Episode 401: SOUL CARE SUMMER - Aundi Kolber, "Try Softer, Part 1"

Most of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that the answer to pain is to push through it. Try harder. White-knuckle it. And for a long time, that worked — until it didn't.

Aundi Kolber wrote Try Softer as a love letter to her younger self, and in this conversation with Michael and Julianne Cusick, she unpacks what it actually means to pay compassionate attention to your own experience — not as self-indulgence, but as the very thing Jesus modeled in taking on a body. They explore why our survival strategies stop serving us long after the danger has passed, how embodiment is the missing piece in most approaches to emotional and spiritual growth, and why the command to love your neighbor as yourself may be more demanding than it first appears.

This is a rebroadcast of one of the most-listened-to conversations in the show's ten-year history.

Aundi Kolber is a licensed therapist and author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival and Into a Life of Connection and Joy.

Transcript

Welcome back, now a published author

Brian Beatty 0:00

Hello, this is Brian Beatty, producer for Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick. All summer long, we're revisiting some of the most important conversations of our 10-year history. We're also celebrating nearly three million downloads since we began this podcast in 2016. Thank you for being an important part of the journey. Enjoy and share today's conversation with a friend.

Michael John Cusick 0:38

Guest to the program, Andy Colbert. Welcome back.

Julianne Cusick 0:41

Yay, Andy! Thank you, guys. It's a pleasure to be here.

Michael John Cusick 0:45

And as you refer to guys, uh plural, Julianne, you're here.

Julianne Cusick 0:49

I am.

Michael John Cusick 0:50

Welcome back to the program.

Aundi Kolber 0:52

So glad to be here.

Michael John Cusick 0:53

Andy, as I mentioned, you've been on the podcast before. You are, by the way, statistically speaking, well, one of the top five most popular guests, one of the most interesting guests, but more than that, uh, we talked about things related to trauma and wholeness that people have responded to because there's such a need. And now you're coming back as a published author.

Aundi Kolber 1:19

Thank you so much, both of you, guys and gals. Yes.

Michael John Cusick 1:22

So exciting, so life-changing, and I'm so glad that your message and your work uh that really has come from your journey is now out there. So your book is called Try Softer. And at one point I actually thought it was Trying Softer, but it's Try Softer, a fresh approach to move us out of anxiety, stress, and survival, and into a life of connection and joy. That is a big uh subtitle, which I really want to unpack. But tell us about Tri Softer. How and why did you title a book like that?

Where the title Try Softer came from

Aundi Kolber 1:55

Yeah, so Tri Softer has really been this, it's sort of evolved over time. Um, but at its heart, it started as sort of a love letter to my younger self. That's really where this idea was first birthed, in in this sort of place of really being aware of a young parts of myself that held a lot of pain and woundedness, and and as an adult, becoming aware of of how much that at times that still affected me and my life. And so, in in a lot of ways, this is sort of this is a decade's worth at least of work, of my own journey, of learning how to, I use synonymously the phrase, pay compassionate attention to my experience. And so when I say try softer, what I'm essentially saying is I have learned or I am learning and love to teach others how to pay compassionate attention to their experience too. And so, in so many ways, that's the lens through which, you know, you're right, like that subtitle, it is it's promising a lot, right? But there's this sense in which I love to invite people into the process, the journey, because it's less of a like, here's your three steps so that you can feel connection and joy. And it's saying, This is your invitation to fully experience the life God created you to live. And trying softer, I believe, is the path.

Why trying harder leads to burnout

Michael John Cusick 3:34

Thank you. That's that's rich. So much of what I've experienced personally, Julianne, you could probably chime in, and certainly what we see with clients at restoring the soul is people trying to find connection and joy through trying harder, through flexing their relational spiritual muscles with God, and that just leads to uh exhaustion or temporary pride. Like, hey, I did it. Have you experienced that, Julienne, with the people that you're working with?

Julianne Cusick 4:03

Well, first and foremost, I experience it personally. And just in your introduction in the first few pages of your book where you're talking about the difference between try softer versus try harder and the propensity to try harder and how that just leads to burnout and exhaustion and frustration. I mean, I was right there with you. Like I was just, Michael said, if there's one book I read this year, or the only book I need to read this year, is try softer. Uh, because it's just inherent, I think, of um people in in in my life personally and professionally, where they believe if I could just try harder, you know, I would be a better person or I would overcome this addiction or I would have this success or this relationship or this happiness. And it just doesn't come through trying harder.

White-knuckling as survival

Aundi Kolber 4:53

Yeah, I think that's so true. And and part of the reason I think that the book went from being a love letter in a sense to myself, to my younger self. Because people say in the writing world, they say, write the book that you wish you had. And for me, this is the book I wish I could have given myself a decade 15 years ago. Um, and and that's where that started, but it's become so much bigger in the sense that I I think we are living in a culture and a cultural moment in which this is the norm. This is what we are taught. This is how we are taught to treat our bodies and our minds and our spirits. We are taught to ignore and suppress. We are taught to shame if it means that we are productive, if it means that we meet the status quo, if we are we're doing all these things that there's a certain um promise that we believe they hold for us. And I think so much of trying softer, the the beginning often is honoring, validating. Why have we tried why have we needed to try harder? I call it in the book a lot of times white knuckling. And I really see that as an adaptive, this these are adaptive strategies that we've learned, um, oftentimes because of trauma and relational trauma, to essentially survive in many ways. The problem comes though that when we are actually safe, we're living from that place where we still think we have to live white-knuckled. And and our body hasn't yet gotten the message that we're now safe.

When the body stays on alert

Julianne Cusick 6:30

I really resonate with that. I recently started doing uh this insight timer. It's a heart um heart math, yeah. Heart variability, watching our heart rate variability where you're sinking your breath with your heart rate. And and it's true, like our bodies can still run in that hypervigilance, that hyper-arousal, even though we're not in danger, we've matured and healed and processed the trauma. It's still that learned response that our body just lives in this overdrive. So I love that you address that in your book, The Window of Tolerance, Hyperarousal, Hypoarousal, what how that looks. I mean, I'm just really excited.

Michael John Cusick 7:17

And I want to have you define some of those terms uh like window of tolerance and trauma. You were talking about that when we feel safe momentarily, that we still haven't given up the those adaptive strategies. And oftentimes, personally, when I have moments of feeling grounded or safe or calm or peaceful, I think that then I'm okay. But that's just a moment of calm and safety and peace. And it's not the same as wholeness and healing and really developing new patterns that serve me well, as opposed to those other coping strategies that don't serve me well. So talk about what wholeness is, and then I want to go back and look at what stands in the way of that.

Reparenting and writing a new story

Aundi Kolber 8:04

Yeah, and safety and this the whole conversation you're having, it's so important, and there is this dance. And and one thing that I would just say as you were as you were talking about that, that it made me think about is even though, you know, sort of connecting when we feel sort of calm or neutral or whatever, that is the place that maybe the change hasn't happened, maybe we haven't learned a new strategy, but it's from this place that we leverage, that we are able to hold one foot in safety in the present, and then over time we we gain the tolerance, the ability, the strength to also sort of work with the adaptive strategies that maybe aren't really congruent with who we really are. And this in many ways is the work of Tri-Softer, this dance of saying we are loved, like we are valuable. God sees us with deep compassion. And with this compassion, if we can look at these ways that we're living out that maybe they served us at some point, maybe at some point life felt so big or so overwhelming. Um, the only way that we felt like we could just stand to exist in the world was by engaging in some things that ultimately we no longer know are are helpful. And so it's from this place that we almost, I a lot of times talk about it like reparenting, that we can view ourselves while we connect to, and maybe we'll get into this a little bit more, but that top of our brain, this integrated brain, um, so our prefrontal cortex is online and has the ability to sort of downregulate and and sort of soothe and love the parts of ourselves that are feeling like the world is ending right now, like I have to go do this thing. And it's it's like we we participate with those parts of ourselves and we participate with God to create and write a new story.

Julianne Cusick 10:00

So it sounds like what you're saying is that what helped us survive later becomes a block to living the life that we really truly want to live and were created to live.

Why safety has to come first

Aundi Kolber 10:13

Yes, I mean, I think that's absolutely that's absolutely true. And I think one important element of that is that we actually have to be safe here in the present. Right. So if we are still in unsafe situations, if we're still in unsafe um dynamics or relationships or whatever those are, really it we can't actually do the deeper work yet. The first uh thing to address is is really stability. So, you know, we it's it it's not even feasible to say, hey, let's do deep trauma work if we're still experiencing the trauma. Correct. And so that, you know, I think for listeners, that's a really important thing to understand. Our body has to actually be in actual visceral safety to help us orient to safety in the here and now before we can sort of help and go back and allow the parts that um are are traumatized or hurt or wounded to experience that as well. And yet, this is the beautiful part. And I think I try to use really invitational language when I talk about this, this idea that it's almost like um really just honoring, and and for me as a survivor of childhood trauma, this is important to me personally, to be able to say there was a time when the best that I could do was just hustle and white knuckle it because I needed that to survive. And I am proud of that part of myself that had the ability to adapt and be resilient and say, I can't fix my family, I can't fix my parents, I'm scared. And this is how I can like essentially stay sane and survive in the world. That part, I honor that. And now I look at that and I say, Oh dear one, thank you so much. Thank you for the ways that you have kept me safe. We don't have to live like that anymore. And what's so cool is that then we that part of myself still exists, and that part of all of us still exists, but it gets to look different. It gets to look um to really, you know, maybe that part now is the part of me that is resilient in the face of, you know, I have a hundred things on my to-do list, and I get to help that part say, we are capable and we do hard things, and not at the expense of sanity, not at the expense of connection or joy in those things.

Rethinking repentance: willingness over willpower

Michael John Cusick 12:39

That's so beautiful about how you talk about the oh dear one, and if uh if we were on video, people would see how your your eyes get moist with tears because that comes from such a deep place inside of you. Not just a theory that you wrote in your book, but as you said, ten plus years of your journey. But my training was that we would label that as sin, that we would label that as some kind of an issue that we need to repent from. And I think it's a horrible misunderstanding of repentance. Uh I like to believe that the the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means to do life differently, rather than to to flench our fists and and white knuckle to change. Um we really can't change by willpower, right? All three of us know that, but we can change by willingness. And the willingness is that that junction point of looking at how you had to live to survive and how that's holding you back and loving yourself. And it's just so much more it's good news. Um it's it's it's compelling to talk like this. We could talk for hours and hours, and I want to hear more of your story, so feel free to weave that in. But let's kind of look at some of the big rocks of what are what's in your book. Um, the reason why we don't try softer, this is not the way you said it, but it's because there are barriers. Trauma and disconnection and dysregulation, uh, attachment issues. And you put those in such understandable terms where you're talking about really deep, uh powerful clinical realities, but you put it in language that's so easy to understand. So start by talking, Andi, about what is trauma.

What trauma actually is

Aundi Kolber 14:25

Yeah, well, thank you so much for that encouragement too. Um so I define trauma really broadly as anything that overwhelms our nervous system's ability to cope. And, you know, at your some of your listeners are gonna already bef be familiar with this, but I always I do like to always define it just so we know what we're talking about. Um and within that, you know, there's a spectrum. There's there's big T trauma and there's little T trauma. And big T trauma, just to, you know, very quickly go over that, that's typically related to um experiencing where we feel like our life is threatened, sexual violence, natural disasters, observing people going through those things. And I always say if someone suspects that they have um PTSD, definitely get connected with a therapist who's trauma-informed, is aware of these types of things, because this is it is catastrophic to our nervous system. But with on the same spectrum is little T trauma. And similarly, it's something, it's an experience, a sensation or an emotion, or many of those things together that it has felt too overwhelming for our body to be able to process. And where it's similar to to big T trauma is that that can also get stuck in our body. And over time, we especially when we don't have support and tools, and if we are collecting all these little tea trauma, um, what can happen is that little tea trauma can act on our body in the same way as big T trauma. And so that was my experience. My experience was that I had chronic emotional trauma from my childhood, lots of unaddressed issues, lots of attachment trauma, and I had no language, and I had and I just really didn't believe that it was it was bad enough uh to actually sort of count in a way, um, which I think is really common for people who've had lots of little well, let's say let's say trauma in general, that's true. And so it was important to me in the book to define these things, and I think that goes into attachment as well, because we can have types of attachment trauma. And what can happen is, you know, we we've mentioned the window of tolerance, but the window of tolerance is the range in which our body can feel our feelings and our emotions or sensations, and we can stay integrated, we can move through it, our whole brain is available to us. But people who have lots of little T trauma or big T trauma have a tend to have a smaller window of tolerance and so more quickly go into either fight or flight, so hyper-arousal, or into dissociation or depression, so hypoarousal. And so for folks who this is true for, what can be happening is we're moving around in the world constantly, maybe triggered. And we have no idea that we are potentially white-knuckling it all the time, which I think is often synonymous with fight or flight, um, or then we're to we get totally burnt out because it's so big and it feels so big, which um looks a little bit more like depression or can feel like dissociation too.

Adrenaline, cortisol, and the driven life

Michael John Cusick 17:36

And when you're talking about hyper-arousal and hypoarousal, I want to make the distinction uh because we talk a lot quite a lot of sexual issues, that you're talking about arousal of the autonomic nervous system, not sexual arousal.

Julianne Cusick 17:47

Correct. Yep. Yes.

Michael John Cusick 17:49

Okay. I have worked with uh so many leaders, uh mostly pastors, who are addicted to adrenaline and cortisol. And those are two of the chemicals that when a person's activated or triggered, those chemicals r are released inside of them, and it's typically on the high side, the hyperarousal. And sure enough, we start to hear their story, and they may not have had a capital T trauma, but like raindrops that accumulate in a cup, there's lots and lots of little T trauma. And they learn that that's what's driving them. That's why they're so driven, that's why they're so unable to sleep or rest or just sit with people and be

How striving shaped Western faith

Michael John Cusick 18:25

present.

Aundi Kolber 18:25

Yeah, I think that has shaped our culture and even even in especially our Western Christian culture way more than we uh really acknowledge. How so? Well, I think that we tend to be like Western culture in general is so achievement oriented, and you know, and I think um not only for women, but sometimes especially for women, um, there is this like there's a hyper um attention to how we look, and that tends to be very objective, like there's a lot of objectification and that type of thing. And all of those things point to a disembodied experience because to be an object means that you're not a person, you are you are not in yourself. So maybe we're paying attention to our bodies in a way, but not the experience of the body. And so I think all of these realities have absolutely permeated also Western, you know, Christianity. And we tend to really value facts, we tend to value these ideas of what we believe to be like this logical linear experience. And all of this points to um not that those things don't matter, but when we overvalue something over another thing, we, you know, things get disjointed, they get um out of whack. And our bodies are created that in order for us to function well, right? I believe this is what Jesus meant when he talked about abundant life, that we are living this embodied, full life of what it means to be a human made in the image of God, and the looking um, you know, to Jesus, his incarnation, as an example of what it means to be fully human. That Jesus wasn't walking around only talking about facts all the time. He was fully present to the human experience. I think we're missing that, and that's affecting our emotional wellness and health.

Julianne Cusick 20:22

I agree absolutely. I am thinking of several uh situations where people involved in church have felt that if they weren't serving enough that they didn't have the community, that that it was contingent membership, right? Belonging connection was contingent upon serving even at the cost of the body.

Michael John Cusick 20:48

And God's approval. You know, God will say, Well done, my good and faithful servant, which he's gonna say to anybody who stands before him, um, I believe, but that uh if I'm not serving, doing uh living in a disembodied way so that I push myself beyond what is kind, then somehow, you know, God is not gonna look at me and smile.

Julianne Cusick 21:11

Well, and then on top of that, I think of you know the sins of the flesh or how that that discourages connection with the body instead of what does it mean to honor the body and the w the way that we've been created physically as beings. And Andi, I love how you talk about Jesus lived a fully embodied experience in that the invitation is for us to do the same, not to disconnect from our bodies. Um I could talk, we could talk all day on that.

Embodiment and the incarnation

Michael John Cusick 21:47

So I want to ask a question because it's taken me as a guy a long time to understand this idea of embodiment. Um I think I intellectually got it pretty quickly. I'm still learning. What it is practically. My opinion as a man is that women tend to be more naturally connected to their bodies, and men naturally are probably more disconnected from their bodies. That's been true for me. I want you to unpack more of the idea of embodiment and come back to this idea about how God wants us to be fully alive. I refer to the soul as four components body, mind, emotions, will, and then a fifth of at the core is the inmost being or our spirit. And that that implies that God loves material matter, uh, the physical. But you were talking earlier, and this is in your book as well, that the whole idea of the incarnation, talk about that connection between embodiment and what is true because of God becoming a baby and a human being.

Aundi Kolber 22:54

Yeah, I mean there's there's so much there. And so going back to the first part of what you were saying about embodiment, that I think a lot of what I mean by embodiment in a very simple way is that we are attuned to the experience of our body. So when I eat an apple and I taste what the sweetness, you know, on my on my tongue, and I and I feel the crunch on my teeth, and I notice what that's like to eat that, there's a sense in which I am that's a that's a practice of embodiment. Like I am, I am paying attention to that in a very specific way. Um another example might be, you know, I always I kind of laugh because there's been a lot of therapy memes about this lately, but one of the questions I ask almost every client is, and where do you feel that in your body? And, you know, you guys are therapists, you know how important this is, but there's a sense in which um, you know, this experience of understanding, like even our emotions, our emotions are not theoretical. Emotions are um first, they they come about, they're experienced in the body, and then you know, they are then later, we can, once we name them, they're feelings. And I forget, I I cited him in my book, but I forget whose work that is, but he talks about this. And sometimes I still use emotions and feelings interchangeably. But what I think is so important about this is that this is more than theory, this is more than a thought. This is an experiential process that happens in the body, right? So if we are disconnected from our body, that means we are less integrated emotionally. And if we are less integrated emotionally, when we go back to things like the window of tolerance, we um that muscle, in a sense, that ability to tolerate the sensation of the body, to be with something that might feel really uncomfortable, um, and then even going to places that are gonna get really disturbing or whatever that might look like, our ability to be with that is really born from our body and from embodiment. And so, as we can sort of, you know, this is where this idea of compassionate attention, if we can approach our body with compassion, and and really this is for men and for women of understanding like that this is how God sees us, and we are invited to steward this compassion, like as our body is experiencing things that are uncomfortable or hard or whatever that might be, we are also invited to be a compassionate witness for ourselves so our body can do what God created it to do, which is move through pain. Like for me, I've been talking about that is just a miracle to me that we can heal, that it's even possible that we can do those things.

Speaking to your body with compassion

Julianne Cusick 25:55

When you talk about treating our bodies with compassion, my mind went went to you you saying to your younger self, dear one, and how many of us can say that when our bodies are in pain or tired or aren't working the way we want them to, that our response is dear one. And I know for me, um you know, I'm guilty of that of not saying dear one, but saying try harder, you know, work, push through. And several years ago when I had um an issue with my back and had nerve pain, that was some of the advice I got was well work through it, you know, push. But with nerve pain, the more I I worked, the worse it became. And so I I learned to rest physically because literally rest was the only thing and ice that would cause the nerve to calm down, to be, to be quieter. And I was grateful I'd had a little bit of practice at being still before that happened. It's not a once learned and done process, it is a process, a journey for me of coming back to stillness and quiet and solitude. I can do solitude and quiet very easily, but the stillness is hard and physical stillness is hard, and it can become a spiritual practice just like anything else. Um but I love how you talk to yourself with compassion, and that gives me a real picture of how I can respond to my body as well as my younger self or my emotions, my scared self, my angry self, my hurt self. So thank you for that. Yeah.

Compassion, the hardest practice

Michael John Cusick 27:51

Yeah, thank you. As we wrap up this episode, and I hope you can come back for a second conversation. Um, thank you for in this conversation and in your book, The Emphasis on Compassion. I think personally, and perhaps for many, um, that compassion may be the most difficult spiritual practice. You know, we can talk about memorizing scripture and reading the Bible and helping the poor and all good things. But uh I've kind of come to see, and tell me if you it's not that you have to agree with me, you might end this podcast going, Michael, that was a stupid statement and idea. But then you wouldn't be consistent with what's in your book, right? All right, but I digress. Um that we can't grow spiritually if we're not compassionate to ourselves, because then everything is forced and true spirituality is unforced. Be still and know that I'm God.

Aundi Kolber 28:45

Yeah, I mean I think that one idea that I have looked at so differently, especially the last couple years, is this idea of love your neighbor as yourself, right? And I emphasize that as on purpose because it's kind of like, well, how am I loving myself? And in what way? And in what mat in like in what um, like what's the tone I'm speaking to myself, and what's the tone in which I'm um honoring my own pain. And would I, would I talk to my daughter that way? Like, would I would I talk to someone that I love that way? And for me, this is a way that, even though that's not specifically compassion, in a way that's the doorway in for me personally, of looking at this idea of Jesus really wants us to love ourselves. Like we are invited to do this work. And neurobiologically, you know, just to make it an even stronger case, it's like when we are connected to those parts of our body that allows us um to feel our feelings and to be attuned and all that, our ability to empathize and have compassion for others is available. And when we are disconnected from ourselves, the part of us that is able to attune to others, that is, you know, you talk about like what it's like for folks to not be able to sit in the presence of others' pain, this is it right here. This is the work. And so this is why people say it's matters so much that you do your own personal work. This is why.

Closing reflections

Julianne Cusick 30:22

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. I like to say, you can't lead the tour if you haven't taken the trip. I love that.

Michael John Cusick 30:31

I love that.

Julianne Cusick 30:31

And and I want to say, Michael, please don't tell me that we're wrapping up because I feel like we're just getting started with this podcast. I still want to talk about becoming and boundaries and our bodies. And I'm curious of Andy's Enneagram number, and there's just so many directions I want to take this.

Michael John Cusick 30:51

It's we could keep talking. It's almost as if I wish you worked here. Which I've been I've been gently and not so gently trying to recruit Andi to come and work at restoring the soul. If you think she should work at restoring the soul, please send emails now. Hashtag Andi at restoring the soul. I want to close with a scripture verse. Um, and in the New International Version, it says, the one who gets wisdom loves his own soul. So that, as well as the Matthew 22 passage, um, it's just another reinforcement that we are called to love our own soul, and that's the total opposite of selfishness. It's compassion. So we will be back for episode two. Thanks so much for being here.

Brian Beatty 31:36

So we've wrapped up another episode of Restoring the Soul. We want you to know that Restoring the Soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in, our intensive counseling programs in Colorado allow you to experience deep change in half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more, visit restoring the soul.com. That's restoring the soul.com