Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

095 Healing What's Within (with Dr. Chuck DeGroat)

Share episode

Like many of us, you carry a weight of buried pain. You feel secretly fractured within. There’s a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
 
Chuck DeGroat is the Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality and Executive Director of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI.  He is also a licensed and practicing therapist, a spiritual director, author of five books. He wrote When Narcissism Comes to Church and his newest book just landed in early October Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself and to God When You’re Weary, Wounded, and Wandering. (Oct. 8).

00:00 Introduction to Healing and Spiritual Formation
00:42 Meet Dr. Chuck DeGroat: Author and Therapist
01:38 The Journey from Narcissism to Healing
03:30 Understanding Trauma: Beyond the Outrage
05:19 The Power of Personal Story in Healing
15:55 Exploring the Genesis Examine
23:38 The Core Message: Healing from Within
28:09 Reflections and Future Directions

Join Attaching to God Learning Cohort: Quieting an Anxious and Avoidant Faith.

Stay Connected:

  • NEED spiritual direction or coaching that aligns with this podcast? Connect with Cyd Holsclaw here.
  • Join the Embodied Faith community to stay connected and get posts, episodes, & resources.
  • Support the podcast with a one-time or regular gift (to keep this ad-free without breaking the Holsclaw's bank).

Healing What's Within (With Chuck DeGroat)

Introduction to Healing and Spiritual Formation

[00:00:14] Geoff Holslcaw: Like many of us, we all carry a weight of buried pain, maybe we feel secretly fractured within, there's a constant churn of unprocessed feelings of shame, anger, grief, or loneliness, but it doesn't have to be that way. There is hope for healing within or healing what's within. This is the Attaching to God podcast with Geoff and Cyd Holsclaw, where we're exploring a neuroscience informed spiritual formation.

Meet Dr. Chuck DeGroat: Author and Therapist

[00:00:42] Geoff Holslcaw: And today we are joined again by Dr. Chuck DeGroat, who is a professor of counseling and Christian spirituality. and the executive director of the clinic, the new clinical mental health counseling program at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Michigan. He's also a licensed and practicing therapist, spiritual director, and author of five books.

Uh, somewhat recently when narcissism comes to church and his newest book, which we're talking about right now, Which is called healing. What's it within coming home to yourself and to God when you're weary, wounded and wandering. Chuck, thanks for being on the show again.

[00:01:19] Chuck DeGroat: Well, hey, even more important is I teach at the school where Geoff and Cyd Holtzclaw lead a D Min cohort. You should have led with that.

[00:01:27] Geoff Holslcaw: Uh, but then that didn't have to be all about me. And that's, you know, you wrote a whole book about how some people turn every conversation back on themselves. So, you know, I figured,

[00:01:35] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah,

[00:01:36] Geoff Holslcaw: figured we wouldn't do that. 

The Journey from Narcissism to Healing

[00:01:38] Geoff Holslcaw: Uh, but you did write a book called when narcissism comes to the church. And I guess It did well, I don't know and uh, you somewhat became known as a narcissist Experts.

Um, and I guess we, we were at the breakfast a while ago, you know, or you said something like, well, people, or maybe even publishers were asking, you know, would you want to write like a, a part two or like do a another book? Like, let's keep, you know, this, this topic is, is hot. Like it'll sell, but you. That didn't sit with you or something like you went a different direction.

And now we have this, a different book. Could you, you know, talk a little bit about what was going on there?

[00:02:16] Chuck DeGroat: Can you imagine that? Uh, it's hot. It'll sell. Write a part two to the narcissism book,

[00:02:22] Geoff Holslcaw: Clearly you're not an Enneagram three, like me. Cause I'd be like, sign me up. Let's go. I will achieve that.

[00:02:28] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah, I've got that Enneagram for let's move toward authenticity thing going, um, for good or for ill, you know, because you probably don't end up selling quite as many books, but yeah, that was a possibility. And, uh, yeah, the, the conversation is, you know, is alive out there. Uh, the conversation on narcissistic abuse, spiritual abuse, uh, in the church.

And it's an important conversation. It's a really important conversation, and you and I have been engaged in it in various ways, and we have friends engaged in it in various ways, um, and yeah, there was that possibility of doing a follow up, and, uh, because clearly, I mean, there, there, there continue to be, uh, significant issues that are being highlighted daily, you know, by, by folks out there within churches, and I hear about Many of them.

In fact, I continue to get emails, multiple emails a week from people from various places. So it's, you know, there's certainly a need to continue to have a healthy conversation around it. 

Understanding Trauma: Beyond the Outrage

[00:03:30] Chuck DeGroat: But I think at the same time, and you know this about me, I'm a therapist and I think, you know, when I, when I, When I think about all the different things that I get to do, um, in many ways, the therapeutic work is the heart of my work.

And um, I don't, I don't think I could, if I had to give, uh, someone asked me to give everything up, but one thing I I'd say, I want to continue to sit with people as much fun as I have teaching and writing. And it was the work of, it was the therapeutic work. It was the work of sitting with people. Um, in the healing process and seeing them, uh, and in fact, steward stewarding them on a journey, I guess I'd say it that way of shifting from, uh, the abuse that happened to them to the lingering trauma within.

Um, that seemed to be, me to be an important next book to write, uh, because I think when you're, particularly these days, when, when you're engaged in issues of spiritual abuse, and you see this on social media quite a bit, um, you get really stuck in this loop of, uh, Of, uh, fixating on what happened to you.

And that was my story too. And I could talk more about that. That was my story 20 years ago when I was fired from a church and I was really stuck in that loop of injustice. Uh, and it was incredibly painful. And I'd think often about how I'd, uh, you know, I'd get the justice that I deserved. Um, but I had to make the shift.

And in fact, I landed tell, tell this story too. I landed in a hospital, which led me to do some deeper discernment around how that trauma had reCyded within my body. Um, and it really led to a shift that allowed me to begin to heal.

[00:05:18] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. 

The Power of Personal Story in Healing

[00:05:19] Geoff Holslcaw: And just, uh, the book is fantastic, but just so everybody knows by the, by the time you get to the end of the book, you still won't know why Chuck got fired from his church because he doesn't tell us,

[00:05:30] Chuck DeGroat: Darn it. Yeah.

[00:05:33] Geoff Holslcaw: uh, But which is part of the, part of the whole thing. Cause you just said like abuse is what happens to us, but the trauma is, is what happens within us and you're the, the point of the book is, is doing the work to heal that trauma that's within us healing what's within, can you kind of talk a little bit about that?

Because sometimes we do emphasize, like you said, the event, um. But really there's things happening in our bodies and our brains. Um, and that's where the healing needs to take place. Not that we're against fixing abuse in the systems. We're not saying that you shouldn't change circumstances when possible.

Uh, but that's not always the whole story.

[00:06:11] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. And it's funny that you bring up that lack of resolution not knowing why I got fired, right? I mean, and I, I do think that this is where we, Again, get fixated. We want to know. Um, and it's, uh, it's not as sexy in a sense to shift the conversation to what's happening within us, but it's important for healing.

And again, that's the work that I do in the room with folks. And it seemed to me to be important to, to shift to that. And so, uh, that began, was that the question, um, about that shift from abuse to the trauma that reCydes within.

[00:06:46] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. Why, why you were saying, you know, like the outrage machine that we live in, like with social media and personal, like that. You can build outrage around your events, right? Oh, Chuck got fired. Isn't that horrible? And that one church and that thing, and the same thing happened to me, but to say something like, uh, I had a panic attack at a grocery store and people were like, Oh, and then they move on.

Right. Or I had, I had a lot of trouble sleeping for a year and a half and they're like, Oh, I'm sorry. And then they move on. Right. So it doesn't like create the same level of outrage and empathy and activism as the events do. But the, but it's really that lingering thing. Trauma within. So, so I, yeah, I was just thinking about that.

So, yeah, so, so you wrote this book to kind of do that work. So as a therapist who wants people to be healed, uh, you, you want to get it that work. So what is, what, what happens within, or you could share part of your story or

[00:07:38] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah, that's right. Well, even though collectively, even that outrage machine feeds off of these, what I call these sympathetic storms within us, our sympathetic nervous system. And that's where I lived for a number of years. And if, you know, I'm, I'm really grateful in some ways that there, there wasn't Twitter or threads or Facebook.

Um, I, uh, in those years after I got fired, there was a lot churning within me. And I, I wonder, What it would have looked like for me to, to speak out publicly in one way or another. I think back to some blogs that I, I started writing blogs in the mid 2000s and, and, uh, some of the dumb things that I said even there, you know, came out of this sympathetic storm within this churn within.

And uh, the, the reality is, is that, uh, I was, um, in the aftermath of being fired, I doubled down and got to work. Um, I, I became doggedly determined to, uh, make a living for my family. And so, uh, I was, I was counseling, I was teaching at a seminary. Uh, I was, I was, uh, I ran after a PhD as fast as I could. Um, and all of it, uh, all of it for the people who are watching me, um, led them to say, wow, you're so resilient, which is really interesting.

Um, what we call resilience. Um, it wasn't resilience. It was dogged determination. Um, it, it was me putting my head down and trying to make a living and, uh, but living in this sympathetic storm. And it landed me well on vacation in 2012 in a Mexican hospital of all places. Um, I was absolutely exhausted. We, we needed to get away.

We wanted to go on vacation and I did what, you know, most pastors do when they think this is, this is what will solve the problem for me. I'll go to Mexico for one week and drink too much and I'll come back feeling a whole lot better. And, uh, the reality is as I landed in the hospital and a long story short, my system was septic.

Um, I had to have my gallbladder out. Um, uh, that was one thing, but they discovered in the process that, uh, My system was septic and it led me on a journey, uh, toward greater health and wholeness in and through reconnection to my body in a way that, um, that, uh, I, I, I wasn't doing prior to that.

[00:10:08] Geoff Holslcaw: And, uh, Chuck keeps using this language of like a sympathetic storm. Uh, you haven't brought up the fog, but throughout the book, he talks about the nervous system and how we can kind of get in these storms and fogs. And, uh, soon in our attaching to God summit, he has a whole session where he dives into all that stuff.

So if you're wondering more about that, uh, be sure to see that that'll be in the show notes. Why? Cause you know, I know you're a therapist at heart, you're a pastor, professor, writer, but you're a writer too. You've written several books. So in the process of writing the book, what ended up being like the most surprising thing to come out of you that maybe you weren't planning or you weren't hoping to say, and all of a sudden you're like, Oh, like I stumbled upon something like This seems important, or at least just for you as part of your own kind of journey of discovery.

[00:10:57] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. Well, I really, I probably, Writing some of my own story. Um, when I was writing the narcissism book, uh, the publisher, at least people I was working with at the publishing company asked me, uh, well, to engage parts of my own story, but but also to, to write about other people's stories. You know, some of the big, you know, big churches, you know, that are out there kind of in the news.

And I decided not to do that. I didn't want to center my story or make it about, um, particular stories that were out there in the news, but I wanted to talk about the dynamics. And I was going to do that same thing with this book. Um, and, and I was challenged by a wonderful, um, acquisitions editor named Jillian Schlossberg, who, you know, uh, to make it a bit more personal and, uh, I was surprised by how significant that was, like just beginning to write parts of my own story and how quickly the tears came and how important it felt to at least, um, integrate parts of my own story within the book.

It's certainly not a memoir. In any respect, but, uh, I, I do think it was important and is important. I mean, I, I've had people come to me now and say, I knew you wrote on narcissism and abuse, but I, I didn't know that you had your own experience. I didn't know the toll it had taken on your body. Um, I, I didn't know that you had, in a sense, firsthand, a firsthand understanding of this.

And, and to be able to say, yeah, I live this. Um, I know, I know the outrage. I know the sympathetic storm. I know the frustration and the powerlessness of not getting the justice that you, you long for. Um, and, and living with that. I know the shame of, of driving around your community and going into the grocery store and, uh, and going back out when you see a leader from the church that you don't want to face.

I mean, all this, all this stuff, right? Uh, that was, that was the piece of it that became really important for me. It's, um, as you know, when you write parts of your own story, it's really vulnerable. And, um, and again, I, I don't want to center my own story in my writing, but I do think it's important to, to integrate into an important work on trauma.

[00:13:12] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. So you, so in the process of writing the book, you were experiencing probably the work that you helped lead other people into, which is to make sense of your own story, to put your story into words and experiences, and then it becomes clearer. And then there's that. Hopefully I assume that sense of like reso broader, deeper resolution and seeing where God is at in the midst of it. So then what was, and maybe it's, if it's the same thing, but what was the hardest part then to write? Like when you kind of started pressing into a certain area, especially since you're talking about your own story a bit, was there a part where you're just like, Avoiding, but then the therapist Cyde of you is like, no, Chuck, we must dig into that.

This seems important because you're avoiding it. Did that happen at all or, or not so much?

[00:13:58] Chuck DeGroat: Um, not that specifically. I mean, there are, there are parts of the book that were, I think, more challenging. Um, to write, uh, as you know, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm connecting it, connecting it to the Genesis three story and a story of, uh, of a kind of primal trauma in Genesis chapter three. And I mean, if I'm honest, uh, I grew up in, in a reformed tradition that read that story very, very differently.

And, uh, I, I think what I ran into were voices inCyde of me saying. You're going to get this wrong. Like the voices that reflect sort of my internal, um, theological policemen. Um, if you, if you know anything about internal family systems and parts work, um, I think I have a loud doctrinal policemen inCyde of me, uh, that has simmered down in the last number of years as I've done my own work, but can get loud every now and then.

And, um, and tell me that I'm coloring too far outCyde the lines. And so that guy was, uh, loud and, um, at times a bit angry as I was reframing this Genesis three story.

[00:15:13] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. Okay. We had, uh, Cyd and I, in our first book, we reframed the Genesis three story also, but, uh, we actually had somebody who was a loud editor and external editor who was a little concerned about what we were writing. Um, so, all right. So, um, but the way you tell it, is less of that internal editor that many of us probably have, which is like God showing up with judgment and condemnation and just needing to point it out to us.

But you kind of read it differently as God kind of, um, attuning through questions with the plight of, of humanity. Could you just one or two of those kinds of questions? 

Exploring the Genesis Examine

[00:15:55] Geoff Holslcaw: Um, could you kind of just get at how you try to reframe a little bit of how God approaches Adam and Eve and us in those situations?

[00:16:04] Chuck DeGroat: yeah, yeah. I mean, I think part of the reframe is, is even to see how they got there, how, how Adam and Eve found themselves east of Eden. Right. And one of the things I often say is that, you know, well, I, in the tradition I grew up in, I was, I was told that it was a story of arrogant pride and Adam and Eve wanting power.

Uh, but. If, if we're honest about what's happening in the text, they're targeted, their goodness and their glory are targeted by this, the serpent that's Cydles up next to them and asked, did God really say, which is to say the serpent begins to question God's goodness and God's trustworthiness. Um, the serpent, I think, stirs questions within Adam and Eve of their own.

inherent goodness and worthiness. And so they're targeted and they're deceived. Um, and, uh, and they do what we do in, in times of scarcity and deprivation and shame, they reach for the self, right. And, and then find themselves, uh, exposed and overwhelmed. And, uh, of course, as the story goes, they sow fig leaves and they hear God coming and they hide.

So it's a really relatable story in so many respects. And, but I think what has been significant for me, and this goes back about 20 years now, uh, to a time when I was on retreat, uh, it was a really important moment for me when I, when I heard that first question that God asks, where are you as a kind question, not as a, uh, where the hell are you?

I'm so angry at you. As you might expect, particularly if you come from a story where you've, Perhaps had a mom or dad who, uh, who has responded to you in that way. But with a kind and curious, like God is walking in the garden in the cool of the day, which is to say, like, God's going on the walk that they probably would go on every day and misses them.

And, uh, it, it became an important. First question of a series of three questions that I now call the Genesis examine, which has become for me a daily practice of regular practice of self examination.

[00:18:18] Geoff Holslcaw: Well, walk us through that practice of self examination then. So if the first one is, where are you? What kind of questions are you using to

[00:18:25] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah. Well, where are you is it's such an important question to begin with because it gets at our fundamental disconnection. You know, Adam and Eve are disconnected. They're east of Eden. They're hiding. They're Pulled away. Um, and it's a different question. If you think about it, then how are you doing, which at least for me, it gets me up into my head and gets me analyzing what's going on.

It's a wonderful question to begin with at the very beginning of your day, when you're being pulled to the, you know, the thing that's going on at work or the relationship problem, or if you're just wanting to check the score of the Cubs game, like Geoff often does. And so,

[00:19:02] Geoff Holslcaw: bad this year.

[00:19:03] Chuck DeGroat: yeah, it's So where are you?

Begins by by inviting us to be reconnected, grounded back in God. The second question that God asks, of course, is who told you, which is a larger question that gets it. How did you end up here in the first place? Whose voice have you been listening to other than mine? And that becomes a more significant reflective question for us.

And, uh, this, I think, uh, I think of the work that you and Cyd do, frankly, um, on attachment because I think it dovetails really well. And I have a chapter on attachment in the book, but I think it dovetails really well with this deeper work of exploring our own. attachment histories and stories. And then the third question that, that God asks is, have you eaten from the tree?

And that was the most challenging question for me, uh, to understand, like, what, what is God really getting at in that third question? And then, uh, I think it was probably about 12, 13, 14 years ago on retreat, I was working with these questions and, um, I heard a deeper question, which is to say, where have you taken your hunger and thirst?

And I thought that's it. God is really, what God is most curious about is our hunger and thirst and where we go, uh, uh, to, uh, to satisfy ourselves, so to speak. Right? And it leads to that question in the New Testament that Jesus asked more than any other. Uh, what do you most deeply long for? Which I think is a really core question that draws us back to the deepest healing that we, we, we need.

[00:20:39] Geoff Holslcaw: I was reading, I don't remember which book. Um, it was a book on spiritual formation. Right. And they were talking about the spiritual discipline of fasting and they said, what's interesting that God instituted fasting in the garden, um, which was don't eat of this tree. Like you can eat all these trees, but you have to curb this impulse to eat of that tree is so, and I don't know if that's like the best kind of ex of Jesus, but it does get at that.

that question of what are you hungering and thirsting after? Are you, does God's words, as Jesus reminded us, do they, uh, satisfy, do we live off every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord? Or are we going to be satisfied somewhere else? And I always think of those words of Jesus in that way. Uh, you know, which comes from the Old Testament of just, you know, living off of the words of God and thinking about that therapeutically and attachment about how we really do live off of people's words.

Like that's as human beings, that's, that's basically the most important thing we do is we live off of others for good and for, uh, we're living off of people's words. And so where are we taking that hunger? So I love that reframing of, did you eat of the tree that I told you not to write with that real kind of, uh, you know, principle kind of, you know, or police officer voice that when you get pulled over, uh, but rather you're trying to say it like, you know, did you, did you, did you take your hunger somewhere else?

Um,

[00:22:02] Chuck DeGroat: That's right. And, and, um, and, and, and also I think with that third question, it's, it's not that God is, this suddenly becomes this angry disciplinarian. Like, where did you go? What, what did you eat? You know? Uh, and because as I point out, it's not so much about the behavior as much as. What that behavior is reflective of the deeper longing, the deeper need underneath.

And so, uh, I tried to tell some stories in there, folks that I've worked with one person in particular who had had an affair, uh, which of course, uh, was a deep betrayal in her marriage and, uh, caused a, um, caused a whole lot of pain in a number of relationships. Um, but as we explored. Um, like sort of what was behind the affair?

What was going on? Um, there was this deep longing to be seen and known in a way that she wasn't experiencing in her own marriage and hadn't for years, um, And, and so of course, in that conversation, I had had that pastoral conversation many, many years ago. Um, my response was not to say, well, of course, then have an affair, meet those needs.

Right. Um, but, but the deeper healing that she needed, uh, came from exploring those unmet needs in her marriage, going back to her husband, exploring the roots of some of that pain and moving toward connection themselves. And that was a longer process, of course,

[00:23:28] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah, for sure. So as you know, you wrote this book, now you're promoting it. 

The Core Message: Healing from Within

[00:23:38] Geoff Holslcaw: Dare I say you, you have to on podcasts like this and all throughout, is there like one, like if you could distill like the one idea that you're just like, you really help people get, um, like what, or, or the one thing to help people pay attention to, what would that be?

[00:23:55] Chuck DeGroat: yeah, I think I think it is. It gets back to that core point that trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within. Um, and that there are many things that we can't control that happened to us. That was the case in my story, but we can. It's not to say that we can have control. That may not be the right word, but we can.

Go on a healing journey as we attend to what's happening within and we have a whole lot more control of what's happening within us through practices. For instance, we can shift from storm and fog to this place of home. We can shift out of, you call it jungle. Jungle and

[00:24:33] Geoff Holslcaw: Desert and war

[00:24:34] Chuck DeGroat: desert, right? Yeah, we can make these shifts and we've got the power through particular kinds of practices that we can engage in, um, to shift in ways that lead us to greater connection and joy and wholeness.

And that seems to me to be a really encouraging message, really empowering message, particularly for Well, the survivors who I work with who come from situations where it's like, I'll never get the justice that I want, you know, and I'm so angry at my church and my pastor. Well, I get it. I've been there.

There may not be anything that you can do right now. And it's not to say give up trying. Um, but let's make the shift to healing what's within, uh, so that you can experience the kind of connection and joy and wholeness that you long for.

[00:25:21] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. Amen. And, uh, if any of that last part connected, uh, Cyd and I were, uh, last couple of episodes, uh, we were reflecting on a book called interior freedom. Uh, so those episodes are called, uh, freedom and acceptance parts one and two, but yeah, that's where that it's that internal work so that we can be free in Christ so that then we can love others and serve others and also rejoice.

Um, and let. Let those others be so that we could see them as God sees them rather than through the eyes of our own trauma, other things that we're kind of suffering from. What, uh, so last two questions in, uh, am I sure, uh, we'll, we'll do this. This comes from, from my own, uh, my, as a parent, we have kids who are similar ages in their early twenties, right?

So have, have your daughters read your book? Or books. And what do they think?

[00:26:14] Chuck DeGroat: You know, I, uh, I think the first book that I ever wrote was called Leaving Egypt, Finding God in the Wilderness Places. Uh, it goes back to 2011. So they would have been 10 and 8.

[00:26:25] Geoff Holslcaw: So

[00:26:26] Chuck DeGroat: And they said, well, you know, they would, I gave them copies and they'd have it around their room, and I think they wanted me to think that, uh, they were reading it.

My, my oldest daughter is actually a student in this new clinical mental health counseling program, and so she's reading Leaving Egypt in a course this semester.

[00:26:43] Geoff Holslcaw: got assigned in a class, one of her dad's books.

[00:26:46] Chuck DeGroat: yeah, I, and I gotta be

[00:26:49] Geoff Holslcaw: That's like a life achievement. That must feel pretty good. Or does that feel really bad?

[00:26:53] Chuck DeGroat: No, it's great. It's, it's fine. I, I just want to be clear. I don't, I don't make it a habit to assign my own books, but I'm co teaching this with a colleague and we wanted to give students some, some books that were examples of integrative work, scripture and psychology. So, you know, I think the bottom line is you could say, I'm making my daughter read my first book.

Um, the verdict is out as to whether or not she'll read the book. This next one. But let's just say that I might just assign it next semester in a class. Um, and you know, I think my daughters are, they're 23 and 21. And they're curious about these things. But, um, uh, they they're, let's just say that they probably have not read my books cover to cover.

And, uh, I guess I'm just gonna have to assign. Them, the books for them to read them Cover to cover.

[00:27:44] Geoff Holslcaw: Well, okay. Well, we have two boys and we're in the same. Our boys are just a little bit younger than your girls. Uh, but yeah, our, uh, does God really like me came out in 2020 and they were both like early teenagers. So they have their own copies, but they've never read. So maybe they'll read our next one when it comes out.

We'll see. Who knows? Uh, well, is there, um, what do you still, cause this is how I am. 

Reflections and Future Directions

[00:28:09] Geoff Holslcaw: I'm always onto the next project, but what do you, what do you still have the most energy around, uh, when it comes to this book and these questions? Um,

[00:28:18] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah.

[00:28:19] Geoff Holslcaw: What are you, what's still like gets you fired up?

[00:28:23] Chuck DeGroat: yeah. So, uh, I do think if there's a continued energy and if it's an energy that might lead to a next book, uh, it's some energy around, uh, this, this distinction between self-awareness and self-regulation.

[00:28:38] Geoff Holslcaw: Ooh,

[00:28:40] Chuck DeGroat: and nowadays, you know, we, uh, we have a number of I've worked with a number of pastors and leaders who had claimed self awareness.

Very, very different, by the way, than when I first got into it. 25 years ago, pastors weren't as interested in therapy or any a gram or attachment. Uh, now they listen to podcasts like yours, and they're intrigued by these things. The problem is, though, knowing about these things doesn't translate to health, and I was a good example of that.

I was a trained therapist. Um, I was, I was, uh, leading a clinical counseling center. I was leading retreats, and I land in a hospital in 2012, unhealthy. And so, um, the reality is, is that I was, I was self aware, but I was ignoring my lack of regulation or my dysregulation, those storm winds within, that fog within.

And so, I think my next writing project might move in that direction, um, and, uh, integrating that into a larger conversation of, of how we, uh, Um, adapt principles from emotional intelligence, um, for Christian leaders. So there are other, there are some other pieces to that, that I would, that I would add, uh, but that's pretty core to it.

[00:29:53] Geoff Holslcaw: Oh, I love that. Well, if you ever want to like test out some, test out some ideas, like we'll get you on the podcast for sure. But I think that's super important. That kind of gets into the, what you know, doesn't always heal you, right? You actually still have to do the work. And I, as someone who loves researching, I fall into that.

Like, just look behind me. I have all these books, right? But that's not going to lead toward. Deep healing and transformation, um, unless I'm doing the work and our culture is always looking for shortcuts and we feel like more information will, will get us there, but that's just not the case. Well, thanks for taking it.

I know, uh, you're busy and you have a lot going on with all those titles, uh, that we talked about. Uh, but I really appreciate you coming on. Uh, And we should do this again sometime.

[00:30:39] Chuck DeGroat: Well, I love it, Geoff. And, um, I'm a big fan of you and Cyd and the podcast and your first book, and I can't wait for yours to come out too.

[00:30:48] Geoff Holslcaw: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. And, uh, also, like I mentioned, uh, Chuck is going to be a part of our, um, free online summit on attaching to God, where he talks a little bit more about the sympathetic storms and the parent sympathetic fog and how the nervous system, uh, can help us know where we are. Um, and kind of gets at that question a bit more, but thanks for jumping on and talking a little bit behind the scenes about, uh, where, where this book came from.

[00:31:13] Chuck DeGroat: Yeah, man. Thank you. 

Um,