Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1332 ｜ Inner Child, Shadow Work & Somatic Therapy： A Warning to Christian Women

00:00:00.740 The inner child, shadow work, somatic therapy, all of these therapeutic concepts are really

00:00:07.380 popular, but are they biblical?

00:00:10.040 We'll be getting into all of that on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:13.760 I am so excited, by the way, before we get started to speak at the Last Stand Conference

00:00:18.960 this summer, June 5th and 6th.

00:00:21.980 It's in Denver, Colorado.

00:00:23.480 I'll be speaking alongside Seth Gruber, Frank Turek, so many more.

00:00:26.940 Go to thelaststand.com. Use code Allie for a discount. That's thelaststand.com, code Allie.

00:00:43.300 Hey, y'all. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend watching

00:00:48.920 the Masters. We did. We love the Masters. I don't have FOMO very much, but I have the Masters FOMO.

00:00:54.760 We've had the privilege of going three times.

00:00:56.860 We obviously didn't get to go this year, but for all of you who did, I'm trying not to

00:01:01.320 be jealous.

00:01:01.880 I'm trying just to be happy for you. 0.97

00:01:03.740 And I want all of you related girls and related bros out there to promise me that if you have

00:01:08.880 not been to the Masters and you ever have the opportunity to go to the Masters, that

00:01:12.640 you go, that you do whatever you have to do to accept the invitation of that very kind

00:01:17.840 and generous person who has invited you.

00:01:19.980 I don't care how much of a homebody you are.

00:01:21.620 you are going to be very thankful for the experience of the masters. I don't really

00:01:25.440 say this about many things, but there's really nothing like it. It's like going back in time.

00:01:29.740 It's like going to a different planet. It's an incredible experience. And I hope I get to go

00:01:35.680 again one day, but I hope you all got to enjoy it from the comfort of your home like we did.

00:01:40.440 And I also just want to remind you that God's eternal plan of redemption is going off without

00:01:44.760 a hitch completely and totally. There's nothing at all that has caused any detour, any delay.

00:01:50.540 no speed bumps no accidents there's nothing that has happened that he didn't foresee that he didn't

00:01:57.120 know about he's never looking down and wondering how in the world am i going to clean up the mess

00:02:01.320 oh my goodness i didn't see that coming that was a surprise for me he's never thrown off

00:02:05.460 he's never taken aback there is nothing that is happening in your life that he cannot handle

00:02:10.240 there is nothing that is happening in your life in the world that can ever separate you from the

00:02:15.580 love of Christ. That's what Romans 8 reminds us of. Paul just rattles off all of these reasons

00:02:20.860 why someone might think they could be separated from God, all of these big, powerful things that

00:02:26.460 could cause a wedge between them and their relationship with their creator. But because

00:02:30.840 of Christ and what he has accomplished for us on the cross and how he defeated death,

00:02:34.680 we don't have to worry about that. We are forever reconciled to God if by grace through faith we

00:02:39.320 have been saved. And we are a part of this grand eternal plan of redemption that through the mostly

00:02:45.120 unseen and unsung acts of obedience that we do as Christians every day, the seemingly mundane acts

00:02:51.500 of faithfulness and worship that we do when we simply do the next right thing, God is accomplishing

00:02:56.920 his grand purposes through us. He doesn't need us, but he has chosen to use us. And how incredible

00:03:02.420 of a privilege is it to be voices of clarity and courage in this age that is just riddled with

00:03:08.620 cowardice and riddled with confusion? That is what the church is. That is what Christians are. We are

00:03:13.500 beacons of clarity and courage in an age that is just infected by cowardice and confusion and chaos.

00:03:21.860 We can be a bulwark against those things. We can be a tower of refuge against those things

00:03:26.100 by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we get that clarity and we get that courage from, yes, God

00:03:30.960 himself, the Holy Spirit that he sent as a helper to be in our hearts and to live inside of us,

00:03:36.640 but also through his word. And that's why on Mondays, I like to focus on these subjects,

00:03:41.940 these evergreen theological subjects. I look for something that seems to be confusing. A lot of us

00:03:47.820 probably confuse me at some point in my life, and especially what is confusing or what's causing

00:03:53.720 chaos or what's causing some kind of dissonance or some kind of theological mishap in the lives

00:04:00.080 of Christian women. And I'm certainly not immune to those infections. And how can the Word of God 1.00

00:04:08.200 add clarity to that. And so that's what we're going to be doing today, specifically about

00:04:12.920 therapy culture and therapy language, specifically three concepts within that realm of therapy

00:04:18.720 culture and therapy language. Before we get into it, just a couple of announcements. Share the

00:04:24.340 Arrow speakers. We finally announced our Share the Arrow speakers, y'all. And I just have to say,

00:04:29.700 can I just say this? I feel like I can say this without it being a brag because it has nothing

00:04:34.260 to do with me that this is the best speaker lineup that you're going to get anywhere at

00:04:39.540 any Christian conference. It just is. And it's because all of these people are so amazing

00:04:43.980 because God has equipped them for such a time as this. So we've got Shane and Shane leading

00:04:47.920 worship. Incredible. We've got Rosaria Butterfield back for the second time. She was our inaugural

00:04:53.840 speaker at our inaugural Share the Arrows, got a standing ovation before she even spoke because

00:04:58.220 she's amazing. We've got Kosti Hinn, first male speaker this year, also amazing. He's been on

00:05:04.160 the show several times. You guys love him. We've got Elisa Childers back for the third time and

00:05:09.340 she's going to be speaking with Natasha Crane, so good at breaking down the lies of the new age and

00:05:14.660 of the culture and of progressivism. We've got Grace Anna Castleberry and Audrey Brogy for our

00:05:20.420 talk on motherhood and womanhood and homemaking and all of that beautiful stuff. And then we have

00:05:27.280 one more speaker that is to be announced. It's also to be determined. So we've got one more

00:05:32.080 special speaker. And then of course yours truly will be there too. Go to sharethearrows.com.

00:05:37.500 Get your tickets today, October 10th, Dallas, Texas, women only. Sorry, Relatables. Maybe 1.00

00:05:43.080 someday there will be something else for you, but this is a Christian women's conference.

00:05:49.800 Sharethearrows.com. Get your tickets today and do not delay. Last thing before we get into it,

00:05:55.260 please leave a review for Relatable. If you love Relatable, please leave us a five-star review,

00:05:59.600 Apple Podcasts wherever you listen. Subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe on Spotify. Subscribe on

00:06:05.020 Apple Podcasts. It helps the show a lot. And make sure to tell your friends about Relatable.

00:06:11.080 Thank you so much for being here. Let's get into this very controversial subject. Are you ready?

00:06:15.520 Okay. If you want to know what I think is the biggest threat, the biggest threat to Christian 0.98

00:06:23.220 women's worldview today, to the theology of Christian women today, to Christian women's

00:06:29.060 ministry. It's actually not progressivism. It's not feminism. It's not the new age, all things

00:06:35.520 that I've talked about many, many times. It's not even the toxic empathy that's interwoven

00:06:40.460 into all of these belief systems that I just listed. It's therapy culture. I actually believe

00:06:47.480 that the progressivism, feminism, toxic empathy, emotionalism, me-centeredness, 1.00

00:06:53.880 new age-ish stuff that unfortunately infects so many women's Bible studies, Christian women's

00:07:00.500 books, and conferences are all downstream from the secular therapy pop psychology pseudo-spiritualism

00:07:07.440 that we find on social media that is dedicated to women's therapy and therapy concepts. 0.55

00:07:13.460 Now, in the past, we've talked about what I dubbed in my first book, Toxic Mommy Culture.

00:07:19.280 Okay, so we've been talking about that, writing about that for years.

00:07:22.200 And a lot of what we're talking about today was actually written about in my first book,

00:07:27.600 but I hadn't named it the way that I'm naming it now. 1.00

00:07:30.680 So toxic mommy culture is the fad of complaining about motherhood on the internet and drowning 1.00

00:07:35.680 your stress in wine and smut fiction.

00:07:38.100 And that concept, while terrible, is not exactly what we're talking about today, but it's related

00:07:44.300 to this.

00:07:44.880 This is toxic therapy culture.

00:07:46.920 And that is the use of therapeutic language and concepts as an excuse for complaining

00:07:51.400 and self-centeredness, a replacement for sanctification, for self-denial, for generosity,

00:07:57.380 and the hard work of Holy Spirit-empowered holiness.

00:08:01.340 Now, before we get into the specifics on this, this is not an indictment on therapy as a

00:08:07.180 whole.

00:08:07.680 I've told this story many times, wrote about it in my first book, of the counselor who

00:08:12.320 spoke unrelenting truth to me about my eating disorder.

00:08:15.500 And God used that to reroute my life.

00:08:18.580 We have had multiple counselors on this show talk about how therapy can be Christ-honoring

00:08:23.400 and can help Christians heal and reorient their lives around God and His Word.

00:08:27.940 And so I believe biblical counselors are a gift to the church.

00:08:31.320 And I think that there are many seasons in a person's life when seeking out counseling

00:08:35.620 from professional, wise Christians is necessary and good.

00:08:39.180 but but i think many christian women have been duped by therapeutic ideas that sound almost

00:08:46.980 christian but are not i have been and actually this directs us away from the truth that god

00:08:53.040 shares with us about ourselves our purpose our responsibility as christians and what we are

00:08:58.700 actually capable of a couple of weeks ago i got into hot water because i talked about this

00:09:04.660 specifically the concept of the inner child. I'm still getting DMs about it, still getting

00:09:10.040 sent videos of therapists online very angry about my videos. So we'll get into that to set up the

00:09:17.180 context, and then we'll get into our three problematic concepts today and what scripture

00:09:22.320 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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00:10:22.840 all right a couple weeks ago um former producer brie i'll just throw her under the bus really

00:10:35.000 fast no i'm grateful that she did this she sent me a video that was kind of going viral

00:10:39.500 on tiktok and i responded uh to this and we'll just kind of play a silent video of this so you

00:10:45.780 can at least see what i'm talking about and it was this viral tiktok of a woman speaking to her

00:10:51.980 inner child before going into an interview. And in the video, the woman has her eyes closed.

00:10:56.340 She's kind of cradling her body. She's rocking back and forth. She's speaking in a baby voice.

00:11:00.480 She's affirming the fears of awkwardness, acknowledging her nervousness. Now, some of

00:11:04.240 you might be thinking, does this person have special needs? No, this is not what that's about.

00:11:08.960 Certainly, we wouldn't be highlighting something like that. This is a person whose caption says

00:11:14.300 that she is speaking to her inner child. And in my response to this, because I thought it was an

00:11:20.480 important concept to respond to, it was not mocking this woman who filmed and posted this

00:11:25.760 at all. I simply made this statement. Are you ready? This has caused a lot of shockwaves that

00:11:31.440 I did not realize it was going to cause. There's no such thing as an inner child in the Christian 0.89

00:11:36.760 worldview. Childhood memories? In some cases, traumatic memories? Yes. Childhood experiences

00:11:43.580 that shaped us into who we are? Yes. Childhood pain that we still carry with us? Possibly.

00:11:49.880 That's very true for a lot of people, but the concept of an emotional or spiritual existence

00:11:56.160 of an internal version of ourselves at six or eight or 12 years old does not exist.

00:12:01.820 And I actually believe speaking to ourselves in this way can actually arrest our growth

00:12:06.600 as adults and as Christians rather than develop it.

00:12:11.440 So hang with me.

00:12:12.060 You might completely disagree with me, and that is okay.

00:12:15.160 There was a lot of agreement on my post when I talked about this.

00:12:18.800 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.

00:12:41.300 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.

00:12:56.560 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.

00:13:05.600 And I believe that it hurts our theology.

00:13:08.100 And if our theology is infected, the rest of our lives are going to be affected too.

00:13:13.080 So today I want to go through not only this inner child concept, but two other concepts

00:13:18.000 or practices and therapy that I see Christian women involved in today that I think at the 0.85

00:13:24.220 very least are not neutral. 0.95

00:13:26.380 They're not neutral.

00:13:27.820 They are probably not healthy.

00:13:29.980 and I think in some ways, okay, in some ways, listen to all of the nuances and the clarity

00:13:36.460 that I am taking pains to give, go against scripture. And we need to be really, really

00:13:41.820 careful when something is outside the bounds of scripture to ask ourselves, is there a biblical

00:13:46.640 basis in this? Are there aspects of this that are not true, that are not healthy, that go against

00:13:51.700 what I know about the gospel, what the God says, the God of the universe says about my body and

00:13:57.500 about myself, about my past and my purpose, we should be asking that about all things, but

00:14:02.280 especially psychology, because psychology claims to know something about the inner workings of the

00:14:08.020 mind, even while psychology itself, the practice of it in general, in principle, actually denies

00:14:15.140 the person is made in the image of God and denies the eternal soul. So we got to be really careful

00:14:20.760 when we are walking along these roads. So the first concept that we'll talk about today

00:14:25.520 is the inner child theory. The second one is shadow work. And the third one is somatic

00:14:32.380 therapy. Okay. So that's like the body keeps score. You're holding trauma in your body. Okay.

00:14:38.480 Wait till we get to all of these, because I know some of you are gunning to, you know,

00:14:42.900 try to already respond. So let's go to the first, um, this idea of the inner child.

00:14:51.080 So depending on your TikTok algorithm, you may have come across some videos of grown

00:14:55.620 women, adult women, coaxing themselves through situations as if they're children.

00:15:00.040 And I am playing these for you to give you an example of what I'm talking about.

00:15:03.800 So you don't think I'm just pulling this out of a hat, not to mock these people, certainly

00:15:08.520 not to make them a, you know, a target for anything.

00:15:11.000 But these people did post this publicly.

00:15:14.100 And so I think it's fair to say we're talking about a concept.

00:15:16.680 Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

00:15:18.280 that one.

00:15:48.280 Okay. So I'm just going to play that one example. The other example that we had to play was actually

00:15:55.500 the video that we've already played in the past. And you saw the voiceover of that just a few

00:15:59.640 minutes ago, but there are several videos like this and I'm not minimizing the hurt feelings

00:16:03.540 that these people have. I simply do not think that the talking to ourselves as children is

00:16:09.540 actually the path that we are supposed to take to deal with very real pain. So I want to talk

00:16:15.420 about what the inner child concept is and how it originated, that tells us a lot about what it

00:16:20.280 means. And if Christians should be toying with it, it's not just a social media fad. This

00:16:25.560 psychological term inner child actually has roots in the new age movement. And quite frankly,

00:16:31.740 has parts of it that a Christian really just shouldn't tolerate and shouldn't play with. 1.00

00:16:37.040 So let's go back to its beginnings. Sigmund Freud, a lot of you know who he is. He was an 1.00

00:16:43.140 Austrian physician. He was often called the father of modern psychology. He argued that early

00:16:48.660 childhood experiences form unconscious patterns in our thinking. And he popularized the idea that

00:16:55.300 repressed childhood trauma is what drives much of our adult behavior. So already you can see

00:17:00.360 that some of that could be considered true and other parts of it. You're like, well,

00:17:04.380 is that true? Does it really drive all of our unconscious patterns of thinking or even most

00:17:09.860 of our unconscious patterns of thinking? Does it really contribute majorly to who we are and what

00:17:15.700 we do as adults? I think all of us just using our own common sense, whether you're a psychiatrist,

00:17:20.740 psychologist or not, can say, yeah, of course, things that have happened to us may affect how

00:17:26.320 we think and how we think may affect how we talk and the things that we do. But is it driving our

00:17:32.220 subconscious? Is it driving our behavior as adults? Partly, but then also it can't be completely that

00:17:40.640 because we know we just also have a sin nature that was inherited from Adam that ultimately is

00:17:46.000 responsible for the wrong things that we do. Carl Jung was one of Freud's students and he expanded

00:17:52.320 on this idea of the inner child and what he called the divine child. Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist

00:17:58.060 and psychologist who lived from 1875 to 1961. He was hugely influential in the field of psychology,

00:18:04.940 and he's best known for developing the concept of archetypes, so the kind of types that people

00:18:11.080 can be. And one of these archetypes is the divine child. And in Jung's conception, it wasn't just

00:18:16.960 the childhood trauma that affected you, but actually the concept that there was a pure self

00:18:23.000 inside of you trying to become whole. And if you read my first book, or if you're familiar with

00:18:28.660 people like Glennon Doyle, or even people like Rachel Hollis, they might not directly

00:18:35.760 cite the psychological literature, but this idea of this divine pure self inside of you,

00:18:45.620 this concept of basically having an inner goddess, that if it weren't for the mean things people did

00:18:52.280 said to you, if it weren't for capitalism and the patriarchy and racism and all of these unfair

00:18:57.500 systems, if it wasn't for mass advertising and unfair beauty standards, she would be perfect.

00:19:03.980 And your goal in life, your journey in life is to go back and find her and to release her from all

00:19:09.060 of these unfair expectations and your childhood trauma. And once you're able to do that, then you

00:19:13.640 can manifest all of these different areas of success. I'm not saying that's the fullness of

00:19:17.900 what Jung taught, but we certainly see that narrative in so much of what women read and are

00:19:23.780 taught today, this underlying assumption that if it weren't for all of these other factors,

00:19:28.720 my inner self would be perfect and perfectly loved. And if I can find her and find a way to

00:19:33.640 perfectly love her and heal her, then I'll just be okay. That is a secular new age idea. It's not a 0.78

00:19:40.500 biblical idea. Jeremiah 17 tells us that our heart is actually desperately sick. Who can understand

00:19:46.520 it. It's not something that we should follow. Again, we inherited our sin from Adam. And so

00:19:52.060 we are depraved inside. We don't have a beautiful, perfect inner goddess. We are sinners who need to

00:19:57.780 be saved. And so this journey to finding the untainted, perfect, divine self inside of us

00:20:03.940 is a losing battle that actually will just encourage more self-focus, which is the thing

00:20:09.120 that is oppressing and trapping us, not the thing that's going to liberate us.

00:20:13.400 um the youngian concept of the inner child really moved beyond psychology circles and

00:20:21.100 into mainstream awareness in the 1990s it was largely through the influence of an american

00:20:26.620 counselor named john bradshaw in 1992 bradshaw published homecoming and it became a new york

00:20:31.600 times bestseller and in that book he argued that the inner child carries unmet emotional needs

00:20:37.000 that individuals could begin healing from mental trauma

00:20:40.560 by re-parenting themselves.

00:20:43.020 So that's a lot of what we're seeing on TikTok.

00:20:45.200 Bradshaw's message reached an even wider audience

00:20:47.160 through frequent television appearances.

00:20:49.500 And he, of course, was on Oprah.

00:20:51.620 And he guides her through a re-parenting exercise.

00:20:55.680 Sot 3.

00:20:56.400 Just imagine you could see a little child,

00:20:59.960 a little child you once were.

00:21:07.000 Really take a look at them.

00:21:08.420 What are they wearing?

00:21:11.000 Tell them, I'm the one that wrote you the letter.

00:21:16.160 And I've come to get you.

00:21:19.500 I want you to come home with me.

00:21:24.040 I know better than anybody what you've been through.

00:21:31.900 And I love you just the way you are.

00:21:37.000 Okay. So that is how that concept was kind of driven into the mainstream. And you can see

00:21:45.340 Oprah's audience is female. And there's a reason why this resonates more with women than it does 0.97

00:21:51.080 with men, because we are more empathetic, because we are more emotional. We are more in touch with

00:21:56.940 those childhood memories and more susceptible to this idea that we have an inner child that is

00:22:02.280 in us that needs to be reparented and reloved. Before I get into all of my theological response

00:22:08.880 to that, I do want to go back to who Carl Jung is, and Carl Jung is rather, and the foundations

00:22:15.740 of this belief and how what he believed is really intertwined with what we know and think about the

00:22:21.760 inner child today. But first, let me go ahead and pause. Let me tell you about our next sponsor

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00:23:27.360 sale ever, LegacyBox.com slash Allie. So Carl Jung, again, who is considered hugely influential

00:23:40.800 in modern psychology and really helped to deepen and popularize this inner child concept, he was

00:23:48.220 heavily influenced by the occult and astrology. And he was one of the foundational figures who

00:23:54.520 influence what we call the New Age movement, which we've talked about a lot on this show.

00:23:58.980 You can go back and listen to some former episodes. You can read my first book. We talk

00:24:02.300 about that a lot. Jung did not believe in a traditional conception of God, but he emphasized

00:24:07.560 God as an archetype that occurred across cultures. That's what he believed about Jesus, someone that

00:24:12.740 we can kind of all aspire to. You've probably heard of this idea of the Christ consciousness,

00:24:17.780 and while that was not his main idea that he popularized, he certainly pushed forward this

00:24:23.480 idea that you can take on the mind of Christ in a way that really isn't in alignment with

00:24:29.100 Christianity at all. Again, this kind of pseudo-spiritual terminology. He also didn't

00:24:34.480 believe in a trinity. He posited something called a quaternity, with Satan as one of the persons of

00:24:40.200 the Godhead and his archetype. He believed that good shouldn't really overcome evil, but it should

00:24:45.100 reconcile with evil. That's according to the Christian Research Institute. He also wrote that

00:24:50.000 this opposition between good and evil means conflict to the last. It is the task of humanity

00:24:54.640 to endure this conflict until time or turning point is reached where good and evil begin

00:24:58.920 to relativize themselves, okay? Until they become relative, to doubt themselves. And the cry is

00:25:05.560 raised for a morality beyond good and evil, he believed. And in the age of Christianity and the 0.95

00:25:10.760 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,

00:25:58.720 including your divine child.

00:26:01.080 Okay.

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

00:28:37.860 the problems.

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

00:28:48.860 you.

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,

00:29:00.200 not as the baby that you were.

00:29:02.640 There is value, I think, in acknowledging the past and owning the pain, processing unresolved

00:29:08.360 bitterness that is lingering within us.

00:29:11.000 But the Christian approach to trauma is compassion.

00:29:16.420 Yes, absolutely.

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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00:34:56.500 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.

00:39:27.520 So the question is, of course, is it biblical?

00:39:31.260 Is shadow work biblical?

00:39:33.280 Shadow work is not biblical.

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

00:39:48.060 we need to integrate or understand better.

00:39:51.120 The Bible does not treat sin as something to integrate into our lives or to understand

00:39:56.320 better.

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

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00:43:07.800 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.

00:45:26.720 It is about the state of our heart.

00:45:28.560 It's about the state of our intention. 0.85

00:45:30.280 So again, all of this just flies in the face of the Christian message. 0.82

00:45:33.460 It flies in the face of Jesus.

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.

00:47:58.260 It's a good thing.

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.

00:48:23.340 I know they're not right.

00:48:24.940 And sanctify me.

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

00:50:22.800 Christian cultures or Christian women.

00:50:24.880 And it's a little bit more nuanced because I don't think all of this is a lie. 0.88

00:50:29.880 I think it is incomplete and therefore can lead us in the wrong direction.

00:50:33.760 So I'll try to get through this last part as quickly as I can.

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00:51:37.780 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

00:52:33.480 to literally force that energy to come out.

00:52:37.020 The next thing is stretching.

00:52:38.700 Something like doing a pancake split

00:52:40.560 elongates the muscle, stretches it out.

00:52:43.340 So this way we're able to release emotions

00:52:45.900 through stretching.

00:52:48.640 Okay, I have a little bit of a hard time with that

00:52:51.140 because I've done all of those moves before

00:52:53.120 and I've never felt emotional

00:52:55.500 except for I wish I could stop doing this

00:52:58.680 because it hurts.

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

00:55:00.340 i got you oh my god

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

00:55:14.700 oh my god do we carry grief in our hips yes

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

00:56:18.180 that the overall study quality is mixed.

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

00:56:35.460 neurophysiological evidence.

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.

00:56:44.980 But also, we've got a New Age crossover here.

00:56:49.160 It is popular online form.

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 0.96

01:00:55.240 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.

01:02:59.220 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - April 13, 2026

Ep 1332 ｜ Inner Child, Shadow Work & Somatic Therapy： A Warning to Christian Women

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