Ep 1332 ｜ Inner Child, Shadow Work & Somatic Therapy： A Warning to Christian Women
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per minute
173.5325
Harmful content
Misogyny
4
sentences flagged
Toxicity
1
sentences flagged
Hate speech
19
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode of Relatable, Allie talks about therapy, culture, and therapy language, and how they can all be used in the context of the Christian life. She also talks about the importance of being a voice of clarity and courage in a world that is full of confusion and confusion.
Transcript
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The inner child, shadow work, somatic therapy, all of these therapeutic concepts are really
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We'll be getting into all of that on today's episode of Relatable.
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I am so excited, by the way, before we get started to speak at the Last Stand Conference
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I'll be speaking alongside Seth Gruber, Frank Turek, so many more.
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Go to thelaststand.com. Use code Allie for a discount. That's thelaststand.com, code Allie.
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Hey, y'all. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend watching
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the Masters. We did. We love the Masters. I don't have FOMO very much, but I have the Masters FOMO.
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We obviously didn't get to go this year, but for all of you who did, I'm trying not to
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And I want all of you related girls and related bros out there to promise me that if you have
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not been to the Masters and you ever have the opportunity to go to the Masters, that
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you go, that you do whatever you have to do to accept the invitation of that very kind
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you are going to be very thankful for the experience of the masters. I don't really
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say this about many things, but there's really nothing like it. It's like going back in time.
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It's like going to a different planet. It's an incredible experience. And I hope I get to go
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again one day, but I hope you all got to enjoy it from the comfort of your home like we did.
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And I also just want to remind you that God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without
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a hitch completely and totally. There's nothing at all that has caused any detour, any delay.
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no speed bumps no accidents there's nothing that has happened that he didn't foresee that he didn't
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know about he's never looking down and wondering how in the world am i going to clean up the mess
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oh my goodness i didn't see that coming that was a surprise for me he's never thrown off
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he's never taken aback there is nothing that is happening in your life that he cannot handle
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there is nothing that is happening in your life in the world that can ever separate you from the
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love of Christ. That's what Romans 8 reminds us of. Paul just rattles off all of these reasons
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why someone might think they could be separated from God, all of these big, powerful things that
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could cause a wedge between them and their relationship with their creator. But because
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of Christ and what he has accomplished for us on the cross and how he defeated death,
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we don't have to worry about that. We are forever reconciled to God if by grace through faith we
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have been saved. And we are a part of this grand eternal plan of redemption that through the mostly
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unseen and unsung acts of obedience that we do as Christians every day, the seemingly mundane acts
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of faithfulness and worship that we do when we simply do the next right thing, God is accomplishing
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his grand purposes through us. He doesn't need us, but he has chosen to use us. And how incredible
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of a privilege is it to be voices of clarity and courage in this age that is just riddled with
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cowardice and riddled with confusion? That is what the church is. That is what Christians are. We are
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beacons of clarity and courage in an age that is just infected by cowardice and confusion and chaos.
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We can be a bulwark against those things. We can be a tower of refuge against those things
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by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we get that clarity and we get that courage from, yes, God
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himself, the Holy Spirit that he sent as a helper to be in our hearts and to live inside of us,
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but also through his word. And that's why on Mondays, I like to focus on these subjects,
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these evergreen theological subjects. I look for something that seems to be confusing. A lot of us
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probably confuse me at some point in my life, and especially what is confusing or what's causing
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chaos or what's causing some kind of dissonance or some kind of theological mishap in the lives
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of Christian women. And I'm certainly not immune to those infections. And how can the Word of God
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add clarity to that. And so that's what we're going to be doing today, specifically about
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therapy culture and therapy language, specifically three concepts within that realm of therapy
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culture and therapy language. Before we get into it, just a couple of announcements. Share the
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Arrow speakers. We finally announced our Share the Arrow speakers, y'all. And I just have to say,
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can I just say this? I feel like I can say this without it being a brag because it has nothing
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to do with me that this is the best speaker lineup that you're going to get anywhere at
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any Christian conference. It just is. And it's because all of these people are so amazing
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because God has equipped them for such a time as this. So we've got Shane and Shane leading
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worship. Incredible. We've got Rosaria Butterfield back for the second time. She was our inaugural
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speaker at our inaugural Share the Arrows, got a standing ovation before she even spoke because
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she's amazing. We've got Kosti Hinn, first male speaker this year, also amazing. He's been on
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the show several times. You guys love him. We've got Elisa Childers back for the third time and
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she's going to be speaking with Natasha Crane, so good at breaking down the lies of the new age and
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of the culture and of progressivism. We've got Grace Anna Castleberry and Audrey Brogy for our
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talk on motherhood and womanhood and homemaking and all of that beautiful stuff. And then we have
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one more speaker that is to be announced. It's also to be determined. So we've got one more
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special speaker. And then of course yours truly will be there too. Go to sharethearrows.com.
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Get your tickets today, October 10th, Dallas, Texas, women only. Sorry, Relatables. Maybe
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someday there will be something else for you, but this is a Christian women's conference.
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Sharethearrows.com. Get your tickets today and do not delay. Last thing before we get into it,
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please leave a review for Relatable. If you love Relatable, please leave us a five-star review,
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Apple Podcasts wherever you listen. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on Spotify. Subscribe on
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Apple Podcasts. It helps the show a lot. And make sure to tell your friends about Relatable.
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Thank you so much for being here. Let's get into this very controversial subject. Are you ready?
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Okay. If you want to know what I think is the biggest threat, the biggest threat to Christian
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women's worldview today, to the theology of Christian women today, to Christian women's
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ministry. It's actually not progressivism. It's not feminism. It's not the new age, all things
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that I've talked about many, many times. It's not even the toxic empathy that's interwoven
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into all of these belief systems that I just listed. It's therapy culture. I actually believe
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that the progressivism, feminism, toxic empathy, emotionalism, me-centeredness,
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new age-ish stuff that unfortunately infects so many women's Bible studies, Christian women's
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books, and conferences are all downstream from the secular therapy pop psychology pseudo-spiritualism
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that we find on social media that is dedicated to women's therapy and therapy concepts.
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Now, in the past, we've talked about what I dubbed in my first book, Toxic Mommy Culture.
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Okay, so we've been talking about that, writing about that for years.
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And a lot of what we're talking about today was actually written about in my first book,
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but I hadn't named it the way that I'm naming it now.
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So toxic mommy culture is the fad of complaining about motherhood on the internet and drowning
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And that concept, while terrible, is not exactly what we're talking about today, but it's related
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And that is the use of therapeutic language and concepts as an excuse for complaining
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and self-centeredness, a replacement for sanctification, for self-denial, for generosity,
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and the hard work of Holy Spirit-empowered holiness.
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Now, before we get into the specifics on this, this is not an indictment on therapy as a
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I've told this story many times, wrote about it in my first book, of the counselor who
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spoke unrelenting truth to me about my eating disorder.
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We have had multiple counselors on this show talk about how therapy can be Christ-honoring
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and can help Christians heal and reorient their lives around God and His Word.
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And so I believe biblical counselors are a gift to the church.
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And I think that there are many seasons in a person's life when seeking out counseling
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from professional, wise Christians is necessary and good.
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but but i think many christian women have been duped by therapeutic ideas that sound almost
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christian but are not i have been and actually this directs us away from the truth that god
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shares with us about ourselves our purpose our responsibility as christians and what we are
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actually capable of a couple of weeks ago i got into hot water because i talked about this
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specifically the concept of the inner child. I'm still getting DMs about it, still getting
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sent videos of therapists online very angry about my videos. So we'll get into that to set up the
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context, and then we'll get into our three problematic concepts today and what scripture
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has to say. Let me pause. Let me tell you about our first sponsor for the day, and it is Range
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all right a couple weeks ago um former producer brie i'll just throw her under the bus really
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fast no i'm grateful that she did this she sent me a video that was kind of going viral
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on tiktok and i responded uh to this and we'll just kind of play a silent video of this so you
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can at least see what i'm talking about and it was this viral tiktok of a woman speaking to her
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inner child before going into an interview. And in the video, the woman has her eyes closed.
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She's kind of cradling her body. She's rocking back and forth. She's speaking in a baby voice.
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She's affirming the fears of awkwardness, acknowledging her nervousness. Now, some of
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you might be thinking, does this person have special needs? No, this is not what that's about.
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Certainly, we wouldn't be highlighting something like that. This is a person whose caption says
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that she is speaking to her inner child. And in my response to this, because I thought it was an
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important concept to respond to, it was not mocking this woman who filmed and posted this
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at all. I simply made this statement. Are you ready? This has caused a lot of shockwaves that
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I did not realize it was going to cause. There's no such thing as an inner child in the Christian
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worldview. Childhood memories? In some cases, traumatic memories? Yes. Childhood experiences
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that shaped us into who we are? Yes. Childhood pain that we still carry with us? Possibly.
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That's very true for a lot of people, but the concept of an emotional or spiritual existence
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of an internal version of ourselves at six or eight or 12 years old does not exist.
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And I actually believe speaking to ourselves in this way can actually arrest our growth
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as adults and as Christians rather than develop it.
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You might completely disagree with me, and that is okay.
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There was a lot of agreement on my post when I talked about this.
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There was a lot of respectful disagreement, which I welcome. Totally fine with that. But there was also a lot of angry protestation in the comments and stitched together responses by Instagram therapists. And some, some, not all, but some went far beyond disagreeing with me and into the realm of ad hominem and downright temper tantrums about my statement, which doesn't surprise me at this point.
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But sometimes I'm like, do you not see the irony here that there is, you know, childish behavior kind of being played out in some of these responses by people who claim that fostering their inner child has actually made them healthier and more mature and developed.
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But this kind of backlash really reminded me of how pervasive therapy culture and therapy language is, not just in our society today, but in the church today.
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And if our theology is infected, the rest of our lives are going to be affected too.
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So today I want to go through not only this inner child concept, but two other concepts
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or practices and therapy that I see Christian women involved in today that I think at the
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and I think in some ways, okay, in some ways, listen to all of the nuances and the clarity
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that I am taking pains to give, go against scripture. And we need to be really, really
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careful when something is outside the bounds of scripture to ask ourselves, is there a biblical
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basis in this? Are there aspects of this that are not true, that are not healthy, that go against
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what I know about the gospel, what the God says, the God of the universe says about my body and
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about myself, about my past and my purpose, we should be asking that about all things, but
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especially psychology, because psychology claims to know something about the inner workings of the
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mind, even while psychology itself, the practice of it in general, in principle, actually denies
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the person is made in the image of God and denies the eternal soul. So we got to be really careful
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when we are walking along these roads. So the first concept that we'll talk about today
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is the inner child theory. The second one is shadow work. And the third one is somatic
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therapy. Okay. So that's like the body keeps score. You're holding trauma in your body. Okay.
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Wait till we get to all of these, because I know some of you are gunning to, you know,
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try to already respond. So let's go to the first, um, this idea of the inner child.
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So depending on your TikTok algorithm, you may have come across some videos of grown
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women, adult women, coaxing themselves through situations as if they're children.
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And I am playing these for you to give you an example of what I'm talking about.
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So you don't think I'm just pulling this out of a hat, not to mock these people, certainly
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not to make them a, you know, a target for anything.
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And so I think it's fair to say we're talking about a concept.
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Okay. So I'm just going to play that one example. The other example that we had to play was actually
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the video that we've already played in the past. And you saw the voiceover of that just a few
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minutes ago, but there are several videos like this and I'm not minimizing the hurt feelings
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that these people have. I simply do not think that the talking to ourselves as children is
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actually the path that we are supposed to take to deal with very real pain. So I want to talk
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about what the inner child concept is and how it originated, that tells us a lot about what it
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means. And if Christians should be toying with it, it's not just a social media fad. This
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psychological term inner child actually has roots in the new age movement. And quite frankly,
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has parts of it that a Christian really just shouldn't tolerate and shouldn't play with.
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So let's go back to its beginnings. Sigmund Freud, a lot of you know who he is. He was an
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Austrian physician. He was often called the father of modern psychology. He argued that early
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childhood experiences form unconscious patterns in our thinking. And he popularized the idea that
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repressed childhood trauma is what drives much of our adult behavior. So already you can see
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that some of that could be considered true and other parts of it. You're like, well,
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is that true? Does it really drive all of our unconscious patterns of thinking or even most
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of our unconscious patterns of thinking? Does it really contribute majorly to who we are and what
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we do as adults? I think all of us just using our own common sense, whether you're a psychiatrist,
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psychologist or not, can say, yeah, of course, things that have happened to us may affect how
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we think and how we think may affect how we talk and the things that we do. But is it driving our
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subconscious? Is it driving our behavior as adults? Partly, but then also it can't be completely that
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because we know we just also have a sin nature that was inherited from Adam that ultimately is
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responsible for the wrong things that we do. Carl Jung was one of Freud's students and he expanded
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on this idea of the inner child and what he called the divine child. Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist
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and psychologist who lived from 1875 to 1961. He was hugely influential in the field of psychology,
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and he's best known for developing the concept of archetypes, so the kind of types that people
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can be. And one of these archetypes is the divine child. And in Jung's conception, it wasn't just
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the childhood trauma that affected you, but actually the concept that there was a pure self
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inside of you trying to become whole. And if you read my first book, or if you're familiar with
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people like Glennon Doyle, or even people like Rachel Hollis, they might not directly
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cite the psychological literature, but this idea of this divine pure self inside of you,
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this concept of basically having an inner goddess, that if it weren't for the mean things people did
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said to you, if it weren't for capitalism and the patriarchy and racism and all of these unfair
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systems, if it wasn't for mass advertising and unfair beauty standards, she would be perfect.
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And your goal in life, your journey in life is to go back and find her and to release her from all
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of these unfair expectations and your childhood trauma. And once you're able to do that, then you
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can manifest all of these different areas of success. I'm not saying that's the fullness of
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what Jung taught, but we certainly see that narrative in so much of what women read and are
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taught today, this underlying assumption that if it weren't for all of these other factors,
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my inner self would be perfect and perfectly loved. And if I can find her and find a way to
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perfectly love her and heal her, then I'll just be okay. That is a secular new age idea. It's not a
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biblical idea. Jeremiah 17 tells us that our heart is actually desperately sick. Who can understand
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it. It's not something that we should follow. Again, we inherited our sin from Adam. And so
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we are depraved inside. We don't have a beautiful, perfect inner goddess. We are sinners who need to
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be saved. And so this journey to finding the untainted, perfect, divine self inside of us
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is a losing battle that actually will just encourage more self-focus, which is the thing
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that is oppressing and trapping us, not the thing that's going to liberate us.
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um the youngian concept of the inner child really moved beyond psychology circles and
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into mainstream awareness in the 1990s it was largely through the influence of an american
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counselor named john bradshaw in 1992 bradshaw published homecoming and it became a new york
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times bestseller and in that book he argued that the inner child carries unmet emotional needs
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that individuals could begin healing from mental trauma
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So that's a lot of what we're seeing on TikTok.
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Bradshaw's message reached an even wider audience
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And he guides her through a re-parenting exercise.
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Tell them, I'm the one that wrote you the letter.
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I know better than anybody what you've been through.
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Okay. So that is how that concept was kind of driven into the mainstream. And you can see
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Oprah's audience is female. And there's a reason why this resonates more with women than it does
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with men, because we are more empathetic, because we are more emotional. We are more in touch with
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those childhood memories and more susceptible to this idea that we have an inner child that is
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in us that needs to be reparented and reloved. Before I get into all of my theological response
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to that, I do want to go back to who Carl Jung is, and Carl Jung is rather, and the foundations
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of this belief and how what he believed is really intertwined with what we know and think about the
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inner child today. But first, let me go ahead and pause. Let me tell you about our next sponsor
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sale ever, LegacyBox.com slash Allie. So Carl Jung, again, who is considered hugely influential
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in modern psychology and really helped to deepen and popularize this inner child concept, he was
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heavily influenced by the occult and astrology. And he was one of the foundational figures who
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influence what we call the New Age movement, which we've talked about a lot on this show.
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You can go back and listen to some former episodes. You can read my first book. We talk
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about that a lot. Jung did not believe in a traditional conception of God, but he emphasized
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God as an archetype that occurred across cultures. That's what he believed about Jesus, someone that
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we can kind of all aspire to. You've probably heard of this idea of the Christ consciousness,
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and while that was not his main idea that he popularized, he certainly pushed forward this
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idea that you can take on the mind of Christ in a way that really isn't in alignment with
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Christianity at all. Again, this kind of pseudo-spiritual terminology. He also didn't
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believe in a trinity. He posited something called a quaternity, with Satan as one of the persons of
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the Godhead and his archetype. He believed that good shouldn't really overcome evil, but it should
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reconcile with evil. That's according to the Christian Research Institute. He also wrote that
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this opposition between good and evil means conflict to the last. It is the task of humanity
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to endure this conflict until time or turning point is reached where good and evil begin
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to relativize themselves, okay? Until they become relative, to doubt themselves. And the cry is
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raised for a morality beyond good and evil, he believed. And in the age of Christianity and the
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domain of Trinitarian thinking, such an idea is simply out of the question because the conflict
00:25:14.500
is too violent for evil to be assigned to any other logical relation to the Trinity than that
00:25:20.740
of the absolute opposite. And we can skip the rest of that quote because it just goes kind of
00:25:26.040
on and on. So he had a completely unbiblical idea of God, of the Trinity, of good and evil,
00:25:32.060
sin, darkness, light, goodness. And he basically used the biblical process of salvation by faith
00:25:39.840
and sanctification with a process of individuation.
00:25:44.380
So he used that as a metaphor for the process of individuation or becoming whole, again,
00:25:49.220
going to that inner divine self, that inner divine child.
00:25:51.980
And he saw this as the process of integrating your shadow and accepting all parts of yourself,
00:26:01.380
So that is what Carl Jung believed about the self, about God.
0.80
00:26:07.460
He certainly didn't believe in the Imago Dei like Christians believe in the Imago Dei.
00:26:12.620
And yet what he believed about the self and who we are in our purpose in life is so intertwined
00:26:20.220
with what students learn when they're becoming psychiatrists and psychologists today and
00:26:26.620
so much of what we read online about the process of healing.
00:26:31.500
And that's problematic that you have someone who pushed new age ideas, who believed in
00:26:36.040
astrology, who basically pushed the cult of self-affirmation and the God of self that we
00:26:40.900
talked about in my first book, You're Not Enough, who is really the father of those concepts. We
00:26:45.480
cannot allow him and his ideas to influence what we think about ourselves and our purpose, right?
00:26:51.400
It's not that people who are false teachers can't ever say something that is true and helpful.
00:26:57.000
All truth is God's truth. And so we can appreciate that. Maybe you can take aspects of what someone
00:27:03.880
says and apply it to the truth. But the bigger question is, is that is what he is saying,
00:27:08.840
is it true at all? And is it helpful? And is there an alternative in God's word that is better? And
00:27:14.720
when it comes to the inner child, yes, there is an alternative or a truth in God's word that is
00:27:19.700
better. So let's explore this. Is the inner child concept biblical? So it's not. It has no real
00:27:26.600
basis. It doesn't have a scientific basis, of course, but it also doesn't have a biblical
00:27:31.140
basis. We simply do not have a younger self emotionally or spiritually. Obviously, I know
00:27:37.100
that people aren't saying we have a physical younger self inside us, but even emotionally
00:27:40.460
and spiritually living inside us. We have memories and lasting effects from our past.
00:27:45.900
You are who you are right now. You only exist in this moment at the age you currently are with
00:27:53.860
all that you've lived through. No part of you is a child. You cannot heal the six-year-old self
00:28:00.440
who was neglected and that neglect was very real if that's something that you experience and the
00:28:06.180
pain you feel from that neglect it matters and it's real but only the 25 or 32 or 45 or 56 year
00:28:13.200
old self staring back at you in the mirror can actually be healed and she can't be healed by you
00:28:18.820
you've probably heard me say this before i say it all the time the self cannot be both the problem
00:28:24.480
and the solution the self can't be both the problem and the solution so if inside yourself
00:28:29.920
You are finding these very real feelings of depression, of insecurity, of fear.
00:28:34.200
You are not going to find the solutions for these emotions in the same place you're finding
00:28:38.960
It's actually a power outside of you that can heal you as you are right now.
00:28:43.880
Namely, it is the God who created you, who alone has the power to heal you and to help
00:28:49.620
And yes, he speaks to you as his daughter, no matter your age, but not as a toddler.
00:28:55.320
He sees and cares about your childhood, but he communicates to you as the adult you are,
00:29:02.640
There is value, I think, in acknowledging the past and owning the pain, processing unresolved
00:29:11.000
But the Christian approach to trauma is compassion.
00:29:18.120
But it is also the difficult Holy Spirit-empowered work of finding our worth in Christ.
00:29:24.040
and forgiving those who have wronged us and this is where true liberation is found it is not found
00:29:29.920
from self-discovery and self-love no amount of speaking to your inner child which doesn't
00:29:35.560
actually exist will lead you down a path of lasting fulfillment it's only jesus is only his
00:29:42.460
words that can do that and counseling in light of that truth can be helpful and healing for the
00:29:47.920
Christian, but no borrowing of new age psychology will do. In scripture, we kind of see this idea,
00:29:55.440
at least spiritually, of prolonged juvenility and prolonged adolescence, mimicking childishness.
00:30:04.420
I won't even say childlikeness because we are called to have a childlike faith in Christ, but
00:30:09.580
a childishness that it's not good, that it's a sign of arrested development. It's a sign of
00:30:15.680
immaturity, not a sign of healing. 1 Corinthians 13, 11 says, when I was a child, I spoke like a
00:30:21.820
child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish
00:30:28.340
ways. Also Ephesians 4, 14 urges maturity so that, quote, we may no longer be children tossed
00:30:35.740
to and fro by the waves and carried out by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning. Children are
00:30:41.940
precious within Christianity, but this prolonged adolescence is associated with a lack of spiritual
00:30:48.160
development, okay? Not an advancement of spiritual development. This inner child concept has the
00:30:53.880
potential, I think, to untether us from reality, to focus on our own power to self-heal rather than
00:31:01.680
on the healing power of the God who created us and the Christ who died for us. Hebrews also
00:31:07.320
stresses the need for believers to become mature. For though by this time you ought to be teachers,
00:31:12.480
you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk,
00:31:16.480
not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness
00:31:20.420
since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of
00:31:25.980
discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish from evil. So that's Hebrews 5,
00:31:30.620
12 through 14. So again, I just want to highlight it's not that being a child is bad within
00:31:35.960
christianity one of the culturally radical aspects of christianity is how valued children are that we
00:31:43.400
had this jesus who came to earth as a baby and against the protestation of his disciples said
00:31:49.460
let the little children come to me for such as these belong the kingdom of heaven and says we
00:31:54.260
must have faith like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven so there is a preciousness of children
00:31:59.980
within our faith. But we also recognize the naivete of children, the vulnerability of children,
00:32:07.640
that when it comes to our spiritual growth, that we are to look more like grownups, more like
00:32:12.740
adults, more like the mature and less like children. Because as we just read, they have the
00:32:18.020
propensity to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. There is a strength that we who are
00:32:24.900
mature are meant to take on through the power of the Holy Spirit. And I think at worst, the kind of
00:32:31.420
self-coddling that we see in a lot of the, at least social media inner child work, has an
00:32:37.880
infantilizing effect on us and actually might, I'm not saying it always says this, might lead us to a
00:32:47.760
lack of accountability and a lack of ownership of our life, a lack of realizing that we do
00:32:54.560
have agency. And we have been given by God authority in certain realms of our lives and
00:33:03.120
the ability to grow up into him who is the head. That's what Ephesians says that the body of Christ
00:33:08.640
is to do. We are to grow. We are to change. And again, it's not to discount that what happened
00:33:14.320
to us as a child matters, that there may be something to heal from, but I don't think the
00:33:18.780
self-infantilizing talk is going to, quote, reparent you into self-discovery and self-fulfillment.
00:33:27.120
God is our father. If you have a father wound, if you have a mother wound, you have a God who
00:33:33.000
created you, who knows you, who cares for you, who loves you so much that he sent his own son
00:33:38.000
to die for you, who calls you his daughter if you have been saved through Christ. And that is where
00:33:43.880
that is real reparenting. If you want that, you can't do it yourself. Okay. The reliance on the
00:33:50.400
self that we see in the inner child work, I mean, it goes back all the way to the garden. Did God
00:33:55.780
really say you can be like God? You can't be like God. And I think it's important for us to realize
00:34:02.280
this. Okay. Let's talk about shadow work. Let me pause, tell you about our next sponsor. It is
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Okay, if you don't know what shadow work is, let's watch this clip of embracing your shadow self.
00:35:03.180
You're not broken. You're just battling your shadow. Here's the truth. The version of you
00:35:07.480
who procrastinates who people pleases who avoids who overreacts chases validation gets defensive
00:35:13.200
picks fights or numbs out she didn't come out of nowhere she's a collection of everything that you
00:35:17.820
had to become to feel safe in a world that didn't feel safe that is your shadow and ignoring her is
00:35:23.180
what's keeping you stuck okay so see again we have this new age definition of human nature the
00:35:30.840
dismissal of the reality of the sin that we have inherited, the dismissal of the reality of our
00:35:38.580
agency over bad choices that we make, a lack of accountability, a lack of ownership, a lack of
00:35:44.920
responsibility. Also, there's a relativism here between good and bad. And I see this a lot in
00:35:51.620
children's movies nowadays. The trend now is to recast previously understood villains as like
00:35:58.500
these misunderstood characters that are, you know, oppressed by Cinderella are like actually nice
00:36:05.300
underneath it all. And I actually think that's very dangerous. And you're teaching kids, one,
00:36:10.680
not to take responsibility for their actions, but also to blur the lines between right and wrong
00:36:15.140
and good and evil. Okay. So this is just another way to excuse bad. So the concept of the shadow,
00:36:22.520
just like inner child work has its roots in freud and young freud posited that a lot of our impulses
00:36:30.040
are unconscious motivated by parts of our psyche that we're unaware of and that his student carl
00:36:35.700
young introduced this concept of the shadow as part of the unconscious mind and his formulation
00:36:40.540
of the shadow is essentially a group of traits that we repress um or deny describing it as the
00:36:46.920
thing a person has no wish to be. So here's another explanation, step five.
00:36:54.180
Shadow work is finding and focusing on the dark parts of yourself. We have learned over time to
00:37:04.740
hate and judge these parts. Shadow work is important to send these parts love, to accept
00:37:13.380
these parts why you may ask these dark parts make us whole humans okay so you see a little bit of
00:37:23.680
the concept of what we talked about earlier with young believing that we need to reconcile good
00:37:28.540
and evil it's not that good needs to conquer evil it's that we need to reconcile good and evil go
00:37:32.400
beyond the idea of good and evil into something more transcendent if you don't see how satanic
00:37:38.720
this is and how satan uses um a sophisticated sounding language to make sin seem palatable
00:37:48.240
then it's just time for us to be reading our bibles a little bit more and ask god for wisdom
00:37:53.260
and he promises to give us wisdom if we ask for it so young argued that the shadow self can include
00:37:58.660
negative impulses like anger resentment but also positive impulses like creativity so again you see
00:38:03.220
these blurring of the lines in this formulation integrating your shadow self is part of understanding
00:38:08.380
your past. Childhood relationships repress trauma. Integrating the shadow self into your persona
00:38:12.760
helps you unlock hidden potential. The idea is that we repress this shadow to conform to moral
00:38:18.060
expectations and social norms of our culture. So it's not that, according to Jung, the shadow
00:38:25.980
is necessarily bad. Again, it's just kind of like misunderstood. His ideas were largely confined to
00:38:33.680
the field of psychology. But again, just like the inner child in the 1970s and 1990s, these ideas
00:38:39.140
spread into the self-help movement. Thank you, Oprah, New Age Spirituality, Human Potential
00:38:44.320
Movement, and also people who claim to be part of the church are like a part of this. The big
00:38:49.160
self-help movement in the prosperity gospel preachers, they preach a version of all of this,
00:38:55.560
even if they don't realize they are. The concept of shadow work really boomed in popular culture
00:39:00.660
in 2021. There's a publication of the shadow work journal by Akilah Shaheen. Um, and I think we have
00:39:07.580
a video of that. Uh, yeah. So this book just, it's apparently super popular and people are writing
00:39:15.680
in their journals about it. And of course people claim that it's changing their lives. Um, by 2023,
00:39:22.200
the garden, the guardian reported that shadow work videos on Tik TOK had passed 1 billion views.
00:39:34.840
It's an approach based on moral relativism, and it stems from Jung's heretical system
00:39:39.220
influenced by mysticism, by Eastern philosophy.
00:39:42.620
Our sinful nature and our impulses, like envy and anger and lust, are not parts of us that
00:39:51.120
The Bible does not treat sin as something to integrate into our lives or to understand
00:39:56.780
Paul writes very clearly, put to death. Therefore, what is earthly in you? Okay. So it's not shadow
00:40:03.360
because again, these people are trying to make good and evil as something as abstract, but Paul
00:40:08.660
says it's actually the least abstract thing in the world. It's earthly, earthly in you, sexual
00:40:14.120
immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Colossians 3, 5.
00:40:20.920
It is true that we may be unaware of the extent of our sinfulness and need to bring that to light
00:40:25.880
because the prophet Jeremiah wrote, the heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick.
00:40:30.000
Who can understand it? Jeremiah 17, 9. David also says, who can discern his errors? Declare me
00:40:35.620
innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. So we don't
00:40:40.940
even know all of our sins. They're deep inside of our intentions. Let them not have dominion over
00:40:47.900
me. But David doesn't say, I'm going to do my shadow work and do my work of self-discovery to
00:40:53.080
try to really understand these misunderstood parts of myself. And he actually was being unjustly
00:40:59.360
pursued and oppressed and misunderstood in a lot of ways. And yet he is seeking God to search him
00:41:05.700
out. In another part of the Psalms, he says, search me and know my heart. See if there be
00:41:10.900
any wayward way in me. So there may be aspects of our motivations that are dark that we aren't
00:41:16.760
aware of, but the solution is to pray to God that he would reveal those things in us and confess
00:41:22.580
them and call them evil and say, I am responsible for those things. It's a little bit difficult to
00:41:28.400
understand these theological concepts of inheriting original sin and also being responsible for the
00:41:34.300
sins that we commit. And there are many theological scholars who have talked about that reconciliation,
00:41:38.760
and yet it's true. This mystery is true, is that we are born sinful with the capacity,
00:41:44.700
propensity to sin. It doesn't mean we've actively sinned yet, but also we are responsible for our
00:41:49.580
sins. John writes, and this is the good news. This is the real liberating news. If we confess
00:41:54.440
our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
00:41:59.840
That's 1 John 1, 9. There's the manifestation coach who talks about shadow work and talks about
00:42:06.600
shame specifically when it comes to a person's shadow. We'll get to the subject of shame in just
00:42:11.580
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so there's this idea that shame is incredibly harmful you've heard this you've heard this
00:43:17.600
in christian circles that shame is bad guilt is good shame is bad shame is always bad shame is
00:43:23.360
always of the devil again that's not a biblical concept that comes from popular psychology
00:43:27.920
and here is what it sounds like in popular psychology thought six there's nothing to be
00:43:33.720
ashamed of there's a quote by some philosopher that i should know for credibility nothing that
00:43:38.240
is human is alien to me it's essentially realizing that you can waste your life being ashamed over a
00:43:43.800
whole plethora of things really even the darkest parts of the human psyche deserve a voice because
00:43:48.340
the more they are repressed the more they come out in passive aggressive action like think about
00:43:53.800
how duality is repressed in the christian church and how that plays out that's a call for shadow
00:43:58.240
work. Okay. So your bad impulses should absolutely not only be repressed and suppressed and controlled
00:44:05.580
because self-control is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, but they need to be crucified, right?
00:44:10.080
Like, yes, they may need to be brought to light, but brought to light in order that they may be
00:44:14.640
crucified, not that they manifest themselves in a non-passive aggressive way. And like, what is,
00:44:22.100
what's the better thing there in her mind? Oh, oh no, your feelings of anger might manifest
00:44:28.680
themselves passive aggressive. Yeah. I'd rather you roll your eyes at me than like commit murder.
00:44:34.900
Like I think passive aggressive is actually a better for society manifestation of our evil
00:44:40.500
impulses than aggressive. And so repression, suppression, crucifixion of bad impulses is
00:44:47.040
like a really good thing. These evil impulses are not misunderstood. They're actually worse
00:44:52.040
than we think. That's one of Jesus's main messages. When he says, you've heard it said,
00:44:56.540
thou shall not murder. I'm telling you that the anger that you have in your heart is akin to
00:45:01.120
murder. You've heard it said, don't commit adultery. I say to you, the lust that you have
00:45:05.200
for another woman is the same as committing adultery. And oh, it's better to pluck out
00:45:11.880
your eye than to look at a woman lustfully. It is better to cut off your hand than to steal,
0.77
00:45:17.260
than to want something that's not yours, than to covet.
00:45:20.260
Okay, so Jesus takes sin to a whole other internal level.
00:45:24.240
It's not just about what we do aggressively or passive aggressively.
00:45:30.280
So again, all of this just flies in the face of the Christian message.
0.82
00:45:35.320
Now, speaking of shame specifically, there are times when shame is bad,
00:45:38.900
when Satan, the accuser, is bringing up past sins that God has already forgiven you for,
00:45:42.920
you've repented of, when he's making you feel ashamed of abuse
00:45:46.000
that you endured from someone else. That's not your fault. But by and large, shame is not the
00:45:53.060
problem that we have in our society. Sin is the problem that we have in our society and shamelessness
00:45:58.960
over sin. In Mere Christianity, one of my favorite books of all time, and so if you have not read it,
00:46:04.560
read it. C.S. Lewis writes this, human beings all over the earth have this curious idea that they
00:46:09.680
ought to behave a certain way and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact
00:46:15.500
behave in that way. They know the law of nature. They break it. These two facts are the foundation
00:46:20.300
of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. So he's saying that shame
00:46:25.320
is a part of that. Shame is the delta between what you're supposed to do and what you actually
00:46:30.100
do. If there is a delta, then that is where shame exists. And when people can't name that,
00:46:35.880
when they can't say, oh, the reason that there's a gap between what I feel like I'm supposed to do
00:46:41.300
and what I actually do is because it breaks God's law, when they can't name it or when they don't
00:46:46.620
believe or hate Christianity, then they say, well, then the shame I feel must be wrong.
00:46:51.480
Then there must not really be a gap. I must just be able to determine what's right based on my
00:46:55.860
feelings. That's why it's so important for us to speak the truth. But that's where the
00:47:01.380
shadow work thing comes in to try to justify, rationalize away shame. The shame all human
00:47:07.500
beings feel at not being able, or maybe not all human beings, but many human beings should feel
00:47:12.480
about how they're supposed to behave actually does point us to a law. It points us to God's law. It
00:47:18.120
points us to God. And the Bible has the answer for the problem of shame. 2 Corinthians 7, 9-11
00:47:24.260
says, as it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into
00:47:28.980
repenting. For you felt a godly grief so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief
00:47:34.560
produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces
00:47:40.180
death. For see what earnestness this godly grief has produced in you, he writes to the church in
00:47:45.440
Corinth, but also what eagerness to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what
00:47:49.420
longing, what zeal, what punishment. True shame and true guilt over sin leads us to repentance.
00:48:00.520
In Christ, we can be washed of the shame of our past.
00:48:04.180
That's the only way to be truly cleansed of guilt.
00:48:07.620
But of course, we continue to sin and we continue to feel guilty in a lot of ways.
00:48:13.000
But we can be rid of the accusations of the evil one, not just by rationalizing the bad
00:48:18.500
things we do or the bad impulses that we have, but by saying, Lord, I surrender them to you.
00:48:26.300
make me more like you, continuing to confess our sin and through the power of the Holy Spirit to
00:48:30.940
be better. And we long for the day when we actually are cleansed from sin. That is one thing shadow
00:48:35.700
work and all of this psychology stuff is trying to do. It's trying to, in an unbiblical, satanic
00:48:41.420
way, bring the goodness of future heaven here on earth saying, oh, you don't want to feel bad about
00:48:46.940
sin anymore. You want to be liberated from these oppressive systems. You want to not have to worry
00:48:51.700
about uh your mistakes you want to no longer feel shame here you can do all of these things when for
00:48:58.280
the christian we know we get a taste of all of those things through christ here on earth but it
00:49:01.980
won't be until the other side of glory that we are truly liberated from the pain and the burden
00:49:07.240
and the effects of sin psychology has a parallel maybe it's perpendicular but it's like parallel
00:49:15.700
but an evil track toward paradise, toward utopia of salvation and sanctification that leads you
00:49:24.940
closer into yourself. What it doesn't tell you is that when you get there, you find a lot of
00:49:30.940
ugly and shameful stuff. It's not this beautiful inner child divine self that you were promised
00:49:38.320
that you were going to find. Christianity leads you away from the self. You die to yourself. You
0.99
00:49:44.580
deny yourself. And it's really hard along the way. It's not fun. It doesn't go viral. It's not
00:49:49.500
popular. You're not going to see it glamorized in modern culture. But at the end of that, you get
00:49:53.980
Christ. At the end of that, you get real satisfaction in heaven. And gosh, it's just like
00:49:58.460
Satan to do that, to switch things up on us with things that sound really good. All right. Let's
00:50:04.360
now talk about, let's end this on somatic therapy or unleashing trauma that is trapped in the body.
00:50:11.700
And I'm going to have to shorten this a little bit.
00:50:13.820
And if you're like, oh gosh, I really wish that we had talked more about that, then I
00:50:18.740
will try to follow up on this because I know that this is one that's super popular among
00:50:24.880
And it's a little bit more nuanced because I don't think all of this is a lie.
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I think it is incomplete and therefore can lead us in the wrong direction.
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So I'll try to get through this last part as quickly as I can.
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okay somatic therapy um i had known about this seen videos about this i hadn't really thought
00:51:47.540
very deeply about it i was kind of one of those people that just believed yeah like this is
00:51:51.920
probably true this is a really interesting way that god made us and i still think that partly
00:51:56.680
but once again we get into some new age things that just aren't biblically true so let's talk
00:52:02.140
about what somatic therapy is first it's a form of body-centered therapy that claims trauma is
00:52:07.280
trapped in the body, the nervous system, and the muscles. There's a health and wellness coach
00:52:12.320
named Mike Chang. He gives his movement guide to releasing trauma stored in the body, SOT7.
00:52:17.500
The first thing is vibrating and shaking the body. Doing so allows you to be able to increase the
00:52:23.680
energy circulation and get the energy moving. The second thing is doing strength training.
00:52:29.080
Something like doing push-ups exerts the body so we're able to go deep inside the muscles
00:52:48.640
Okay, I have a little bit of a hard time with that
00:53:00.180
So I don't know if there's also some mental aspect
00:53:02.920
where you have to think about like releasing trauma um we have some exercises that we can
00:53:08.580
show you voiceover too um that like okay so these these are the kinds of things like you're supposed
00:53:15.820
to if you're watching this throw a pillow down on the ground it's called i'm not kidding says
00:53:21.280
sumo wrestler stance you're supposed to flex and point your feet this is going to release fear
00:53:25.340
going to release anger it's going to release overwhelm you pull one ear firmly anxiety
00:53:31.480
is supposed to help you kind of in the fetal position. And I don't doubt that some of these
00:53:36.120
mechanisms may have a calming effect on your body, but here's the underlying idea in this.
00:53:41.620
Even if you don't consciously remember your trauma, your nervous system does. Trauma isn't
00:53:47.860
just the event, it's what gets imprinted on the body. Even when your mind moves on, time passes,
00:53:53.340
your body stays stuck in survival. This shows up as chronic patterns of fight, flight, freeze,
00:53:58.520
and fawn. We see it in our posture, our muscular tension, our breathing patterns, in persistent
00:54:04.160
feelings of unease, distrust, or hypervigilance without really knowing why. Now, trauma doesn't
00:54:09.820
just disrupt memory. It actually enhances implicit memory or unconscious memory. This means you may
00:54:16.160
not be able to remember or verbalize the event clearly, but your body still reacts as if it's
00:54:21.160
happening okay maybe um and then we have okay so there's vo3 is like uh this video shows a man
00:54:29.180
allegedly releasing stress from his body um by shaking i think this is a man or a woman um this
00:54:38.960
is again one of these sessions where people it's almost like those like super pentecostal revivals
00:54:45.560
where people are kind of like on the floor shaking filled with the holy spirit it reminds me of that
00:54:50.580
okay i saw this singer and songwriter leanne rhymes she's brought to tears after a few
00:54:54.940
movement movements with a somatic uh therapist these are really going around right now stop nine
00:55:03.080
say i feel safe i feel safe i can let this go i can let this go oh my god wow
00:55:22.520
okay so there's a lot of videos going around of her really you know emotional crying after
00:55:30.900
some of these position changes so this idea was popularized by this book i had heard of this book
00:55:36.080
i don't know if you have by um this 2014 book called the body keeps the square brain mind and
00:55:43.040
body in the healing of trauma he wrote trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the
00:55:47.160
past it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind brain and body this imprint has ongoing
00:55:53.660
consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present so these theories are
00:56:00.640
very scientifically contested in a 2021 study they found that somatic experiencing effectiveness and
00:56:08.600
key factors of a body-oriented trauma therapy, that there is some preliminary evidence for
00:56:13.520
positive effects for things like PTSD, but overall studies quality assessment indicate
00:56:21.340
Also, clinical neuropsychiatry, a study says that this idea is not supported by past or
00:56:27.060
current knowledge and in several instances is inconsistent with the broader evidence
00:56:31.300
based that it's actually untenable because it is not defensible based on existing
00:56:37.260
And so scientifically, just from a secular perspective, it is very contentious, actually, whether or not this has a scientific basis.
00:56:53.240
It has significant overlap with these New Age and Eastern ideas.
00:56:57.460
Pop therapy trends that push somatic experiences use phrases like your body's wisdom or your body knows.
00:57:03.620
from a post on Trauma Therapist Institute titled Reconnect With Your Body, Somatic
00:57:07.940
Exercises and Reflections, allow you to honor your body's wisdom and its capacity for healing,
00:57:14.240
marking significant steps in a holistic healing process. So again, a lot of the language we see
00:57:19.180
is that it's about the self, that inside you, there is this inner knowledge, this divine wisdom
00:57:25.080
that just needs to be tapped into by this work of self-discovery and self-love. This framing of the
00:57:31.600
body as a source of sacred knowledge or higher intelligence mirrors very classic New Age ideas
00:57:37.520
like the body as a manifestation of psyche or spirit. Example in New Age literature would be
00:57:43.680
in the 2007 self-help book, The Secret Language of Your Body. We see, quote, wisdom of the body
00:57:49.940
language. Like in this quote, you need to learn how to focus within and allow the innate wisdom
00:57:55.660
of your body to notify you as to when it needs to work and when it needs to rest. In all of this,
00:58:01.600
just like all new age concepts have ties to Buddhism. In his book, Somatic Descent,
00:58:07.100
How to Unlock the Deepest Wisdom of the Body, Buddhist academic Reginald A. Ray writes,
00:58:12.200
for tantric Buddhism, the tradition in which I was trained, the ultimate enlightened wisdom
00:58:17.880
is found in the body. The wisdom of the body is not just one spiritual experience among many
00:58:22.660
others. It is the ultimate experience or realization, including all others capable
00:58:27.040
of bringing us to complete human fulfillment. Okay, so there are some troubling aspects of this
00:58:34.060
that I think we need to be careful about. We do, of course, have brain-body loops. Our brain does
00:58:39.340
talk to our body all day long. It sends signals to the body, receives feedback from it, creating
00:58:44.260
ongoing feedback loops that influence everything from our heart rate to our stress responses
00:58:49.220
that is very well established. But there is no evidence of energy leaving your body when you
00:58:54.760
shake. Many systems of thought build on a small kernel of truth and extend it far beyond what
00:58:59.800
the evidence actually supports. The presence of something true at the foundation does not mean
00:59:04.340
that the entire framework on top of it should be accepted. Stretching can be healthy. That doesn't
00:59:11.020
mean that we have to embrace yoga in all of its corresponding spiritual practices. Even if the
00:59:15.840
evidence shows this is helpful to make you feel better, it can't resolve your deepest need. And I
00:59:20.860
think that's what's important here. Like breathing exercises can be helpful, but they're not going to
00:59:25.600
deal with your sin. It can't make us more holy. It can't make us more healed ultimately because
00:59:30.540
that only comes from Christ. So my issue with this is not that like getting massages or stretching
00:59:36.780
or certain kinds of exercises can't help regulate your nervous system, or I don't know, maybe there
00:59:42.040
is some emotional effect that it can have that we don't totally understand, but know that this is
00:59:48.320
not a treatment for sin and suffering. Treating sin, suffering, or emotional struggles as purely
00:59:53.580
physiological problems solvable by these techniques instead of God's word falls into
00:59:58.580
medicalizing the mind. As we discussed in our interview with Dr. Greg Gifford, which I just
01:00:03.780
really encourage you to go back and listen to, there's something that he said in that interview
01:00:08.940
that I think about every day. He said, your body can't make you sin. Your mood, your hormones,
01:00:14.460
like how tired you are what time of the month it is it can't make you sin okay so if that's true
01:00:22.440
if like the body doesn't have that power the body also can't heal you from sin and trauma
01:00:27.920
one of satan's subtler tactics is not to directly oppose christian teaching but to introduce an
01:00:34.280
alternative way of thinking that gradually erodes and replaces it in our lives so these somatic
01:00:39.520
exercises can subtly shift blame to the body. My nervous system is just dysregulated rather than
01:00:45.160
calling for sanctification and for repentance. Jesus had to deal with all kinds of confusion
01:00:50.520
over the role of the physical body. The Jews had extreme focus on physical rituals that
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he thought would keep them clean. But Jesus, again, he brought it to the heart. It is not
01:01:02.120
what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of his mouth, this defiles a
01:01:06.180
person. And so Jesus dealt with a lot of this confusion about what righteousness looked like,
01:01:12.400
what cleansing looked like, that it wasn't just about these physical aspects. It certainly wasn't
01:01:17.000
these pseudo-psychological New Age aspects, that it was a matter of soul and heart and mind and
01:01:28.160
body intertwined, but only through the power of the Holy Spirit, not by going more deeply into
01:01:33.640
ourselves but into god his objective truth and his word rightly understanding ourselves and sin
01:01:41.100
and good and evil really all of this so much of modern psychology is all about self-help self-healing
01:01:48.560
self-discovery self-fulfillment and of course it's enticing it's enticing for the same reason
01:01:54.320
that the fruit and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was enticing because it entices
01:01:59.620
you to think that you can be like God. I'm not saying every aspect of every psychological concept
01:02:06.900
or every aspect of somatic therapy is all demonic and wrong. I'm saying really be careful. Really
01:02:13.960
compare everything you do, everything you imbibe, everything that informs your patterns of thinking
01:02:19.240
to the word of God. And I'm telling myself that just as much as anyone else. I think there are
01:02:24.540
so many underlying assumptions that affect our theology and our view of ourselves that we don't
01:02:29.220
really understand. So maybe it's just a good thing for you to think about, for us all to think about,
01:02:35.060
is what I think about myself in healing, is it informed by scripture? Is it informed by therapy?
01:02:42.040
Is it informed by the rock of ages or is it informed by the new age? Because that really
01:02:48.000
matters. All right, that's all we got time for today. We will be back here on Wednesday.