Trusting Yourself Again with Dr. Hillary McBride

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Oh, Hillary, we are so delighted to have you back.

Today, you're just truly one of our favorites.

And I'll remind the pod squad that Dr.

Hillary McBride is a registered psychologist, researcher, podcaster, author, and speaker.

She has lived experience and clinical expertise in the areas of trauma, embodiment, eating disorders, and the intersection of spiritual and mental health.

I'm sorry, I'm just, is this my bio?

Oh, no, because

you have the clinical expertise.

Okay, that's right.

Right.

You just have the life experience

in those areas.

Okay.

Hillary actually like read so many stories.

That's right.

Right.

Got it.

So you have facts.

You have facts.

I have feelings.

Okay.

Her research has focused on women's relationships with their bodies across the lifespan.

And her books, which are so beautiful and so important, include Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image, Embodiment and Eating Disorders, The Wisdom of Your Body, and Practices for Embodied Living.

Her latest book, Holy Hurt, Understanding Spiritual Trauma and the Process of Healing, is available now.

Welcome, Hillary.

How are you?

I am so good.

What's going on in your brain and heart today?

Oh, in my brain and heart.

Well, we had an earthquake recently.

So there was like a lot of anxiety where we are, where everyone's okay, but there was a lot of middle of the night Googling.

So that happened.

Oh, my goodness.

Other than that, I'm just so thrilled to be with you.

And this book, I'm so excited about this book.

I'm sure you are.

Yeah.

I can see why.

There's a lot of good that's happening.

Let's talk about where I know your brain and heart is right now because of your new beautiful book that I absolutely loved, Holy Hurt, which is such a good title, by the way.

Good title.

Thank you.

Great title.

I have so many things that I want to talk to you about in the next hour because I feel like as I was reading, my brain was exploding about

ways that I think what you're talking about and discovering in this new work applies to absolutely every human being on the planet, not just people who were raised in faith traditions.

But first,

tell us spiritual trauma for dummies.

Like anybody who is listening to this and doesn't know what we're talking about, talk to us about the specific flavor brand of trauma that you're exploring in this book.

People who have spiritual trauma might, what does this look like and feel like?

Yeah.

Okay.

So

I'm an academic.

I'm going to give you definitions.

I'm going to start with defining the terms so we know what we're talking about and then we can have some shared language.

I kind of want to rehabilitate our definition of what spiritual means because I think that when someone says spiritual in our current socio-political context, they mean something that maybe in academia we don't quite mean.

So when I say spiritual, what I mean is the innate inborn human desire and longing for connection.

for meaning, for flourishing, for asking questions about who am I?

What am I doing here?

And why does it matter?

So spirituality is not religion and spirituality isn't owned by any system or institution spirituality is born into us and i think it is very closely tied to this life force energy that causes us to expand and reach and make more of ourselves i think i think if i was to maybe take a risk i would say that spirituality is inherently erotic that it is like

propels us into connection.

And you could say like big connection, connection with maybe God or creator or spirit, but also like inside of ourselves.

Like what is this something that makes me want to reach down into myself and find the places in me that have been cut off or fragmented?

I would say that that's a spiritual drive to forge connection inside of and between us.

Cool.

Okay.

So we got that.

We'll just hold that here for a second.

And then trauma.

Trauma, when we understand what it is psychobiologically, when we understand what it is systemically, it's usually experiences, singular or multiple that overwhelm us to the point of fragmentation.

So if you take spiritual, which is this inherent drive for connection and meaning inside of ourselves, and you take trauma, which is this

something that rips us from ourselves and from each other, then I would argue, one, any trauma is spiritual trauma.

Yes.

Then anything that we've ever been through that has fractured us from ourselves, from the land, from each other, from our family, from the good parts of us, I would say that that's spiritual trauma.

But where does spiritual trauma thrive?

There are certain contexts and systems in which the messaging from the moment you're born is you are bad, you cannot trust yourself.

Somebody else has much more power and control over you.

Your body is dangerous, right?

We see that there are certain spiritual or religious contexts or family systems, or we could say political systems that do that to us.

And so I would argue that there is a spiritual trauma that is bigger than those particular contexts.

But what I really want to bring to the fore here is the way that some of these systems that we have been born and bred into that have become so normal for us that we feel like they're, you know, the water we swim in have actually played a significant role in doing the opposite of what they've said they want to do.

And they have pulled us apart from ourselves ourselves and each other.

And until we can look at that and name the wounds and explore how that is in us individually and collectively, then I think it's going to be really hard for us to heal, heal ourselves, heal the world, and move back towards this kind of individual and collective flourishing.

Give us an example of what fragmentation, you said, anything that causes fragmentation.

What does that mean, not in an academic way, in a life?

How does fragmentation manifest individually for a human being?

If I'm listening, how do I know if I'm fragmented?

Tell us.

Yes.

Yes.

Well, I think the way that it probably manifests in the most obvious form, and that relates to conversations we've had before, is I can't feel my body.

I want my body to go away.

My body can't be trusted.

My body is dangerous.

I don't even know what's happening inside of me.

I would say that that's a very obvious form of fragmentation.

Maybe even more specifically, things like my sexuality is bad or dangerous and I need to cut it off.

Desire needs to go away.

Longings, anger, right?

Anger, my power, my voice, it needs to go away in order for me to belong or feel safe or be connected to the people who I love.

So it's anything that's keeping us from living out our full humanity and who we are.

If we're hiding a part of ourselves, if we're ashamed of a part of ourselves, whether it's part of our personality, whether it's our body, whether it's

whatever it is, if we are not living out our full human self, that means we are fragmented.

Yeah, that could be one explanation of what's getting in the way is that there have been something inside of us in our psyche has been severed in some way.

Yeah.

I wonder, does needs fall into that?

Because as you're talking, I'm thinking about every trauma that is separated.

And when I think about fragmentation, it's like fragmentation of

needs.

Like, I don't actually need that thing.

I'm putting it over here.

Or I don't need that in a relationship.

Or I don't need that in a friendship.

Or I don't need that in any part of your life because you've learned that that is dangerous or unavailable or got broken before.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I think needs, but what if needs

intimately connected to knowing?

Your body and your knowing.

Yeah, and your body, right?

Like it's really, really hard to even know

what I need.

if I'm not connected to the place inside of me that says this feels good or I want this.

Like we've, we've had conversations before about wanting and that place inside of us that says, I want to move towards this person, this thing, this experience, this identity.

And so there's needs for sure, but I would argue that depending on how baked into oppressive, high control systems people are.

that sometimes like we're not even talking about needs there's no contact even with the place inside that knows that something could be needed it's just like yeah you don't have access to that you're separated from access to even know that yeah yeah so underneath needs might be knowing like any any kind of knowing, because I think that there's a thing that happens in these systems.

And a colleague of mine, Preston Hills, writing and theorizing about this, what he's talked about is that there is this outsourced moral and spiritual authority that somebody else gets to know.

Yes.

I can't know.

You know.

Yes.

And what do you do with that knowing?

You continue to tell me.

through this form of spiritual gaslighting, moral gaslighting, I can't listen to myself.

I'm bad.

So the ability to connect even to what I know gets severed, right?

Because I'm not allowed to even know.

You get to know and you're going to tell me what to do with my life, with my body, with my values, my practices, with the way that I function, with my sexuality.

So the knowing gets outsourced to somebody else.

And then I think where this often shows up in therapy, like at the very real.

point where people are coming in to seek support is I don't know who I am.

I don't know what I want.

And I fundamentally believe on some level that I'm bad.

Okay, let's give some examples here.

And I'll just pull some out from my life.

So if you're listening to this and you're like, wait, what?

If you were born in a religion, I grew up in a religion where the messages were, you cannot trust yourself.

There was literally scripture we studied that was, you cannot lean on your own understanding.

Your heart is wicked.

If you have a need or a want or a bodily desire that is bad.

And in fact, the story we were taught was that the way to fall from grace was to indulge your appetite.

For example, the story of Adam and Eve, right?

If you're curious, if you're hungry, if you're whatever,

you can indulge that, but then the whole world will be hell forever.

So if you're told that story, you might be someone who becomes someone who is fragmented from her own needs, from her own desire, from her own even mind,

because she has been taught that none of those things can be trusted and that she should defer to someone outside of herself.

Now, what is told to you is you can't trust yourself, you can trust God.

But what in the hell does that mean?

So what it really means is you can't trust yourself, you can trust us, God's spokespeople, the human beings in charge, right?

Is this a general description of what you see over and over again in different arenas?

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And I think that maybe one thing that's important to identify in this mix is that sometimes we're in these multiply reinforcing systems where it's not just the church leader who is saying, don't listen to yourself, you're bad, but we're going home to a family that's also saying that or replicates that hierarchy and power structure in which we become disconnected from ourselves because somebody else knows better than us about what's happening inside of our body.

There's a sociologist who's researched this particular phenomenon extensively, and what she's found is that women who are in abusive religious systems, systems of high power and control, are more likely to be in abusive marriages.

Of course.

Of course, right?

It makes sense, right?

They're saying the same thing.

Don't listen to yourself.

This person, this other person, ideally, or probably a man, knows what you need better and has power and control over you and your body.

But what we're not talking about very often is the family system that undergirds most of that too, right?

The way that the messages of you are bad and your body is bad and you can't trust yourself start so much earlier than when we hear them coming from the pulpit or from the text.

Yeah, there is a leader who knows better than all of you and everyone will be safer if you listen to him.

And if anything goes wrong in this house, including you being hurt, it's as a result of your disobedience to him.

And I would argue that the family system is in some ways more damaging and entrenching in the conditionings that can happen.

Because I can think of my family and my mom.

I think that there was a big part of me that thought my mom was a God.

Yes.

That I, I interpreted her

being as the all-powerful, most knowing.

Of course we are.

And so, and it becomes because you're, you're in your family systems more common than you are in churches or in synagogues or wherever you get your, your sermons on the weekends.

And I think that some of the little sly side comments, they cut so deep.

And I mean, listen, I'm still dealing with so much of this like internalized homophobia that I had learned from such a young age.

That, by the way, my mom no longer believes in.

Yeah.

That she's done her work in so many ways, but it's still so deeply entrenched in me.

And it's this family fundamentalist system that I think we need to reckon with, even more so than in some ways, like the religious one.

Yeah, Hillary, I was texting my sister and Abby while I was reading your book and just saying, I

am so convinced that when we say God or we say spirituality, we just mean the way things are, right?

We're just using that word to describe reality or purpose or whatever you're saying.

So it's not just people inside a fundamentalist religion who have spiritual trauma.

Isn't every family a fundamentalist religion where our caregivers are our first gods or ministers?

And

they're just giving us a lens on the world, right?

They're giving us their lens.

And isn't growing up for all of us, just the long process of trying to figure out exactly what filter was put over our eyes in our family of origin, and then trying to clean it up a little bit.

That feels to me like what every single one of my friends are going through, regardless of whether they were born in quote unquote religion.

Isn't every family of religion and every adult just healing from it?

I love that parallel.

I think that it highlights, there's many theorists out there who would say the reason why

Yeah, like you're saying, Abby, that why religious systems can come in and do what they do is because we've already learned some of these ideas about who is God, who has dominion over us, who's kind of like omnipotent in a way, like who is the first omnipotent figure, usually like our mom or our parent in some way.

Maybe the distinction here is that in systems of high control.

whether they're family systems or religious systems, you don't get to think critically about things and you are forced to disconnect from yourself to belong.

And I do believe that there are families out there where people do not have to do that, right?

There are are families out there where parents say tell me about how this is not feeling good for you i want to know or i'm sorry or teach me or i'm learning from you while still taking responsibility for their children parents can set the example that you can have connection to your inner knowing and i think it's hardest for those of us who grow up in families where we're not able to do that to then do this reckoning over the course of our life and realize how much of us had to go away for so long in order for us to belong but i do hold the hope and the vision and I have evidence that there are families out there that exist where people do not have to be bad.

You know, people do not have to believe that they are bad at their core to make up for the failures of their parents.

There are parents out there who take responsibility and there are parents out there who protect their kids' autonomy and agency and bodily knowing.

But yes, we're all undoing our family stories.

That's like, that's actually a task of adulthood.

That's a developmentally appropriate task to look back and go, ooh,

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How am I different?

How am I connected still?

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Our youngest came home a little while back and she was not super young.

She was probably 14 and she said,

Mom,

I just figured out that Tish's opinions are just opinions.

And I said,

what?

And she said, I have always thought that what Tish says is true.

And she knows, she's like, I just figured out while I was sitting in English class today thinking about this, that Tish just has an opinion.

And I can have a different opinion.

That at the crux is what growing up is.

And that's why the youngest in a family.

has it the toughest because you don't know this until you're a fully formed 14 year old

Yeah.

Okay.

You're saying something exquisitely important, which is that thinking for yourself is a developmental process.

It is an essential hallmark of psychological growth and health.

The ability to differentiate and go, wow, we can still be connected and different.

And I have my own.

opinions and perspectives.

I think one of the problems in religious systems and spiritually traumatic systems and abusive systems is that people are not allowed to to do that they are not allowed to know what they know they are not allowed to question they're not allowed to think for themselves and in fact there's this really funny like manipulative flip that often happens which is the people who are most disconnected from their knowing who completely outsource most of their moral decision making and discernment and authority are seen as the most spiritually mature yes

right these are the people who are completely psychologically essentially deprived of appropriately developmental skills like i can think for myself i'm connected to my body i can feel my pleasure i can feel my anger i can take responsibility i can be a complex human who isn't trying to be perfect all of the time i'm allowed to like stray from one idea to explore another idea and that doesn't compromise my eternal safety.

Like the ability to think critically and push back and say no is essential for us to be whole, healthy people.

But these systems that are traumatic and abusive, not only do they not allow that, but will often reinforce the people who are the most disconnected from their knowing or somehow idealized, valorized, the most superior spiritually.

Think about like the good girl in the family, right?

The one who is toeing the line and held up as the idealist.

Think about the person inside capitalism.

who's about to die because they're so cut off from their wants and needs it to rest and humanity, but making so much money for the company that they are held up as employee of the year, right?

Or the religious person who's following every single rule and is the minister's favorite.

It's the people who are disconnected that are the

A-plus students.

Yeah.

Well, like a practical example of this that I think is probably going to apply to so many of your listeners is the young woman who is disconnected from any desire, sexual appetite, wanting,

is seen as somehow the most ideal girl or woman, right?

You're seen as most spiritually mature.

I'm thinking about purity culture in particular, this kind of like subset within evangelical Christianity, although it shows up in some other religions as well, that to be the best,

you actually...

discard and shut off and disconnect from any bodily wanting or knowing.

And somehow that makes you more desirable.

But there's such a great cost to what it means to be you, to believe that your body is bad, to hate your sexuality, to hate your desire.

I mean, I could talk verbatim.

I'm doing some research on purity culture and embodiment and what it does to disembodiment and the things that people are saying in this research about what it is doing to their lives, like the lifelong

symptoms, essentially, of what it has done to them to be disconnected from their desire and their body.

I mean, like,

the stories are horrific.

And yet, these are people who were praised for being the best at it.

Like, they were winning somehow.

And it's self-perpetuating because if you are a person, not just to yourself, like if you think you are being a selfless, ideal woman who doesn't know what she knows and doesn't see what she sees and doesn't have any desires or wants or boundaries outside of what you're told to be, then you make a family.

And then when something happens to your kid and you see it happening

and you know what you know and you know what you see, you don't protect them either.

It happens in your communities.

It happens to your own children.

And you have learned that.

What you see is not actually what you see because you can only know that that's that when someone else tells you that it's that.

And so it's just this cyclical exponential abuse

that goes on forever.

I mean, it's really, really, it's not just your own life that you're sacrificing to do that.

That's right.

Are you, I don't want to go off on a tangent, but everything you're saying, I always view things from a political perspective.

And I'm trying to like, I'm swapping the words that you're using.

And I'm like, we are talking about

the extreme political movements that are happening all over the place.

Like there are, it's that idea of I'm, you are a good person.

I know my Aunt Sarah, my uncle Bob, they're good, but they are supporting all of these things that I know deeply hurt people and are deeply devastating to people and to the world and to the, it's that same dynamic, right?

Like the ideal person doesn't question.

You're not allowed to think.

You're not allowed to be like, if you're on that team, that political team,

you just have to say, yes, yes, yes, I support all of that without putting it through your head and saying, that doesn't seem right.

I don't think we should be doing that to that person.

Like the unquestioning piece of it, I think, is how we get to where we are

globally right now with these extreme groups.

Do you see parallels there?

I love that you're bringing this up because I think you're right.

These are like the things that are happening over here in systems that are abusive and traumatic are happening in parallel ways in so many different systems.

The first thing that I wanted to add to that, I think you're so right about that, is that we have a rescuer fantasy.

The idea that someone's going to come in and rescue us from the things that are painful and awful in our lives.

And when we believe that we found the rescuer, we need to cling to that person, hook, vine, and sinker, not think critically, because they're a way out of what we've been, the mess we're in the mess we've made and we can look at that as an idea that is replicated at the level of religion but also right in our political context if i have someone who i've been told or believe is the way out of how awful this is or how awful i've been made to believe i am or this context is

then why why would i ever think critically about that person who can rescue me from this mess well that's the model we're given that's the model because i mean that's the when you said if you've been taught there's a person who's the way, I'm a person who was taught that there's a person who's the way, and that person is Jesus.

And so if I'm told my whole life that it doesn't matter how I feel or think, because this guy's going to come and sweep in and be my savior, which, by the way, I'm still

big fan of Jesus, worship the guy, but I'm just saying that model, okay?

Then take out Jesus and put in daddy.

Doesn't matter how I feel, daddy, daddy will take care of it.

Take me out, put in Trump.

Doesn't matter how I feel, Trump will take care of it.

It's this, the savior model that we just replicate in every single arena we live in.

Can I actually just ask you, how does this happen?

Like psychologically speaking and like developmentally?

Yeah.

Because it feels so, as an adult, I just feel a little bit bamboozled.

And I mean, we're cult susceptible like people in general.

Like we're like, oh, that's it.

That's the new way.

Like,

and that's something that I think was created and like kind of

built in us in some way.

But are we wired like as human beings to be gullible enough

as little babies to be molded enough to become these like little robots walking around believing in whatever mommy and daddy told us?

Yeah.

How does it happen?

Yeah.

What a good question.

There's generally two categories of people who find themselves in abusive systems like this.

There are people who are raised in them, and then there are people who find themselves in them because they provide a shelter from the chaos of what was before.

So in the purity culture research I'm doing, if people have come from an extremely abusive home where perhaps there was no body boundary, the ideal of high control and safety really legitimately feels to some like a relief.

Yeah.

So there's that population who it feels like, wow, this is actually going to, this is going to correct some of the things that have been so out of whack in my lived experience that this feels like a haven.

Then there's this other group of people who I would say maybe we find ourselves in, where if you are raised in a context where this is all you know, then it's actually shaping your thought life, your brain matter.

at the level of like neurological structure.

We have something called experientially dependent development, which means that the way that we grow into the world has to do with the experiences that we're exposed to.

Like we know this from other forms of research.

If someone doesn't actually have visual stimulation, parts of their occipital lobe and their ocular nerve, things are not going to operate typically and they won't be able to see because they weren't exposed to visual information.

So a parallel principle applies with this, that what becomes normal for us in adulthood is what we were exposed to most frequently.

And that's patterns of power and control.

That's messages around, can't trust my body.

That's, I think, right down to the level of our invalidated knowing.

When we look at a parent and we feel inside like, mom, are you scared?

Are you sad?

She goes, I'm fine.

I'm fine.

I'm fine.

And we're left with one of two choices.

Either mom's lying or I can't trust the knowing inside.

that I really did see her sadness or whatever the analogy is.

Like we have so many layers of I can't trust myself by the time we get to adulthood that it's hard to even point our finger at one specific thing.

But when I look at these large systems, I've over the years of researching this and working clinically with folks in this population and analyzing my own experiences, because I too am like susceptible to systems like this.

It's very easy for me.

And I think for many of us who are in a context of who's the person who will show us the way, maybe you leave religion and you're like that yoga teacher, that podcast host, that political figure.

Right.

Like people are like, I still can't trust myself.

I know I don't want to be with connected to that system, but I still don't know how to listen to myself.

So I'm just going to find a new place to put that like outsourced moral authority.

But some of the things that I found happen in these systems to

keep them running, like, how do we find ourselves here?

Why does it do this to us?

Like control.

is huge.

It is huge.

I would say that it's the backbone of many of these systems.

But what is control if you don't have consequences, right?

To control someone, but then to make threats, like if you don't listen to what we say, what you won't belong or the eternal version of you won't belong, which is eternal conscious torment, like hell burning in hell forever and ever and ever.

Like that's a pretty significant consequence.

So we've got control, we've got consequences, which force us to be compliant.

in order to stay in this system.

So I'm going to do what you ask of me.

I'm going to be good in your eyes so that I don't have the consequences and I stay in this really narrow name that you've given me.

And then it breeds this kind of codependence.

Again, this is the outsourced moral authority.

Like I'm only okay if you tell me I'm okay or if I'm good in the eyes of this system.

So I'm going to start cutting more and more parts of myself off.

And how does all of that happen?

Well, there's a culture around it.

There's a group of people who are also reinforcing these ideas.

But all of that, all of those elements, they sit on top of this fundamental human need to belong.

Exactly.

It is at the core of what it means to be human.

Belonging is so baked into us at the level of our neurobiology that anything that threatens belonging, we're going to do anything we can to navigate around that to be seen as safe and good in the eyes of the people who we believe will protect us.

And so it becomes really scary and dangerous when the people who we are looking to to protect us are also the people who are reinforcing you can't trust yourself and you're bad.

But it is scarier.

I think this is the crux of every single thing I'm ever trying to figure out in my life.

Okay.

It is scarier for some to be alone and whole

than it is to belong to a group and be fractured.

So I think that the life is so scary.

And it can feel so dangerous to be a person who is admitting that they see things that other people are not seeing or admitting they see, that they feel things that are maybe not appropriate, or they want things that are outside of the realm of what they've been told to want, or they have questions.

It's so scary to accept that level of freedom that it is more tempting just to be like, you know what?

I will shut up.

I will pretend to believe what you believe just so I have the belonging of the group.

And so the question becomes, why do in every system we have to choose between our individuality and our belonging?

And how

do we create communities?

This is Al Abby and I talk about in our family.

How do we create a community, a spiritual community, which a family is,

where people can be both held and free, where they know that their belonging is not dependent on towing their parents' line?

How do we do that, Hillary?

How do we create communities in our families, in our spiritual groups where where you do not choose between being held and free?

What an interesting question, right?

And I think you probably have done some good work to figure out how to do that.

So I'm going to take a stab at it, but I actually really want to hear what you have to say about this, because I think you've probably like done the work to answer some of these questions too.

I think.

At the level of skill, like again, here I go back to the psychologist, me who sits every day in the room with people who are asking questions like this.

And at the level of skill, I think we need to get better at emotion regulation.

I think that's a really key part of it.

Like we can't do conflict in a healthy way.

If as soon as I feel threatened or scared, I have to blame you and push you away in order to protect my safety.

I think that we need to learn how to tolerate discomfort at the level of the body to be able to hang in there, notice our cues, go.

Okay, I'm probably not hearing you right now.

And there's something important.

I believe there's something important that you need to say.

And so I'm going to take a moment to tend to the parts inside of me that are feeling scared right now so that I can come back and listen to you.

Abby and I go for a walk.

Every time we're scared, the kids freak us the hell out, which happens 30 times a day.

We don't allow ourselves to go talk to our children until we've taken a three mile walk and sorted through all of our own shit.

So we can come back with a clear filter.

It's like the walk out.

We talk about all of our fears, like what that brought up in us, all of our old shit.

And on the walk back, we can leave that that out there.

And on the walk back, we're actually like strategically trying to figure out how we're now going to approach a situation.

It's like a less fun, more grown-up walk of shame.

Like a walk yourself.

It's a walk of deshame.

Yeah.

You're shaming your own stuff so you can actually see the other person.

That's good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

So, I mean, there's so many things in there that you're doing.

You're connecting.

There's already this inherent value of conflict.

I like, I want to take responsibility for some of the things that come up that make me scared in my parenthood, that make me like feel threatened.

And I don't know if a lot of parents know how to do that because we're often just replicating so unconsciously the things that were done to us.

We, I can't even tell you how many times, and I'm only a few years into parenthood where I will say things like, I don't believe that.

That was said to me.

Like,

how is that coming out of my mouth?

I don't even believe that thing.

So it's, it's wild to feel that happening, but I think that most of us don't even know that that's happening and don't know how to turn that back towards ourselves instead of just unconsciously replicating the path, like the choices that our parents made to us that are embedded in us.

Again, at the level of our biology, those are wired into us.

We have to work really hard to try to extract them out and learn to do new things.

And pausing and regulating, I think is a really important part of that.

I don't think that we can do that as well if we don't accept ourselves as well.

Like it's very very very difficult to say to someone i'm okay with you being you in the messiness and the chaos and the wildness and perhaps the things that are kind of provocative for me that feel scary for me if i don't know how to be in contact with myself and trust that I, when I am whole and connected to all of that, am also good.

Like, why would we ever create systems where you can be fully you if at the core of it, I believe on some level, when we are connected to ourselves, we're bad.

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Yeah, that's what it feels like to be angry.

You want to hit, like, show me how angry you are.

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I'm also welcome the anger and shape the anger because I'm okay with that angry place inside of me.

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I'm just sitting here thinking about,

okay,

high level, like if we think about it, as a spectrum, we got people who really are self-aware, who are working through this stuff, really in touch with like their childhood and maybe they're in even conversation with their parents and their family members around some of this stuff that happened throughout their life.

And then if you go down the other end of the spectrum, where we're talking maybe to people and folks who are still so entrenched inside of

this world of trauma, trauma, whether it be from their familial situations or their religious traumas,

that they are so so far on the other side of the spectrum where they actually believe all of the things that there is a part of them that that believes how do we

as a community as a culture as obviously i think i'm talking a lot about our country in the united states here

how do we handle that how do we handle some people doing the work and some people not doing the work or just the difference of places of existing.

Like it feels so difficult to have that be our reality.

How are we to deal?

Well, what we talked about before, I think applies here that the things that are happening at the level of the family replicate things that are happening at the level of our politics and our society and our culture.

So my answer is probably going to be pretty similar to you.

of what I just said about building families as I think about building culture and community.

Like, can we tolerate tolerate distress?

Can we learn to, especially those of us who like to identify ourselves as the more awake or the critically thinking, right?

It's so easy to just do what we did in our religious systems and say, we're the chosen ones and do that even when we leave the church and be like, we're the ones who see it right.

And what I would love for us to be able to see is the ability to be able to hold and tolerate distress.

Now, I really like Chloe Valdery's work around this.

She created something called the theory of enchantment.

And I think her theory on this has really moved me to see that wonder and curiosity are a big part of the way forward.

It's really hard to do wonder and curiosity about the people we've been made to believe are bad, whether those are people outside the church or on the other side of the political spectrum.

What would it look like if we didn't dehumanize each other?

What would it look like if we were curious and interested?

And I think that I'm better able to do that.

Again, I want to come back to the level of the skill as a person.

I know that I'm better able to do that when I can look at someone across a political divide, a religious divide, a family divide and see, how am I like you?

And if I'm willing to ask the question, how am I like you?

And how are you like me?

Then I think we can hold more tolerance for difference.

I mean, maybe there's some more specific questions you have, but I think emotion distress, like tolerance, like curiosity, wonder, I think that those are part of what's going to to heal us moving forward, as well as continuing to look at our own wounds and our desires to be better than other people.

Yeah, I'd like to tell a story that I think gives an example of how this has worked recently in our life, because there is the take of like, how do we get other people to think better?

And I am fully aware that.

that question is done for me.

I don't know that.

All I know is that I have to work on my own filter and my own, because I'm while I'm busy saying, how dare you dehumanize people?

I'm I'm always dehumanizing the dehumanizers.

So I can start there, right?

So

recently I was at the dinner table and we were all there and we were talking about some of our youngest kids, the kids she was running with.

Anyway, what happened was that I watched my daughter listen to me judging people.

And I watched her face and something happened on her face where I thought

it sent me into like a long, months-long

investigation with myself about why I'm so judgmental.

Because I am extremely judgmental, and I use judgment and have my whole life to protect myself because I'm scared of everyone.

So, when I am afraid of someone entering my space, my life, my family's space, because they scare me, I begin to list reasons why that person's bad, why I just, it's what I do.

And what has happened over time is that my kids

start to either do the same thing,

they have a worldview.

I am passing down to them a worldview.

And my worldview and my way of being

was

an adaptation from my childhood, right?

It was.

the way that I learned to protect myself from the world and people.

Now, Abby and I took our youngest to dinner the other night and I said to her, I need to talk to you about something serious.

I know that you listen to your mom being judgmental about other people.

And

that is about me.

That is something that I do to protect myself from other people.

When you

see me or hear me doing that,

I want you to look at me and I want you to think, oh, that's what my mom does.

I do not want you to look at the person I'm talking about and think this is about them.

Because what I'm doing when I do that is I'm putting my dirty lens over your face and I want you to have a clean lens.

Now, the reason I'm telling this story is because I haven't sorted it out all yet.

But I know it's an unbelievably important moment for me because I am entrenched in what I was taught and I have a double consciousness.

I know that I want to be less fragmented.

And yet there is a lag in spiritual healing where you know you can taste the cleaner lens, but you are still entrenched in the old behavior.

But in our spiritual communities, we are the leaders as parents.

And we can say to our kids,

I'm still stuck in this shit.

What I am doing is not the worldview that I want for you.

So while I'm in this lag time, time hillary what i'm saying is i'm being compassionate to myself

this is who i am now it's not who i want to be but it sure as hell is who i am but i'm not passing it down to as the exact lens that my daughter has to wear yes yes you're making the thing that's implicit explicit you're giving it a name and you're inviting her to notice it and you're giving her a tool around that I, first of all, I'm obsessed with this story because I think on one level, it's even more important that you're showing her yourself in process.

Like how often in positions of leadership in the church, in religion, in families, do we tell a story when it's all finished and we've gotten to the other side and we miss showing people what happens in between and the space where it takes to negotiate something.

And what you're doing.

This is again the psychologist to me talking is you are giving her a gift for her future self when she's in the middle of something to help her know that she doesn't have to just wait to tell the other side to talk about it.

And that there's something about being in process that she can let people into.

So there's like multiple gifts in that.

But I think the second thing is that this is kind of how we inoculate systems from becoming toxic.

Yes.

Because we have the people who are in leadership say, hey, here's how I'm human.

It's okay to look at me and think critically.

I'm still valuable and I still have something to offer and so do you.

But where our systems become toxic is when leaders become infallible, when leaders are not allowed to be questioned or looked at, when we're not doing at the level of the church, what you're doing at the level of the family, where you're saying, hey, it's okay to see me in process, right?

And I'm not getting it totally right, but I'm working on it.

And it's a really hard thing because I think what we're doing as parents now is we're opening up the door for

future criticisms.

Exactly.

We're saying, hey, we're not perfect and and we're going to keep working.

And that's really hard because we are starting a new paradigm.

Like our parents, me going to my parent and saying, hey, I want to talk to you about this stuff,

that would ruin their whole parental identity in many ways because they have stood strongly in the knowing and in their truth

and their authoritarianism that like.

That's a hard thing to negotiate in myself.

Like, oh yeah,

I do need to actually see myself as a parent who's not perfect.

Can I tell you what Amma said, though?

Yeah.

At the end of that, you were there, so you know.

So I finished my speech about being judgmental and how she should look at me, not at the person that I'm judging.

And she said, yeah, I know that about you.

And I said, okay, all right.

And then she said, it's tricky because you're so smart also.

So I never know.

If it's because you're so smart and you're right, or if it's because you're scared.

and that was hillary the most beautiful moment of the whole night because i got to say exactly

that's your job

you know you have to decide whether you think i'm scared or i'm smart you always know you look inside yourself you will forever have leaders who are smart and also dumb as shit.

Smart and also human and not correct.

Smart and also flawed.

And your job forever is not to swallow what they're doing whole.

Your job forever is to be connected with yourself, to look at leaders and say, not that, this, not that, this,

right?

That's, it felt like the whole thing you're talking about in one dinner.

Yes, yes.

I love that you have that story to point to and to share with us.

It's so powerful.

And the fragmentation, it's so full circle because it's like the ability to see

in yourself the flaws and to own them

and the ability to see yourself as fragmented.

Like when Abby, when you're talking about like one side of the spectrum is like super in line and totally following the program and I mean that's a very good political system.

People who are all in line and following the program is a winning team, literally.

On the other side, though, we look over there and we say, oh my God, they're all just following some purity test.

They're not even thinking.

They're just going with what they say to do.

Except we're over here

deciding

who's in, who's out on every little micro decision on the planet.

We are like, they're one big block all together.

And we refuse to go together with anyone because we are also following an insane purity test.

And so we won't even make coalition with one another.

And so we will never win.

And like when I think about this whole thing from a political perspective, I'm like, the answer is we are looking over there, shaming them for being such a monolith.

And we are each individual monoliths on this side of the spectrum that refuse to unite and make coalition with anyone.

And we will take our righteous little hearts straight to the grave because we will never win that way.

You guys, the whole other side anxiously attached and we're just, we're avoidantly attached.

They're all in on belonging.

We're all in on individualism.

But we're all in on belonging and we feel righteous about it as long as you believe.

every single thing we believe.

And then we're looking at them and saying, what horseshit that they have a list of a thousand things they have to believe and they don't even believe them.

True.

But we have the same list, but no one else believes our shit.

So it's like, we're just the flip side of the same coin.

And it's like, we're only going to get somewhere when we're like, yeah, see, you are allowed, just like my kid is allowed to not believe something that I believe and be a part of my family.

You cannot believe something I believe and be part of my coalition that's for the better good of the planet and the earth and the country.

And until we get to that place, we are just as toxic.

Right.

And we are just as spiritually abusive as the other side of the spectrum.

Yeah.

It's really good.

There it is.

So good.

Yeah.

Well, you guys,

you can tell the kind of conversations that Hillary McBride's new book is causing by this conversation.

What do you want to leave us with, Hillary?

And what would you say is the first step besides going to grab your beautiful book that people can do if they want more on this entire paradigm we've just suggested?

Yeah.

I mean, it comes back to conversations we've had before, which is,

I think that people who are disconnected from their bodies are the easiest to control.

I think that people who are disconnected from inner knowing and where does that live?

At the level of the body, the ability to tolerate distress, like even more than going to a certain resource outside of ourselves.

Like it would be easy for me to answer this question and say, look to this guru, look to this website, do these things.

And what I'm going to say in response to the question is, hey, everybody.

get connected to your body.

Take a moment after listening to this and notice what's inside.

What does it remind you of?

How does it feel?

Like I really want the answer to this to not be that me or some other person becomes the new place to look.

So I love it if people turned off this conversation and went for a walk and noticed the beautiful green earth underneath them.

Because I think like, and maybe that's another point I could make, that.

I think that there is so much spiritual trauma because the reason that there are settlers on Turtle Island is because of religious abuse and spiritual trauma, colonization, the doctrine of discovery, the whole reason that white people are on what we call North America is because of religious abuse and religious and spiritual trauma.

So it is baked into the systems that we are in here.

If you were to leave this and go put your hands on the ground.

Again, like what an act of reparation to do something different instead of looking outside to connect inside of yourself.

There are so many other resources I could give you, but I think that ultimately I think they boil down to that, like the ability to be with ourselves and with the land and with each other.

And that I wish was, you know, something we could operationalize, but ultimately no, no book necessarily is going to teach us how to be connected to ourselves.

Tolerate.

So good, Hillary McBride.

Your work is so freaking important and never, ever has been more important than in this moment.

I'm so grateful for you.

Pod squad.

Take a walk.

You are the book you need.

Be the book you need to exist in the world.

You are it.

I'm not very doing very good book publishing right now, but I don't really care.

I'm like more interested in people, people connected to their body than promoting material.

That's like the thing.

That's the thing that I want.

That's why you're a credible

Hillary McBride.

Thanks, Pod Spud.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

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