Episode 112 - Change

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hey everybody michael gunger here welcome to the liturgists podcast the podcast where we talk about the most interesting stuff we can think to talk about through lenses like science and art and spirituality and today we're talking about the subject of change with hillary mcbride and william matthews and myself had a nice little conversation about it so glad you're here with us welcome to the literature's podcast everybody [Music] [Music] so hillary you and i were texting the other day and we were talking about different topics and you brought up the topic of change and it really seemed to uh it resonated with me like that's it so what was it i guess we could just maybe start what was it about that topic that made you bring it up is there something you've been experiencing or why did you want to talk about it yeah i think it it's kind of two-fold i it happened to be that the day you texted me i had so many clients come in that day talking about big changes in their life and like stuff that they were going through and i think i think about how often as a therapist i get this window into this window into like what's happening in people's lives and some of the normal stuff some of the everyday stuff some of the big stuff um that people bring to therapy just makes me see like where people struggle in their lives or where things are easy or where things are hard so that was on the top of my mind just to something that is a part of life something that's hard but i think maybe more personally i i've been in school for 27 years pretty much so long like if you count like like from the beginning school 27 years and i am wrapping up uh grad school this year like seven years of post undergraduate school seven years of grad school training and um i have some nerves about being done and it's weird to me that as much as like i was going through the whole process being like i just want this to be over now that it's going to be over i feel nervous about that and i'm so curious about what it is about the thing that i've wanted to end ending makes me feel like some unrest and it just makes me think about even when stuff is good if it's different it can be hard if it's foreign it can be scary and just i mean change so that that feels like the big one for me on the top of this like ending school we just uh my husband and i just had a big move i opened up my practice again um after being away for a year for my residency so lots of stuff has changed in my life and i think that's probably why it's top of mind as well it's interesting to think about how everything i mean everything is change all the time there's no yeah nothing has actually remained static right ever like even we say you've been in school for 27 years but of course being in preschool is different than being in graduation yeah versus being yeah um but but we feel certain changes more acutely you know like there's enough of a pattern between preschool and grad school you're going to a place where they're teaching you things and you have homework and you have assignments there's enough consistent pattern that that that we're able to like forecast the future a little bit more and feel like we have a little bit more control maybe or i i see it as i've been watching lucy um she is so she thrives in systems where she like can anticipate what's gonna happen right right um this year one of the biggest parenting wins that we've had is figuring out okay lucy first eat then bath first eat then bath and then book and you know like right um and if she can kind of have some ability to forecast what she's doing it every the every step of that goes so much smoother because otherwise we've been we get into giant tantrums and fights moving from bath to book or you know any any movement any transition um so i've just been noticing change i think we all have that to some degree or another where it's like we have enough of a predictable world a pattern where even though you go to work and every day it is different i don't care how mundane your job is on some level you're not having the exact same conversations with your co-workers right you're not eating the exact same sandwich even if it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day that peanut butter and jelly sandwich today had a little bit more peanut butter or whatever you know like there's always change i always think of uh seasons as the best indicator of change and even life changes kind of moving in sequence to nature's rhythm so obviously summer spring fall um but i think for me one of my favorite passages in the scripture talks about i guess time and this change and it's ecclesiastes 3 that says i don't know if you guys remember this one there's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens a time to be born a time to die a time to plant a time to uproot a time to kill and a time to heal a time to tear down a time to build a time to weep a time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing a time to search and a time to give up a time to keep and a time to throw away a time to fear and a time to mend a time to be silent and a time to speak and a time to love and a time to hate a time for war and a time for peace and i just feel like in my life i've always viewed time through this len like lens like there's there's always something designated for a certain period of time kind of like what you're saying with lucy like first comes summer then comes spring first comes morning then comes weeping first comes you know um war then comes peace and i don't know there's something always exciting for me about certain seasons compared to other seasons like i love fall and winter and then then i love spring and then i hate summer summer for me feels like death i don't know why i hate summer um but the one thing i do love so for a lot of people winter is kind of that i guess that death thing where things go to hibernate but for me i think winter has this beautiful magic to it and summer for me just feels like i don't know it's just maybe it's the heat i just i hate heat um but one of the things i do love at the end of summer is that anticipation of autumn and fall and the the leaves changing and and even with schooling like you were saying hillary like there's always that like newness that happens that new beginning like because that's usually when school starts and that's when the jewish new year is and there's almost this momentum that comes in september every year that i almost if i can just make it through june july and august i feel like i can get to that thing so when you say that my immediate thought is is it easier to get through the changes that are happening that you don't like because you know what's coming up next and then to like follow that up what is it like if you don't know what's coming up next like when there's the change without the rhythm of the season without the knowing of like the well then there will always be fall like what if you don't know what comes next yeah now it's now it's winter on mars what comes next right right um i think it does always come easier and at least for me i've always been the type that said i can endure anything if i know what i'm getting on the other end yeah and and i can endure for a long time too like love is patient love is kind of love love is long suffering i know how to endure a lot of shit but only if i know that there's a promise and a hope on the other end of it and so i think the only times in my life where i haven't known what the promise on the other side is was when i've gone through uh different seasons of deconstruction because i didn't know what was coming on the other side of that and in a lot of ways i was almost abandoning the natural rhythms of my life and my spiritual development and what that means like thinking like as a christian right it was always like okay i'm going to the next level of maturity i'm coming you know in the christian world it's always like you're going to get a new season there's a new season come there's a breakthrough coming like there's always like this almost prophetic anticipation uh that you're always kind of fed like and this year god's going to do a new thing this year right and in my deconstruction i really kind of called bullshit on a lot of that and was like wait what if what if there isn't what if this is just kind of the same old you know or why wasn't this year this this was supposed to be my prophetic year and it didn't actually pan out that way um and so yeah i think the times in my life where i haven't felt uh where i felt kind of the most unshaky was when i didn't have a sense of rhythm i didn't have a sense of time and i didn't have a sense of sequence and what that would mean what you said reminded me so much of nietzsche like when there's a when there's a y we can get through anyhow when there is some promise on the other side and like frankel has said that too in man search for meaning he like real built his whole style of therapy and existentialism around that statement like when we know what is coming we can injure right which is the difference between like why if you threw someone into a marathon who hadn't trained right it would feel like death like your lungs would be burning right your your body is shutting down but how different it is when someone is choosing to run a marathon and that there is a sense of like goodness at the other end it's like oh this pain actually even feels enjoyable like oh this is the this is the measure of like how hard i'm working that this why on the other end can help us endure so much in the right now is that is that though the same thing as feeling a sense of certainty or is that a type of embrace of mystery having that do you having the why yeah what do you think don't don't hillary me don't therapist me well like what made you ask that question like what well do you have a knowing that you want to share no i i legitimately don't know uh i you know because we talk a lot about how certainty is you know can become its own idol and having the knowing and the why um or at least maybe it's not the why maybe it's more of the what right like having feeling like i know what's gonna happen but having the y you're right i guess maybe the why is the thing that keeps us more open to unknowing versus the what um ooh that was good good job hillary i'd like to answer my own question you made me think about it [Laughter] what do you think michael certainty uncertainty why versus what um yeah why why helps me and i guess i mean what you're saying is it helps everybody i think that's yeah you i mean that's like why is working out not perceived as incredible suffering you know it hurts to go work out and like lift weights and tear your it is muscles painful experience it actually hurts the whole time but you can actually really enjoy it if you have a why that this is making me healthy like if you if you really believed that working out was killing you it would be torture torture right but if you believe that it's making you healthier and this this temporary pain is moving towards a fuller life and you've felt the endorphins and enough for you after a workout where you're like you're excited about how it's gonna feel after this and you can even so much know that that you can enjoy the moment of it um and yeah so the why for me as you talk about deconstruction william um it took a long time for me to enjoy uh deconstructing my certainties and that's i think that's because i had the why of it for so long was it it felt like i was dying it felt like i was this was moving into destruction like me questioning my beliefs me questioning my certainties is going to move me into destruction and it just it just honestly it took a number of major chapters where i moved out of one way of thinking one way of being into a new scary way of being and thinking and then felt the growth and the fruit and the um the joy of that that i started to trust my own heart a little bit more that like my heart was actually every time i followed my heart out of some really constrictive spaces it always ends up good and it just took a lot it just took a bunch of times of of being afraid and then not being able to operate anymore within a really constrictive environment and then over time like wow that actually turned out okay and so now you know there's always i think there's always that stuff happening there's stuff in my life that feels scary right now um things that are changing patterns that i don't know how to forecast you know mike has been facing all this health stuff he's we had to cancel our tabs and wafers events because he can't be traveling right now there's a bunch of stuff like what how how involved and how is his involvement going to be um with all this stuff and that's scary like for up to this point it's been my buddy mike and i in the back house doing you know it's it's there's change in a bunch of areas of my life but i've experienced enough of the know of trusting that whatever the flow is that keeps opening up um new possibilities and and moving beyond the the ability for me to forecast the future i've i felt a goodness about it enough a beauty about it enough that i'm starting to be able to trust it a little bit more than i used to it sounds like a like your relationship to change itself or to the process of change has adapted like as you've seen that just how things unfold can be good even if there's a not knowing that it that when you find yourself in the in the process of undoing or shifting that because you've done that process so many times that it becomes easier to know maybe even to bring it back to what we were saying that the why that there is always a y and sometimes we don't even know what that y is until we get to the other side so there can be just a trust of like there is a y here there is a meat there is meaning here well i have a question i guess um because i feel like this relates to my process a little bit learning about evolution really not just you know i went to school they taught evolution and the church untaught it to me uh and then i had to reteach it to myself the idea of evolution was was actually in one sense daunting but then very comforting to know that things are just moving and going and changing um you know on a microscopic level you know to a macro level that um and that i was or we are a part of that change do you think michael that was actually in your deconstruction like did you find comfort in evolution because in a strange way i i think i kind of did to know that house for me to feel like how small i was to take comfort in like the things that feel so big to me are really very small um and it doesn't take away from the importance because yeah i am small so therefore my small matters matter but um also how they were being played out in the macro kind of helped humble me a bit um and opened me up to change yeah i think for when when you see how the whole world works that every beautiful thing we've ever experienced is the result of change and pain and there is no life without death and there is no light without dark and how it all goes together i think that does it can foster a feeling of why even if you don't have an answer for it it feels like this is how it is and how it is is beautiful um even if it's painful even if it's terrifying um how it everything that i've ever experienced that is good going back to lucy like terrifying when she was born to find out she had down syndrome and all these heart defects and never wouldn't have been able to see all the ways that that ended up being one of the biggest gifts of our lives just and it's not something you people then put it into like trite pithy sayings like well there's a you know everything happens for a reason and and painting like god is some being out there that's like well you just deal with it and i'll surprise you later with with how this is gonna turn out to good and that's not what i'm talking about necessarily i mean if that helps you uh great you know maybe don't shove it in other people's faces because it's annoying to a lot of us but because it's annoying because it feels like you're dismissing our pain right and and our fear and our our process of walking through it um and it's not it doesn't work out great for everybody yeah so true um and so just to say like yeah your pain is gonna work out perfectly for you that might not be true you might die you're gonna die eventually from one of the painful things [Laughter] sorry positive encouraging message here um but even that even the death even the it's part of all of it and there is no joy without pain and there is no um growth without without growing pains and without without change so learning to trust the flow of change which is everything is is so beautiful to me is this a burning man that's kind of the major theme of burning man right is change is is how how everything is not permanent and they have these beautiful pieces of art these giant structures in the playa that people have spent who knows how many hours and how much money on building these intricate beautiful pieces of art and then they set it on fire and there was a pain to it like i while i was watching this beautiful piece of art burn i was like the artist has got to love that art like they put in a lot and here it's burning and we're all kind of like whoa awesome but there's a pain to it there's like a um but that's life and the more that we embrace that i feel the better my art is the better my living is the looser i hold on to trying to make sure that my ego gets to control all of it in the ways that i think it needs to play out because i could never have anticipated lucy i never could have anticipated you know the milky way galaxy what in reality could you your ego really have been like this is how it's gonna play out reality is so fucking weird and wild and bizarre and magical and you either kind of learn how to let go to it or you fight it and suffer [Music] and to me my spiritual work is a lot about learning how to trust trust the change today's episode is sponsored by better help online counseling i know from personal experience that finding a good therapist or counselor can be extremely difficult and expensive and betterhelp.com makes that whole process so much easier more affordable just go to betterhelp.com the liturgists you can fill out a short survey and be matched with one of their thousands of licensed professional counselors personally suited for your needs and goals within 24 hours whether you need help with depression stress relationships lgbt matters grief self-esteem trauma or just somebody to talk candidly and open with betterhelp.com can help it's all done over secure video or phone sessions and it's all confidential and surprisingly affordable so if you want more information or to get started today go to betterhelp.com slash the liturgists to get 10 off your first month or just use the discount code liturgists [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p dot com slash liturgists what about you hillary where are you well i'm just dealing with it i'm thinking about so i love what you're saying about the surrender to the process to to being in the flow and seeing the beauty of holding things with an open hand and i i'm re kind of replaying some of the changes that have happened over the last couple years in my life and thinking about how when the changes were something i chose so burning something down that you've made but when you've chosen to do that it's so much easier yeah somebody else setting it on fire setting it right right so like what if like i'm not ready for this to change because it's beautiful and i'm made for it to be here and and what if what if i built it to tear it down like the change the experience of change when you are choosing it versus when it's happening to you and how those feel so different so i guess i'm i'm wrestling in in the right now as i'm listening to you with change how change feels so easy for me when i want it yeah and when it feels like it's happening uh i dig my heels in i feel scared i resist i try and find ways around it until i can't and then i realize usually on the other side that it was better all along but like how how the the um the stretching of will or the the element of choice here feels so central to if change feels okay or not at least for me anyway yeah we have this joke in in our house that uh my husband's always saying like you don't you don't love change and i often say like well not the ones that you're trying to impose like he'll be like it's time it's time for a new whatever the thing is he's like we you know this chair is falling apart and i'm like but the chair is the memories and i love it and i don't want it to go you know and i have these connections and attachments to these things that i just love that represent the journey we have taken and right and and the idea of letting that go feel so painful but it's like a chair or like you know but isn't that kind of the rub right like you said it's one thing when i burn it down it's another thing when somebody else burns it down i'm still kind of stuck on that for a moment because i just feel like that's where i know in my life that's where i felt the most stuck is hey i wasn't ready to give that up or i wasn't ready for that relationship to end or i wasn't ready for that job to not be there anymore or that thing that i love that's no longer here like it felt it feels when it feels taken from you it almost feels like time then feels like a predator like like it's violating you and it's versus so it's hard to surrender it's easy to surrender like you said when you offer it up like what michael's talking about and then it's so hard when it feels like it almost feels like an attack and so what do we do uh how do we allow ourselves to actually move on or or let go like whether it's you with the chair in your house that's falling apart you know um uh or it's it's it's a family member that has been lost or a job or a a or a relationship i think that's the hardest one for a lot of us is relationships like and still grieving in our bodies those the space we held for those people um yeah what do you how do you move on before i i jump in with where how i move on and how i might say how i might suggest how i've seen other people move on i think about the tension even in deconstruction like for some people deconstruction is this like it feels like a way to have agency like i was handed all of these things and i never got a choice about them and here i am in in it getting to choose what i think what i believe and how i've also seen and heard other people talk about deconstruction as a thing that's happening to them and how there is like this i can't i can't believe the things i used to believe anymore but i don't i also don't want to let it go and even in deconstruction there can be choice or a feeling of it happening to you and how when belief systems are tied to a sense of community and belonging it can be so so so hard to move on to something else because you're not just moving on to a new way of being you're moving or thinking and what you understand about what was and what's coming and what's happening in life but also like letting go of the ability to relate to certain groups of people with ease or have a shared sense of understanding and identity and the pain that comes when change is inevitable but costs you more than maybe you ever wanted it to but you have to keep going just like i feel the as i've listened to people talk about that that tension of like i'm not gonna choose anything else but to go down this road because i have to and it's happening but but knowing that on some level a part of them doesn't really want to either and to make room for the fact that we can have multiple parts in us that respond to change differently like one part that is like this is good and another part that says i don't want this and that they can both coexist at the same time wow i think i think about go ahead william well it's funny what comes up for me when you said that what came up for me um and this is not a therapy session for me but what came up for me was um you mentioned the deconstruction that you know you choose as an autonomy but then the deconstruction that happens to you and for me i i felt the most deconstruction that's ever happened to me honestly was my my collective perception towards white people especially after the 2016 elections or the lead up into the 2016 elections i think i was genuinely optimistic about white people collectively and and and slowly it it almost kind of came crashing down almost like you're in you're in a you think you're in a a romantic comedy and then it ends up like a horror story yeah uh that's legitimate i think when i talk to people of color as well too i think that that especially people of color who were primarily in white spaces or worked a lot in predominantly white spaces uh that's the feeling that i think we all kind of coalesce around is like individually i can parse out who's a good person who's not no matter what your race color skin creates sexual orientation um but when it comes to the collective like identity and movements and patterns of white people in the western world it became like something that happened to me and i and it's like the fantasy of what i thought it was got unmasked and it was brutal and it's still something four years later i think so many of us are are reeling from and and still feeling like it was something consistently now if i just turn on twitter it's like the attacks against people of color from this administration are just so targeted and so personal and so intense but it's like i yeah and so the the trauma doesn't end so then i the question i've been asking and i don't even know if there's an answer to this as much as i'm just sharing um is how do i keep well how do i not fall into the weight of of despair around everything that is happening um i think that's just a question that uh i'm constantly wrestling with in some weeks and some i'm really great about it another week so i'm really not um yeah i don't know i'm just pro i'm just processing but that's what came up for me when you when you shared how the deconstruction happens to you and that was a perfect example of how it happened to me in that case it sounds like maybe you'd want change yeah like we've been talking so far up into this conversation at least what's come to mind for me is like when change is hard or when it kind of happens to us but what about when we're like desperate for things to be different yeah yeah were you gonna say something michael well i was agreeing with you yeah desperate for things to change yeah desperate for them and like that as much as i we joke as i was saying about how i can sometimes be resistant to change when it's happening to me like the the very fact is that what i do all day long is help people change like as a therapist that's what i'm in the business of change and people who are desperate for it in one way or the other because things being the way they have been is no longer working and it's hurting um so there are so many sides of change like when it's happening to us but also when it's not happening enough uh when it couldn't happen soon enough fast enough deep enough you're grooving over there i can see oh yeah i mean i'm just i'm just agreeing with you because it it i think it's the thing we're we're hungry for collectively you know speaking collectively um that obviously impacts us individually and personally is that need for change that want for change like i wanna i i don't wanna carry animosity or antagonism in my heart heart towards people who are a different skin color for me like that's not like i don't wake up in the morning just going how can i piss off white people today you know like i don't like i don't do that but like i don't even want to remotely be because that's just not joy and abundance and freedom and hope uh for my life um but when it's so in your face and it's constantly like uh deepening and and in some cases worsening um you go you that resistance start and then and in that way almost resistance is a good thing because there's it's like there's this change that wants to normalize racism or that wants to normalize inhumanity and indecency and dehumanization and i go uh actually i don't want that change i want to resist that change that's not good change and we actually that's change that we that's not change that's actually i would call that regression like that is a that's a moving backwards that's a d evolving um versus a uh evolution and so i'm interested and if we have to de-evolve a little bit and ult ultimately to take some steps forward i'm i guess i'm fine with that um but yeah so then it puts you in this place of yeah i am resisting the flow i am resisting the energy and the tide that is coming uh at me you know whether through the internet or whether through political agendas um and i know people on the flip side of this right like who maybe would lean more mega or conservative would probably you know felt that way you know i guess under barack obama however i think i would probably want i think there's quantifiable evidence to say um there is a type of discourse in society that is civil that is healthy that is normal that moves us forward to common ground and collective uh good versus ones that kind of de-evolve us into uh kind of the the back and forth um i don't even want to call it tribalism but you know the thing that the polarization that's happening um anyway i said a lot there but i i definitely feel like the resistance part is like there is some change that i think deserves to be resisted right right yeah i'm with you i am with you yeah same can go for gender i mean my feminist friend you understand this sure you know issues when it co gender you like yeah no we don't need to regress on our treatment of women and their bodies and yeah that matters yeah it's it's interesting i feel like talking about resistance and flow um it's it's kind of a matter of perspective and where you're talking about it from because i when i talk about flowing with what is and not resisting change i'm certainly not talking about not resisting racism or not um fighting for a better future for our kids to not have a planet that's going to have no food for them you know like i'm not talking about apathy but part of the flow is resistance i like that you know so like if you look at a river part of what makes it flow so strongly when you look at rapids like why do rapids flow so strongly it's because there's fucking resistance in the rapids like the rocks are resisting the flow and the water has to move around it and it makes there's like resistance is part of the river and so resistance is part that's part of the thing that's happening as well and so flowing with what am i finding in my body i'm finding resistance to the status quo i'm finding resistance to apathy um that you can flow by resisting those things so to me it comes down to attachment and that's kind of we're getting really into the center of my whole spiritual world view and practice here which is um to me it's about attachment so you see that everything is changed like we are change we think that we think of a oh william and hillary and michael sitting here having a conversation but of course none of the organisms that started this conversation are actually exactly the same as when we began this conversation like a hair probably fell out of my head you know atoms have been flying out of our bodies and we have different thoughts different memories now it's always there's never a static anything it's like i said the beginning it's all change so so am i going to get attached to my ideas of thingness of staticness of what what is a static thing so i think of if i think of michael as a static thing as a static somebody then uh oh now i've got a bunch of stuff that i could lose because michael has these possessions and has my life and oh no michael's gonna die someday and um so now there's fear now there's something to fix but and that comes with suffering but the more that i just not just like embrace change as though i'm a static something that can embrace change as another static something the more that i really exist within and as that flow that is not is not just this body but everything um the the less there is suffering and for me i find the more naturally i'm able to flow in the ways that this body loves to flow in which is things like love and peace and justice and and empathy and not apathy and in creativity and like but that the hard part about that is you can't when you're talking about attachment in this context it's not just it's not that i can just like be attached to all the good things in my life and then something shitty happens and somebody does something to me and then that's when i decide to not be attached if i'm attached to the good stuff i'm going to be attached to the bad stuff too so i can't the anthony demelo has this book the way to love that was a really beautiful explanation of this to me who was like a jesuit priest and he would talk about how love the way to love is without attachment and that was really hard at first like how do you even do that um because it's really terrifying and then you're not even holding on to the good things in the moment you're like it's letting it all pass like the river um and that's a that's zen that's um i can't do that that i'm too possessive for that [Laughter] i'm like give me give me no i want to keep the gun i want to keep it up yeah i'm trying to do i'm trying to open up i'm dying that's fine and it's like there's nothing wrong with me for me to say that that like wrong way to do it would be an attachment right ah yeah i guess so so i'm i guess i'm hearing you say one that that flow and being inflow is not is not you saying that we should adhere to whatever social dominant kind of trend or or discourse is right that that finding yourself in flow is not necessarily saying like i give up yeah or letting somebody else burn your artwork right right yeah exactly um but i guess i'm also hearing you say or maybe i'm i'm hearing what i already believe in what you're saying too that that when we accept that change is part of life that we don't have to spend so much time resisting it and we can we can know that security and identity live somewhere else besides like everything has to stay the same for me to be okay like i can there is an okayness that can live in me that can transcend if some of the variables on the outside shift and that my ability to be at rest does not come from everything always being certain but that even in uncertainty i can find perhaps a certainty of knowing that i'm i'm okay this is kind of like um maybe we could even say and i'm going to use the word attachment differently but attachment in terms of like a style of relating to the world around us and to ourselves a kind of attachment to self that means like we're not needing to to constantly have um things be the same in the way we relate to them outside of ourselves to know that we can relate to ourselves with kindness and compassion and presence and and goodness and love and stability so that becomes the thing that's known that's how i think about it does that does that feel like kind of what you were talking about different so when you say relating to it can you talk a little bit more about it i was starting to understand a little bit i feel like i'm a little cloudy still with what you're getting at yeah just that the the consistency doesn't have to be external that it can be internal um like i think about what i'm working at in my life right now about the consistent thing that i would like to be certain is that whatever comes up on the inside of me i respond to with curiosity and self-compassion yeah yeah and so that way if it's anger i'm like oh oh oh anger what what are you doing anger tell me oh there's a part i meet right so that even even if things are different on the inside the thing that's the same is how i respond to them that there would be um that means a kind of certainty that i can take with me wherever i go no matter what and that it doesn't even mean that i need to feel the same all the time it's that how i always respond to what's happening is the same that it's always curious and always loving yeah i think about richard rohr he talks about yes and like what does it look like to have a yes under even the no in your life so like to have a that internal yes to everybody and everything including the like when you're paying attention to your own heart and your own your own body and you feel in your body i don't want to be close to this person they don't feel safe for me even though there's a no on the surface of like i'm not going to be close to this person there's a yes under that of like i'm paying attention to my heart and my body and i'm saying yes to what my body knows to do yeah so there's like a if you can find a yes even under the ways that you have to say no to the world that in oh please go ahead and mean to interrupt you no but i mean that's kind of to me what living in the flow feels like it's like surrendering to the the natural and good instincts and responses of my own body and my own heart um and it's not necessarily to say yes to the external world in all of its forms like as far as like yeah go ahead and lock kids up in cages at the border just a big yes to that no a big no to that mm-hmm but i'm saying yes to the compassion in my heart that says fuck no that's not what we should do we might call that inner consent too the the idea that like we are we are giving ourselves permission for what we notice inside and that we're taking away the resistance to what is on the inside like in existentialism or accidental analysis we call that inner consent which is like so useful when we're trying to create change too and realizing that sometimes we're not ready to and that we can give ourselves permission to not change yet like if there's a person who's like i am still um i'm still oh gosh what's a good example i'm still uh shopping as a way to manage my anxiety about work or something or i'm still i'm still consuming in somewhere i'm still using some behavior some activity that there's often so much shame about that that it creates more conflict more distress and then more tendency to need to use things to get away from what we're feeling and the ability to do this yes that you're talking about michael or what we would call like inner consent is to be able to say ins my first step to change is changing how i'm talking to myself about this my first step to change is changing that i'm not going to beat myself up about the fact that right now this is the only strategy i have to manage my distress so instead of being distressed and feeling shame about it change starts by me deciding to tell a different story about what's going on inside to not fight myself the word picture i keep thinking of is like the river as the flow of life and there's a river coming in every time we say yes it is we are allowing ourselves to be taken by the river and to flow at the river and maybe every time we say no we are just redirecting the the flow of what's happening i don't know that's a just a picture that kept coming to me as you were talking um about the the the permission to go with it but also the permission to resist it um and maybe it's all a great cosmic yes underlying at all um because whether i'm saying no to this and redirecting it there still is like you said that yes that's yeah that's that's happening um and that in and of itself is perhaps another flow um can i can i tell you what i've been chewing on for the last few minutes here yeah i i work with people one of my areas of clinical and research specialty is in the area of trauma and and trauma uh can come in so many different forms like a single incident it can come in years and years and years and years of something that actually begins to feel normal and doesn't feel like trauma anymore because our body changes to adapt but in something that like most trauma practitioners know when treating trauma when is is something we call the triphasic model and the idea is that the first step to treating trauma is to create safety and stabilization that when there has been distress when there's been dysregulation when there has been unsafety that the body begins to heal when there is stability when there is something that's known so as i'm thinking about our conversation about change about listening to change and being okay with it and giving the yes to it i'm just thinking about this tension for some people where when everything has always been changing and it's been it's been bad it's been horrific when there's been so much unsafety how the change towards stabilization again it's a change and it would be really good it would be necessary for healing but how how sometimes we actually need things to be known how we need things to feel like they're perhaps predictable at times like you're talking about with lucy michael that knowing what's coming next allows our body to stop being in hyper vigilance and like i don't know what's coming i don't know what's coming until like oh i can start to pay attention to my body again or i can start to pay i can feel i can feel the warmth the sunshine because i'm not constantly worried like where am i going to sleep tonight or when's my next meal or when's like so change into stability is still change but but the stability can sometimes be essential for us to actually recalibrate our system and how painful i could imagine it would be if if you finally feel at rest like you know you're out of an abusive relationship or you know you're out of a toxic environment or you're you know that that unstable housing situation it's done your summer's stable but then then if something changes again like how does your body find rest yeah it's a nice ideal to just be like yeah whatever just flow with it but then yeah you gotta to eat you have to figure out how to change the world in a in a forecastable way to get food into your body like you've gotta you've gotta have some ways of either paying for it or getting it from a garden or you know so having practical patterns of a predictable structure in your life that you don't have to spend all of your ram on all of your processing power on so when the big big changes kind of come at you externally finding ways of uh you know i think that's a big part of what spiritual disciplines why they're so powerful it's like a really reliable here's a pattern that i do every day as i sit down and i meditate or i have this mantra or i read this spiritual text or what these things that we have these disciplines and patterns i feel like the more of that i have in my life the easier it tends to be when other stuff really changes if there are some anchors of patterns of thought and being in practice it's a little easier for the external world to shift around that and there feels like there's some sort of home under all of it that doesn't get shaken so much but literally everything in my day gets shaken up that can be really hard on the road i found like touring william i know you're on tour right now but touring for a while was like so disorienting you're in a new place every day and new people and it can just get really unhealthy a lot of people that are on tour just can really can really find destructive patterns you're drinking every night you're eating shitty food all the time and so finding little ways of like putting in reliable healthy predictable consistent uh anchors in your life i started doing that a lot on tour where it's like okay every tuesday thursday saturday i take the afternoons by myself when i go on a walk and i find a park and i'm in nature and i'm quiet by myself for a while like i just find little things that i would do on tour that would help me not just lose my entire bearings what about you william how you feeling with all that touring uh yes so i'm just two weeks into it um and i've i keep finding places of rest like i was with my family for a couple days in atlanta which was really great and that always re-centers me um i'm currently in saint augustine's florida right now taking a couple days near the beach just to relax and rest before i hit like another string of dates so yeah like i i decided to do a two-month tour which was crazy um but i spaced it out enough because i just after touring a long time i just know my body and i just know my max and i also know what i need so i created lots of room and space to re-center to take time to like you know like i think the first three day two and a half days i was here in saint augustine florida i don't think i left the house like i was just like i'm a homebody i love being home and that's how i stabilize is like being in like inside of a house having like little routines things i do um and so yeah i've i feel a lot of grace thus far um on on the journey and and hopefully uh and then seeing friends and people that i've known for a long time along the way like i'm headed to charlotte to see um one of my longest best friends for 15 years and so i feel like i'm i'm connecting along the way with people that i love so i'm not every single day or weeks at a time without seeing anyone that i know and love so yeah so that's how i connect no i think that's it like how how change becomes easier when there's also stability when like we think about that in terms of attachment relationships again you and i use the word attachment differently i'm thinking from it of it from like a interpersonal neurobiology perspective like how we we need to know that there is a place we can always come back to that feels safe so that we can go into the world and have experiences that are new and challenging and and when there hasn't been that safe place we can come back to and there is only the challenging and new and different stuff that happens in the world that our body doesn't get a chance to to rest like i think about sleep and how sleep is the it's just this like down time for a nervous system to clean everything out for our memories to get reconsolidated for our tissues to rebuild like it's so so so important if we don't have that then the demands of daily life and the up and out and through and around is too much so i just think that this like it's easy i want to acknowledge that it's easy for us to talk about change with even curiosity because we likely have some measure of stability in our lives and that there might be people listening to this who who feel like they don't have that and so the idea of embracing change feels like an assault because there's nothing that's known so just i guess making room for both of those yeah totally i love that can you think of any other ways of internally um finding consistency even like for somebody that is in a world of external hurricane i mean literally people like in hurricanes right now the people that have lost their their entire houses and yeah uh are displaced and that's going to keep happening more and more the way climate is like what do you how do you can you internally find places of reliable structure and stability that that can anchor you when the world is literally falling apart around you yeah i think i think that you can and yet i don't want to i don't want to miss the point that like we exist in contexts and we exist in relationship and our brain actually develops and is shaped because of our interactions with other people in our relationship so like having internal stability is so good but i don't want to subscribe to the idea that like you need to love yourself first so anyone can love you or like you you need to have it all okay on the inside and then nothing will ever hurt again and no one can touch you like i think i think it's important to look at practices that create stability on the inside and to think about how we can create experiences on the outside that are also stable so that we can endure just the normal change of life that we've been talking about um but i think like one thing that's actually been really really helpful for me just in in creating this kind of compassionate dialogue with myself and my body especially because i've been i've had some pretty pretty serious injuries this year and pain that i've been dealing with is no matter what level of pain i'm in when i wake up in the morning putting my hands on my body and saying good morning thank you in advance for everything we're going to do today other today no matter what messages you give me about how much things are it or not like i'm not going to be cruel to you so the touch feels like a consistent practice that when i touch myself it's kind and loving um but also making sure that that my dialogue not only in tone but actually in the language is kind and loving um i think about mental places we can go to as well like when things are changing um are there things we can access like i mean for some people that's even like pieces of scripture like okay this is what i know i'm going to remind myself of this thing that i know or i'm going to recite this poem i know some people who who watch certain shows on tv as a kind of comfort or stability of like this feels like comfort food but in terms of entertainment just any of the things that feel like they bring our body rest i think what i'm saying underneath everything else that i'm saying is you can find these things if you're paying attention yeah right and that means paying attention to like what body cues tell you i'm at rest right now or i'm not at rest right now and finding finding those cues listening to them and then returning to the things that are related to that as much as possible what about you guys i actually i actually did that in the shower this morning which was really which was really great um i woke up today feeling pretty well put on some lizzo was juicing felt good and then these like feelings of i'm gonna call it just to be vulnerable i started feeling love sickness over a relationship that uh i don't know where it's at and but it wasn't just because i've been thinking of my body more in the communal way it was it was like my body was missing this person my soul was like yearning for something and then my mind was like get over it you just need to you know don't think about that right now you got things to do you got whatever and then my soul and my body teamed up on me and my mind and then just shut me all down and i had to just lay in the bed for like an hour and then i said okay y'all get an hour and that's it we gotta we gotta get up and take a shower and do some podcasting but when i say all that to say like i had to like allow myself to listen to myself like what you're talking about and just recognize once i was able to name what i was feeling i was like oh you feel love sick and this it's me and this person are not in a bad place but for some reason we haven't been talking for a while and i was like because i'm on tour and my body like missed this person and i was like oh wow that's i've never felt it this strong and it kind of took me out for a second but then over time i was able to acknowledge it affirm it and then i got in the shower and i spoke some affirmations to myself and then i just feel like remarkably better um i think once i allowed myself the space like you're saying to just feel all the feels and who i didn't imagine i'd share that story but uh here we go thanks for sharing um thank you william yeah it's it's funny how change is good but it's hard and me being on the road has produced a obviously a change but what it's also done is it's helped me look at things from different perspectives so change to me though it's hard and it brings a new opportunity and it brings a new grace and it brings a new perspective and a new mercy and a new um a new way of being even so i think part of the reason why i wanted to do this tour was to just kind of throw some change into my life and say you know what just do something you've never done before all right you've never done this let's do it because it's going to produce something out of you that's going to going to be good for you so hmm yeah that's what i felt um i i like the for me the sort of concept of karma yoga um has been really helpful for me it almost it in a way it kind of turns everything into that frame of mind of working out where any pain that you're experiencing can be part of your body letting go of unhealthy attachments that it has so any pain that's coming in then rather than feeling like a victim of it feeling like i'm being tortured by the external world can be experienced as wow look at my body resisting what's what's happening and look at how it's opening up look at the possibility of allowing this pain to open up new surrender in my life and new learning experiences in my life and new wisdom and kind of interpreting all that's happening as a way of learning and growing and [Music] and surrendering and even worship or love or um i think it's interesting when we think i'm gonna go i'm gonna go christian for you guys for a second ready william just just broke down but i even think about like jesus the whole cross and resurrection thing why does that resonate so much with human beings that we keep telling this story for thousands of years because none of us that are hearing the story have died right like it's not like yeah that's what happens when you die like there's something about our lives and the way that we experience life that that story really informs and really like resonates as true that sometimes you experience a cross you experience hell and and that makes a way to have new life come out of it like you experience this rebirth after these really painful horrible dark experiences sometimes and um to be able to view the the painful changes in our lives that feel like they're being imposed on us that feel like um i'm a victim now of my circumstances and this again this is not something i put on anybody else but for me there's things that happen in my life that that's my body wants to say well fuck you i'm the i'm a victim here and i i deserve better than that and maybe i did deserve better than that but for my internal relating to it um i found it helpful to to try to bring it into to more of that how can i use this how can i learn from this how can i hear from this what might be lying on the other side that i have no idea about maybe there's some why underneath this not again not that there's like some puppet master doing this to me so that he can get me to be more holy or whatever on the other side but like what what are the possible fruits of this that i just have no idea about and um and then then it can having that brings it back to the moment just in the same way that like working out i keep using that example what can we getting a massage anything like if think the same thing if like you didn't think that the massage was doing you some good and they're just like pressing pressure on that really painful spot and it's like get off me what are you doing it hurts but if it can be like oh wow look at the pain that really was tight there let it open let it open let it open um for me that's just been really helpful um at not just at bringing me to the moment because then then i'm not lost when that pressure's happening um it's it's so easy to get caught up into all the thoughts about yesterday and tomorrow and what this pain means and oh no this shouldn't be happening here's how i wish it was happening instead rather than just feeling it and experiencing it here and now and then allowing the lessons to come as they do just being present in the moment for me makes it change more bearable and and in in the best of times even a little it can't even be exciting and beautiful [Music] wow that's beautiful thank you for sharing that um yeah it reminds me of something we do in therapy called radical acceptance which is uh i mean this is our whole conversation like being with what is and not adding more pain just there is already there is already pain and suffering in life i would say i mean maybe you would say differently but i would say life is inherently challenging at times and and what we can do to move through that is to not add more to it right to just be with what is and um if all that it means is staying with our breath as we survive something instead of beating ourselves up for being in that place maybe that's what it is maybe that's where we go back to is our breath but there is always an opportunity to [Music] say anchor ourselves in something and have a choice about how we talk to ourselves about whatever we're going through yeah well thank you guys for the lovely conversation thank you to change to change well we hope you enjoyed our conversation about change today if you'd like to discuss or learn more about the liturgists and what we're doing just go to the liturgists.com or find us on social media at the liturgists we'd like to thank our patrons for making it possible to do this and our hosts have been hillary mcbride william matthews i'm michael gunger today's episode was engineered and edited by tejas lear hayden thanks for listening everybody [Music] you