The Place We Find Ourselves

It turns out that the practice of reflecting on the story of your life actually promotes healing in your brain. There are two reasons for this:

Brain health is a function of the degree to which all parts of your brain are connected with one another.

The process of reflecting on your story, sharing your story with another, and hearing another’s reaction to your story connects neural networks that were previously separated.

In other words, the key to healing is connecting. Engaging the core stories of your life heals your brain by connecting regions that were previously not well connected.

Connecting Left to Right

When you experience harm, your thoughts about the experience become disconnected from the overwhelming emotions you had. Literally. The neurons holding your thoughts (stored in your left brain) become disconnected from the neurons holding your feelings (stored in the right brain).

Telling the story of the experience requires that

your brain link your

thoughts about the story (left brain)

with your

feelings about the story (right brain).

If you are able to tell your story while remaining connected to your emotions, then the neural networks in the left part of your brain will link up with the neural networks in the right part of your brain.

This is very healing.

It leads to what neuroscientists call integration, and what the Bible calls shalom.

Connecting Top to Bottom

Telling your story not only leads to left-right integration, but it can lead to “top-down” integration. “Top” refers to the portion of your brain that is behind your forehead—your cortical brain. “Bottom” refers to the portion of your brain that is lower and deeper—your limbic brain. The limbic brain triggers your fight-flight response and your shutting down response.

When you begin to reflect on harmful parts of your story—stories that hold shame, fear, or rage—your limbic brain reacts and you enter a state of fight-flight or a state of shutting down.

Do I Really Have to Tell It To Another Person?

Yes! If you are able to stay with the story in the presence of another person, two things happen (which are both very good for your brain).

First, the other person’s limbic brain regulates yours—which is to say, their limbic brain soothes and calms yours.

Second, as a result of their attunement and soothing, your cortical brain (top) forms connections and linkages with your limbic brain (bottom).

In other words, the presence of an attuned listener leads to changes in your brain.

Your brain develops neural pathways that connect your cortical brain to your limbic brain. This is very healing because these pathways enable you to self-regulate when you become overwhelmed by fear, shame, or rage.

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This is part 2 of a series of episodes focused on how to interact with someone who has harmed you. Today’s episode identifies two additional attributes of wicked people—namely scapegoating and intellectual deviousness. If you confront a wicked person about their sin or failure—instead of examining their heart and feeling sorrow and guilt for how they have hurt you—a wicked person will somehow shift the blame onto your failure and your sin. This is scapegoating. Intellectual deviousness refers to the ways wicked people use words to twist truth, avoid guilt, and fill you with self-doubt.

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I am joined today by author Jay Stringer to talk about sexual stuckness/difficulties/pain. Healthy sexuality is deeply tied to the degree to which we have made sense of our story in our family of origin. Sadly, so few of us have ever been asked to connect the dots between our past life story and the sexual difficulties we face in the present. Today, Jay and I try to connect some of those dots. If you want to understand your sexual story in more depth, please sign up for The Sexual Attachment Conference on May 4th. We want to help you understand and transform some of the unique sexual difficulties you may be experiencing either individually or as a couple.

Therapist and fellow podcaster Vanessa Sadler shares a story from when she was 11 years old. As children, all of us needed to belong—to feel “a part of.” If we did not receive sufficient attunement from our primary caregivers, we likely experienced high levels of loneliness. The dilemma is that it may not have felt like loneliness because it was such a normal part of your life. Vanessa talks candidly about her loneliness growing up, as well as how she came to experience significant healing from that loneliness. You can follow Vanessa on Instagram @abidinginstory.

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I am joined today by my friend Rebekah, who shares a story from when she was six years old. Topics covered include: feeling like there is something wrong with you but not knowing what it is, self-doubt about how you see reality, difficulty trusting your gut, learning to listen to your body and to trust the information that it is giving you.

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