today I am talking with Christine Wolf Hoover, who is a licensed professional counselor in Texas, and she has a book that is just about a year old that I wanted to share with all of you. Hi, Christine. Welcome to Restoring the Soul. Hi, Michael. It's an honor to be with you. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I got sent this book a while back and it took me a little bit to get through it and to get it off of my desk. And the title is called Soul Guide to Living with Bravery and Joy. And I guess my first question is, why the title Soul Adventuring? I know the answer to that. Because you are an adventurous person. The book is filled with all kinds of stories of you and your husband venturing and traveling to different countries and parts of the world. But why Soul Adventuring? That's such a great question. As a clinician, I live on this threshold where, and I know you know this too, where when clients are in hard places, there's. There's a sense that they're. We're on the edge of something that you never quite know maybe where it's going to go and what the next conversation is going to bring. And I. I began to really feel, and when I began my clinical work that it would really light me up knowing who knows where this is going to go and really believing that God is up to something really beautiful every time I'm sitting with people. And I also love to travel and, and love kind of off the beaten path kind of travel. So I wanted to combine that idea that God himself is. Is the one inviting us into risk, into bravery, into joy. And oftentimes our faith can be presented as something we just have to do. We have to pray more, more Bible study. But I wanted to open up the idea that God wants to do something in us and we don't has a bit of that uncertainty to it that can be scary, but also can be exciting. One of the things I really appreciate about the book, and I'm giggling as I say this, is because if you're a licensed therapist, I'm sure you read a lot. You've got to stay abreast of what's in the field. And if you're a writer, you have to read a lot. I read a lot of books that are heavy and just hard to read, whether it's because there's hard stories in there. But your book is relentlessly optimistic but without being toxically positive. And it strikes me that just reading your stories in the book that that's very much your personality, is that you're an optimist, that you see the glass half full and that you really work with clients strengths and bring a lot of hope in that way. So am I getting that right? Absolutely. And that really was a challenge and I even find that obstacle, you know, when it comes to trauma of allowing people to sit in hard places and not pushing in like that toxic positivity. But I wanted the. To be. These are heavy topics and like you said, oftentimes it's hard to address trauma, it's hard to address lack of boundaries, it's hard to address being hurt. But I wanted to do it in a way that the reader really felt invited and also kind of learned accidentally a little bit about some of these concepts and also where the idea where we can still hold hope even when we're doing something hard. Yeah, yeah. This feels like, and this is by no means to minimize the substance of what's in the book, but it feels like a book that you could put in the hands of a client the first session, the third session, the fifth session. And it gives them a lot of the information that you'd want to unpack over the next dozen sessions or more. So are you using this in your work and did this emerge out of your own work? It absolutely did. I began to have. Feel invited to write. I've always loved writing. But after being in sessions, being a clinician for three, four years, I began to notice that God gifted me with this ability to be really practical, to have like special, really simple ways to illustrate boundaries or, or how their brain works or emotions. And so I would just make up these, these, you know, little tips for clients. And so I wanted to be able to include that and also be a way that someone who's in therapy or not in therapy, someone who is. Has higher degree or doesn't have a higher degree in education, can, can grab ahold of it. But I definitely. All of these have been tested and I use them in session regularly and, and putting them, you know, you can read an entire library of books on boundaries. But I wrote one chapter on boundaries and you can read the, you know, books and books on the integrated brain, but making it succinct enough where people, I felt like clients and readers could get need, but not get more than a need for the purposes of my particular book. Yeah, kind of the Goldilocks effect. Not too much, not too little, but just. Right. Exactly, exactly. Another thing I appreciated about the book, and this is hard to do, having written several books, is your book is very vulnerable. And I think one of your endorsers called the way that you write and share about your own personal struggles and stories as disarming. So it really helps the reader to drop the guard. And you open the book with a personal story about what I'll call the block. Will you share that story? Because you set out to do this and it kind of led to a kind of failure, and then you picked it up again and that's the book. But you shared that story. Yes, absolutely. And I always tell people that story is completely true. The way I tell it, that I felt called, I felt equipped, and I felt ready to write this book. And then I essentially, like we all know, writer's block happens, but I got so completely stuck that I felt it was impossible. It really felt like I would never get the book completed. And so I finally said, I have to give up there. There's no going forward. I'm wasting so much time. And little did I know that that was the very thing that God exactly where he wanted to get me. Because I didn't actually intend to write about shame, which I get to. But the idea that I was already encountering so much shame, that I wasn't enough. It wasn't enough that I quit. And I just said, I'm done. And then right in that moment, I had an idea to journal what was so hard about it. And that's when I faced what I called the block, was that I had to admit to my readers and to myself that I actually. I'm this adventurer. See, this is the paradox. But I was terrified, and I love to take risks. But I was so afraid of failing. And I. I'd read an article one time about why writing is so hard if you're a reader. Because if you're a reader, you know what good writing sounds like. So when you're a new writer, though, your writing doesn't sound like the end result of what good writing is. And I. It's like I couldn't make it through. And so I knew then to start the book with that secret would also disarm my readers to say, I know other people are scared, too. I know other people get afraid and have something God has put in them, but are too afraid to take that step. So the idea was, I'm going to expose the block and I'm going to tell my secret. That I. I really was more afraid than I realized and that it. It truly did set me free. I feel sturdier. I feel more Whole in Christ. And I feel, and I say throughout the book that an embodied problem needs an embodied solution. So I couldn't, I couldn't just think, oh, well, I could have written it in order to face my fear. I had to write an imperfect book in order to face my fear of being imperfect. Wow. And how does it feel now that you're on the other side of it and the book is almost one year old? Yeah, it feels fabulous. I was rereading it, getting ready for the podcast, and I was thinking, I really like my book, I'm really proud of it. And, and it feels good on so many levels. Not just like, wow, I wrote a great book, but that I did. I did face those things head on and did expose some vulnerable parts of my life. That some of the stories I tell about some church hurt and some other experiences were, you know, they're brief, but just enough to say, I'm just like everybody else. We're all in this together. And so it feels good to be on this side of that and enjoy the labor of the fruit of that labor. Yeah. I always say it feels so much better to be on the side of having published a book than to have to do it. I tell people I like to have a book written. I don't like to write. Oh, exactly, exactly. People. I say, do you enjoy writing? I say, no, not at all. As far as I like the idea of writing. But when it comes down to it, the pressure and all the things of getting in there, what needs to be in there? When you were telling the story of the block and your self doubt and self contempt and all of that, I laughed out loud at one point. And because you said I found myself lying and embellishing. You know, people would ask me, how's the writing going? And you'd say, great. And I remember Sacred Attachment, my most recent book. I think it was a four year process from the time that I started telling people that I was writing it. And I even had a dear friend and former client paint a picture with the title Love has yous on that. And they gave that to me. And I would literally like, oh, yeah, making progress. It's going great. It was like I hadn't, I hadn't typed or thought or done anything for a month. Oh, exactly. And it was. I mean, that's why I said I just had to be honest about that because I really would embellish and say, oh, I wrote all day. And I had sat with my computer open all day but just hadn't been writing. So it's just a challenging process. I would say it was just even harder than I even imagined it to be. And the other side is definitely much better than the other side. Yes, I sometimes save this for the end, but thank you for taking the risk. Thank you for pushing through and thank you for all of the labor. You get through that beginning, introductory part of the book and you throw out this idea of doing the work. And, and I'm sure that you've realized, and I've seen this, that the New York Times and social media and CNN and Fox News and the grandmothers at church, they're all using this phrase now do the work. And it seems like nobody's actually understanding or talking about what that is. So you propose that we rethink what that means, but that we actually need to do the work and you challenge the reader to do that. So unpack the idea of doing the work. Yes. And you know, and my goal was that I would, I could freshen up that phrase because it is used a lot, but that it could be when we realize that it's in these bite size places and pieces that we face these hard things in our life, whether it's a pattern, whether it's a way of thinking, a way of behaving, that God has given us what we need and how we to appropriate that is part of doing the work. And that step by step journey of believing that we are not just automatically transformed. And we, you know, we know this to be true, that sanctification, you know, we are new in Christ, but our habits, our body still holds so much of all of our story. So we are sanctified and made new, but we also are being sanctified. So it's, it's inviting. And I add to that. I don't know if you can get there with that next question, but that it's a, it's a combo of doing the work and doing the joy so that we can see two sides of what God is inviting us to. Not just this drudgery and this hard thing, but that we are and really invited to allow God to transform us, like in 2 Corinthians, day by day, you know, moment by moment. Yeah, I love that. And it's, I guess, an interpretation of how you wrote it, but that doing the work is for the purpose of joy, not just for the purpose of having pain go away. And so many people come to our counseling offices and so many of our listeners are saying, you know, I just want the pain to go away. They go to counseling and they think that's the point that you stop, but it's actually getting to the place where the fruit can rise up, where the fruit can begin to bloom and blossom. And so yeah, do the work for the joy, for the bravery, for the life. So then you go into four components of what I'll call the aspects of our humanity and our relationships. The brain story, our emotional world and then boundaries. Can you touch on each of those? As both a therapist and a longtime follower of Christ and Bible teacher, what's most important that you'd want somebody to know about the brain if they come to you or if they read your book. Yeah. You know, we know that neuroscience is, it's sort of a, it's a pop topic right now, but it's also extremely important. Clients I have found, I'm sure you found this too, are it's so encouraging when they find out how their brain works on a very basic level. I call it the kindergarten description of the brain that Dan Siegel talks about. Just that basically when, when we are in, when we are hooked by emotion, we're triggered, when we are even stressed, our brain moves out of what we call our relational space where we can connect. So understanding that, that when we know that we can then work to self regulate work to get that prefrontal cortex back online. So part of the integrated brain chapter is, is showing how that works and how we can manage ourselves in. In with spiritual practices, with embodied practices to be. Because you know, anytime we, we can know when we've lost our front brain is when we've said something we regret or we've done something we regret, we don't have our full capacities online and even engaging with God. If we go to God of like, oh gosh, I better have a quiet time or I better pray or God's going to be mad at me. You know, that's going to create stress in the body and it's not a relational space. So inviting us to understand. And then I went on to talk about our story, how we have to understand where we've come from. And my. One of the phrases I've learned years ago, it's asking the question not what's wrong with me, but what happened to me. Yes. And understanding our story helps us have that. And you talk about this in Sacred attachment, which I'm loving. You know, the of course. So the of course is part of our story. That way we can say of course it's hard for me to trust because. And then we know the story. So it gives grace and compassion to our responses and I found that to be really helpful for clients to understand. I love the fact that your husband did the illustrations in the book that was fun to see. And they're great illustrations, by the way. And for those who have not heard of Dan Siegel's triune model of the brain, I talked about this in some Surfing for God. But it's a closed fist. The limbic system is the thumb in the center, the prefrontal cortex or the knuckles. And the reptile brain or the base of the brain is kind of where the wrist comes up. And then Siegel, I think, is the one who invented this. That you open the hand and then you flip your lid. And that's just wonderful. And it was so wonderful to see there talk about the emotional world. What's important if people are gonna have a healthy soul. And one of the statements that you make later in the book, by the way, is that forming. I'm sorry, I wrote down the exact sentence. You put it in bold print in one of the call outs. All souls are changed by love. I love that. And I know that you quoted Dr. Todd hall in here, who I actually had dinner with and got to know he and his wife, Dr. Liz hall, in Wichita last fall at the Apprentice gathering. So I love the simplicity of that statement that we change and our souls are changed by love. But one of the things that often stands in the way of being loved and receiving love is our emotional world. So unpack a little bit about what's the core of that chapter that you'd like people to hear? Yeah, the core is that oftentimes in our spiritual lives, our emotional worlds have been neglected of not understanding the. How deeply our emotions affect the way we move in the world. And I make a. I tell a funny story about emotion leaking when I was in counseling myself that. That what we feel comes out and then it can govern how we. How we act. And so to make space, I would say the most important thing is learning how to make room in space for. For all of our emotional world. So not just joy, not just contentment and happiness, but also for. For sadness, for disappointment, for grief. That we know that. That emotions are not permanent, that they. We are have. We can process them through breath, through grounding, but they often have important messages for us. And so learning to listen to emotion. And I talk about those beach balls. If we hold a beach ball underwater, it's got a lot of power, but if we hold it up, it doesn't have as much. As much will, as much force. So we wanna keep our emotions where we can look at them because emotions are wonderful servants and terrible masters. So to be able to understand that gives us more insight to who God is too. Cause he's an emotional being. So it helps us be known by him and known by others in a more intimate way. That's wonderful. I love how you said that. So boundaries was the last chapter in that section. And again, the Goldilocks factor. There's so many books on boundaries. And again, people talk about boundaries. And I love to say to people sometimes like, so what's your definition of boundary? And they go, well, it's kind of like, you know when, and they really don't know. So this was the just right chapter. And give the essence of what you communicated there. Yeah, the essence of boundaries is truly managing self. It's being able to say, and I use the Hula hoop as the metaphor. It's one of the meaning. If I have a hula hoop around me, everything in that is my responsibility. So my thoughts, my values, my beliefs, my convictions, my preferences, my voice. And so when we understand boundaries, it's not me trying to make you do something like, my boundary on you, Michael, is, you can't do this to me. Well, I can't govern you. I can only govern myself. So my boundary is how I am going to what's actionable for me. Yes. And so being able to say, I'm not able to do that right now. And it's using those I statements. And it also holds us accountable to live in our values. And so I often say I'm a hothead by nature, but my value is to be kind. So. So when I fall out of. When I move out of my boundaries, I'm held accountable to God and myself to say I violated my own boundary, my own value. And so it keeps me accountable because it's actionable. And so it's what I will do and how I will manage my time, my resources. And the truth is, God has limits in the everything. There's limits in the whole world. And so boundaries help us define what our limits are. What I basically, what's okay and what's not okay for me. I love the way you said that. The boundaries help us define what our limits are. Whereas I think the average person thinks that boundaries are getting a lot of clarity about how we're gonna tell others what they can and can't do. And absolutely, it's true. It happens so much like you can't. And I often say in session, you can't make. And I think I said it in the book. You can't make a two year old eat a pea. You know, we can't make anybody do anything. So when we say, you know, stop yelling at me, a better way is say, I won't be yelled at. You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave the room if that's gonna happen. So it, it, it enables me to be able to live in that and walk in that and not just put a boundary up, but I'm not going to do something or you're not going to do something, but it, and there's a lot of grace in that too. And there's a lot of compassion when we understand our limits and what they are. Thank you for that, for putting a chapter in on boundaries that was so clear. So I love. And this, this may be what you're referring to about how in sessions you come up with ideas and naming things in such a way, but the unwanted passengers. It was such a refreshing way of talking about, you know, the things that we carry or the habits and the patterns that we get into. Will you unpack those three different things of shame, ruts and roadblocks? Oh, and by the way, will you do a shout out on your website, which I checked out. Loved your website. You have some downloadable PDFs for this. There's a PDF for ruts, there's a PDF for roadblocks, and then there was one for emotions. And what fascinated me about the emotions 1. Forgive me, but I was like, roll my eyes. Oh great. Another emotions handout. This was one I had never seen before. And you put it where emotions. You, you tell me because I asked you to unpack it. Now I'm answering the question. But you broke it down into emotions on three levels and then all the different categories explain that. Yes, I put five core motions across the top and then I, I put them on like low, medium, high intensity. Yes, yes, yes. Because we, we don't often have the. And Brene Brown talks about this in many of her books, that we don't have language for our emotional world that the average person, I think she said has, can, can say eight to nine emotional words. But we need a big vocabulary. We need to be literate. So there's all the. Because we're not just angry, we might be bothered versus feeling rage or we might be sad versa or we might feel, you know, solemn. So it gives us some options so that we can put language on that and helps us then more clarify how we are feeling. And it helps give us good information to both sides of our brain. Because you know that the left brain needs to language what's happening in the right brain. And so where can people find that? Those downloadable PDFs. Yes.@Christinewolfhoover.Com so. Yes. And they're under. I think there was a section about resources and downloads. Yes. It's under my soul Adventuring tab, I believe. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So many people have talked a lot about shame, but again, you, You. You talked about it in a refreshing way. Not too deep and not too much on the surface. Unpack shame. And then that idea of the ruts and roadblocks. Yes. One of the things that I noticed early on in my sessions is how often, me included, our clients would say, well, I know God loves me, but I still feel unloved, or I know I'm enough, but I still. And so they would actually point to their head with I know. And then. And then point to their heart with but. And so I know that. That just replacing thoughts isn't always enough. We have to get. So the ruts are actually embodied behaviors that we. We get. We get stuck in. So perfectionism, people pleasing, performance, scarcity, numbing, worry control, ways we behave that. That are driven oftentimes by a sense of, I have to prove my worth, I have to. I have to somehow keep pleasing or keep worrying or I keep numbing in order to. To keep the fear that I'm not worthy of love and belonging. So the ruts are those patterns, and then the roadblocks are those phrases that we often not just say in our heads, but we feel them, that we feel oftentimes, no matter what we do, a sense of being unsafe or unloved or unworthy or not enough. And so the goal is to give shame. Let's give. Let's find a way to spotlight the ways it show us, shows up in real life, and then some strategies to help us move out of it. Because we often don't really recognize that shame drives our behaviors the way it does, the way it continues to give us a sense that we don't. We don't have what it takes, which is an incredible tool the enemy uses against us. Yeah. And through the remainder of the book, you actually talk over and over about how love is the antidote to shame and specifically being known. And I appreciate the fact that you quoted so extensively, my friend Kurt Thompson, who's written the Soul of Shame and so many other works. Yes, yes. Kurt Thompson's books changed my life. He is a pioneer in helping us integrate our faith and shame in so many ways. And So I. I really wanted to help us capture that God's heart for us is always. He is always for us. And. And that his love for us is transformative. And I. I read that from James K. Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom. That we are loved in the new ways of loving, that we're lovers, not learners, that we're formed, not informed, but we. We're kind of formed by that belief that's just all of our thinking. But we know that's not true anymore. And so when we can experience in a time of shame, in a time of being overwhelmed, that I am. I am delighted in that I am loved by God, we can reach toward people and experience loving relationships and that. That calms the raging storm of shame in our bodies. I think the most delightful part of the book for me was the book at the end when you talked about forming soul habits. And my mind immediately went to spiritual disciplines. And I've always been triggered by that word, disciplines. Thus I wrote a chapter called Practices in my last book. But the chapter surprised me because they were things like Gather Delight. So can we wrap up by you just walking through the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 habits that you call soul habits there? Because I. I think they're really refreshing. And every one of them, I was like, oh, I want to do that versus oh, no, I have to start this new habit. Yes. And that's. I like the kind of the catch of, you know, we all say, oh, you're a brave soul. But I like calling them brave soul habits that things we can practice because the idea that we. That what is not practiced is not understood. So the more we practice. So I started out with Gather and just the idea. I grew up in a home that gathered people a lot that, that we have moved, I think away from being in people who really reach toward others. Sometimes we're more isolated than ever. And so what does it look like to really. It doesn't have to be a big giant party, but gathering that God is so glorified when we're together and it helps it. I believe it brings hope. And when we gather and helps us feel known and maybe more light and connected. And the next habit I talk about, drop the rope. And it's essentially another strategy I came up with in session to help clients with anxiety and regret. But the idea is that there's. We're holding a rope and one way will drag us into the future. What if? What if? What if? And the other way will drag us into regret. I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have. And that our brain will just will never stop going either way. And it goes to infinity. So the idea is drop the rope and get present right here, right now. Yeah. And stay where we are. And because we're not going to talk our brains out of anxiety, we will only spiral more into that. So that's a habit that I love teaching my clients and I practice regularly myself. Another one of them is. Oh, I talked about rest and slowing and how to, you know, we know that we should slow. But I mean, like I told the story, I still run into grocery stores and why, I don't know. But being just fast at things. And so how much our body is built to grow and when we create space, when we slow down. And then another one of the habits I've talked about grief and lament that we. That's a brave soul habit to let ourselves grieve, let ourselves feel sorrow. And you know, I talk so much about do the work, do the joy. So I don't. I didn't ever want to have the implication that we don't enter hard things. You know, part of we know that we. Jesus says you're going to have trouble. It's going to be a hard thing and hard life. And so how to enter even a grief that's not a death of a person, but maybe of a dream or the loss of something we had hoped for and being able to enter that and use that as a brave soul habit. And the last one I called delight and gave the idea that we can practice delight through play, through allowing ourselves, because play is the opposite of survival. When we're in survival mode, we can't play. Our brain won't allow it because we are just. We have to be on guard. So play allows us to enjoy the free expression of joy. And then also I talk about delight in nature, how important it is and God built us to be outside. And some practices to really let nature bring delight and also then ending with spiritual delight of allowing us to feel God's delight for us and experience that again in our bodies. I think that if I could just focus on delight and delighting and maybe even being delighted in that would transform a lot of the things that I carry from day to day. So I think that was a beautiful reminder and especially strong to put it as a soul practice for being having a brave soul. Christine, what's the big, big thing that you would want people to take away from reading Soul Adventuring? The one thing I would want readers to take away is that God is active. God is more for us than we can even imagine. You know, and Scripture tells us over and over that it's more than we can ask or imagine. That our lives too. It's so easy to feel like life is just drudgery. And so I would want. I would want readers to feel invited in to maybe taking what's the one next risk, the brave thing that God might be inviting them to and, and trusting that our lives don't we. This is not about performance. This is about these treasure that. Treasures that God buries within us, that he wants them to come to life. And so that readers would feel first of all that God is kind of on their cheering section for them, but also that we can, we can change and we can make it through these hard things. And God has a. Has a beautiful itinerary for us and when we join him in that and, and see it as less a responsibility and more as a joyful invitation to something really beautiful. Well, it's really been fun talking with you, Christine. And again, I want to, number one, congratulate you on making it happen, getting it done, pushing through, especially the way that you did it, choosing vulnerability. Thank you for the blessing that Soul Adventuring is. Your website is ChristineWolf Hoover. You're a licensed professional counselor. You're available for counseling, consulting and also speaking was listed on your website as well. Yes. So thanks for being on the program today. Thank you so much, Michael. It's been such an honor. I appreciate it.