Chris and Beth Bruno host conversations at the intersection of psychology and theology. This podcast is powered by ReStory Counseling.
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Want to know what it takes to Restore Your Life? We are Chris and Beth Bruno and we lead a team of brilliant story work counselors around the country all committed to helping you come alive. We call it the Restorey Approach. So if you're a story explorer, kingdom seeker, or just a day-to-dayer, you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Restorey Podcast.
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So I love how we spent a whole day this weekend. What is it now? Bi-monthly day that we need to spend bringing order back to the garage. At least every other month. And I'd be curious how many times you have purchased a whole new system of containers or shelving or things that you've built or hooks that you've installed. What-
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rendition of garage organizational system we're on now, but yet again, this weekend, that's what we found ourselves doing because we've been parking on the street now for it's been months, right? Because it's just been a disaster. It's so ridiculous. And our garage is the dumping ground of all the things. Right, and it's not just us, right? We had an adult son.
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that moved back home, his crap came, your restoration project really needs a warehouse at this point. And so after a summer full of expeditions, we have BB guns and tents and sleeping bags and plastic forks that would last a lifetime. I mean, it's just everywhere. Not to mention the trash, just the trash and furniture. Well, that's another thing. How many couches and chairs
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have cycled through our garage in and out of our nine room office. It's, it's ridiculous. It's crazy. So there we were again, this weekend cleaning out the garage and you know, it is a mess, but to really bring order and get the cars back in there, it needs to get even messier. And so the process of cleaning always cracks me up.
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because you tend to just pull everything back out to reorganize it again. It's the only way to do it. Just gets messier before it gets better. The only way to do it. I mean, how are you supposed to organize something on shelves when you're just shoving more on the shelf? You have to pull it all off and reorganize and then repack and put it all back on the shelf. And then the driveway gets full of all the things because it's too much to fit into the garage. And so you have to pull it out. So you have space to do the work that you wanna do.
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Yeah, yeah. It does look like a bomb goes off in our garage about once every four to six to eight weeks. Yeah, depending on- To make sure our neighbors, they think we're crazy. And then I will often find many things that no longer need to be in our garage or in our possession. And so I will put things out with a big free sign on the sidewalk for all the neighbors to drive by or walk by and remarkably, those things are gone usually within about 20 to 30 minutes. They're gone. Yeah.
03:30
Just like that, they're out. Because everybody wants all our stuff that we don't want. Yeah. Well, I mean, not to like force this analogy, but it is a great picture of what we wanna talk about today in that oftentimes before things get better, they get worse. And so we're talking about how for counseling, oftentimes you start to go see a counselor and-
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long before you feel better, you actually feel worse than before you started seeing the counselor. And that sounds awful. And why would we want to tell people that that's the case? That's not really a great business strategy. Let's talk about that. Why is that the common experience? And why is that actually essential to seeing real transformation happen? Yeah. Well, and it is a real thing.
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because when you start coming into counseling, really what you want is something is not well in your life. Something is stressed or anxious or depressed or frustrated or relationships are broken and you're wanting to find some level of relief from the bad feelings that you're having, you wanna find relief to feel better. And so that's what you come to counseling for. And a lot of times the first several sessions or minutes or whatever it is, there is some level of what do we need to do to stop the bleeding?
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in order for you to feel better in the moment. The reality is that the symptom relief of not feeling well to feel better is not gonna bring any kind of deep solution or healing to your life. And so you have to go several steps further than that. So people get frustrated and it's a thing because you come in and you start feeling worse because we're starting to address some of the things that are underneath why, what's driving some of the things of
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why you were depressed or anxious or stressed or broken, why you're experiencing the things you're experiencing and not just get you out of the symptoms that to really help you to dig into what's happened. So for a while you're saying the symptoms continue, the presenting, you know, feelings, emotions, struggles that you came to counseling to address continue because you're going beneath those. You're getting to more of the root causes. Yeah, I would say the symptoms might temporarily be relieved.
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out of the catharsis of telling someone of what's gone on for you and what you're facing. And it is relieving, right? It is good to get it off your chest. We have all these metaphors of, I'm sorry to just dump on you, or I'm sorry to vomit on you, or this felt good to get it off my chest, just like I said. And so there is a level of catharsis that comes really when you start the process of counseling, when you start to head into the Restorey journey.
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But then if you're really gonna be guided well by a Restory practitioner, you will go beyond that catharsis into investigating some of where all of that came from, not just continue to develop habits or best practices or something like that to avoid those symptoms from coming back, right? We wanna get into the deeper stories. That's what we're about. Right. So would you say I can anticipate that this is what
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that journey might look like, almost a, I'm picturing, you know, a graph, like a cycle, a sense of markers along the way that one might be able to anticipate as they start a counseling process. Yeah, sure. And I'm gonna say just generally because each person is different and each journey is going to be different, but.
07:15
There will be, you know, the first, like we just said, there'll be the first catharsis of coming in and starting the process and getting to develop a relationship with the person you're working with, the practitioner you're working with. And there is that sense of like, okay, I'm starting to feel a little bit better because I did get those things off my chest. I've started the journey. There's a big, I often commend people for making the phone call or reaching out because there's so much that goes on before you even get to the counselor's office or that first conversation. So they have to get up over that, you know, hurdle.
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And then you come in and you start the process, you feel a little bit better after the first couple of conversations. But then it really kind of feels like you have to dig into the mud at the bottom of the lake. Because that's where the stuff really is buried. And over the course of years, the sediment has kind of settled down and it has settled into a place where it feels like you can operate on some level of kind of general survival or I can basically operate from my day to day.
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And what the Restory process does is it starts to dig up some of the mud that's settled at the bottom of the lake. And that's where people start to feel like, wait a minute, why are things getting more murky? Why are things getting more muddy? Why does it feel more messy? Because I had come to a place of stasis in my life where those things had been settled and now you're starting to dig them up. I don't wanna talk about those things. But the reality is those are the things at the bottom of the lake that really need to get dug up that are causing some of those other symptoms for you.
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So we go through the first part, we go through the second part of digging in, and then I would say there's probably, again, I can't say for each person, but maybe two or three significant movements where some awarenesses are made, some kindness is brought, dots are connected, those kinds of things, and maybe some new stories begin to be incorporated into a person's life. So maybe two or three of those over the course of the work that you're doing.
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with the counselor will kind of feel like some good markers. And then you come to really the final stage, which would be like, now those things are being incorporated into your life. That restory is now something that you're moving forward with in your life. And now you come to a new place of understanding and good living, I guess I would say, while living where you weren't before.
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That might mean just the end of a season of care in walking with a counselor. And you might come back later. You might want some maintenance, if you will, for months ahead, but that would be a good place where you can say, I've done some really, really good work. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about one of those markers. And you've talked about this before on the podcast, but where someone's innocence is being explored
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where how that might be feel really like shake shake them up a lot. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean, I'm a man of many metaphors. And so I like to talk about the cave, and the cave being a place that is often damp and dark and hidden. And it's a place where we kind of push things back into the recesses of our minds and into the recesses of our hearts.
10:35
And then we go about living outside the cave, and that's that stasis that I was talking about, but inside the cave are still those parts of us that are young, wounded, confused, lost, innocent, all those parts of us that we've kind of put there in the cave to either protect them or we're ashamed of them, or there's something in there that we cannot bear to face. There's something in there that is just too hard for us
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reconcile or understand. And so therefore we put it in the cave and go on with life. And the hardest one, I think, and what you're referring to is where that innocent part of us that was wounded or experienced some kind of family trauma or any kind of trauma that we, it's so hard for us to reconcile that that innocence was lost.
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And then what evil was often wanting us to do is to believe that our innocence was lost at our own hand, that there was something that we did that ushered in the trauma or the difficulty that it was our doing, it was our participation, it was our fault that led to the loss of our innocence. And that is so hard for us to face, so hard for us. And so we lock it away.
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into this cave, we bury it away from us because we can't bear to really see that again. That maybe some of what we did as a child or some of what we did in the midst of that trauma was actually the best that we could do given what we had and the resources we had at the time. And to bring kindness to that place, that young part of us is unheard of because we blame that young part of us for not being equipped or right or doing it well. Wait a second.
12:28
So you're saying that we've been blaming ourselves for years because we've colluded with the enemy and believed that lie that we were at fault. In many cases, yeah. And that it's what you're saying is too difficult to face. You're saying is actually it's too difficult to face that perhaps it was not our fault. Perhaps there were other things at play. Perhaps the decision that we made
12:58
And again, I want to hold that loosely decision. How does a child make a decision? But the actions that we took were at the time, the best that we could do to both protect and provide for ourselves where that protection and provision was not given to us by someone else. And a good example that I can share is, and this is often shocking to people.
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is that in the realm of pornography, where for a child who's in an emotionally vacuous home, who doesn't have emotional presence or doesn't have the kind of parents who will be attuned to them or attending to them or whatever, just as an example, okay, it might also be a violent home where instead of just not, instead of getting the vacuum, they're just getting violence, either way,
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there's not a safe place for them to process their emotions and experiences and feelings and all that. And so they're looking for something to feel good and to get out of the feeling bad that they have. They're looking for someone or something to attune to them. They're looking for something to both give them some interest or some face or some excitement or some arousal, something that will be there for them. And so a whole other conversation, which we won't get into is just how the enemy uses
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the realm of pornography in the sex industry to capture the hearts of young people, but something will pop up. Some friend will show a video, something will pop up online, something will happen. And the trap is set not by the pop-up or the picture that is seen in the magazine, but by the empty and broken heart of that young child who's looking and longing for something to connect to. And so there is pornography that comes along and the child then starts to
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ingest that pornography, whatever it is, and they start to develop a habit, and that habit starts to develop an addiction, and it just moves forward over the course of years. Well, for years, and years and years, that person may hate themselves for the level of addiction that they have to this shameful sexually explicit material or actions that they have developed over the course of those years.
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when in fact, for that child in that kind of a vacuous home, it was not good for them to go towards pornography, but it was the best option that they had for something good to be experienced in life. And so to step away from the blaming and the shaming of that child who found some breadcrumbs of goodness in that situation, they were actually doing the best that they could.
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And no, it's not a good decision, right? It's not a good thing. And it led to years of pain and struggle, but can we allow that younger part of us off the hook, if you will, for making that decision and going into that cave and offering that child kindness in the midst of our exploration of the story? That is the movement, I think, of really the beginning of that restory process. Can we bring kindness to the child and say, hey, what you did was not right. It was not right.
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good, but for you at the moment, it was the best that you were offered. So can we begin to call you smart and brilliant? Can we begin to bless you and say, I want to bless the desire in your heart to find something good, to find attunement, to find some sense of life where no life was being offered to you. That's why it gets so murky and muddy because you get into these places, these, whether it's the bottom of the lake or in the depths of the cave, whatever you want to call it.
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It's those places where those parts of us are buried that make it really, really hard, both shameful to admit, shameful to step into, and then super challenging to receive that kind of kindness to those parts of our stories again. So that's why it's so difficult oftentimes before it's relieving why it can feel so hard. Right. And disruptive. And we've talked a lot about that disruptive kindness that would be really disruptive. And that's why it takes time.
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it takes time to really see all of that clearly and start to re-story that. And that's why and where the symptoms are, you know, are not being relieved in that example, right? If I can just stop viewing pornography, that's good, that's helpful, right? Let's not view it, let's not do that. But that's not the answer to the problem. The answer to the problem is buried in that cave.
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and that innocent little child who had to find a way to survive emotionally and mentally and spiritually, whatever it is, that's the child that we need to go after to rescue from that cave. And just to stop those adult now, you know, symptoms or behaviors, that's not going to ultimately restore your life and bring about life and healing. And that's not actually what Jesus is about either. He's wanting to go to those places where darkness is known.
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He wants to bring all of his light and all of his kindness and to find all of those lost parts of us that we have out of shame buried into those dark places. And that's what a skilled Restory practitioner does is we help walk people into those places, not to re-traumatize them in any way. And we're very careful about that, but to explore those dark caves in order to find those innocent parts of our lives and our stories in order to bring them back.
18:46
out of the cave so that they can live more fully into who God made them to be. That's the restory process. I love this song by Jason Upton and he sings the song called Scarecrow. And I just want to read a few of the lyrics because I think it's beautifully put. And it says, if I were a bird, if I were a foolish bird, I'd listen to my fear and fly away from here, wherever that scarecrow is. Okay.
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But if I were a bird, if I were a wise bird, I'd listen to my heart and I'd find the treasure waiting in the field because the scarecrow is guarding something worth finding. And those places where the scarecrow is in your mind, that is where we need to go. That last little part, that was my commentary, but he goes on, he says, "'There's a scarecrow living in my memory. "'It just hangs around and stares at me "'with eyes that look but cannot see there's a scarecrow.'
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living in my memory, if I were a bird, if I were a wise bird, I'd listen to my heart and I'd find the treasure waiting in that field. And I think the Restory Process is inviting us to move past the scarecrow, find the treasure that we have buried in our own field to recover and Restory who God actually made us to be in the beginning. I love that. All right, friends, thanks for listening. If you haven't left a rating on iTunes, we'd love for you to do that real quick.
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And here's the thing with our name change. We're trying to offer more cohesion to all the things we do with restoration. We've got counseling and stuff for marriages and dads and moms, and the list goes on and on. One of the ways we started talking about it recently is to rather humorously and affectionately refer to it all as the ReStory Universe. Doesn't that sound interesting? Well, if you wanna learn more, just head over to restoryuniverse.com to see what we're up to.
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and we'll see you same time, same place next week.