IIC 142: Your Story and Your Personal Formation

Dr. Peter: [00:00:00] When you look at a person, any person, everyone has a story. Everyone has gone through something that has changed their life. “Anxiety, depression and panic attacks are not signs of weakness. They are signs of trying to remain strong for way too long.” A quote from Deepika Padukone. “Everyone has a story. Everyone hides his past as a means of self-preservation. Some just do it better and more thoroughly than others.” Jodi Picoult in her 2013 book The Storyteller. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story within you.” Maya Angelou, a Facebook post from February 13th, 2013. Today we examine personal formation from a different angle. Today we are looking at stories, the stories of our lives, the stories of our hearts, our personal narratives. Why? Because we make sense of our lives through stories. We understand ourselves through stories. We enter into the experience of others through stories. Even God reveals himself to us through stories. And today we are harnessing the power of stories to help us in our personal formation. This is the 10th episode in our series on integrating the four dimensions of formation in our lives, the four dimensions of formation that Saint John Paul the Second gave us in his 1992 apostolic exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis. First, human formation, the basis of all formation according to Saint John Paul II, spiritual formation, intellectual formation, pastoral formation. And today I’m inviting you into my story with the help of two Catholic experts, two people who I am so honored to have with me today, two individuals who are dear to me and have been doing excellent work on helping Catholics understand, accept, and embrace their stories. These two Catholic professionals have offered to help me unpack one of my stories — a painful story, a formative story, a story that changed me in bad ways and in good ways, and a story that today I will share with you. And along the way, I invite you to enter into my story, but even more importantly, to enter into your own story, to connect as you watch, as you listen, to connect with your own story, to notice what resonates within you as my story unfolds with the help of our guests. Are you ready? Let’s do this together.

Dr. Peter: [00:03:08] I am Dr. Peter Malinoski, also known as Dr. Peter. I am your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast. And I am so glad to be with you today. I’m a clinical psychologist, a trauma therapist, a podcaster, a writer, the co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts. But most of all, most of all, I am a beloved little Son of God, a passionate Catholic who wants to help you taste and see the height and depth and breadth and the warmth and the light of the love of God, especially God your father, and also Mary your mother, your spiritual parents, your primary parents. I am here to help you embrace your identity as a beloved little child of God and Mary. That is what this podcast is all about. That is what this episode is all about. And that’s what we’re doing today through stories. To live out this mission, I bring you new ways of understanding yourself, fresh conceptualizations informed by the best of human formation resources, always grounded in the authoritative teachings of our Catholic Church.

Dr. Peter: [00:04:11] And that is why I am so excited to have two of the most innovative Catholics in the realm of formation and story with me today for episode 142 of the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, this episode, titled Your Story and Your Personal Formation. So just a brief bio. Dr. Kathryn Wessling is a behavioral scientist who works with individuals, married couples, educators, and organizational leaders to create a culture of healing, faithfulness, and relational joy through the integration of the Catholic faith with the science of human thriving. She has a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate from Duke University. She has taught at the University of Virginia and at the Wharton School of Business, where she has coached hundreds of teams to thrive professionally and within their businesses. In her research and information work, Kathryn focuses on well-being, resilience, positive relationships, attachment styles, and virtue, all of which we are so interested in here at Souls and Hearts.

Dr. Peter: [00:05:13] And Kathryn is a pioneer in developing Catholic Story Groups, places in which Catholics feel safe enough to share their stories. She founded Catholic Story Groups at catholicstorygroups.com, a fascinating, innovative way to connect with yourself, with others and with God through story. Now, I have heard many, many good things about Catholic Story Groups from a variety of Catholics. Kathryn describes a Catholic story group as “a place of belonging where God’s heart meets the heart of your story. When you join a story group, you will be on an 8-week journey with 4 to 7 others and a Catholic facilitator to name, explore and heal each of your stories.” Kathryn says, and I really resonate with her, “We can’t heal in isolation. Believe me, I’ve tried. I founded Catholic Story Groups so others could experience the transforming love that occurs when we come out of darkness and allow God to heal our brokenness. It literally rewires our brains when we are able to put words to our story and make sense of our history in the light of God’s salvific plan.” And I got to know Kathryn through Souls and Hearts, through the Resilient Catholics Community, especially on our RCC retreat together. And I am so excited, I’m so honored, so pleased to have you join us, Kathryn. Kathryn, it’s so good for you to be here with us today.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:06:40] Oh, I am delighted to be here. Thank you for that intro and I feel really seen. So thank you, Dr. Peter.

Dr. Peter: [00:06:47] Well, this is going to be awesome. I am so excited. And I want to also introduce Gabriel Crawford. Gabriel describes himself as “a husband, a father of four wild red-haired children, and a licensed mental health counselor in the state of Washington.” He is the founder of Saint George Counseling, a faith-based clinic that enhances mental health care through physical fitness and the outdoors for combat veterans, service members, first responders, and the local Catholic and Christian community in Kitsap County in Washington State. He comes to us today in this moment of his story, after his experiences in the Military Police Corps in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, a masters of Divinity at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, his conversion from Presbyterianism to Catholicism, his experiences of childhood trauma and abuse, although not all necessarily in that order. Gabriel tells us that, “A life is a vale of tears and suffering is inevitable, and we often treat our wounds as if they really aren’t that serious. When we treat our heartache as not that serious, our pain becomes sediment in the bottom of our hearts, impacting every aspect of our lives and our relationships. Unaddressed suffering is a callus on our love and hinders our becoming saints. Story work is a bold and creative endeavor in which we bring our stories of harm to a group of wise peacemakers. Story work is a process of healing, a renewed encounter with our heartache, a holy work in which others can read well our hidden stories and a tender opportunity for the glory of God to shine forth in the healing of our wounds. It is the unfolding of the story of God in the continued story of our lives.”

Dr. Peter: [00:08:31] And I’ve gotten to know Gabriel over the last few years from the Catholic Psychotherapy Association meetings, the annual meetings. We’ve had some great experiences together, and some of you might remember him from our discussion, our debate about Santa Claus in the Souls and Hearts reflection from May 11th, 2022, titled Santa and Myth, when we discussed sort of different positions that we had on that. Gabriel is a creative thinker, he’s a passionate Catholic, and this is what’s most notable — he engages the faith from the heart. He’s a story facilitator with Catholic story groups. Gabriel, I am so glad to see you again. It is so good to have you with us.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:09:12] All right. Hello, Kathryn. Hello, Peter. I should say Drs. Peter and Kathryn. I am Master Gabriel.

Dr. Peter: [00:09:21] So good. So let’s just get into this. And I’m just going to turn this over to the two of you. I really just want to hear more about whatever you think is important to share. I’ve done a little intro based off of my reading of your website, my conversations with you a little bit, but yeah, just let’s just get into it. Let’s just have this conversation. Let us be together in this whole topic of story.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:09:48] Yeah. Thank you. I would like to connect this back to the human formation series that you’ve already been doing, and really ask Gabriel to connect it to some of these key documents and what he’s, you know, come up with.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:10:04] Sure. All right. Thank you, Kathryn. So there’s a few lines in the PPF. Now, Peter, what’s that stand for?

Dr. Peter: [00:10:13] The Program for Priestly Formation, sixth edition from the USCCB, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:10:20] Okay, excellent. So there are a number of excellent lines in there. I want to draw out one. And it says this: “Just as Jesus accompanied his apostles, the growth of human formation happens generally in a threefold process of self-knowledge, moving to self-possession, and finally to self-gift. And all this in a context of faith. This is a gradual process of growth that integrates both the human and spiritual life of the man, and leads to a deepening of interior freedom. To this end, it is important that every seminarian be aware of his own life history and be ready to share it with his formators. This would include especially his experience of childhood and adolescence, the influence that his family and his relatives have exercised upon him, his ability to establish mature and well-balanced interpersonal relationships.” So here’s the thing. First, well, this doesn’t have to do just with seminarians. This is the human formation of every person, of every Catholic, of every Christian. So that’s the first point. So this applies to you. The second point is notice how formation happens in community. Just as Jesus accompanied his apostles, it happens in community. The third point is to draw our attention to, it is important that every person, I would say, be aware of his own life story. Something that’s key here is that, I believe, and this is in my own case, is I’ve spent had spent much of my life quite unaware of how my story is continuing to be lived out in different ways in my life. So if I’m called to holiness, which is through greater freedom, that which I’m not aware of hinders my freedom, which hinders the process of holiness. So engaging story helps us to grow in awareness and helps us in the process of spiritual and human formation.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:12:46] Yeah. And God writes our story. He’s our coauthor and our story continues. And so to know what the story he’s writing historically also helps us live into that co-authorship with him moving forward. Dr. Peter, I’m curious what comes up for you when we talk about this importance of story for our own human formation, but also just holiness?

Dr. Peter: [00:13:14] Well, you know, stories are the way that we make sense of our experience, right? So this idea of, if I don’t know my story, I don’t know myself. If I don’t know myself, I can’t know anyone else. I can’t know their stories. If you are caught not knowing your story, it’s going to be impossible for you to connect deeply with anyone else in their story. And I really love how you guys bring out this relational aspect of the story, the sharing of the stories. You know, that is something that I think just is like glue that can bond us together, that can connect us together in relationship. And so what I’m thinking about as I’m hearing this is, yes, community, but also, you know, the relational context of this, right? Like we sometimes say that we know somebody well when we know their story. And so that’s what was kind of coming up for me as I was hearing these quotes from the PPF6.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:14:17] Oh I love that. Yeah. Because we can recognize also ourselves when we hear another story and we’re no longer alone. It’s like, me too. And it does connect us. Yeah. I’m curious, Gabriel, what your thoughts also are on how that connects with the other formation. There’s human formation. We’re talking about stories important for human formation. How is that also important for the spiritual and the intellectual and the pastoral?

Gabriel Crawford: [00:14:42] You know, Kathryn, that’s a great question. I’m thinking of one way this goes back to the PPF, and it mentions how the seminarian, or let’s just say the Catholic, we have the opportunity, the more we know our story, we can bring it into prayer. And that’s a line in the PPF, is that the seminarian brings his own life into his prayer. So imagine — I’m a big fan of Ignatian contemplative prayer, which engages the imagination. And so often when you do contemplative prayer in this style, you’re bringing yourself into the story. You’re bringing your life history. You’re bringing where you’re at now. And the more I can know about my own story, especially the emotional experiences, gets brought into the prayer. And then it unfolds in that way. And I’m kind of curious what you guys think from that.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:15:45] Oh, I love that. Well, actually, and I’ve experienced it in the reverse. So I have spent a lot of time in the Spiritual Exercises. And I can see now how the Holy Spirit is illuminating my story by how I interact with Jesus in the Scriptures. And even if we connect it back to parts, I can now see, oh, here’s all these parts, the Holy Spirit’s illuminating parts as I interact with Jesus and is healing some of those parts. So I love that you went there, Gabriel. And we’re bringing our story to Jesus to heal, to rewrite, to illuminate. And there’s intimacy there.

Dr. Peter: [00:16:23] I love that idea of the intimacy, you know, in Carmelite spirituality, if you look at the writings of Saint Teresa of Avila, if you look at the writings of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, these doctors of the church, it’s a love story. It’s a love story. And so we were talking, I was thinking about how Pope Benedict XVI talked about how Christianity isn’t a collection of dogmas. It’s an event. It’s an encounter. It’s a story, and we’re in it. It’s an adventure, you know? And so far from being merely a collection of rules and regulations and so forth, that’s not what our faith is meant to be. It’s not primarily a moral code. It’s a story. And are we willing to get into our story? Are we willing to get into the stories of others? Are we willing to become part of the story of the church together? And that’s what I think this concept of story just vitalizes for me is that it somehow makes it real. Like the hero’s journey, you know, in a sense, right. Or other ways that we’ve understood that stories resonate with people. So yeah, think about the Lord of the Rings, right? That’s a story that teaches people so much without getting into, you know, sort of systematic theology and ways of laying this out that people might find sort of hidebound or dry or difficult or boring. You know, little children learn through stories. We don’t start teaching children in systematic ways. We start by sharing with them stories. And that’s how our Lord taught us, right? Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. He taught his disciples through stories, through the parables.

Dr. Peter: [00:18:02] But when we bring this this dynamic inside, when we are willing to encounter ourselves, however we conceptualize that, you know. Through the emotions that we have that we may not have been recognizing, the unconscious, or through the parts, right? How we encounter ourselves, that that just fosters the integration needed for us to be wholly in our story. And that goes back to the freedom that you were talking about, Gabriel, that you were quoting from the USCCB, from page six, that that fosters that progression from self-awareness, right — that first step, which I think story helps so much — to self-possession, right, where we actually possess ourselves. Because you can’t give what you don’t have, right? If you don’t possess yourself, you can’t get to that last step in human formation, which is self-gift, according to the bishop. So this is why I’m so excited about the work that you’re doing. And I know that you guys are also riffing off of and drawing from other people, Dan Allender, like you’re bringing in some of the best of non-Catholic sources, but in a way that’s entirely consistent with the Catholic understanding of the human person with a Catholic anthropology. And that’s just so near and dear to my heart, because I feel like we’re really fellow workers in the vineyard, in this little corner of the vineyard, kind of focused on human formation. And so that’s just to me, just warms my heart because sometimes it can feel a little lonely sometimes here, you know. That’s kind of why I wanted to bring us together in this series on personal formation and in this podcast.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:19:31] You know, we’ve been talking about formation and we’ve been talking about story. But it makes me wonder. Very simple question. What is story? So I turn that question back to both of you. You know, just off the cuff. What’s a story?

Dr. Peter: [00:19:48] So I love this because, listeners, you know how much, viewers, you know how much I prize definitions, right? Confucius said, you know, “The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper names.” And so this idea of let’s define it. Let’s just not assume we know what it is. Let’s define it. Yeah. So, Kathryn, I’m going to pitch this to you because I want to think about this a little bit. I just don’t want to shoot from the hip. So if you’re willing to take a stab at this, to take up Gabriel’s challenge, let’s go that way, if it’s good for you.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:20:22] Yeah. It’s the plot, scenes and characters of our lives that a story, we’re seeking truth. So that also connects with intellectual formation, that we’re seeking the truth and our story reveals truth about our own lives and the lives of others and binds us together. It gives us a sense of wonder, and it allows us to look at life with a greater sense of hope that things can actually be better, and that we can actually bring the kingdom here on earth through story.

Dr. Peter: [00:20:53] Oh, wow.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:20:54] Yeah, story. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Sometimes some stories feel like they don’t end. When I watched Fellowship of the Ring, the Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, at the end, and they’re just going down the river. And I’m thinking to myself, I have to wait another two years to find out what’s going to happen next. So a story and a narrative are distinct. So a story could just be a work of fiction. Somebody’s going to read it eventually, maybe. A narrative necessarily involves the storyteller and the listener. So a narrative is always a communal process. The document that was the Catholic-Christian Meta Model of the Person, the fifth chapter says that the human person has a narrative structure. The human person has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I’m conceived. I live. I die. Then what happens next? I don’t know, I’ve never done it. Something happens next. So a narrative structure, a beginning, a middle and an end. And so we in story work, we engage our stories that have a beginning, middle and end. What’s the plot? Who are the characters? What’s the context? Where did it happen? How did it end? How did it begin? What are the themes? All of that.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:22:31] Yeah. And Gabriel, we know through story what happens after death in eternal life. Yes.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:22:37] Yes.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:22:38] We only know through story. We don’t know by our own lived experience. Yeah.

Dr. Peter: [00:22:44] So the one thing that you guys are doing an amazing job of laying this out and creating a visual for me, the one thing that was coming to me was that a story has an arc. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it also has an arc. And I was thinking about this in terms of adversity, right. And how like a good story involves a challenge. Like it’s not something that’s just easy, right. And so I was thinking about this in terms of the PIECES of our lives as you were laying this out. This is an acronym I came up with a while ago to represent the people, the institutions, the events, the circumstances, experiences, and systems that we encounter. And this arc through what I call ROTATE the pieces. ROTATE is often we start with rejecting those things, especially when they’re difficult, and then maybe we can move to a little bit of openness. This is another acronym, ROTATE. Rejection. Openness. Tolerating. You see this in the Lord of the Rings, right? So many of the characters tolerating to acceptance, to thanksgiving, to embracing, embracing it all as coming from the providential hand of God who is intimately involved in our story and is not allowing anything to happen that is beyond his will, right, at least his permissive will. So this idea of the arc of the story and the adventure of the story, the adversity and how this is all gift if we love the Lord, right, Romans 8:28: “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.”

Gabriel Crawford: [00:24:14] So what’s often so hard to name in the adversity of the arc of the story are moments like, if we stick with The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir and Frodo. At one point in the time, Boromir is overwhelmed with his crave for the ring, and he betrays Frodo. Frodo is powerless in the moment. He’s vulnerable. He trusted Boromir, and Boromir is in the process of betraying him. Our stories so often involve betrayal, powerlessness, and to really name and feel what it was like to have somebody who we trusted betray us, evokes shame, it evokes rage, it evokes grief. And to enter those stories, we would rather avoid that.

Dr. Peter: [00:25:08] It’s really human, right? I mean, to avoid, to flee. I mean, we see it all in Genesis 3, right after the fall in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hiding from God, now in this place of shame, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And I think going back to the quote that I read from you earlier on, we prefer to avoid these things. We bury them deep in our hearts, the sediment like at the bottom of our hearts. That is just like such a graphic image. I’ve never heard it put that way, which is why I wanted to include that quote, because I was like, wow, and I can’t ask you to read it. I mean, come on, that’d be a little awkward, right? Maybe not for you, I don’t know, but it would be for me. So I’m like, yeah, the sediment at the bottom of our heart, the sludge, right, that we have to work through. And I make the argument. I wrote a weekly reflection about this. We’re either going to do this formational work, even human formational work, we’re either going to do it here, or we’re going to wind up doing it in purgatory because nothing imperfect enters into heaven. We’re going to need to have these areas of disorder, of growth resolved in one way or another. And so one of the beautiful things that I think about in terms of your guys’s work is that it’s also like, and I imagine it would be hard to bill it this way, but as a purgatory reduction program, right. Like in terms of like the formational aspects of it, right. 

Kathryn Wessling: [00:26:27] Yeah, we’re getting into the story now versus waiting until later. Yeah. I am really looking forward to getting into your story. Peter, are we okay with transitioning?

Dr. Peter: [00:26:41] Absolutely. Yeah. So can you just give a little intro as to what you asked me to do?

Kathryn Wessling: [00:26:47] Yeah, absolutely. So when we think of the story or the story of our lives, we normally think of the overarching arc, but we’re going to ask you to zero in or we did ask you to zero in on a scene and not to give us like the high level, but to actually help us be with you in the story by describing it from the senses. Like, what did you see? What did you feel? What did you smell? Because we want to live this experience with you. And you did a great job. Dr. Peter forwarded that to us and so we are aware of your story, and yet there’s so much more to know by hearing the emotional content that comes out as you engage that story. And so it’s a thousand words or less. We ask people to come up with a story that has impacted them that might keep coming up in the present, like, oh, this feels like what happened when I was five or something like the Holy Spirit puts on our heart. So we did that and we asked you to do that, and then you wrote that story and we’re going to engage it now for the listener. We would love if all the listeners were with us to engage that story. And normally there would be 5 or 6 of us engaging. Gabriel and I are going to engage you in that story, but so that the listener can engage, I’m going to share some tips on how do you engage someone’s story. And this is something that can be done in story group, but also in your everyday lives with your children, maybe with your parents, your students, your friends, definitely.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:28:23] How do we engage a story? Well, and I like to use this acronym called CAKE, the acronym of CAKE. I want to show up for your story, Dr. Peter, with curiosity, which is C. With attunement. So what is attunement? Attunement is like there’s analog radio stations where I’m trying to dial in to your felt experience. The very first thing we need to do with attunement is to first recognize what’s going on internally in our own body, so that we can allow it to shift to resonate with yours. So Dr. Dan Siegel says attunement is that feeling felt. I know I’m being attuned to when I feel felt, meaning I get you, I get what you’re experiencing. We’re feeling the same thing. We’re on the same wavelength. And that’s how we know we’re loved. Like that’s the practicality of love is attunement. And then K is kindness. And kindness is not about being nice. I hate nice, nice shows up in the Bible once and it’s talking about the Gentiles’ food. So it was not a virtue, but kindness is about truth and gentleness. And like Gabriel said, we want to name in truth and in kindness the areas where we’ve been betrayed, where we see that in your story, where we see powerlessness. And then lastly, ambiguity, which means it’s confusion. And we see this in people’s story of like, oh, I want to be around, let’s say my mom, but my mom is also can can be dealing with her own stuff and she can actually be terrifying.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:30:02] And so there’s this push pull and this confusion and difficulty for the child in their story. And that’s ambiguity. So I use an acronym BPA, like the bad stuff that’s in plastic, is the things we want to name: betrayal, powerlessness, and ambiguity. And the last part of cake is E, which is eye contact and really empathy. So I can’t attune to you unless I see your face, unless I see your eyes. I’m not going to stare at you. And listeners, you can do this if you’re watching the YouTube, you can see Dr. Peter’s face and give eye contact. We’re going to try to give you comfortable eye contact in this interview and not feel uncomfortable. And if there are any parts that feel uncomfortable by us and how we’ve engaged, right, let me know. That’s another thing, that we’re not necessarily going to engage this perfectly. Audience, you’re not going to engage us personally. And there might be some ruptures, like you might not feel seen or known by us, and it’s okay to share that. And we can repair. We can repair if something is not done well. Which brings me up to, what are some of the things that are not done well, that we already know these don’t work in story engagement. Things like hijacking — going, “Oh, me too. It’s just like my story. Let me tell you this.” That’s hijacking the story and the attention.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:31:27] The spiritual bypassing of going, “Yeah, but God was really doing a lot for you at that moment. And we can see how he’s testing you in this moment. And this is part of the overarching story of your life.” True — and not helpful for engagement, because there’s very human dimensions and emotions and experiences, and we want to get into that first before we see like what God is doing. Silver lining — “Oh, well, at least this didn’t happen.” Or, you know, again, “God is doing all of this. You should be happy.” Or, “Aren’t you grateful you went through this adversity and now you’re Dr. Peter. You wouldn’t be this Dr. Peter without…” That’s silver lining. And it’s not meeting you where you are in the story. Fixing — we’re not coming here to fix you. We’re just coming here to be with you. People know when someone’s trying to fix them, and that’s treating them like an object. So we’re not trying to fix you. We just want to be with you. The difference between suffering and trauma is whether we’re alone or not. So trauma is we are alone in our suffering. Not even Jesus was alone in his suffering. He had his mother, Mary Magdalene, and Saint John, the beloved disciple, with him at the foot of the cross. And so we know we’re called to suffering as Christians, but we’re not called to be traumatized. And so we want to be there in your stories of harm and trauma, so that we can, with you, transform trauma into, I say, mere suffering. Is there anything else that’s annoying to you, Dr. Peter, when you try to tell a story and you feel dismissed or ignored?

Dr. Peter: [00:33:08] Well, you’ve covered a lot of them. I think sometimes there’s the minimization, you know, like “That wasn’t so bad.” Or the sort of stoicism, you know, like stiff upper lip kind of thing, which is sometimes maybe more common among guys. You know, one of the things that’s really helpful is when other people hear in my story that which I’m saying, but I’m not hearing myself. You know, like where I’m communicating it, but I’m not receiving it myself, you know. So when others listen and can kind of listen with that third ear or kind of read between the lines of the story and point out something that I didn’t realize about my own story. That to me is like, wow, you know, like I wasn’t dialed in to that. And so that’s something that I think is really beautiful when it comes to being able to share a story.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:33:59] I would add one additional thing. One way to get away from our story is to begin to think about our story. We have to feel it to heal it. So what can happen is we start to think about our story and we move into our left brain. We want to come back to the felt experience of the body. What are the feelings that are arising? Do you feel it in your gut? You feel it in your heart. Your teeth tingle. And we tune to the felt experience. And that’s how we access the emotions, right? That’s where we bring deeper healing.

Dr. Peter: [00:34:41] But that doesn’t mean, I’m assuming — you can correct me if I’m wrong — but that doesn’t mean we get overwhelmed by the intensity of it, right? We want to, I’m assuming you guys want to stay in the window of tolerance. You know that there’s an emphasis on not being inundated with the intensity of some of this stuff, because that could happen. So I’m just curious about how you manage that within the groups and how do you keep it safe enough so that the story can be told for both those who tell and those who receive?

Gabriel Crawford: [00:35:09] That’s great, Peter. So if we imagine a window of tolerance, a one and a ten. And a ten is you are hyper aroused, your body and your nervous system is about to jump out a window, and you either want to run away or punch somebody in the face. We can also be down in a one. Maybe we start to shut down. We get numb, we freeze. Maybe we start to try and please the others. We want to stay, you know, we don’t want to be just a five. But if we can kind of stay in that six range, maybe, you know, might be prodding a little bit, having some emotions, right. But this is where the group, if the storyteller starts to dysregulate, move into that hypo or hyper arousal phase, we can notice it, we can see it and attune to and help bring the person back into a state of regulation on an embodied level.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:36:07] Yeah. So just a little bit of clarity. Gabriel is talking about this continuum. I like to think of it as an emotional temperature scale between 1 and 10. The hyper aroused and dysregulated or the total freezing out. And the window of tolerance is between 3 and 7. This is when I’m relational. This is when I can attune. This is when I can love. I can’t do that outside of those ranges. And parts language or IFS would say this is when I’m in the self. And we can actually go a little bit higher like 6 or 7 and go a little higher and get to those edges of that emotion and still be, well, we’re hearing the parts at that point and we’re actually allowing ourselves to get a little dysregulated. It’s going to eventually allow us to actually increase our window of tolerance. And you’re being met. You’re being met and attuned to there. And then your body is being calmed down. And we know the nervous system wires — we know this from infants — by being met where they are on the emotional temperature scale, seven, eight, nine, ten, met there in that intensity and then brought down into their body. And so the group serves as that container to meet you where you are and to help bring you down back into the self and regulated in the relational zone. Does that make sense?

Dr. Peter: [00:37:28] Yeah, no, I love how you are laying that out in a way that that I think will help people understand, because even in hearing another person’s story, right. And we know this even from the clinical research on vicarious traumatization, right, where helping professionals, therapists, others coaches can get caught up in another story and be traumatized by it. So we want to make sure that when we go through this, that you are just paying attention to what’s happening within you, because you may find that parts of you are really resonating with the things that I’m sharing. There may be parts that are like a tuning fork, right, where, you know, tuning fork vibrating at one frequency is going to cause another tuning fork at the same frequency to vibrate at the same time. And so this is an opportunity as you listen to the story, to what I’m going to offer you in terms of my history, my story, to really understand more about what’s happening within your life along these three themes and BPA. So I’m going to see if I can remember them. Betrayal, powerlessness, and ambiguity. Right, those three that you guys are bringing in, because all three of those are going to be in the story that I’m going to be sharing with you. And so, yeah, just, you know, to take care of yourself when you’re doing this, you know, to recognize that, you know, this may be a story that you listen to, maybe not while you’re driving, you know, if you really want to enter into it or operating heavy machinery or, you know, or whatever, but you don’t have to.

Dr. Peter: [00:38:50] I mean, just to think about what’s best for you, to actually slow down and ask the question. And I feel really, since I know both of you, I’ve actually engaged relationally with both of you in pretty deep ways. I just have such a sense of safety and protection kind of coming into this, across my parts. Now, yes, I also have parts that are like, you’re doing this on a podcast episode that’s going to be on YouTube, right? Like, is this okay? And I have done some real work with my parts around that. We feel good about it. You know, this is a way that I’m hoping that it can be, you know, that process of self-awareness, self-possession, and self gift. So, you know, I have this sense that you, Kathryn, that you, Gabriel, are going to help me make a gift to you, the listeners. And also, I’m really ready to receive a gift, you know, because I’m sure that you’re going to be listening with that third ear, that you’re going to be looking between the lines. And I know there’s a lot about this story that has not yet been resolved. I’ve done some work on this story, but I would not say that I have resolved everything in this story by any stretch.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:40:00] Okay. Well, great. I’m going to invite the listeners and also you, Dr. Peter, Gabriel, myself, to make sure that we are in that relational zone and grounded. And so the way we can ground in the present and ground our bodies in the present is just to notice how our body feels inside, outside. I’m going to invite you to notice where your bottom is sitting on and making contact with a chair, a couch, bed, your car, in your seat. Make sure that you can feel your fingertips and your toes. And so Dr. Peter mentioned that you might get agitated. You might have some parts that come up during his story because it’s a really hard story. And if you start to feel like you’re dissociating or numbing out, you can reengage by noticing your fingertips and your toes, what that feels like, and to not stay still. When we’re still and feel like we’re numbing out, it tells the body we’re done, we’re getting ready to die. And so it’s really best to stand up and take a walk as you listen and stay engaged. But also not to to numb out. And we’ll do that for you, Dr. Peter, if for some reason we see you to start to numb out. We will engage. We will engage you and make sure that you’re safe.

Dr. Peter: [00:41:24] Yeah. And I’m not expecting necessarily that this is going to happen for anyone, you know, but we want to be safe and kind of let you know to prepare. And, you know, also feel free, if you’re noticing that, you know, that there’s something within you that says this may not be the time, this may not be the moment for this. You know, listen to that. This is going to be available. You can come back to it at some other point, which may be a better time for you too.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:41:46] Gabriel, do you have anything to add before he shares his story?

Gabriel Crawford: [00:41:49] Splashing cold water on your face is a great way to get yourself back into the moment.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:41:55] Yeah, back into the present.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:41:56] On the back of your neck.

Dr. Peter: [00:41:59] Beautiful.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:42:00] Okay, so whenever you’re ready, Dr. Peter.

Dr. Peter: [00:42:03] It’s a hot night in the summer of 1980. An 11-year-old me is 104 miles from home in a cold hospital bed in a cold hospital room, smelling of antiseptic and detached professionalism. At the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin, I’ve just been released from post-op for a third neck surgery, a cervical fusion of my top four vertebrae. I’m in a full body cast with a halo brace screwed into my skull with all this plaster covered with a green hospital gown. The metallic taste of the general anesthetic is still in my mouth. I’m not feeling afraid. No fear at all is registering in my consciousness. But I do feel rage and bitterness. And I do feel terribly alone. But I’m not alone, because I’m in a double room in a pediatric unit. I have a toddler roommate trapped in a crib who was crying intermittently through the night. I’ve mashed the call button repeatedly, trying to get him some help, trying to get him to stop crying. But the answer I got was, “There’s nothing we can do for him.” More incompetence and neglect from the medical profession. In that moment, I thought I couldn’t take anymore. I remembered the words I found in my grandfather’s Magnus chord organ book to the song, Suicide is Painless. That’s the theme from Mash. Really grim lyrics. If you ever look at those lyrics, they’re really grim, and it’s the first and only time I remember considering suicide. Not that I could do it. I was helpless in the bed, could hardly move.

Dr. Peter: [00:43:37] How did I get there? I got there after two previous botched operations in my hometown, two attempted procedures by an overconfident and under competent surgeon to wire two of my vertebrae together. Then my mother, a nurse, found me the best care possible at the teaching hospital for yet another surgery in my hometown hospital. The first surgery failed when the wire snapped, and the second surgery, which repeated the same procedure as the first, failed because the wires snapped. It’s been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I remember being in my hometown hospital in a bed alone when that surgeon, Dr. L, all dark hair and dark eyes, came in to tell me that the second procedure he had performed had failed, and he was not so confident. Now, I don’t remember where my parents were or why they couldn’t be with me for the results. Maybe they didn’t tell him. And fear gripped me.

Dr. Peter: [00:44:39] I’m going to have to go through this again. I was overwhelmed. I was overwhelmed by fear. The kind of electric, primordial animal fear that sears the mind and closes the heart of fear that I thought might grow so great that I might die from it, or that it could turn me into a desperate, gibbering idiot. And then, then something happened. There was a transformation. In a moment, the fear drained out of me. All of it. All of it was gone. All of it vanished, or so I thought, in the face of towering fury at my surgeon. I remember raging at him, screaming at him the worst names I could come up with in my 11-year-old mind. Then from my hospital bed, I remember throwing my water pitcher at him. The only thing I could grab on to, causing him to bolt from the room like a frightened rabbit. And in that moment, in that moment, I realized that I was no longer afraid. Instead, Dr. L was afraid. He carried the fear now. I didn’t carry any fear. I was powerful. He was powerless. Fear makes me powerless. Anger makes me powerful. Lessons learned.

Dr. Peter: [00:45:57] And what was was the point of all these surgeries, anyway? I never had any pain in my neck, just a sore shoulder for a few days. I had no physical complaints at all. There was no accident, no trauma, no nothing. So why? Why was I being put through surgery after surgery? And here’s how that came to be. So I pulled the muscle on my shoulder. My mom insisted, she’s a nurse, remember, we got to get an X-ray. And in that image, it was discovered that my first two vertebrae, C1 and C2, were not connected by bone at all. Technically, for those of you that are into this, the odontoid process was congenitally deformed and only ligaments held my spine together at C1 and C2, and that’s why the adults in the room wanted a cervical fusion so that a likely potential impact at some point in the future didn’t shear my spinal cord, rendering me paralyzed from the neck down or even dead. But that, that was a really abstract possibility to me when I’m immobilized in a bed in Madison, Wisconsin, hating authority figures and trying to figure out whether I should just die, or whether I should become powerful enough to never have to depend on any authority figure ever again. So that’s the story of 1980, or at least the first telling of the story or the second.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:47:13] Thank you so much for sharing that story, Peter. I’m infuriated with you. Absolutely beyond infuriated. The cast, the full body cast for something on your neck and going all the way to the halo. Crazy. Trapped, powerless, and the repeated surgeries that you may not have even needed and the wires snapping and the incompetence and then the results you’re shared. Your results were by yourself, as if you were an adult, fully regulated and able to handle this information. It is absolute insanity. I’m infuriated.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:47:58] I’m noticing in my gut and in my heart, like my belly is churning and my heart is burning. And I’m curious about kind of the churning in your body after reading this story.

Dr. Peter: [00:48:13] Yeah, I’m noticing that that what I’m feeling is a little higher up in more around my heart and my chest. Not so much in my belly. Ah, it’s weird, like I’m noticing. So I can get into a mode of operating or a part that is like very large, very powerful. And even I was reading that story, it’s so interesting because even though I’ve done some work on this, like there’s an appeal to having that power, like to the power that comes with the rage. That’s still a big draw. Like I found myself kind of enjoying, you know, that intensity and and thinking like this was a solution to an impossible situation. But then, you know, also very intellectually at least, aware of how not helpful, how not adaptive that can be for dealing with, you know, vulnerability. But yeah, that was the moment where I learned that if you have that much power, if you have that much rage and that much power, you can recreate your environment in a way that seems to be safer, like getting rid of the surgeon who had hurt me, like he’s gone, right? That that was effective. I was able to do that even though he was bigger than me, stronger than me, older than me, smarter than me, whatever, you know. So I’m just sort of sensing that there’s a pull, a temptation sometimes toward that, when it’s not always helpful or appropriate.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:49:41] It kept you from numbing out. It literally kept you from dying.

Dr. Peter: [00:49:44] I have never dropped into a dorsal vagal, numb out response that I’ve ever recognized. I don’t know actually what a dorsal vagal freeze response is. I’ve never, to my knowledge, I’ve never frozen and I usually don’t have a flight response either. I go immediately to a fight response. That is very typical in my system. I remember being on my Level 1 IFS training and discussing that with folks, you know, and I was like, wow. So and that’s been really helpful. There’s been situations, you know, where a lot of people, like accidents or medical emergencies, where people didn’t know what to do. They were sort of lost or whatever. I never lost the capacity to function in those situations, really demanding situations, life threatening situations. You know, I remember even being on my internship and people saying that in difficult situations. I just had a pager back in those days, in the 90s, we had pagers, right. And you would just show up at a room. That was all I had. You know, we just show up at a room and you have to deal with whatever was going on, whatever kind of intense, you know, acting out in the whole hospital. This was actually in Seattle, Harborview Medical Center, the university. The feedback I got was nothing fazes this guy, you know, because I could rely on sort of the sense that I could really protect myself from anything. So that gave me a sense of confidence, you know, or whatever.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:50:54] So, Peter, can I ask you a question?

Dr. Peter: [00:50:57] Yeah, by all means.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:50:58] I’m noticing we’ve left the 11 year old.

Dr. Peter: [00:51:02] We have. We have.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:51:03] On his bed, enraged. Can we go back to the bed?

Dr. Peter: [00:51:09] Yeah, but I would also say that what you’re getting is still the sense of the anger. Right. But, yeah, the rest of him is gone. Yeah. The rest of him is sort of missing. Not in the picture. Especially the fear. Especially the fear. Yeah.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:51:23] I’m curious about the fear. You said, and this is right after you’ve been told that the surgery didn’t work, the second surgery didn’t work, and there’s no one there, and that the wires have snapped again. And you write, “And fear gripped me. I’m going to have to go through this again. I was overwhelmed by fear. Kind of electric, primordial animal fear that sears the mind and closes the heart. A fear that I thought might grow so great that I might die, that I might die from it, or that could turn me into a desperate, gibbering idiot.”

Dr. Peter: [00:52:03] Yeah, I’m not in touch with that part right now that carries fear. Not at all.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:52:08] You can’t feel it in your body at all, can you?

Dr. Peter: [00:52:12] No, not in this moment. Not in this moment, right. I have in the past, but not right now.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:52:16] Because you’re close to your anger.

Dr. Peter: [00:52:17] Yeah. I mean, I’m feeling the anger sort of subsiding, you know, and some of that is, I think, because the part of me, I frame it that way, you know, is sensing that it’s being sort of seen, heard, known and understood like it’s like, okay, you know, like I have been understood. And so it doesn’t have to be as prominent.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:52:36] Yeah, I appreciate that part. I’ve seen that part.

Dr. Peter: [00:52:40] Yeah, we’ve experienced that part together.

Kathryn Wessling: [00:52:42] I’m terrified of that part. And now after sharing your story, I have such a deep compassion. Deep, deep compassion. And I honor that part. And it’s kept you alive, literally. Like suicide seemed like another option. And I’m so grateful that that part got you through that horrendous experience.

Dr. Peter: [00:53:06] Yeah, that feels really good to that part of me and to the intensity that that part has carried.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:53:13] So do you have a sense of why in the story you are so angry? Why that part is so angry?

Dr. Peter: [00:53:21] Yeah, because that, because — I’ll try to keep the language somewhat clean here — but because the the idiocy, right. Like, I mean, I was told that this was going to solve the issue, the issue that I didn’t even fully understand what it was, right. Like, I’m trusting these adults, they’re telling me I’ve got a potentially life-threatening condition. So I believe them, right? And they tell me that the surgery is the way to solve that condition, right? Okay, I agree, I’ll do the surgery and then they tell me it didn’t work. Okay. We’re going to have another surgery. Okay. You know, but by the time that we were done with the second surgery, especially the second surgery being the same as the first surgery and it not working. Like I’m thinking to myself, am I the smartest guy in the room here? Like at 11 years old? Like, where is your intelligence? I’m supposed to respect you, you know. Basically you’re all frauds. And that you get to walk away from it, you know? And I don’t remember. I don’t think I actually hit him with the picture.

Dr. Peter: [00:54:21] He didn’t even get wet. But yeah, I’m the one that’s left to bear with the consequences of the incompetence. That’s what was enraging about that whole situation. And, you know, there’s nobody saying, “I made a mistake.” They’re saying it didn’t work as though that was sort of a sort of random thing, you know? So that’s where the intensity of it came from. And also, I think the rage covered up some grief about like, just illusions, you know, falling about like, yeah, if you’re sick, the medical profession can take care of you. That was something that was very heavily believed by my mother, who really bought into, you know, obviously she’s a nurse, right, so she’s seen a lot of great things happen in the medical profession. But this was really only my second time of having anything sort of serious health-wise. And yeah, like to have it go this wrong, this bad, I think, was just an awareness of how the world was not like the little bubble that I may have thought it was, at least in this area.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:55:14] So I’m noticing you’re staying nice and regulated. Yeah. You don’t want to feel your rage, do you?

Dr. Peter: [00:55:22] You know, I don’t like right now. Well, I mean, I felt it a lot while I was telling the story, you know, and I felt like when Kathryn was sort of acknowledging that part and resonating with it, it was like, I don’t need it. It’s not needed here. It’s not 1980 anymore. So there was something immediate about that for me. And that part was very much in the present. And so I was like, okay, you know, I don’t have to be that way, even though in certain situations that part really likes to be up, really likes to have that much power. But if I were to really engage in that, yeah, I could get up out into the fight response. And I don’t, you know, I don’t know that I want to do that here, you know.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:56:00] So do you feel ambivalent about that anger, that rage?

Dr. Peter: [00:56:04] No, no, I don’t notice that. I don’t notice that. I don’t feel guilty about it. The anger never has had much of a quality of ambivalence about it. So let me give you a couple of examples. I chase dogs. It’s one of the things that this part of me actually really enjoys doing. And so, like, if I’m in the neighborhood, if I’m walking, if I’m out on a run and a dog chases me, this part like comes up and really enjoys running away from the dog initially and then turning around and running right at the dog. And it has never failed that the dog turns and runs. Even the last time this happened was a pitbull and the pitbull turned and ran. This part also enjoys being cross-examined by attorneys like as an expert witness, you know, there’s just like this kind of dynamic that it likes to protect, you know, so I can see a lot of really great things. This part is no longer my, I used to call it my intimidator part, but this part is now my guardian part. And it not only does it guard me, but it also guards other people. It can guard other people, it can protect others. But it’s also not great on its own at like intimacy and stuff like that. This part has an understanding that it’s got a role within my system. It’s got certain gifts and talents and so forth. But left to its own devices, not in right relationship with my innermost self, it’s going to get us into trouble. So yeah. So I don’t have a lot of ambivalence about it. I didn’t have a lot of ambivalence about it at the time that I was so angry, except for my Catholic standard-bearer, the part of me that, you know, sort of questioned whether, you know, these sorts of actions are good, but like, that wasn’t even very strong. Even that part of me was like, yeah, he deserved the pitcher being thrown at him and and stuff like that. So, you know, not a lot of ambivalence, but yeah, not a lot of connection when that part’s up.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:57:42] I’m wondering why that part got so angry at the doctor. Can you take us back into that moment? You’re so angry. “I could come up with,” you say, “every worst name. I’m calling him the worst names that I could come up with.”

Dr. Peter: [00:57:58] Yeah, like poophead, stuff like that at 11, you know?

Gabriel Crawford: [00:58:02] Sure. I love your humor right now.

Dr. Peter: [00:58:05] Because it was like, yeah, I wasn’t good at swearing back then. Yeah, but I mean, the intensity of it, I think it goes back to what we talked about before, was that this was monstrously unjust. It felt like it was monstrously unjust. But I think at a couple other levels, and I don’t think this was like thought out. But I’ve got to master myself. I’ve got to somehow pull myself together, and I have to have something that’s more powerful than the fear, or the fear is going to rule me. And so I think that’s what was going on, although I don’t know that the part had any sort of consciousness about that, it felt much more automatic to me. It wasn’t like I was choosing to be angry versus afraid or anything like that. It was very automatic.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:58:40] But there’s a reason why he was so angry. Why?

Dr. Peter: [00:58:43] Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is a moment where I feel like I’ve said it. Like because there was monstrous injustice, you know? And a sense of incompetence and a sense of like, you know, I’ve bought into your recommendations for me. You said you were going to care for me, and this is what I’m getting. Like I’m further behind the eight ball. I had a hypothetical problem before, an abstraction, and now I’ve got real problems because I’m incapacitated. And that just felt like, dishonest, you know, fraudulent. It felt hypocritical. It felt vain and prideful on the part of this particular surgeon. And so, yeah, and just totally not attuned, you know, the idea that you were bringing up and remember this is 1980, right. So, you know, there wasn’t as much of a bedside manner, you know, especially in the pediatric wards than there would be, I think, today.

Gabriel Crawford: [00:59:38] So whose idea was it to get the surgery?

Dr. Peter: [00:59:41] That was the sort of consensus of the medical community, right. So the first doctors that looked at this. So I pulled a muscle in my shoulder when I was helping my grandparents move their things out of their house. And my mom is, like, super protective about this sort of stuff, like stuff I would have just shaken off. She’s like, no, let’s go get an X-ray. And so that’s when it was sort of a, “serendipitous finding”, you know, that, oh, we found there’s nothing wrong with the shoulder. There’s no problem there really. But we’re finding that his top two vertebrae are not connected. They’re not interconnected as they ought to be. So the idea was the original doctors up in that town were saying you need a surgical consult. And then everybody down the line said, “yeah, this is not safe.” Because the idea was, I get hit in a football game, I get in a side car accident, you know, and I don’t disagree with that. Like, I’m not saying that that was ridiculous, right. I understand and I even understood at the time that there was a need for, intellectually at least, I understood at the time that there was a need to intervene in some sort of way to stabilize that from causing paralysis or worse. But that was the the idea.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:00:43] And your mother, your mother was trying to find the best care possible.

Dr. Peter: [01:00:48] Yeah. Well, I mean, we went to the local surgeons first, and when that didn’t work, I mean, to her credit, she took us to this place. I still remember his name, Dr. Drummond, who actually did an excellent job, by the way. At the time post-op, I don’t know if it worked or not, right. But yeah, I mean, she had the resources to be able to find somebody that was a real specialist in this area and that could treat it in such a way that it would actually resolve.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:01:13] Something I notice is mom, who wants to find the best care possible. She’s also absent in the story. You’re alone.

Dr. Peter: [01:01:20] That is a huge theme in the story. I remember just a lot of aloneness. Now, I remember also there were some times where my mom really wanted to be with me, but again, hospital policies being what they were in 1980, you know, not possible. And also being a long way away, 104 miles, that also made it difficult for her to be with me as much as I would have wanted. I mean, there was a deep sense of being alone, and also like there was a lot of focus on the medical aspects of this and almost nothing on the emotional or psychological aspects of this. Like that was not something that was, you know, thought about much or talked about much. And I don’t particularly fault my family for that, because I don’t think it was something that was thought about in these pediatric wards, you know, in the hospitals generally at all. Again, this is 1980, my goodness. You know, we knew almost nothing about trauma in 1980. So maybe I’m, you know, trying to be protective in some ways, of my family or whatever. But yeah, I mean, in those moments, I remember, you know, the only one that was there was this crying toddler who was also just as isolated and helpless. And going back to that resonance I was talking about before, like I was feeling a lot like that toddler, right? You know, and trying not to turn into a gibbering idiot at 11, like the toddler had the freedom to do. That’s a connection I’m making. That’s a connection I’m making right now as I talk about it. I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but I think part of the reason I was so uncomfortable with what was going on there was because he was able to express what I felt, but I would cross a point of no return if I went there.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:02:48] Mmhm. Yeah, this fear of being a gibbering idiot.

Dr. Peter: [01:02:53] Yeah. Because this little one was so young he couldn’t articulate anything clearly. You know, his cries were inarticulate and it was clear that nobody understood him. And so it was sort of a living evidence of like, this is what happens, you know, if you go that way, you’re not going to get helped either. So it was a very clear sort of model of like, this doesn’t work either. He’s tried that. I’ve got the experiment unfolding before my eyes. So there’s got to be a different way.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:03:19] Super scary. Yeah. Super scary. Like if I end up invalid and this doesn’t get fixed and I end up being a gibbering idiot, there is no one there for me. No way.

Dr. Peter: [01:03:31] And I have no idea, like where his family was either. Like, I don’t remember ever encountering them or anything like that. You’re not tight on the unit, you know, it’s not like we had close conversations or not even that I was there very long in that particular room with him.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:03:44] We have to name that you are so vulnerable on that bed and you’re alone and you’re terrified. And the people who are in your life that you needed the most care from — mom and dad — they’re not there.

Dr. Peter: [01:04:00] Yeah, there’s a back story to that, too, because the day after I was born, my father left for his second tour in Vietnam. The war had a huge impact on. And I can feel this coming up now, because I think this does harken back to that. My father actually was absent without leave because he stayed. I was born like, I don’t know, 13 or 14 days late. You know, his squadron, his flight crew, everybody was gone. And I’m not sure how much permission he had to stay, but he stayed as long as he could. He stayed till I was born. But then, yeah, for the first six months of my life, I had no contact with him. And again, that’s not because of him. That’s not his choice, right. He was originally going to be drafted. He enlisted in order to not be drafted into the military. And then he became an officer and a navigator on the B-52s. And so, yeah, so we didn’t connect. I got tears coming up in my eyes now because I think, again, that was a really early experience. And then I think, you know, my mom and I, we connected deeply. I was the first born. So it was her and I on an Air Force base in Air Force housing. And then when my dad came back, it must have been a huge adjustment. I don’t have any explicit memories of that, of course, but. And he had his own experience of trauma in the war and so forth. So yeah, I think that it sort of took me back to some other experiences early on where I was primed to experience a sense of people not being there. I mean, I do think that, you know, going back to the rage, the fear, the fear is also a reaction to something, right. And so both anger and fear are reactions. They’re emotional reactions. And so I think it goes back to that sense of the opening line of the story, you know, of being alone.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:05:35] And I can feel how the emotion of everyone. I can see it on your face, Kathryn. I can see it on your face, Peter, when you speak of this grief and feel it.

Dr. Peter: [01:05:46] Yeah. Yeah, I’ve got little tears. I’ve had little tears in my eyes. It’s interesting. Not so much about the surgery, but going back when I started to talk about my father having to deploy. Yeah. And I’ve only thought about that sort of intellectually. I’ve not really gotten into what that must have been like for him. He’s not a particularly verbal guy about like his own internal emotions about that time. But yeah, I can imagine how hard it would have been on him because I was born in between his two tours.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:06:14] My fatherly heart wants to be with you in that room, to even hold the toddler.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:06:23] The infant.

Dr. Peter: [01:06:24] Yeah. Because if anybody had even come, even if they had not been effective, you know, in calming the toddler, that would have been different. But it was much more like there’s nothing we can do for him. And I’m like, I believe you, based on my experiences of all you people, I believe you, you know.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:06:40] And your dad being gone. He might as well been deployed during that surgery. He’s gone.

Dr. Peter: [01:06:46] Yeah. And again, I think it was another situation of circumstances beyond his control, you know, like not being allowed on the unit. I remember something about that. And I know my mom would move heaven and earth to be able to be there and in fact, was able to cite her own credentials as a nurse, I think, to bend some of the rules. And one of my favorite memories of that whole experience actually, was my mom had one of her best friends, her name was Kathy, from nursing school, was there in that town. They actually lived close by. And so her husband snuck in like this hamburger, you know, because the food is terrible in the hospital at the time. And I think they were only giving me like a restricted diet for a while, post-op and all of that. So I don’t think they violated anything in terms of, I wasn’t supposed to be on a clear liquid diet anymore like that, but yeah, it was just so delicious, like this hamburger. I think it was a whopper. And it was just also so good to, like, violate the protocols. Like, it was just so great to be joining with Dave. His name was Dave. Yeah, to be able to share that together, because I think he had a sense of that, going back to that attunement like that, this would be helpful. You know, like this would be attuned. There was some really good moments after that. So I’ve always appreciated that, you know, that moment. And there was another moment I remember in the story where my uncle, who I saw rarely because he lived in California, we were in Wisconsin, he was in California. But he came in and gave me this red fire truck. You know, and, I don’t know, I just always remember that, you know.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:08:32] I know my motherly heart just wants to, like, hold you, in that terrible situation in that bed. And it is just to be, in those small gifts, right, of being with you and that responsiveness. And I see you. I see you’re uncomfortable. And I want to comfort you.

Dr. Peter: [01:08:54] So those were two really beautiful, those are two just really powerful moments in all of that. Yeah, and I don’t know how much it registered. It’s interesting because these are both guys too that are doing this. And I know my mom cared for me and she spent time with me and really helped me in a lot of ways. But I remember it coming from the guys, these two guys that, you know, neither of whom did I know very well. But there was something about that presence.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:09:20] And those doctors were guys too.

Dr. Peter: [01:09:22] Yeah. The physicians were all men as I recall.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:09:26] I imagine, the 11-year-old boy, it would have been much easier to express his rage to the doctor than to express rage to dad for not being there.

Dr. Peter: [01:09:37] Yeah, yeah, there’s no doubt there’s a lot of what you and I would call displacement in our adults. That was a focal point. And I really know almost nothing about the surgeon, either of the surgeons really. But yeah, definitely there was a focal point, a lightning rod, you know, for a lot of other rage in this situation potentially as well. I mean, I’m just so struck right now by the connection between the hospital room scene and my own experience of the war separating my family, you know, the deployment and all of that. I’ve not experienced that connection so clearly as I am right now with the two of you.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:10:19] Mmhm. Yeah, it’s a theme. It is a theme, an arc, through your life story. You were deployed to the hospital room. Mmhm. That’s beautiful.

Dr. Peter: [01:10:31] Wow. This is remarkable. Like framing this in terms of story. I knew this was going to be something. But yeah, this is really powerful. I’ve got lots of kind of emotional intensity but also just like feeling freer inside, like wow, you know, this is like good to be acknowledged, you know. Yeah, like a lot of awareness, right. That arc of self-awareness, self-possession, self-gift. Because I’ll tell you, yeah I mean, that was part of my thing. I spent a lot of time being fearless. And I thought that that was courage, you know, but it’s not. Like if you’ve drained all your fear away, I mean, in certain situations that can be adaptive, but man, it makes it really hard to identify with other people that are experiencing fear, you know, because that’s too threatening.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:11:18] Oh, thank you for naming that so clearly and owning that. Yeah. You look ten years younger.

Dr. Peter: [01:11:26] Thank you for that. I feel lighter inside, you know, I mean, I do. I feel like this is like, really, really something. I’m really struck. It’s just hard for me to put this into words. I’m really struck about the connections, right, between when I was just first born and, you know, when I was 11, like just the theme there. I don’t really know much about how it was communicated to me, or even if it was, you know, about the whys and wherefores of my dad deploying. I don’t know that my mom would have explained it, or that I would have, you know, as a newborn, had been able to understand what that would have been like. There’s a lot of other things, a lot of other themes about sort of being alone and and having to sort of fend for yourself and so forth, that came in, you know, later in my life, too. So I can see where this arc kind of continues. And yeah, a lot sort of falling into place that’s pretty consistent thematically. So it’s a lovely thing to be able to have that insight and to be able to elect a different course. I have enough integration to be able to not only understand this sort of stuff, but to be able to choose differently. I’m not have a sense of being dominated by it. And that is a real blessing, a real gift.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:12:36] Yeah, yeah. You’re freer, right?

Dr. Peter: [01:12:38] Yeah, I made decisions. I had an appointment. I could have gone to the Naval Academy. In fact, I remember the local US representative wondering why I’m backing out. I’m wondering even then why. And maybe it even had something to do with the idea of, like, I don’t want to be deployed. You know, if I want to have a family, it has… Like I work from home, right? We have this five acres and I work from home. And some of that was to be close, right. And so I’ve never had sort of long separations from my children. And I think that was, now that I’m thinking about that, that’s not just an intellectually calculated decision or an agreement with my wife or whatever, but, you know, an effort to not have my children go through something like that. And there were other reasons, like that I didn’t join the military, like, my issues with authority and things like that.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:13:24] I get that. Yeah, I totally get that. It makes so much sense. Well, thank you. Would you be okay, and Gabriel, if y’all are okay, that we’ll end this portion? Thank you so much for your story. Like, this is amazing. And just to be able to see you, see those younger parts of you. And to be able to weep with those parts and to rage with those parts… Like, such an honor. Your story is sacred, like a baby bird, you know, like holding a baby bird. And I just feel honored to have gotten to be there with you.

Dr. Peter: [01:14:00] Well, it’s been a beautiful experience to be here with both of you. And, yeah, this has given me, like, a firsthand kind of understanding of, like, just the power of connecting, you know, like to even slow down and just listen to my own story, right, to write it and then to kind of go through it with you guys. And it doesn’t take a lot of space for connections to happen. It’s not like I have to labor at this and, you know, I’ve got to do, you know, 42 months of therapy before I, you know, kind of get this connection. These realities, there’s a pull, a theological pull for us toward health, toward integration. You know, if we can create this conditions for that to happen, we can trust that it will. And that’s why I love the angle that you all have on this. It’s really impressive.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:14:44] Well, great. Well, that makes me think of, you brought up writing. Some people are like, do I have to actually write it out? And we do. It helps us for integration. Just, this is an oversimplification, but a lot of our memories and felt sense touches is in the right hemisphere of our brain and in the limbic, the mid part of the brain, and we can’t make sense of it until we connect it with words, which is more in the left hemisphere of our brain. And integration literally happens in the brain. This is not just a nice, like, parts, like, oh, let’s get integrated. It literally is the more neuro-pathways we have between the parts of our brain, the better and we can make sense of it. And as you said, mental health is so much related to, is there coherence? Does this make sense? And when we take the felt sense and we feel the emotions and at the same time write it down, we are connecting the parts of our brain and making sense. And we have greater freedom and greater integration.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:15:41] Dan Siegel in The Developing Mind, he says our earliest experiences shape not only what we remember, but also how we remember and how we shape the narrative of our lives. And if I can build on the example of the deployment, can I do that?

Dr. Peter: [01:15:58] Sure.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:15:58] I imagine the grief of the child when dad goes away. The adults, we understand now, looking back. But the child — all he feels is his grief. So that shapes how he experiences things. I would be amazed if when you’re the 11 year old, if those implicit memories and feelings are not, let’s just say it, otherwise, they are involved there. It shapes how we go on.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:16:28] And the grief of your mother. So babies attune all of it.

Dr. Peter: [01:16:31] That’s what I was just thinking about, Kathryn, is like, those deployments were not easy for my mom.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:16:35] No, no. There’s a grief of the mother. And the primary role of the dad, that first year, is to regulate the mother so she can be there for the infant. So yeah, it’s really about how regulated and emotionally capable she was able to attune to you. And if she was in grief, that would be so hard. And even as a baby, you might have felt like, I have to make up for her grief. I have to help her calm down.

Dr. Peter: [01:17:00] Right, and fear because, you know, there were squadrons losing bombers. You know, this was not just a cakewalk. There was a lot of ground fire, and there were surface to air missiles and all kinds of things. And my dad told me that his greatest fear was actually that the wings would fall off the aircraft because, you know, tropical conditions, just maintenance was difficult. A lot of crews didn’t come back because, you know, flaws, you know, things that maintenance couldn’t keep up with it. So, yeah, she was afraid that my dad wouldn’t survive his tours.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:17:29] Yeah. Your nervous system was created as a reflection of hers, and it makes so much sense. You don’t want to access that fear. I get it. It’s a lot. Well, thank you. So usually what we do in our groups is we also will do a quick round and see how your story activated ours. Are you okay with doing that?

Dr. Peter: [01:17:50] Oh yeah. Sure. I’d love to do that.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:17:51] And listeners, I’m curious how your story was activated by Dr. Peter’s. Maybe parts, but also, is there a story that comes up for you? And you are welcome to put that in the YouTube chat. If you want to share that with us, we’d love to hear that or anything else that came up for you. Gabriel, was there any part of your story or part of you that was activated when you heard Dr. Peter’s story?

Gabriel Crawford: [01:18:15] Oh, sure. Well, two ways. My own orphaned heart. The orphan is left vulnerable in the betrayal of those who need to be there for us, and the times when we need the most care. Like the rage and the anger and the ways in which I’ve had to protect myself when I’ve felt orphaned. So there was definitely that part kind of resonating with the story when Peter’s alone in the room. Then the other part is, as a father, I have a child with a pretty severe medical condition. And so when I was reading the story, there was my father, like my own grief of what it was like for me to spend the first year of my child’s life when he’s at Seattle Children’s Hospital fighting for his life. And the grief that I still haven’t fully processed. And so those kind of two parts to aspects of my heart are quite present.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:19:15] Oh, thank you, Gabriel, for sharing that. I can see that, yeah. Thank you.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:19:19] How about you, Kathryn?

Kathryn Wessling: [01:19:20] Well, the summary where he said, I was fearless as a child and I thought that was courageous. That was me. I was very self-reliant. I went to my mom once when I had fallen out of a tree or tree house, when a board had broken. And I went for care, and she shamed and blamed me and said I was not going to be able to play, and I had to clean up my own blood. I had to do all of that. And so there were things like, I’m not going to make mistakes or mess up, and if I do, I’m going to hide. But most of the time I was pretty fearless and knew I was on my own. And I thought it was courageous. And sometimes in my life, I wish I was, that I could go back and wasn’t afraid. But so much of healing has been in thawing out those emotions and getting to the fear and getting to the sadness and disappointment and the grief. And it’s made me more human. Just like Dr. Peter said, I had no ability to connect with other people and those feelings, and there was no level of intimacy I could have until I started to grieve and to heal. And so when people ask me, what’s your goal in life, it’s just to become more human.

Dr. Peter: [01:20:28] Yeah. To come into the fullness of our own being, you know, what we’re called to. I remember reading your story on the website. You’ve got your story up there. It’s so interesting because now I see the parallels. You know I’m like, wow. Because you even actually have a couple of pictures up there and I’m like, whoa, you know, those make so much sense to me.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:20:48] And if I could throw in one more part, I found myself fiercely protective of the 11-year-old, like the adolescent in me who wanted to be kind of his comrade, and say, we’re not going to scapegoat him. Of course he’s angry. Like this environment is sterile and incompetent. And of course he’s angry. So there’s a big part of me saying, we’re not going to treat him as bad.

Dr. Peter: [01:21:11] Right. Well, thank you, both of you, for being with me in this story and for picking it up, for listening and for attuning and for reflecting and sharing and being with me in it. I really, really appreciate, I value this time. I’ve got a lot to unpack with my parts about this. There’s yeah, there’s been such a great opening up here. And so I’m grateful to both of you for that and for the opportunity here. As soon as you suggested it, Kathryn, in an email about sharing my own story, I was like, yes, definitely would love to do that.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:21:42] And I’m sure your listeners feel like they know you even more. And that is such a blessing. So thank you so much. We do story work mostly with people who’ve never done IFS, but we do do story work where we have IFS, so we can specifically talk about parts and geek out about parts. We also do work with married couples. That’s how I got started with this, is there might be a lot of, let’s say, anger or blame or avoidance in a marriage, but once you start to hear the underlying story and make sense of it, we realize that our current, let’s say, conflict is activating earlier stories, and then we realize like, “Oh, I’m not having a conversation with a 45 year old man. I’m having a conversation with a six-year-old who’s really hurting, and I can be empathetic to that.” A lot of couples don’t know how to attune. If we’ve never been attuned to, it’s hard to know how to attune. And then in a group, it shows the spouses how do we attune to one another. And they also don’t feel the pressure that they, let’s say it’s the husband, has to perfectly attune to his wife. No, there’s a group, right?`

Kathryn Wessling: [01:22:52] Like there’s a group and we’ll show you. Or maybe the spouse feels too close to that story, but we get to do it in a group and we’re literally — it’s human formation in action. We’re making up our deficits. We are a family in this group. It’s a group for a reason, not just two people. It’s because it has this corrective experience of what we needed family to be like, to just be able to attune. Can you imagine a dinner table where you attune to one person that much? Without all the like, let me tell you this, let me tell you this, growing up. And so it is just a huge blessing and an honor. And everybody has a story. So it’s for everybody.

Dr. Peter: [01:23:32] So catholicstorygroups.com?

Kathryn Wessling: [01:23:35] They go to catholicstorygroups.com. We’ll start more story groups in the fall, and they can go and sign up for the interest list, so they go, hey. We do story groups for adult children of divorce. So we’ve done some of those in person, we’ve done those online. And we’d like to do an adoptee, so an adult adoptee story work. I haven’t found enough Catholic adoptees to do that yet. But I’m an adoptee, so it’s definitely in my heart to do that. And married couples and then just, you know, regular story group like we did with you. And IFS.

Dr. Peter: [01:24:07] Wow. I encourage people to check that out, catholicstorygroups.com. Just, I’ve heard so many good things about the work that you guys have been doing, and this has just been so confirmatory. So we really at Souls and Hearts here are trying to link people with the best of, you know, human formation resources. And so this is another option. Not everybody may be cut out for the RCC, the Resilient Catholics Community, not everybody may be cut out for the Formation for Formators group that we’ll be talking about in just a little bit. So just want to connect people and get the word out about these different options. People heard about, you know, Jake Khym’s Life Restoration, they’ve heard about, in this series, they’ve heard about Bob Schuchts and his John Paul II Healing Center. You know, we want to get the word out about these options for folks. So that’s beautiful. And thank you for being here and for being able to show us. So one final thing I always like to ask, is there a point and a half that you’d like to leave our viewers with, leave our listeners with? Sort of a take home or a takeaway from our time together today.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:25:08] I would encourage people to go to Catholic Story Groups just to get the free writing guide and to start writing your story or writing stories. So if you go under resources and you can download that there and just start writing and see what comes up. You will discover. This is how I got into it. I have a book coming out, Wired for God, and it’s about story and about the neuroscience of healing. And IFS is in there, and there’s so much in there. But that book started because I started writing my story. I was like, oh, there’s all this research on meaning in life and coherence and narrative. So I’m going to start writing a memoir, not with the intention of publishing, but just to start writing, to make more sense in my own brain and to start to heal. And so I encourage everybody to at least, you know, try writing a story.

Dr. Peter: [01:25:57] Beautiful.

Gabriel Crawford: [01:25:59] I would end with the thought that probably what I’m most passionate about is the experience of the love of God. Story work for me has been one way where I could connect with my fatherless heart, the ways in which parts of me have been wounded and exiled and abandoned and to really to bring the human formation into the places where Jesus begins to encounter my heart. And I would say for the first time in my life, begin to know the fatherly love, be able to feel it and to know it.

Kathryn Wessling: [01:26:34] And the reflection of the divine gaze. Like we serve that. Like we might not be able to see Jesus’s face or parts of us not be able to see. But in the group we’re a reflection of the divine gaze, made in God’s image, and that it’s more than just this, you know, natural formation, like we are being cherished and delighted in and those that can really see us. And that’s what God does.

Dr. Peter: [01:26:56] Well, so good to be with you. And again, thank you both for being here. Okay. So I’m going to invite you to check out the previous episodes in this series on formation, the integration of formation. Episodes 133 to 141. This is episode 142, the 10th in the series. Also go to our YouTube channel if you’re not already there. Like and subscribe. Let’s start a conversation. If you leave a comment in YouTube, I will read it. I will respond. So good to hear if you have something about your story that you’d like to share, or something that my story brought up or evoked in you, we would love to hear it. Dr. Gerry and I have media passes to the 2024 National Eucharistic Congress, and we’ll be interviewing more of the best Catholic voices about the integration of formation for episodes 143 and 144. So keep a lookout for that. That’s coming up like just in the next couple of days if you’re catching this right when it first comes out. Calling all Catholic therapists, coaches, spiritual directors, all who are involved professionally in the formation of others. I am excited to announce the launch of our Formation for Formators community. This community, Formation for Formators, is an expansion of our Interior Therapist Community to include those who individually accompany in formation, who do that for others professionally.

Dr. Peter: [01:28:22] So here’s some questions for you. If you’re in that category, are there times when you’d like to focus on your own personal needs? Would you like to go inside yourself in a more structured and focused way? Would you like to address what’s going on deep inside you? Do you want to understand your emotions, thoughts, assumptions, and behaviors better? And are you interested in internal family systems-informed approaches to understanding yourself and others? Do you want connection, community and support on that journey to better human formation? There’s a lot happening in the Formation for Formators Community. We have monthly office hours. We have demonstrations of how you can work with others in this IFS-informed way, grounded in an authentically Catholic understanding of the human person. We have our Philosophers Cafe, where we discuss the philosophical and metaphysical implications of this work. We have our Theologians Pub, where we discuss the theological and spiritual aspects of understanding the multiplicity and the unity of the human person, and understanding other people as systems. We also have our discussions boards and the Foundations Experiential Groups. Those are the basic groups for the FFF. This is a chance to use IFS parts work in your own human formation, as well as connecting with other Catholic formators experiencing IFS in small groups of about ten members.

Dr. Peter: [01:29:39] That’s what the FEG is about. It’s a personal introduction to IFS. It gives you the opportunity to experience the personal benefits of IFS parts work. You can check out all the details at members.soulsandhearts.com/fff. It’s again, a focus on your personal development. It’s not your professional formation. It’s not your professional development. It’s not your continuing education. It’s you working with you, together in a group. We focus on human formation here at Souls and Hearts, with also some emphasis on intellectual formation. And we do that in community. So if you’re a Catholic who holds that with the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches is true and you’re inspired to work on your own human formation, but not alone, not as a lone wolf, but in a community of other Catholics journeying on a pilgrimage to flourishing in love — then check out the Resilient Catholics Community at our landing page at soulsandhearts.com/rcc. Get on the waiting list. We’re going to open for new members in October 2024. So again, thank you both for being here, for giving me this gift of your presence. And in that, we’ll go ahead and close by invoking our patroness and our patrons. Our Lady, our mother, untier of knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Special thanks to the Human Formation Coalition, who provided the support to make this transcript available.