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One of the hardest questions to answer in life is not “Does God exist?” but “Is God kind?”
Sometimes, unspeakable things happen at the hands of others. Trauma of any kind often shatters are capacity to trust ourselves, God others, and the world around us. When we feel left in our pain, holding more questions than answers, it can feel like we’ve been given the raw data that God is not good.
In this conversation, my Jennifer joins me to share her story of spiritual and sexual abuse from a church leader. Through her lived experience, she puts words and phrases to the disorientation that comes when life doesn’t make sense, and how to begin a healing journey when you doubt if you’ll ever be able to trust again. This conversation is beautiful, honest, and also one of Faith & Feeling’s most downloaded episodes yet.
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How we walk into room will always carry evidence of our formation.
The way we act, if we get big or small, whether our voices soften or louden, if our shoulders hunch or straighten, whether we anticipate acceptance or brace for unbelonging...it all tells a story. A story about something we’ve lived. In those moments when it feels like you don’t fit in and that shame-filled question wells up inside... “why can’t I just be normal like everyone else?” ....there’s always a deeper question: what is your definition of “normal”? Where did it come from, and when did you learn that you did not meet that standard?
This conversation with my friend Amina is one of Faith & Feeling’s most downloaded episodes. Through her story, she shows us that when we read rejection into a room, its roots can often be traced to pivotal moments of self-rejection in our childhoods that are still living inside of us today. Together, Amina and I process what it really looks like to belong, when to trust the invitation of others, and how to walk into a room as your own friend.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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Have you ever wondered why you get dysregulated?
Another way to describe this term is the inability to control your insides. It’s those moments when everything seems out of sorts. All of us experience emotional dysregulation. But, so often, we can get dysregulated without even realizing it. So, how do we begin to notice & listen to what are bodies are trying to tell us? In this episode with licensed therapist David Floge, we talk about what emotional dysregulation is, what it can feel like in our bodies, and practical ways to self-regulate.
This conversation is such a fun combination of clinical insight and personal experience. My hope is that you’ll find it practical (and you’ll also laugh, because some of the stories that David and I share are really funny!).
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With 2024 coming to a close, I’ve been reflecting on this first year of Faith & Feelings.
What a year. I just want to say how grateful I am for this community. Thank you for sharing this podcast and inviting others to be a part of it. Because of this, we are ending the year with tens of thousands of downloads and an actively growing community of listeners. And I just want to say thank you.
In this brief update, you’ll hear some personal reflections on the year, as well as what’s coming up next on Faith & Feelings in December (hint: I’m re-releasing 5 of your most favorite episodes!). My hope is that these listener’s favorites will encourage you, reinforce some of what we’ve learned together, and create space for deeper reflection as you go from one year into the next.
*I’d love to hear your suggestions for episode/series topics for 2025! Email your ideas to me at [email protected] or DM me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__.
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What is the ultimate goal of interacting with an emotionally immature person? To stay in control of our own mind and feelings.
While we can’t change the person, we can learn ways of interacting with emotionally immature people without sacrificing or losing parts of ourselves. When we learn how to keep an observational perspective, we can stay centered, no matter how the other person behaves. This also helps to keep us in our thinking brain instead of falling into our emotions or a fight-or-flight reaction.
In this episode, I talk about 3 three practical steps for interacting with an emotionally immature person: (1) detached observation, (2) accurate assessment, (3) and re-entering the relationship in a different way. I also explore how grace is often misused today, and I emphasize what it truly looks like to extend real grace — the kind of grace that Jesus died for — in our relationships.
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Hitting a wall is not an if, but when.
We all have this experience, typically several times throughout our lives. Suddenly, the ways that we learned to cope with childhood wounds and unmet needs begin begin to fail us in adulthood. Unhealthy coping patterns catch up with us. Our souls often begin summoning us to a deeper, inner change through emotional or physical symptoms like panic, anxiety, depression, anger, a continual sense of low-grade agitation, addictions, or other dysfunctional attempts to numb our pain.
We feel stuck. We want to change, but we don’t know how. It’s here, where God longs to meet us, opening our eyes to see the truth of ourselves, our stories, and who he’s created us to be. In this episode, I offer common signs that you might be hitting the wall, and I also talk about how to begin opening ourselves to God to bring transformation into the deepest parts of ourselves.
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Are patterns from your past impacting how you show up to your life and relationships today?
How we learned to cope with childhood wounds and unmet needs often become the dysfunctional patterns that we live out in adulthood. This is one way that the impact of emotionally immature parenting can leak into our adult lives.
Healing starts with noticing and naming these patterns. When we invite God’s spirit into this process, change begins. I talk about 2 ways that we may have reacted to emotionally immature parenting as children (internalizing or externalizing our pain), and how these childhood coping styles might be showing up in our adult lives today. In her research, psychologist Lindsey Gibson found that most children of emotionally immature parents are internalizers. I also highlight 8 common patterns of internalizers in adulthood and offer practical steps for change.
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From the time we entered the world, we all began crafting a story that helped us make sense and give meaning to the painful things that happened to us.
As we absorbed explicit and implicit messages from family members, authority figures, and peers about who we were and what the world expected of us, we gradually began forming a narrative that explained our lives to us… a narrative that grooved itself deeply into our hearts. This story helped us, as children, to know what we needed to be and what we needed to do to stay safe in the world.
However, this story becomes a broken story when lived out in adulthood. I talk about why it’s so important to get to know your childhood story, and I also offer some practical steps for exhuming the hurtful events, unchallenged, taken-for-granted beliefs, and unhelpful internalized messages from our childhoods that may still be ruling our lives today.
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We all need someone who reads us well and believes in us.
This is the essence of what security feels like in a relationship: knowing that the other person sees you, understands you, and celebrates who you are. But what happens if you didn’t receive this kind of nurturing love as a child?
There is essentially one way to provide this kind nurturing love that we all need to develop and thrive, but there are many ways to frustrate a child’s need for love. I talk about 3 things every child needs from their parents, and I also unpack 4 types of emotionally immature parents by psychologist Lindsey Gibson.
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Many of us have a confusing relationship with anger.
Anger is a complex emotion that can create significant internal conflict, fueling both guilt and fear. Similar to anxiety, it’s a powerful force that can do great harm and also has great value. It’s such a physical emotion, and we can feel anger in our bodies with incredibly intensity. In this episode, I talk about 4 ways that that we tend to avoid anger, how we learned these strategies (and why they actually make sense), and practical ways that we can start to befriend and create space for a healthy expression of anger.
I also talk about some common theological misconceptions about anger, and I highlight examples of Jesus expressing anger in the gospels and modeling how to speak on behalf of anger rather than from it.
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If emotional immaturity could be summed up in a sentence, it might be this: “it’s not me, it’s you.”
People who are emotionally immature often engage in inappropriate or harmful behavior, and then revert to altering their perceptions of reality to fit what makes sense to them. They lack emotional sensitivity, are self-preoccupied, and often cause others to question reality instead of taking responsibility for their actions. In other words: “It’s your fault for what I did, not mine.”
Personality patterns of emotional immaturity can be devastating to families and relationships. So how does emotional immaturity show up interpersonally? And how do we recognize signs of emotional immaturity? To continue our series on Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, I highlight 15 personality traits associated with emotional immaturity. I also talk about how to know the difference between a pattern of emotional immaturity and a temporary emotional regression.
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Emotional loneliness is the kind of loneliness that you can feel even in the presence of others.
It results from a lack of emotional connection, and it can sometimes be even more painful than being physically alone. It’s that feeling of being unseen… a vague and private experience, not easy to recognize or find words for. While just as wounding as a physical injury, emotional loneliness is less obvious because doesn’t show on the outside.
So many of us experience emotional loneliness. But what exactly is it? And where does it come from? To continue our series on “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” I talk about what emotional loneliness is, how emotional loneliness is the result of unmet emotional needs during childhood, and some specific ways that emotionally immature parents can affect their adult children’s lives.
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Have you ever longed to be seen and known as the person you truly are? To share anything with someone and know that you’ll be understood, accepted, and validated?
Emotional responsiveness is the single most essential ingredient of human relationships. Our relationships are built and sustained through emotional intimacy, and the feeling that someone is interested in taking time to listen and truly understand our experiences. But what happens if your parents were distant or emotionally unavailable? How did this impact you as a child? And how do these experiences continue to impact you as an adult?
To start off our new series “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” I talk about what emotionally maturity is (before talking about what it isn’t). This episodes highlights 15 characteristics of an emotionally mature person. I also talk about one possible reason why so many parents today are emotionally immature, and why emotional and spiritual maturity cannot be separated.
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Although we’re used to thinking of adults as more mature than their children, what if some children come into the world, and within a few years, are more emotionally mature than their parents?
In this next Faith & Feeling’s podcast series called “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,” we’re going to talk about the ways that emotionally immature parents impact their children’s lives. Through these episodes, you’ll discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion that come from having a parent who refuses emotional intimacy. You’ll also gain some insight into possible reasons why your parent’s emotional development stopped early.
My hope is that these episodes will bring clarity and relief as you see that what you’ve been though has caused you to have these feelings. That you’re not the only one. And that it makes sense.
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Why does God sometimes feel so far away? The reason for this could be your attachment style.
We all experience moments when God's love and presence are tangible. But we can also experience feeling utterly abandoned by God. Why? In this episode, I talk about how your early childhood experiences and attachment (or emotional bond) that you developed with your primary caregivers can influence your relationship with God.
Some of us have parents that make imagining a loving Father more difficult, and some of us have parents that make it easier. I describe each of the 4 attachment styles and explore how each style — developed from a pattern that we learned as children to maintain closeness with our primary caregivers — often translates to how we seek to maintain closeness with God. I also talk about 4 kinds of spiritually (secure, anxious, shutdown, and shame-filled) that can result from each of these 4 attachment styles. In other words, how might someone with a secure attachment experience God? How might someone with an anxious attachment experience God?
Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource emailWhen Your Spiritual Growth Feelings Frustratingly Slow with Chip Watch this episode on YouTubeGrab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm FineConnect with me on my website Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ -
Do you get easily dysregulated? Or struggle to get back to a regulated state when you are dysregulated?
There’s a reason for that. In this episode, I connect your present experiences of dysregulation to your relationship — or attachment — with your primary caregivers when you were growing up. You’ll see how the emotional environment that you were raised in, and the ways that your parents interacted with and responded to you, shaped the way your brain learned to regulate emotions. I also talk about what secure attachment is, how to know if you developed a secure attachment bond as a child, how the presence or absence of this bond is directly linked to to your ability to self-regulate (and reach out for help) today.
Get Faith & Feeling's weekly resource emailWhen Everything Seems Out of Sorts with David Floge, LPC Watch this episode on YouTubeGrab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm FineConnect with me on my website Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ -
We all have deep and inherent need for love and acceptance.
But, as children, what happens when unconditional love and acceptance were not freely given? In small ways, many of us learn that a “packaging of self” is what is necessary to find approval and affirmation in the eyes of others. As we begin to develop and experience life in the context of our closest relationships and social circles, we learn that we are liked and accepted by constructing a version of ourselves that puts us in the most flattering light. Maybe if we help enough. Self-sacrifice enough. Do all the right things. Maybe then we will be loved.
In this conversation with a family friend, Ellen, she shares a recent story of dysregulation, triggered by a childhood belief that equated being perfect with being loved. She shares her own journey of growing in self-awareness, untangling this belief from her story, and learning to rest in the unmerited favor of God.
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I think everyone could testify to how imperceptibly incremental our spiritual growth can feel in some areas of our lives.
If you’re like me, you often feel a disconnect between the theology that that you believe and the reactions that leak out of you in everyday life. Even though you know something is true in your head, it doesn’t seem to be shaping your heart or steering your hands. Sometimes you feel defeated because you don’t like how you’re acting, what your response was, or the way you sounded. But you don’t know how to change. You wonder if you’re doing something wrong. You wonder why God is working transformation into your life so frustratingly slowly.
In this conversation with a family friend, Chip, he shares a recent story of dysregulation that puts words to all of these tensions so beautifully. We talk about what initiated a deep inner change in his life five years ago (after decades of following Jesus and years in full-time ministry), and he models how true spiritual growth and emotional maturity often begin with getting to know your story and learning to tell it more truly.
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“We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.” - Curt Thompson, MD
But we all have those experiences of being unseen. Un-chosen. When care was not given. When no one came. Somewhere along the way, many of us learned to stop listening to our gut instincts. We learned to grit it out and turn off the messages of our healthy needs. We stopped crying out. We no longer asked for help because we didn’t want to be a burden on others, or we didn’t expect anyone to respond.
This conversation with my friend Kylie is just so beautiful. Through her story, she names a deep-seated belief running throughout many of our stories: asking for help doesn’t change anything. You have to do it on your own anyway. We process the ways that not asking for help can become a learned trait, and when carried into adulthood, fuel patterns of striving, exhaustion, and inadequacy. We also talk about the ways that Kylie is learning to trust in God’s rest, responsiveness, and delight.
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What happens when the circumstances of life force you to grow up too quickly & shoulder a weight of responsibility or caretaking far beyond your developmental age? When our bodies carry the story of an interrupted adolescence into adulthood, how can this kind of trauma impact us? And how do we begin to heal?
In this conversation, my friend Jonathan shares a recent experience of dysregulation: a chest-tightening, drowning sensation when too many people around him needed too many things. Together, Jonathan and I process how this everyday moment with his family strikingly paralleled some of his childhood experiences, and he names the longing inside so many of us with similar stories: “Can someone just take care of me?”
We talk about what he wishes he could tell his younger self, and how the way we are in our bodies tells the story of who we’ve been up to this point in our lives.
Check out Jonathan's book: Digging in the DirtGet Faith & Feeling's weekly resource email Watch this episode on YouTubeGrab a copy of my book Stop Saying I'm FineConnect with me on my website Find me on Instagram @__taylorjoy__ - Näytä enemmän
