The Listening Church: Loneliness, Mental Health, and the Skills Every Christian Needs (Dr. Jackie E. Perry)

00:00:01
Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Doctor James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Everyone you call them make a difference. In mental health. Columbia International University offers graduate counseling degrees that combine professional excellence with Biblical truth from associates. Through doctoral program, CiU prepares you to bring healing and wholeness to others through a biblically based framework of compassion and care. Whether it's their carep accredited Masters in Clinical Counseling or their PhD in counsel or Education and supervision. You'll learn from experienced faculty who integrate faith with real world application to cultivate a Kingdom impact through disciples who counsel, teach, and train. Whether you're starting your journey or advancing your career, CiU's counseling programs equip you to serve others both professionally and spiritually. You can visit CiU dot edu to learn more about making a difference in mental health through christ centered education. That's CiU dot edu. Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm doctor James Spencer and I'm joined today by doctor Jackie E. Perry. She is a clinical supervisor, a professor of counselor education at Columbia International University, and she's also the president of the soul Well Center. And we're going to talk a little bit about what that is, what that does, what she does, and we'll get into a lot of topics related to faith and mental health. So, doctor Perry, welcome to the program. Really excited to have you here.

00:01:46
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: Well, maybe just to start out, tell people a little bit about the work that you're doing at the soul Well Center.

00:01:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just Pausiti formidting. Yeah. I live in Asheville, which is in western North Carolina, and in my teaching as a professor of counseling, probably about ten years ago, I was teaching a course that is called Skills. It's sometimes called helping Techniques. It's just the class that counselors get that really teaches them how to sit across from one another. And as I was teaching it for the first time, I had taken it many decades before, it really occurred to me that I felt like the church could use these skills in a layman's way. And though I'd been involved in different lay ministries, Stevens Ministry, things like that, I didn't see the kind of teaching that we were giving counselors that I felt like could really easily cross over. So I created a beta course with quite a few pastors and just individuals in western North Carolina, and the course led to kind of this organization, the nonprofit called the Soul Law Center, And the idea was, what if we equipped just ordinary people, parents, pastors, friends, nonprofit leaders, business people with a chunk of good skills combined with the neuroscience behind relationships and why these skills matter. And that's what started the Soul Center. James, the vision still is to equip people. The goal is and we're not here to have a center where well equipped folks that are not licensed clinicians can hold a safe space for anyone wanting to be heard ununderstood. So we're in process. The nonprofit has just been official for about two going on, yeah, two and a half years, and we're definitely still in an early growth stage. But it has been fantastic to see people in this community equipped, you know, just even the feedback of how it's changing their families and listening in a new way.

00:03:54
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. On the website, it talks a little bit about, you know, the listening courses being related to this sort of growing epidemic of loneliness and certain mental health problems. And so I mentioned before we got on you know, I've done a little bit of this in relation to social media, and you know, some of this work Jonathan Heights put out and you know, various different things where social media is being linked to mental health problems and loneliness and all those kind of things. But I'm wondering what else you're seeing and how this course really sort of dives into that those notions of loneliness and mental health problems.

00:04:31
Speaker 2: Well, I guess I'd love to just back up and talk about that for just a minute, please. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a huge part of this course, and it is a huge part of a problem we're seeing in mental health. So I've been in the field for about thirty five years and probably in the last fifteen I remember sitting with colleagues and noticing the shift and the kinds of people who were coming in James and we began to see a shift. And this is there was a consensus among my peers anyways, from people who had really, you know, serious issues going on or semi serious, two people who really just didn't have anybody who listened to them, whether that was an adolescent, an emergent adult, or an adult adult, that really we weren't doing the clinical work that some of us were used to doing. We were providing a safe space. And there's just you know, it makes me scratch my head in terms of especially being a Christian, It's like, wait a second, why aren't we doing this better? I mean, we all have this imprint on us that is this deep, deep desire to be seen and known. And I think there's a lot of contributing factors to the reasons why we're seeing globally, it's not just in the US. Globally, these numbers rise, the way we live, our lives, all of that, but fundamentally it comes down to this. It's like two people talking and people being able to offer the other person the sense that when you walk away you feel seen, like oh Jackie really saw me, or you know, and I and I and vice versa. And I think something has happened in our families and our culture where we don't even have a mental model anymore. I mean, that's what I'm seeing in the class. It's like, this kind of listening is not something I've experienced outside of accounseling office. That is a very common statement of just oh this, this feels really good when we're practiced. There's a lot of practice in the class, and so I think it's like, wow, this is deep if we don't have a mental model from ideally our upbringing, whether it was parents or grandparents, and I don't know how to offer you what I also need and lung for myself. And so then we see this trickle effect like Okay, where do I get that? Hopefully you're getting that from you know, hopefully you get that if you pay for a therapist. But yeah, I mean goodness, that's not accessible for the majority of people around the globe who can pay for a therapist. And it's one of the biggest reasons behind the Soul Wall Center was it's just not feasible for many many people for a lot of different reasons, and a lot of people aren't going to go into therapy office because it's like I don't have a problem. I just feel unseen, you know, And that is a problem, we know, but it's not enough that it feels urgent, you know, understood.

00:07:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost like there's a malaise. Would you describe it sort of an ongoing sense of tension that I'm just sort of floating alone in the world and don't have really any outlet to have a real connection or any intimacy with anyone. Is that sort of the feeling.

00:07:36
Speaker 2: I think. I think that's a big part of it. I think you said that well, and I think part of it is like I don't know what I don't have if I've never had it. I don't know what I'm missing if I've never had it. And one of the sad but true things that's happened in this course is now, you know, not just in our community, in other places is the feedback is one of the biggest things that was the takeaway was other people practicing these skills on me made me taste of them. Actually sometimes for the first time, it was like I came in because I wanted to be a better listener at my job or at my home, and it's like, oh, that felt really good, and sadly for some people, it's like it upped the thirst. And then it's like, Jackie, I don't have these people who I'm not going to dominate my small group. I don't know how to offer this. I don't know how to get this. I don't know how to describe what I need. I can offer it maybe a model, but yeah, it's tough. So you know, I have our team has trained even small groups and small group leaders so that they can be the ones that facilitate this a little bit more in terms of like what does this look like? But we have a long way to go. I mean the numbers are really high.

00:08:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it almost feels like So I was a personal trainer when I went through my seminary degree, and one of the things that I found, and I think I even experienced in my own life was it's almost like the frog is being boiled in the kettle. Like you always hear that analogy, but it really is kind of true because when people come in and they're overweight, and you know, they're carrying a lot of extra pounds and they're not particularly strong. The transformation you can get them to go through by helping them lose some weight, develop some strength, and the way that their body now feels, you're resetting what good feels like. And when they're heavy and they're weak, they don't really understand that that's not they don't feel good, it's just their normal, right. And I think when I, yeah, I went through a period where I had some pretty heavy weight gain and I felt fine, right, But then when I lost the weight, I'm like, oh, yeah, I remember, now this feels good right, Like, yes, so much better.

00:09:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that parallel. I. Yes, you don't know what you don't have. Yeah, if you've never felt that, if you've never had that deep connection, if you were raised in a home where everybody came home and went to their rooms and suffer together, wasn't a thing, and you didn't have eyes on you. Okay, let's talk about that for just a minute, because there's a lot There's a wonderful writer, doctor Gabram Mattee. He writes about attachment and families and trauma, and he uses this phrase I use a lot with my students. It's called these eyes of delight. Looking at people with eyes of delight, like even when you're having quick exchanges with them, the eyes of delight is like this quick bond that can form, and the deeper the bond goes, the more this person's likely to follow me. Well, when you grow up with this in front of you, really truly for much of your life, eyes of delight or eyes towards you, not even eyes of delight, just eyes towards you, can actually feel like a threat. It really can't you. You can feel like why are you looking at the stop it and working? My specialty area is adolescents and emergent adults and families, and so you know, we now have a generation of people that it's like we don't know how to say hard things to each other. They're all now becoming parents and then some we would, we would we can construct sentences that send it to them. Or now where we are right now is we have parents who are using AI to help them find the words to say to their children. That's coming up to my supervision cases is just yeah, yeah, it's like I don't even know how to find the words, so I'll text them to you in this way, child, And it's like we are now another step away from the messiness of human relationships, which is like, it's not supposed to be perfect. It's just to make us feel uncomfortable when we have new or hard or conflicting messages to give to one another. It's not supposed to be you know, I don't know a state of calm, so we even have that, right, But intimacy can't be formed if you're not willing to enter those waters. And so then and what I mean my intimacy is I mean emotional intimacy, the depth of relationships. Me knowing you, you knowing me. We will always hit this place. And if it's like we back out, then what a setup to not have very deep relationships where we can go there.

00:12:06
Speaker 1: So obviously the technology is creating some sort of distance, right, But then it also seems like what I'm kind of hearing you saying, maybe I'm inferring it incorrectly, but that there's a vulnerability that we're no longer willing to give away in order to have these relationships. And so part of it, maybe the distancing that technology provides. But then a part of it is the modeling as you're talking about, and then it just feels like we've gone into a more protective shell, like we don't want to be vulnerable, we don't want to we don't want to have those hard, intense conversations. Maybe we're afraid of hurting other people. Maybe we're afraid of getting hurt ourselves. Is that part of what you see when when you're dealing with these folks.

00:12:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say this, let me normalize that because I think fundamentally that's who we are as humans. It's like a push. It's like I want you to know me. I mean, I think about my relationship with s. Gott and I was sharing this in the question just weekend with students. It's just like this deep satisfaction of knowing we're reading someone thirty nine, of just knowing that he knows us, and he sees us, and he sees us whether there's light or dark, all of that and how wonderful that is, and what the group was talking about is also how terrifying that is. So this is fundamentally who we are. It's like I want it. And it's also like ah, because we fear you know, a lot of things. The voice of shame plays a role in that, like what if he really knew? Or what if she really knew? All of this? So I think that's always there and that's always at play. But I also think that if we are in this era where again I didn't have a mental model for it, I'm not seeing it in my peer group or my adult peer group. It really is kind of classified neurologically in my brain as a threat, as a bigger threat, and it gets bigger, and so what should be ideal and good is like even more of a threat threat threat. And if we just look at fundamentally how we're wired, well, when we have a threat response, what do we do we don't have a skill, we go to two extremes. We either avoid where we attack, and that that's kind of what we do when we don't have a response in general, we're going to go to the extreme of get me out of here, or.

00:14:23
Speaker 1: What are you trying to do?

00:14:24
Speaker 2: Why are you asking these questions? What are you trying to find something? And you know, I've heard some teenagers talk to me that way, so and it's like, oh no, no, no, that's not what's happening here. So I think there's that too. We can code things as threats that are actually quite good. And we see this definitely with trauma, where people who experienced some trauma they the very thing they long for is very scary because of the way their body has encoded people, relationships, situations, stressors, et cetera, et cetera.

00:14:53
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, So when you're doing the listening groups, I guess I have a couple of questions I'll ask. I'll ask one first, and then I'll i'll do a fall level see where it goes. But so I would think, guy, I grew up as an only child, right, and so we weren't we weren't like an around the dinner table kind of family, like we ate on TV trays in front of a television, right. So I didn't have a lot of I was almost like the original screen kid. You know, It's not like my parents and I never talked. But there wasn't a real big expectation that we were like going to be the Waltons and sit around the table and have dinner, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, And so I was just sort of raised as a much more independently minded person, right, And so I don't have a lot of real close friends. I have a very small circle of real close friends. And so when I hear listening circles and like trying to understand how to listen to other people, I give my head around that and go, yeah, I probably do need to listen to other people. The scary part for me would be having someone else listen to me, Like, that's the part I don't really want care for, right, Like I'm good without that.

00:16:07
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly exactly what I'm talking about, that tension.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, So do you find like that dynamic? How do you break somebody out of that? Because I mean I could see myself in my head going well, I just have to do it and then see how that feels. But I don't know, like how much does it take for that to just sort of habituate in and go, oh no, this is a really pleasant thing. And now I could see doing this more often, Like having been a rained for forty eight years, how likely am I to change? I guess maybe that's the question.

00:16:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you.

00:16:41
Speaker 3: Can answer that question more than I can, for sure, But I yeah, you're talking about something that I think you know, most people can identify in some way, shape or form a totally different story.

00:16:54
Speaker 2: Lots of kids in my home for girls, lots of conversation. Because it doesn't mean it doesn't mean that there was like a tuned listening where I felt heard. It's still, you know, something I get sad about sometimes when I go back home. It's like I don't feel known there sometimes, you know. So I don't necessarily think it's like a ripping open of my soul and like offering it. But I do think the question for me, in healthy relationships, whether it's two people in a partnership or good friends, is there a gentle moving towards can you offer each other a little more? And I think for some people that happens very fast because they feel comfortable and they grew up in a place where like emotional intimacy is just like the part of the risk taking they take in relationships, whether it's you know, really naming an emotion really really specifically or what we call granularly in the field, or we're just being like I'm feeling sad. There's a difference between sad and deeply distressed, right, So I think if there's movement towards each other. But unfortunately that's not always the case. Like I think, there's sometimes there's a momentum. Actually, especially when I look at families, there's a momentum of moving away or just this stuckness where everybody's sort of facing outward. And if we look at the I mean, if we go back to the narrative of the Grand Native Scripture, it's like this, we were made for more. And yes it's scary if I've never had it, But am I willing to sort of go in that direction? Who is it Benner who talks about to the extent that I know God, I know myself, and the more I know myself, I know God. And I can't do that work without another. Meaning even this requires community, and so even knowing me requires somebody else as well as my relationship with God. That this models the Trinity, and we resist that, we resist that. I think there's a tension in all of us if we're honest.

00:19:02
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I've thought about in the past is I think about discipleship as the church's coordination. Right, Discipleship is what sort of keeps us all on the same page. But it to your point, there's this sort of inertia or centrivigal force that's sort of pushing us away from that central point. It happens in families, you can kind of see it happening in churches. My thought has been, you know, you've got busyness, you've got the ability to travel, you've got you know, less sort of local community if you can kind of grasp what I'm saying there, what this listening piece seems like it would really play into that though, that because we're not in part, because we're not doing this, there's no reason for us to really stick together. Am I overreaching there? Or is that that's something you would like? Does that resonate.

00:20:03
Speaker 2: Because we're not doing say it again? I don't think yeah.

00:20:06
Speaker 1: So, because we're not doing this sort of listening it is a tuned listening, we lose a reason to stay together. In other words, if I felt known somewhere, I would tend to always go back there, right, gotcha? Versus like, because we're not doing it and we don't have any of those real deep connections, the the centrivigal forces that kind of pull us away and out, they're easy to follow. Yeah, they're easy just to go along with yeah.

00:20:39
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I have lots of thoughts in my head, but the first one that comes to mind is yes, agree with you. But but then look at our world. We have oh gosh, in a million different ways, movement towards things to see if I can get what I don't even know how to name. So I look at addictions as that, just like you know, addiction to pornography. It's like it's never enough. That's why you keep doing it, because it's never satisfying this deep thing in me overdoing this or under it's it's so yes, it's like I don't know to even that I need this, So why would I move towards you? But if we look at any person's life, we probably could see a hunt going on, a hunt for something that maybe is unnameable, that maybe has to do with this thing that's deep inside of us, just simply because of a human And yeah, I just want to name again the power of shame in this This is from the very beginning of the store of the Grand Narrative, right, It's like the enemy uses shame to sort of go this play, don't share that, don't name it. And we have this other tension in the other opposite direction, which is the father saying let me see you know, like where are you? This first question where are you? And it goes where are you? It was where are you? Who said that? Those are some of the first questions, And so there's this invitation on the other end that I do believe, you know, if most people can at least tap into some level of introspection, it's like, yeah, it's there, it's just it's playing out not in moving towards people. It's like I'm searching again. I think this is one of the reasons why social media has grown exponentially. It's because it's part of that hunt. There's just never enough. It's the illusion of connection, and it's never been it's never been sufficient. Like it taps in on that. There's beautiful things that come from that, but it's never sufficient. What's sufficient is but oftentimes people say they go on these extreme things and they get away this random group of people and they're on this adventure and it's like, I never felt so kind of what you were talking about, Like, yeah, that feeling that you have when you lose all the weight, it's like, oh, there it is.

00:22:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. With and then it's a question of how do you capture that on a day to day sort of basis, And part of it has to be just rooting yourself in the relationships that are right in front of you and having this experience of knowing and being known is kind of how it would work.

00:23:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm deeply aware of even what's happening between you and I, Like if we were having this phone call for me and what I experienced just in this conversation so far, James is very different because I can see your eyes, I can see your softness, I can see this two way. So we have this incredible thing in technology to be able to do this, to be able to facilitate calling my friend who might live on the other side of the world, but to be able to sit with them.

00:23:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:23:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't remember who it was. It was a therapist and they were talking about how they connect with friends they haven't seen, and I thought that's pretty intense. But it was like, they don't say anything for ten minutes and they just look at each other and it usually ends up in just lots of tears. This deep connection that happens when you just look at each other powerful. Yeah, and I'm probably incredibly uncomfortable.

00:24:06
Speaker 1: Time, really awkward.

00:24:08
Speaker 2: It might even have been more than ten minutes, because I remember going, ooh, that's a lot.

00:24:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Can I nap while we're doing this?

00:24:18
Speaker 2: Look at you? Can I cut my eyes while I look at you?

00:24:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to picture you in my mind.

00:24:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well I will say this too, which is probably you know this. It's it's a thing that we know, but it's like the power of it is pretty fascinating. Most of what's happening in a conversation is not verbal, and so a big part of the class is actually harnessing that and realizing that what you need and what's what you're processing for me is happening before my words come out. That's a fact. We know that from neuroscience, and so it's why I can say something with a very flat affect that I want you to really hold and you'll be like, you don't believe that. Or I could also say you're a jerk, you're terrible, and you'll be like, she doesn't really think that about me, because you're so I think that's that too. I think there's this piece that we need to see each other because there are seven or eight things that are happening nonverbally that are processed and felt faster. That's a big part of the class is helping people realize that, like, yeah, you don't actually need to say a whole lot to sit with people in hard places.

00:25:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. My wife was just talking about she started, she shifted to more remote work, and so she's been doing a lot more meetings on Zoom, and so she kind of got online did a little research looking at you know, how do you how do you do this right? How do you make connections over zoom? One of the things she found was that hands up, like big hands kind of movements like this, they are they express sort of a friendliness and an openness. And so she's like, you know, whenever you get on a meeting, you should just hand up, like hey, everybody right, And I'm like, it feels so weird, but I found myself doing it more often than so there you go. Yeah, I don't know whether it's working, but it's I'm like, it's one of those little things that you wouldn't necessarily go, you know, what I should do? Put my hand up?

00:26:12
Speaker 2: But that's right.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: Evidently there's there's all those different little cues, right that that you're supposed to sort of that really do communicate really if.

00:26:23
Speaker 2: You're trying to mimic what happens in a face to face conversation, which you would see the person's whole self. And yeah, it's why you know, if I was like this, it wouldn't be the same, right, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've learned that. I mean, I think COVID really fast forwarded all of our learning on that. There's like a distance, it's comfortable, and I even just now you shrugged your shoulders. I could see that I wouldn't if anyways, we're getting lost on that. But but communication is a fascinating thing and how much we yeah, push stword it in a way from it in terms of connection.

00:26:56
Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you this because you had mentioned, you know, I think it was about twenty five or thirty years ago you're and your colleague started noticing that people weren't coming in just for like major mental problems, but they're starting to come in just to get this sort of back and forth, this intimacy, and so that tracks well pass I think like the onset of social media and those kind of things, right, actually.

00:27:20
Speaker 2: Said, I started about thirty five years ago so.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: I can't when you started on their Yeah, and it.

00:27:25
Speaker 2: Was in the past ten or fifteen years. It's definitely pre COVID. Definitely pre COVID, probably more like five or seven years pre COVID that it was like, something is just different. We are seeing people who it's really kind of hard to give a diagnosis. That was never the case when I entered the field. We didn't struggle with them. I mean, surely there's probably people who had a person on their caseload, but we have clinicians who much of their caseload is this person just doesn't have anybody is interesting.

00:27:53
Speaker 1: I guess I'm wondering. My question is what do you see as the impetus for that, because you know, theologically, we could probably both sit and say, you know, there's always been something lacking, right when we don't know Christ, There's always going to be something lacking in these people, and there's always going to be a sort of a quest for a meaning in life. But then this onset of it in the last ten or fifteen years, right, what are some of the factors that you think are culprits for sort of amping this up, like making it the way I think of it asn't. I don't think there's a cause necessarily. I think there's an increasing intensity that people are becoming more and more aware of its sort of how I it's almost like having the volume up too high on the TV and it reaches this level where you're like, that's really loud.

00:28:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think most definitely it's multi factored. So I always like saying like, there, could it be. Could it be that we we do have more like the efficiency that we have in our phones is actually or are just technology has pushed us away from each other? That's one thing. Could it be that I don't know the impact of more single family homes, the impact of one person providing for a family needing to be gone and it's simply not enough margin to be able to give children ideally what they need from at least a parent throughout the days, which is eyes and presence, and not this where we have that in families so much. Yeah. Could it be the pace at which we live our lives, especially in the West, and we don't allow for long slow that we sometimes make fun of in other countries, just even meal times that are just like you're going to get your food when you get your food, and that's how it works in this country, and so it's slowing down, Like could it be that, Yeah, it could be a lot of things. Yeah, it could be a lot of things. And I don't think it's here to blame oh if we didn't have phones. But I will say, I will say my husband was in youth ministry for a long long time, and I've always been involved with youth. You do hear a younger generation saying as much as they hate being away from their phones, there's this incredible relief. But then and it's like, well, I can't have it, none of us can have it. And it was the best week of my life going to this retreat or this camp or this whatever those two weeks. I do a lot of consulting for local camps in western North Carolina, and you see that it's just fascinating to see teenagers be together without phones for two weeks, and so it's a culprit. It's not the only thing, though, it's not the only thing.

00:30:38
Speaker 1: I just think there's a lot of Yeah, it's been interesting. I know you sort of run a nonprofit organization. You're doing a lot of other things too. But one of the things I found when I stepped away from academia was that I purposely decided that I was going to slow lifetown, and so I didn't take the next big job. I took a position with a nonprofit organization that was a little smaller that I knew would slow life down. And so I get, like, you know, a quarter of the emails I used to get, and even those, I know that most of them are not really that urgent. Right unless it says pay immediately, I don't really need to open it, right, and so things can just be slower. And I think after just like I said, after being in academia for such a long time and having everything feel very urgent and being pressured to deal with things like right now, right at this second, I just decided, like I'd like to enjoy my kids occasionally, I'd like to enjoy my family. And my family was telling me that too, like you need to slow down, and so I was like, okay, you know, pull it back. I don't think anything is really crept back in the way it used to. But I can definitely say like texting is becoming the new email. It feels like you're constantly, you know, like the buzzing and the chirping and whatever else constantly on. It's constantly there. And even I've got all my app silence, there's no alerts coming in on my phone, Like I don't do any of that, right, it's still very tempting to check. Yeah, it's crazy, yeah, and so it's hard to believe. Like I'm with you. I don't want to put it on one thing either, but I do think there's something to the three pieces you noted, like this efficiency that we're chasing, which yes, it makes something more efficient, but it's not our lives necessarily.

00:32:32
Speaker 2: That's right, right.

00:32:33
Speaker 1: The pace is just it's extraordinarily quick unless we grind it to a halt. And those are just challenging things I would imagine for people. But they do tend to squeeze out relationships, conversations, they.

00:32:48
Speaker 2: Do they do. I I want to say two things. One, I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for you sincerely, because I think that's a brave move, important move, because I think what I see often is, you know, it's when they're when our kids are gone, and then it's like I missed it, And so it's hard to do it in the midst of that and I would say that's one of the drivers to people realizing I need somebody to talk to is pain. Pain is one of the things that brings people in and pain is one of the things that helps them recognize I don't want to be alone in pain. I can be alone in a lot of things. But when I hit pain, which we all will, every one of us in some way, shape or form, it's like it brings to the surface some of what we maybe didn't know we needed, We didn't even know that we were so so I love that for you, that you aren't in a place of like, oh, they're all gone. Shoot. I wish I could have done it differently, that you're doing this like that you can forecast. That's a that's a huge, huge thing, which is which reminds me, which makes me think of something else. And this is semi related. It's related. I'm going to make it related. It's just having a gone verisation with my son last night, who is a principal two schools in New York City, at two elementary schools, charter schools. And and he's not that old, okay, he's twenty eight and a half, so this old wise soul. And he said who hated school. It's a funny thing that he's a teach others and then principal, a hilarious thing, middle child in every way. But anyways, he's like, Mom, this is just like a huge problem. I have these young young little people coming out twenty two, twenty three, and they can't do this job. Is not that hard. This is a pretty structured school. This is not crazy here. They can't do this job. And so we had a long hour long conversation about distress tolerance, a lack of distress tolerance. And I think there's a connection here. I think there's a connection here. I think one of the ways that we learn to tolerate stress distress is in relationships. James. It's like we build up our tolerance for some of the discomfort in relationship. There's other things we do which is risk taking and not a lot of over protection. So that's a whole other thing we could talk about. We have kids now that were raised in way overprotected. Jonathan Hyde talks about a lot of people are talking, yes, right, what I did growing up in the seventies and eighties is you know, would be considered child of probably right, some of it. Jonathan talks about this. Yeah, I love his work, but I think that's part of it too, is like there's just a moving away from stress period. And so it's like they quit in eighteen teachers. This has never happened. He's like, I had eighteen teachers that two different schools quit and they were all under twenty five years old. What is happening out there? Which is again he's not that much older, but there was enough of a difference honestly, even in cell phones and when you gave them out to your kids and then in those different years, and so I think that's another factor that's part of what's missing sometimes as people enter adulthood, this ability to tolerate distress, to which I said to him, the good news is this is all learnable. You can actually teach somebody, probably related to your former career. You can actually teach somebody how do you begin to tolerate distress? And what most people do naturally is not helpful, which is white knuckle your way. You can wipe knuckle your way through short term things. You cannot wipe knuckle your way through a job that's going to go day after day after day, right unless you have some skills to be able to tolerate the distress of little kids being out of control, or parents getting mad at you, all of that. So I think, I don't know. I think that's another maybe impact product of lack of good relationships that's playing into listening, and it's I don't know, those all go together, but this distress tolerance is a big thing.

00:36:49
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question because I want to see if there's a parallel here too. Like you know, when you read this strength training literature, one of the things you do if you're trying to build muscle is you want to take your muscle to failure. But what the literature shows is that if you take your muscle to failure within let's say, five to ten repetitions of an exercise, people have a much better perception that they've actually failed than if they go beyond that. And you're trying to guess, how would I fail if I'm going to do fifteen or twenty or twenty five repetitions. The longer the sets go, the easier it is for you to misgauge how many more you could actually do. Interesting, and so my question is, like when you when you're training people to deal with those stressors. Do you tend to focus on a small package stress right, like a very minute, like here, let's just focus you in on this little piece and deal with it versus you know, long term in this job, you're going to deal with all of this stress and it's going to be okay, right, I mean I think, yeah, I.

00:37:55
Speaker 2: Think it's both. I honestly think it's both. But like, yeah, if I was sitting with you and this is something we're working back at, and maybe you're a teacher in my son's school, it is like, get your eyes off of where you think you should be, Like, that's not where we're going to start. It's like looking at these micro moments throughout your day that you're building up some some some stress, uh resilience or a little bit more tolerance level. That's typically how it's done. It's like these little crements. There may be a dip that you can't control because it's like this thing is going to happen and it's going to submerge you. That's life. But it typically is in these little and then leaps though. That's the wild thing is like little things end up creating, So it's not always right. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. Yeah, yeah, it is very very true. It is very teachable, but I think it's like, again, the people who are going to learn that are failing relationships. I have to learn this because I want to have a relationship with my son or daughter, my wife or husband.

00:39:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, my job.

00:39:06
Speaker 2: There's this thing that's happening. And then it's like there's a little bit of motivation, like I've got to change, I've got to do something a little bit different.

00:39:13
Speaker 1: But again, yeah, well, and you can kind of see how all of that sort of fits together. I mean you think through Jonathan Height's work and sort of the safety and security that has been provided because now the pain of losing your job isn't as like if I think about if I lost my job, I understand the pain of it, right, Like I need to now go find another job, and that job search is difficult, and every year I get older, it's getting more and more difficult, right, Like you know, there's just certain things you just think about, and so you're like, Okay, I got I got to deal with where I'm at now because I need to continue performing. I can't retire yet, right so right, because there's no real net right now, that's not to say that I'm scared of that or like being anxiety paralyzes me or something like that, but just the reality of the situation. You know this is going to be bad. But sometimes it feels like maybe with younger generations there's too much of a safety net and so when something gets painful, it's like, well, it's just easier for me to default back down to this easy, sort of safe kind of lifestyle. And I don't know it. You can see how that sort of his research dovetails with what you're saying. I think it's probably not as clean as that, but the general idea is I think crucial to make that connection of the more safety we feel doesn't necessarily mean that we are fully functioning human, right, Like there are aspects of it that we lose because we're just too safe. There is such a thing as being too safe one percent.

00:40:52
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, so let me just go to like a theological place I think. I think one of the fascinating thing about working with adolescents is I believe part of God's design is risk taking is supposed to happen in that season because it's like the beginning of having a vision for something beyond that's scary and bigger than you. In fact, we know dopamine levels begin to draw around twelve or thirteen, and it's interesting, it's like, that's such a bummer. I would have liked that to not be the case with my teenagers. It's why they're kind of sometimes they're flat. We see crocks, and so the theory, one of the theories is it's because they now need to go look for things that are going to give them. You know, some of them do that, well, gotcha, taking a hard course or auditioning for something or trying out for something new. Those are going to give some and others, you know, break into buildings and steal you know, that's a dopamine verse or drugs or what all. But I just think about how much, you know, if we can get a snapshot of how God has designed us and what he's inviting us to do with him, each one of us globally, it's like beyond what we could usually imagine. And it requires again, distress, It requires a lot of these. It requires an ability to enter into relationship to tolerate distress. And so when you talk about what you were just saying, it's just sort of this default. It's like it must grieve the Lord so much to just see us sort of like, yeah, that's okay, because it's like there's this capacity, this invitation. I like that word better, like I'm inviting you to co labor with me, the god of the universe, and it's always going to feel bigger than you. It's always going to feel ridiculous in some ways maybe, but that's what you get to do if you can actually dream big. And I think you're right, I don't. I think a lot of young people are dreaming big and doing amazing things. So I certainly don't want to put into any kind of box at all, because I see amazing things, but I see the counter of that too. It's just sort of like I don't know, Like I was supervising a case with it. I think he's twenty one. He's a tech school now because his parents want him to be there, and he's like, you know, I think I'm happy just working at the ice cream shot down Down, and we as I'm listening to this tape with this therapist I supervised, it's just sort of like that's kind of bummer, not that there's anything wrong with working, do you know, what I mean, it's just sort of yeah, there's.

00:43:20
Speaker 1: Not that sense of like movement forward right, like you know, it feels like a stagnation.

00:43:28
Speaker 2: Yeah. I'd almost rather see something ridiculous, like I don't know, he's gonna be this rock star and I'm gonna start It's like, okay, we can use that. But when there's like a flatness in the fuel, it's kind of like what you're talking about. It's like, yeah, we're just taking exit ramps left and right and just settling for whatever lands in our lap. And is that living? I don't think. I mean, I don't think so. And again, yeah, there's privilege at we're not talking about that. There's privilege here in that some people it's like good luck, that's not going to happen in my situation. I don't have choice. I'm not talking about those. I'm just talking about in general. This is patterning that's happening.

00:44:06
Speaker 1: So no, it's hissery. I mean. Jurgen Moltman, he wrote Theology of Hope. If you're familiar with Jurgen Moltman, he's got a great quote in there about sin and he says, you know, sin isn't just this sort of tremendous desire to be like God. It's also the passivity, the unwillingness to move, the complacency that keeps us from being who God requires us to be. And I think that's sort of what we're hitting on here. It's this like I don't want to step out and even try anything. I just want to be cared for, thank you, and I don't want to really put any skin in the game.

00:44:44
Speaker 2: So Will said, yes, that's what we have right now.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's something where that's the challenge.

00:44:50
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, Yeah, I think that is. Yeah, and there's just a sadness. I mean it goes back to sort of the relationships not being it back to you, James. I'm just saying in terms of like why should I why should I not? You know, why should I go deeper in these relationships. It's like that's a part of it too. It's not just about a vocation or a co laboring. It's also like this is because this is good, this is how I've made you, and this is not partly like these deep relationships are an extension of the Trinity. They really are that there's this beautiful thing that's happening and it can't happen in hiding, And again it's like, does that mean we all need to have like seventeen people.

00:45:31
Speaker 1: No.

00:45:32
Speaker 2: I always say people, if you have two or three people, you are blessed, because I know too many people that don't have two or three people that they could share the deepest, most vulnerable part of their lives. And do you have one person that you can do that with? And you should consider yourself less because I think most people don't. The second part of that is would you you know, would you share that right you might have that person?

00:45:57
Speaker 1: Even if you have it, would you do it? Yeah?

00:45:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And there's goodness in that, just to see the eyes that actually do ideally ideally reflect the eyes of the Father, which is no condemnation. I see you as you are.

00:46:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, this has been great. I work running into time, so I want to on your time and just really appreciate you being on the episode though, And I'm wondering if you'd answer just one last question. I usually ask my guest one last question before they go, And so you can go wherever you'd like to go with us, But what do you think the church needs to do today in order to be and make more faithful disciples. There's probably a million things you could come up with, but I'm just, you know, kind of your your gut reaction. What does the church need to do today?

00:46:43
Speaker 2: Exactly where I started with you, James. Yeah, I really think the church needs to become better at listening, at really sitting and holding a safe space with the person next to you and the pew, the person who's that you see when you leave church, the extension of the church, not just the building. But I think that is you know, we can go on a whole nother forty five minute conversation about the divisiveness that's at play in our in our world, in our culture, and so I just can you listen to the person who is one hundred different than you and offer the eyes of Christ. We have a lot, we have a ways to go in that. I don't think that that's what we are known for.

00:47:25
Speaker 1: Very good, Well, thank you very much for being on the program. We're going to put the link to your website to soul Well Center on the website and that's where people can get the listening course. Correct, Yeah, yeah, if they wanted to sign up. So the soul Well Center if you're interested in doing the listening course. That's where you can find more information about that, so you'll see that link in the show notes. But also just encourage you to pick up your book. Heart cries of every team. I read through part of it before the interview. I knew wouldn't be talking about the book very much. I didn't read the whole thing, but really appreciated it. My kids are teens, and so it's just one of those it's like a good reminder. Yeah, they want to be heard, they want to you know, they want to be seen, they want to and so yeah, just really appreciated, really appreciated what I was able to read there. But yeah, check out the links in the show notes. Everybody really encourage you to check out more of doctor Perry's work. And yeah, thanks again for being here.

00:48:24
Speaker 2: Thank you James. A great week.

00:48:26
Speaker 1: All right, everybody take care and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com, you'll find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting and more