welcome to the being known podcast with my friend Dr Kurt Thompson and my friend Dr Sweeny we are here to discover and explore what it means to be truly known hey Kurt hey pep you feeling known today already am I feeling known by you yes yes yes and by Amy yeah we uh as as we' talked about in the past we um we often gather early or we try every week when we when we're recording together early so that we can just catch up with one another and um and and share uh different things and thoughts and ideas and I found out today that I'm part of the wisdom Council makes me very excited I am part of Dr Kurtis ring Thompson I I am part of don't forget the yeah I'm going to get they're going to take my wisdom away I'm got to take they're going to kick me off they're going to kick me off the wisdom Council if I don't say the say the letters MD at least five times around Curtis ring Thompson's name MD oh gracious so we are here and uh we are here and we are recording episode five today of the being known podcast and we are um we are in the midst of rupture and repair uh what I think is a very important and uh wonderful season for us all and uh excited today to be um to be talking about osculating and benign ruptures so Kurt if you can start us off um yeah yeah so this this notion we we've uh thus far we we talked a little bit about this last week in in the sense that our our experience of rupture we we live the world that would like us to believe that there should never be a rupture um I I don't want I don't want there to be any I I don't want there to be any ruptures uh and some of us become allergic to ruptures because we don't have really much practice in knowing um how we repair them but one of the things that we we we learn about um uh ruptures and the repair is is it it turns out um that they are actually a normal part of the Rhythm of Life um and uh this this C where we're going to start to talk about this this week and next week in The Following episode we're going to talk about these various forms this week this oscillating or benign ruptures and uh next week we'll talk about limit setting ruptures um and the the the thing that we want to recognize is that this is just part of the everyday uh normal life Rhythm that we encounter and one of the things that this does um is that when when we begin to recognize that oh ruptures happen as part of normal life cycle uh what what we're learning is that the repair of ruptures as they happen typically uh speak to the reality that our minds are in part governed by what we anticipate we like to talk about how uh our mind our our brains our organs that are one big anticipation machine I'm anticipating everything from you know I'm walking across the floor I'm anticipating that the floor is going to hold even though I'm not thinking about that consciously this is kind of how we move through the world we anticipate that all the cars will stay on their side of the road and we hope they do but we're not thinking about that we're not worrying about that but one of the things we recognize is it is as we T start to more uh explicitly and consciously anticipate that ruptures and their repair uh help us develop resilience um this becomes uh something that helps us be less frightened of ruptures especially when we start to recognize the neurobiology of how resilience develops primarily as a function of the repair of ruptures one of the first things that we see is that um that that indicate to us that a rupture is happening is that we have this neural distress signal of disruption this neural distress signal of there's something being wrong and that we might not necessarily be immediately aware of them consciously uh it happens in our bodies you'll you'll watch that you know newborns they'll they'll when when Mom moves away when Dad moves away from an infant or a toddler who is by themselves in a room there there is a certain distress that starts to show up and we don't have the sense that a 9-month-old is necessarily thinking oh my goodness my mom is leaving the room but there is this sign of this distress and as we age and develop these things then gradually do make their way into our conscious awareness as our prefrontal cortex develops I become more aware that I am aware and then more aware of what I'm aware of and so ruptures manifest in terms of our perception the way they really work our perception of relational distancing and SP we all of us have seen the the signs of some kind of stranger danger right this sense of this sense of threat that a a young child might experience and not as if they are thinking this person is a threat but there's a sense in which if a baby is handed to a stranger and the baby immediately starts to feel distress there's a sense of which there's a distance that's felt in their body and mind that's felt between them and their parent and there's a mild rupture there if you will but these are Rel what we would call benign or they're oscillating they're moving back and forth this rhythm in which the baby goes to some else and then they come back tomorrow and this notion of this distancing uh really is ultimately they they kind of point to this relational threat this this sense that I'm being taken away something's being T I feel more alone with me now of course we don't have nine-month-olds that are reporting this to us because we try to do the interviews and they're not really that Cooperative with you we try but so so so these are things that we adults with the research are projecting onto them but there is this felt sense when we look at a 9-month-old like we kind of get it we you know we get this felt sense of we because we as adults now that we can think about it we have this sense of what it's like for them to move away you know I'm I've been married for 38 years and the longer I'm married to phis the more often I just love being like close to her proximally like physically like I want to watch a movie on the couch like I don't want to walk I I I don't want to to be in separate chairs like I want to be close to her I I love when when you know when you and I haven't seen each other for a while like I love an Embrace yeah me too with with you that that is not just kind of the conventional you know nanc Embrace and then we go from there to you know our to go about our business this this proxim this proximity that we that we love and so we perceive rupture ultimately in terms of this relational distancing it can be minor like with a newborn or an inant or it can be major and we'll talk about this when we get to toxic ruptur it can be within me I can have parts of me that I want to cut out from other parts of me it can be between me and somebody else it can be between communities it can be between social institutions or entire nations we' see this and you know one of the reasons why we felt like this was a an important topic for us to cover in this season is just kind of where we are in our own culture here in North America in the west and particularly in the United States and we know that these ruptures can take place but we and and and we we have so little experience with their effective repair that it's hard for us to imagine that these things could actually be M these things begin with the oscillating rupture and repair of Labor there is this sense of pushing the child out and the child doesn't go pushes the child out the child comes back and the child goes out and the child comes back in this literally laborious effort of giving birth to a child there's a coming and going and coming and going and then the child comes out and now the child needs to be fed and child has this sense of my I I feel things now again it would appear that at first glance it's just the child's body is telling the world that the child is hungry but at its core how do we feed the child we don't feel the child from a distance we pick the child we hold the child right Mom nurses the child or we give the child a bottle there is this sense in which there is this Interruption of the moment right the child is moving along in a certain direction and then there's an interruption in the trajectory of what we think we're supposed to be going about and so a child's attention might be shifted unexpectedly a 9-month-old that's playing on the floor and then suddenly something happens parent comes in and needs to pick the child up and take the child someplace else the child's attention is interrupted and the child might have some kind of distress because there's some sense of something being disrupted in the book A bless the blessing of a skin knee Wendy Mogul back in 2008 writes about this way in which part of when we have ruptures like a skin KN it's helpful for us to recognize that we have these sens ations of discomfort I skin my knee or I get my feelings hurt and I sense it and it comes into my body we set ascends from the central nervous system into the insula the right hemisphere of the brain I become emotionally aware of something and then I have a cognitive processing about that I'm going to like make sense of what I sense and this process of making sense also includes then the participation eventually of other people who are then going to come for me when my knee is skinned my parents want to come and both comfort me but also give me the felt sense that I can be okay even with a skin with knee and this and it's normal to fall down and skin your knee it's a normal benign thing nobody's trying to hurt my feelings there's no Mal intent I was running as a three-year-old and I fell down and skinned my knee and there is some kind of break in my awareness of being okay we see this in the biblical narratives there's this early oscillation of God why Walking In the Garden of Eden we see this in Genesis chapter 3 that he was walking in the cool day coming back into the garden for the garden to be more proximal with the mandaline which means at some level in some degree he was away from there I remember uh I was four years old and my mom uh was part of part of our our church denominations uh um Gathers an annual meeting of all the churches in our den our little Den Evangelical Quaker denomination and this annual meeting would happen in a place called Malone college now Malone University the place I eventually went to school this annual meeting in Canton Ohio about an hour and a half away from we lived and every year our little church in Mount Pleasant Ohio would send a delegation of people to this Gathering it last for flight five or six days right and uh I remember somehow being being aware that my mom was going to go to this as a delegate with you know half dozen other people from our church and somehow even in my four-year-old mind I had it in my head that I was going with her and dude like I remember it like it was yesterday I am I see myself in my living room and the the other folks that are going to go with her they come to the house it's good they're all going to drive in they to pick her up and I'm like I'm like okay like now of course I know nothing about packing for things so it's not like I'm aware that like wait I haven't packed my shoes I haven't packed and like no I'm just like oh we and dude they're like okay we'll we'll see you and I and and and she left and I fell apart h I I was just I was I was so sad like I still feel it in my chest I still see where I like kind of fell down on this little Ottoman and just wept because mom's leaving and and I remember I I remember my my father uh what significant is I I remember my father I I don't remember my father being like like Supreme ly comforting but I remember my father not being shaming at all about this not there there was no sense in which there was something I there was no message said that there was something wrong with me for feeling this at all but like like where did this comfort and there's this this thing that just tends to happen to us when Mom goes away when Dad goes away when God goes away what's happening with us and what we recognize is that there is this developmentally progressing experience uh of these benign ruptures there there was there was no Mal intent there right and so somehow I'm going to have to learn how to tolerate the disruption with this right we and we see different levels of this infancy and toddlerhood AD adolescence right when you know uh you you have a you have a particular you know girl or guy that you like to date and like you date them for two weeks then they're like like and they're like they don't want to date you anymore no you know after two weeks and this is a person you you didn't even know four weeks ago right and now it's four weeks later and your life is over yeah because of relationship that didn't even exist four weeks ago right this because what somebody's leaving there's this felt but but it's a it's a normal part of life nobody even even in these kind of benign settings this oscillating coming and going with with friendship you know I we have very close friends who moved to Africa two years ago and it was a it I mean for for both of us it was it was painful distancing and you know we've had to work through that that sense of no nobody's nobody's trying nobody's being mindless nobody's trying to hurt I even remember like my friend Byron who was just so did such a beautiful thing when they kind of we we had there was a a dinner there were you know a d maybe tab us there at the dinner which they kind of made the formal announcement uh that they were leaving for Africa and though Phil said I had known this was they they'd let us know but one of the things that Byron did he said like you know right now I'm I'm aware we want you all to be excited with us eventually but we know that right now is not that that's not something we can ask of you like such an honorable thing for truly yeah for him to do yeah and so it happens in friendship it happens in marriage coming and going I mean when I have a if if even if philis and I have the minor the most minor ruptures like dude like I I I cannot especially if it's me who's been the ruptur I'm like that four-year-old I'm like no no I I got to make this yeah but this is all part of this oscillating movement back and forth within context and then we get to you know when we begin to age I like right now like I'm at a time when I mean this is it there is a certain sense like I I I I sold I practice five years ago to uh my colleague Courtney who I just think is it you know she is just the best and yet the C and the practice has continued to grow and I'm like they feel distancing mhm like nobody is pushing me out no like nobody no these are things are banging of my head it's that part of me that is four years old that is like feels somebody leaving mhm but it's not it's this is all part of normal lights all part of normal lights and then we get to eventually we get we get to death right and we and we um you know we were talking offline earlier about like because my parents were in their mid 40s when I was born I was attending funerals I I remember my first funeral that I remember when I was about three years old and I like to remember attending all kinds of funerals as a kid growing up and so it wasn't that um foreign to me uh but like you know this whole sense eventually like when my father died when I was 17 and then my three brothers that I've lost to cancer this whole sense and here this is all part this is this is quote unquote part of life right nobody's doing these things as an attempt to wound me but Paul does get to this the Apostle Paul does get to this this notion of death is the final enemy there is a sense in which we would say look back at with all of these ruptures even the mind even the even these oscillating and benign ones death is kind of like hanging around it's like a plane that's circling the airport it's like hovering CU it's felt sense like oh gosh is this going to leave me in a place where I'm going to be left alone no I think you know with our listeners I think you know part of the part of the difficulty is that we we can have so many of the kind of ruptures that were never repaired even even what in many families would be benign ruptures somebody didn't come back and close the gap and it became something other than that yeah I was thinking about your when you were talking about um your mom leaving and you thinking you were going with her and how devastated you were and I uh I think I've shared this with you my when when my dad I think was 6 years old um you know it was a it was a rough period in the world and and he his parents could not afford to keep him and his sister yes and so they sent them to uh a cousin's house that he didn't really know and they um um from stories that I've heard over the years they they weren't treated wonderfully there I mean they had to live in the basement which you know a basement then was not you know and but anyway all that to say he he had shared with me at one point that he remembers his mom coming to visit him and him just begging her please take me with you please take me with you and she she couldn't um and eventually they were able to be reunited you know but I it was a long time it was a long time and I think yeah you know it wasn't being done it was being done to make sure that he had food and that he was taken care of and and those kind of things it wasn't being done to harm him but right it did right it did right yeah right and I think you know by the time we get to two episodes from now when we talk about toxic ruptures um we're g to we're going to in more detail talk about the Nuance around the question well what makes something uh you know benign rupture and what typically would be that and somehow how does a benign rupture turn into something that's not benign yeah right how does a limit setting uh rupture turn into something that's not just limit setting but toxic yeah we we will talk about that but again all this is to say is that these this progression of these uh of this particular benign ruptures it depends upon the proper experience of the repair from an earlier age I mean like even when my mom left when I was four years old like you know she came back and in that moment I do have the memory of my father bringing some comfort to me mhm so there is a sense in which at the same time that there was a rupture there was a repair that happened in the presence of my father and my mom came back and you know um that continue to happen she would go for these for these conferences and I don't remember having a experience like that ever again and we'll also get to this uh later on when we talk about the repair especially of um of of toxic ruptur but we're going to we're going to talk about these three words of the repair that requires timing Tempo and time the timing meaning how do we You Know What's the timing like when we step in to make the repair when do we do this how do how do we do this how intensely do the tempo um how quickly do we need the repair to be repaired and then time how long does that rupture require for repair to be adquate for it so even with uh benign ruptures we would say that the timing is typically relatively immediate my mom walked out the door my father met me in that moment the tempo was that I remember him being gentle about it I don't remember him I don't have a memory of him like being like okay we've done this now let's be done and so the amount of time it turns out that because I think in many respects he was able to move toward me and be present for me uh it didn't take long for me to recover from that and in the same way we have all these moments that are taking place in our lives in which uh this question of timing Tempo and time in the repair of our ruptures will will be important for us to pay attention to and in in in especially you know I think about your dad and you know this is a guy who went on to survive and he went on to have his own kids and he and and you know and he gave us you which means like which means what which which is an entire which is an entire season not just an episode which is an entire season to which we need to commit our time the season of the most beautiful man in the world that that's that's we'll call it that terrific meaning meaning that at some level even with all of the uh of the harshness of the environment emotionally for your dad right something was going right because like here you are and there are things about you that are so rich and beautiful in some part I'm guessing because of your dad absolutely and so I'm and and again it we're going to talk about this from a cultural standpoint as well because we have we have been formed especially in the last 60 years in particular uh around like what adequate repair should look like and I want to invite us to consider that um even our imaginations and what we anticipate repair should look like uh in and of itself needs to be uh repaired uh there there there needs to be a corrective uh apply to that but we will come back to these questions of timing Tempo and time over and over again in the course of the rest of these episodes but for now I just want us to like sit with this notion of wow there are a lot of typical benign normal oscillating ruptures and that they get repaired and I'm really curious about how we can do that by paying how we can enter into that more consciously by starting to pay attention to which brings us to our application yeah so today's application and this week's application we would like you to make a list of the forms of benign or oscillating ruptures that you've experienced just today um in the last 24 hours and begin to pay attention to them throughout your day and notice how quickly you're able to recover from them this practice then begins to strengthen your ability to attune to ruptures that occur that you may not be consciously aware of and will prepare you as we begin to explore more difficult ruptures uh and the work required to repair them it's like practice ruptures it's like uh you know practicing repair um so that when the big things come uh we're equipped and it's not you know something brand new a brand new practice for us yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean it gets us back to that very first live recording this whole notion of how can we be uh repairers of rupture how can we begin to practice looking for where they are uh so that we can be agents of goodness and beauty and healing and and uh you know closing the breach yeah um yeah agents of reconciliation as St Paul might say yes um so uh thank you for today Kurt I just want to um so I'm going to ask you a question in our post conversation with with Amy because I'm I'm curious you and I don't think that we should we should talk about it too much here but we can talk about it and if you people are if you folks are going to be joining us on YouTube uh you can you can join in that conversation but I'm curious you use the word repair and then in your situation where you talked about uh with your mom leaving you also you also talked about recover and I want to talk about the difference between those two things and um and I want to dig in a little bit to the fact that you you said you recovered from that situation and yet you still feel it today and what does that mean and what does that mean so if you're interested in hearing that and some some more stuff from uh Amy please stick around and we'll have that conversation Kurt thank you for today love you buddy nice love you wisdom Council forever [Music] wisdom Council forever I want a shirt or I want a hat oh oh I want to trucker hat oh we have to get it counil Dr th MD PhD hi guys hey so good um so pep should we dive into that question yeah I'm curious Kurt so so you did in in in the course talking about that particular situation you you you said you know um you were talking about how how it was repaired and then you said that you recovered pretty quickly from it um and so so what does a what's it what do you see the difference between repair and recover and B what exactly does recover mean if you still have sort of viseral feelings about about the event um and it brings things up OB viously and so yeah so I'm curious to know yeah and I it's it's a great question I I I think probably um in some respects it's it's how we use words how how are we using words in some respects I might say that um repair we would say is uh kind of like uh the tent the big tent under which other things that are part of that repair also exist and uh recover might be one of those words so you know you have um you know you you have a my my friend Byron right there I mentioned before like he we were playing basketball back this is 25 years ago he falls fractures his elbow right and they had to have a repair surgery which they did it went really well he's back on the court in about six or eight weeks great A year later we're playing and somebody just you know he just hits his elbow yep and and it it it went through him like an earthquake despite the fact that his elbow was completely repaired it was completely repaired but there are echoes right because the where the where the bone heals along the along the lines where the bone has to heal the bone remembers MH and so it can send pain signals to the body despite the fact that the bone is completely repaired H right and so we can have we can have experiences in which we you know you we have a rupture in with somebody and we we do the the genuine repair work you know they they come to us and say I really I I really screwed that up I'm and and you get their genuine repentance their genuine turning around and you like that that happens and then this has happened like you know I mean where I've hurt phyllis's feelings about something and we do the repair work and then like two weeks later or a month later or something like some memory comes back up about that moment she feels it that's like the memory of the bone and in some respects we would say that that recover there there there you know degrees of recovery like am I able to you know yes I'm recovered from my surgery to get up and walk about sure but I'm not yet recovered enough to get back on the basketball floor and then eventually I will get back on the basket but am I recovered enough so that I never have any pain again no but the repair has been effectively completed in order for me to live the life that I want to live and so it it may be a way that I'm using words I can we can find ways to use that better but yeah no I I I don't necessarily think it is the way I think it's I think it's makes total sense when you explain it that way and it's it's also um you know we were talking about another subject the three of us together and and uh and some things were coming up for me uh from memory um you said that that uh it's it's how important it is to just be able to regulate those things because they're going to continue to come up and it will still yeah yeah and so right and as we'll get to when it when it comes to toxic ruptures um and and and not just what happens to us as individuals but what happens to us in our social awareness and Consciousness and so forth especially when we talk about all the you know the difficulties that we've been experiencing here in our country in the last 10 years or so or more um these things create uh deeply felt and remembered emotional states and part of our challenge is that we can um experience those memories of of emotion and we can misinterpret that to mean that I'm not yet fully repaired right and I and that's and there's work in that for us to do right there's work in that when I'm now the work of repairing a relationship can get so far and and I've recovered to a certain degree but I have to keep working at this but the ultimate like the the basic you know fundamentals of the repair work have been completed but then there's this recovery that continues to go on and you know we might say the whole process is repair and that between now and the new Heaven and new earth everything is one big repair effort on God's part yeah yeah I was going to say that you live with me everything's one big rupture you know mik sometimes I think my marriage is a petri dish of rupture and repair you could just study it you know and Hope the repair is is happening timely enough uh anyway Amy let's have some Reflections before I just go on yeah yeah okay I had two thoughts because in this is um episode five but it it feels found it felt feels foundational to me for for two things like from the top Kurt when you said like rupture and repair that's a is part of life this and it made me think of um The Road Less Traveled you know when Scott peek he opens it with life is difficult and it's like oh like you can settle into it you don't fighting it is like trying to fight you know the unfit um so it's like ah okay so if that's a given then what right right and then the other piece and I I the other piece is that like the idea that and it the rupture begins when with birth and then for us to know what is what was our experience because then it's like what we you know that then we anticipate that like if your dad did shame you you know we all have our stories and knowing that story because we anticipate that now right totally totally yeah well as we we were saying earlier that like we are we are these big anticipation machines yeah and and and and so much of our anticipatory networks that are developed in the early years of our life like we don't know that that's happening we're just trying to survive we're just trying to do this and so we you're right like we will if we begin to anticipate that ruptures will not be repaired then we will create other coping strategies to deal with that but that's not the way our bodies are made to operate and so we do get the points eventually where my body starts to rebel against what I have been asking it to do and that's when symptoms start to show up no matter what the symptoms might be as we like to say at some level um life is just one continuous attempt to repair ruptures and all the symptoms all of our trauma is really about unrepaired ruptures that's really what it's about and um and and if we are uh if we are folks who are in a reconcile we are agents of reconciliation we're agents of repairing rures yeah and again I think I this this notion too that it's not just we're not just saying oh ruptures happen so it sucks right like Jesus says in John 16:33 like in this world you will have tribulation good luck no yeah he does not say that he in this world you have tribulation be of good cheer because I have said these things to you so that in me you will have peace in me you're not going to have it in the abstract you're not going to have it because of philosophy or because of theology you're going to have it because I'm coming for you I am the repairer capital r yeah it's good and you know so much shame is entangled it because the first rupture that like that whole notion that we talked about in our last episode or two episodes ago about the biblical narrative and like the first wound is there is a rupture but with the intention of creating Beauty and goodness right right which is so different than so much of what we experience in life yeah yeah I mean yeah I when you were saying it feels like that that even the process of of therapy is uh is a rupture for goodness and Beauty I mean because you are going yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean how many patients come in with particular ways of telling their story and what they you know and and they they they they have made sense of their traumas in a particular way and this makes sense to them mhm and part of the work involved in their healing is necessarily going to involve their being willing to give up the story that they have told it is a terrifying thing yeah I was going to say that's harder to give up the story that I believe I'm going to try I'm going to trust you that you have a different story in mind about me and for me and to which I would say yep I do I have a different story my job is to imagine something about you while you're imagination is trying to catch up and I'm not going to be out running ahead of you by 100 yards uh like like I get it like when you're when we're early in the game like I am right beside you right in front of you right behind you but I am try I am inviting you to move into a different story than the one that you need to tell in order for you to keep coping with the story that you've constructed over the years I'm like yeah it is that practice and process of yours that has you in my office in the first place yes yeah I mean I think about I I think I think about us here like how how much of my story in the last what was it last 12 years 12 now 13 however many years we've known each other how much of my story is now different because being with you guys invites me allows me uh uh as we might say with a capital D demands of me to tell my story differently than the one I have banging around in my head oh my gosh because the two of you can imagine things for me uh that I can't imagine for myself by myself yeah y it's great y well thank you for today guys great to see you both and um we'll be back next week right on looking forward to guys love you bye you love [Music] you this podcast is produced by Kurt Thompson pepper Sweeney and myself Amy Chella audio production and editing is by Katon Simons video production and editing is done by Mark gold if you'd like to connect with us you can find us on social media @bn pod if you like this podcast tell a friend if you love this podcast tell everyone you know and please like rate and review wherever you listen be well be known