the staff at my practice and I don't know what my wife would think if I just said like, look, I don't know how much she can pay me to come like join her research team. But I think I'm moving to New York. We're going to do some work on this because like I'm just, this is really intriguing things because as you're speaking and I've got another question coming about how your work is, what your work is doing even, or even for those of us who are not clinicians, but those of us who are curious about or are really quite committed to faith. But before I get there, I want to, you know, the, some of the work that we do in interpersonal neurobiology is shaped and formed by the research work in attachment. Of course, as you're probably familiar, this whole notion of the adult attachment interview is all about the construction of memory. And how deeply attachment forms are how highly they are correlated with the way that we tell stories, the way that we remember things and so forth and so on. So when you say that these are folks for whom their faith was important to them, like if I were to ask a patient sitting in my it was your faith important, they would say, yes, it is. I, of course, was like, tell me what that means. I'm really curious about, in the moment that you're saying, yes, it's important, I'm really curious what you're remembering, what you're constructing in that moment, what is the story you're telling that means that this is important? Because I got plenty of people that are coming to my office who are telling me that their faith is important, who are in a range of different states of health, mental health. And for them, we might say that the story that they tell about what their faith means is quite different, despite the fact that they would all say that it is important. And so I'm all so equally, this is why I want to see if I can get a place on your staff and run another sidebar study while you're doing all this. That would be amazing. Yeah, because it, I mean, for us, it does have actually like really quite practical implication because we have, it is in our in our practice, it is a common thing for us to be caring for people who've been traumatized in their religious experience. They may or may not have had difficult religious experiences within their family. By difficult, I don't even mean traumatizing, but just hard to manage and live through and so forth. All of whom would say, yeah, their parent, they would say, yeah, faith was important to my parents. At least that's the story that they would tell. That's the memory that they would construct. For us, practically speaking, we want to, you know, we want to be hopeful with and for the patients who have remembered experiences that don't feel like much hope can emerge from them. And so I'm really curious, I mean, I have some ideas percolating here, even as you're talking, I'm curious about what you are hopeful about, what makes you hopeful about the work that you're doing, to the degree that you think about how clinicians like myself can apply that work. I mean, I'm already thinking of ways about applying this. What makes you hopeful about that in ways that can be helpful for people, whether you're a clinician or whether you're not a clinician, but you're an engineer or you're a pastor or you're a teacher or you're a farmer, whoever this is that's listening to this, what is it about what you're doing right now that really brings you the most hope. Yeah, I brings you hope of any kind. Yeah,

with this, with these findings, I mean, I think that they speak to like this broad range of areas that you've just touched upon. With a clinical application, it kind of encourages including and integrating some kind of spiritual inventory or questioning for patients, for people to even be, for that to be considered within a psychological or psychiatric assessment or dialogue, just to even include that because it often isn't. And so that's, these findings are encouraging in that respect. I actually did a little study look at what is it, it was funded by John Templeton, by the foundation that you had mentioned earlier. And they asked us to expand all these measures because all of our findings were based on this religious spiritual importance measure. And so we looked at different aspects of religion and spirituality to say, well, what is it about it? And I would have loved to have done a qualitative study where we is it about religion or spirituality that makes it important to you. But we didn't have that. But we had all these questionnaires that have been validated out there and gave that to the people in the study and found that, well, religious service attendance, regular attendance at religious services was associated with that and that's replicated in the literature too. That that's also protective against depression and different things. What was interesting was that it was really more intrinsic though. It was about an intrinsic quality of religiosity and spirituality where it was something that was meaningful to the person and that their faith was really for their faith. It wasn't religion as such, it was their faith that was central to how they made decisions in their lives and out their lives. That's what made it important. That was a defining feature. Other things weren't so much, even things like gratitude and things that you hear about in positive psychology and even things with nature. And that was not part of what was the importance measure in this study. Not to say it's not, but it wasn't part of that, which was interesting. So there was something about an intrinsic kind of religiosity, and I would call that one's faith, devoutness. And forgiveness was part of it, but forgiveness by God specifically was part of it. Forgiveness in general was not. So forgiveness was also part of that. And so someone who has that, I think that would be good to encourage, or if they don't have that, and they're inclined to kind of nurture that kind of thing. In other ways, applications of it, one thing I just want to say is, you know, I look at autobiographical memory, which is the memory of life stories, one's life story. And it's about the narrative. And so how we remember the narrative, and how we structure it, construct it, that can give us hope. Ultimately, it's the ability to find meaning in our life story, and carry that forward, whether that's by including some part of one's faith or not, or just having insight into oneself and other relationships and experiences, memory can help one heal from things and move on and kind of integrate experiences to move forward. So that gives me hope and knowing that that's possible. And then I'm doing a study now that's actually working with churches, with the churches in the upper Manhattan area, neighborhood of Washington Heights, where there's a Hispanic community, a strong Hispanic community. And so we've just gotten a grant to look at partnering with the churches to work with mental health issues and try to get a sense of what their needs are and how to partner in that way. So it's kind of going in a different direction and working with faith communities and integrating mental health measures and interventions. You

know, in attachment research work, we talk about this notion of how our narratives are always co-constructed. Nobody ever just tells their story by themselves. Somebody else is always, they're collaboratively told. And I think about how stuck we can get in the memory that we continue to construct and then kind of reinforce that constructed memory that can feel overwhelming, traumatizing that leads eventually to increased states of anxiety and depression. And we notice how in our patients, we, as we frequently say that our mission here in our practice is to help you tell your story more truly, more faithfully, in a way that is more deeply connected to all of your story, including the parts of it as we think about even the role that Jesus plays, the role that God plays, that God is coming to redeem the story. God is coming to tell a story very differently than the one that I have walked in my brain. And I just want to say that it's been my experience, that that's actually happening right here today in our conversation. That we, and it's happening, and I would want you to leave our car, when we wrap this up, I would want you to, we'll stop this with you knowing, Connie, that you have helped many people tell their stories very differently after today. For those people who think that their memory is a watch that's locked in a box and is unchangeable, You have been telling us a very different story. And I can't imagine anything that would be more hopeful than that. And so I'm just really grateful, not just for the conversation, which has been delightful and fun, and the information that you have graciously given of your time to share with us. But I'm supremely persuaded that your words can help to, can enable others to collaboratively tell their story differently going forward. And I'm just ever so grateful for the time that we've had. So thank you very much. Thank you so, so much.

That means a lot to me. Yeah. Yeah.

And I want you to take that in and let that shape your memory that you're creating. I will. If our listeners are interested in finding out more about your work, if that's something that they would want to do, what would be a way for them to access that work if they're curious about this? Because we do have people here who are, who are not just casual listeners, we have people who are scientists themselves who are curious about these kinds of things. So how would they access your work?

academia.edu, if you Google my name on a research gate. There's a little blurb on me on the Columbia University website, if you Google my name and the search. And I believe that my contact information is there as well. Okay. I'd be happy to talk to anyone who's interested in discussing anything further. Very

good. Well, Connie Sfob, it has been an utter delight to spend this time with you. Thank you so very much for joining us.

Thank you. You've

been listening to the Neurofaith Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kurt Thompson. And today my guest has been Connie Spod. I look forward to your joining us again soon as we continue our journey to explore life at the intersection of neuroscience, the light of following Jesus. Until next time.