Bonus Episode: The Healing Power of Understanding Your Story with Adam Young, Cathy Loerzel, and Dan Allender
Dec 11, 2023
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Adam Young, Cathy Loerzel, and Dan Allender discuss the healing power of understanding your story and how it impacts your thoughts and actions. They explore the influence of family of origin on present mentality, the value of community in the healing process, and the importance of embracing different perspectives within ourselves. The podcast also announces the StoryWork Conference for engaging with your own story and finding freedom.
Engaging with our stories and past traumas is essential for healing and breaking free from the bondage of our past.
Truly listening to our stories and tending to the neglected parts of ourselves fosters integration, growth, and reframing our narratives.
Deep dives
The Significance of Story in Our Lives
Our brains constantly bring order to the world and make meaning, not just explaining why things happen but seeking the deeper meaning behind them. Our lives are centered around storytelling, finding meaning in time, space, people, dialogue, and plot. We all carry and interpret our stories, which bond us and connect us to others. Traumatic experiences become imprinted in our brains, creating neural pathways that trigger familiar feelings and reactions when similar situations arise in our lives. To break free from the bondage of these past stories, we must engage with them, listen to our own stories, and reconciling the fear, trauma, and anxiety associated with them.
The Invitation to Engage One's Story
Engaging our stories means entering into the places of bondage and pain, rather than avoiding or going around them. It requires acknowledging the past traumas and memories that shape our outlooks and decisions today. By engaging our stories, we can move from feeling bound to finding new paths of bonding and growth. This journey is not easy, but it opens the door to healing and allows us to bless our own transformations in the face of past harm. Engaging one's story requires time, perseverance, and the support of wise guides, therapists, or community members who can help interpret and navigate the complexities of our narratives.
Listening to Our Own Story
Our stories are like written realities, composed of overlapping memories, sensations, and emotions. Truly listening to our stories means being attuned to our bodies and minds, as they hold the imprints of our past experiences. By listening to the signals and triggers in our bodies, we can better understand and tend to the unresolved parts of ourselves. This process may bring discomfort and require courage, but it leads to healing, liberation, and a greater capacity for love and kindness. Engaging our stories alongside empathetic witnesses or therapists allows us to retrieve and tend to the parts of ourselves that were left behind in our childhood, fostering integration and growth.
Tending to the Parts Left Behind
The parts of ourselves that were neglected or unaddressed during our formative years require tending in order to experience healing and freedom. Difficult emotions, traumas, or heartaches that were not met with empathy need to be revisited with curiosity, kindness, and care. Retrieving and tending to these parts, even if they bring up uncomfortable feelings, allows us to reframe our narratives and transform our neurobiology. We can rewrite our stories by allowing ourselves to be reparented through self-care, community support, therapy, and the belief that there is goodness to be found in embracing and healing our past.
You have a story and that story matters. Your story in your family of origin significantly affects the way you think, feel, and act in the world today. This is why Dan Allender says, “It is time to listen to your story.”
What if healing begins by listening to your story? By reflecting on—and engaging—the experiences in your growing-up years, you can better understand why your brain has been shaped in the way that it has.
These are the topics that Dan Allender, Cathy Loerzel, and Adam Young explore in today’s bonus podcast episode, which is a co-production between The Place We Find Ourselves Podcast and the Allender Center Podcast.
If you want to experience more of the healing power of understanding your own story, join Adam, Cathy, and Dan in Atlanta, GA, on Saturday, February 3, 2024, for the StoryWork Conference. In-person and livestream tickets are available. CEU’s are also available for therapists.