it's not I'd say this to people in pain um when I talk about it now and I feel it it's not pain it's gratitude but what God has done in a life that was not going anywhere welcome to the car newoff leadership podcast I'm so glad you joined us if you're new here well subscribe you know sometimes you can look at your Heroes and go I'm sure they don't have any problems while Henry cloud has been a hero to millions of people and today we get personal we talk about his traumatic past depression panic attacks and what to do with the stuff that a lot of us struggle with well I think you're going to really enjoy this episode and hopefully it's going to be super helpful speaking of helpful do you know I have partnered up with Craig relle Chris Hodes Ashley wridge Dan Clark and others to help you unleash generosity at your church I got a brand new Advanced Master Class coming to my art of leadership academy on November 18th now if you want to get in on this these are some of the very very best in the church today head on over to the artof leadership academy.com to learn more and join and you'll get exclusive access to the advanc master class with Craig gelle Chris Hodges myself Ashley wridge and others and 10 by by 10 is inviting you to join the conversation of partnering with the Next Generation by going to 10x 10.org Partners you can learn more about how you can join this growing movement and make Faith matter more to the Next Generation through loving young people and pointing them to Jesus and now my conversation with Henry Cloud Henry it's great to have you back it's good to be here it's always fun yeah it is always fun I love our conversations so one of the things that hit me when I read your new book which is totally different than any other book you've ever written is that it is why have I not talked to you about this stuff before I I don't know it was like one of I guess because you're such an expert I just kind of drilled down on the issues you and I have had you know in real life conversations and I'm kind of like wow there's just such a rich tapestry uh and story to Henry and I I didn't ask about it is that common like do you often have people drill down on so tell me about your childhood tell me about you know all that I'm just curious because I didn't do it I don't know if that's normal Green Room conversation yeah yeah or podcast but I'll do it on the podcast sometimes sometimes on the podcast but you know I didn't I didn't I wasn't trying to write and it's not the book is not a memoir it's not really a book about me um it's a book about my my faith and I wrote it for a very specific reason you know the preface starts out and it says I have an issue and this book is my attempt to solve it and it says um I love God and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's real he's proven that to me for decades that's not my problem my problem is I love my friends and many of them don't know him and frankly it's very difficult topic to bring up with a lot of people you know I operate in the business world you know so much have so many friends from different Persuasions and and for some people as you know K you you bring up the topic of faith and it can be very very touchy it can be divisive in today's climate but it can be personally kind of they feel uncomfortable or feel like you're judging them or trying to convert them and M and so I just a hard conversation to have with with a lot of people I know but that I want them to know him and so it it was just plaguing me for so long that I said Dad come it that's not being a good friend either I'm just going to write it all down at the end of the preface and says so here it is this book's written to my friends all the all my thoughts about God that we never talked about and so originally I was going to do it is I was just going to do a 30 or 40 page little deal self-publish it hand it to my friends and then I started sharing the idea with some some Christian friends and Carrie every one of them said I have that same problem I need that book and so then that's when it turned into a real book and basically the subtitle says a psychologist thoughts on suffering Miracles science and faith and that's kind of the organization of the book I I just you know lifted up the proverbial how do you say that CUO and I just tell my story um which began the real Faith story really begins in horrible suffering um that I I don't talk about too much i' I've kind of written a little bit about it but I tell the whole story and how in the depths of incapacitating nonfunctional depression that's when I came to Faith in college and then that's followed by a lot of Miracles that God actually did and then I'm in the faith at that point but everybody's telling me well science is dis proven the Bible and it's a bunch of myths and all this so so that sent me back then into a you know a deep dive into the hardest questions my objections intellectual problems I had with the whole thing and that I actually found answers that made my doubts go away and so I shared those and then there's a big section at the end on one area of science I can claim some expertise in and that's psychology and there's a Big E big section on how the science of psychology proved the Bible to me so yeah and and it is so autobiographical and it just hit me as I moved through the book Henry it was like why have I never asked Henry about this stuff before so I want to go there because I think a lot of us you know you emerged on the scene you're an expert and we just listen to the expert right oh Henry Cloud's got an answer on this he's got a book on boundaries he's got a book on this book on trust which I've recommended so many times and we've talked about on this podcast but I want to go back to your childhood and and what were some of your earliest defining experiences because that's what any psychologist would ask us if we were there so now I'm gonna flip the mic and ask you all right Henry's like interview's over it's done yeah what were some some of your earliest CH defining experiences as a child well I specifically related to Faith yeah just the faith Journey you can take it wherever you want well I think they're the same um in terms of defining experiences um you know I was floating along there as sort of a normal two three four year old yeah and then one morning um in the middle of the night they tell me I I woke up with screaming screaming in pain and long story short I'll make it short the I had a um they didn't know what to do I had I had a severe pain in my left hip and I don't remember all of the screaming fits I do remember some but anyway they put me in the hospital I'm there for a month they can't um they can't diagnose it and they don't know what's wrong so ultimately here's the defining moment they they were in a meeting my mother went to the appointment with a friend of hers um and they were going to actually discuss amputation and so they're thinking about amputating my leg and she's in the waiting room and this gets to my earliest I guess Faith defining moment um my mother hears a voice while she's in the waiting room and the voice said leave and take him to a particular Hospital in New Orleans which was 200 and something miles away from where we lived in when that potentially she's never heard of before or she'd heard of the hospital right because it's like the mayos of the South Mayo CL okay but we're in the hospital there and the voice out of the blue she's waiting on the doctor says leave and take him to that hospital boy oh boy and so she turns to her friend says we got to leave she said what are you talking about she said we have to leave this is crazy this is not Behavior right and so she somehow talks my other wife's reasonable father into this and they drive to New Orleans and check me in big hospital be like taking somebody Cleveland Clinic saying my kids's hurting we randomly get signed an a woman orthopedic surgeon oncology um expert randomly who had just moved there um from Chicago I think and they do all the workups and the x-rays and all that we go into the exam room and she says um well there'll be no amputation I know exactly what's wrong I know how to treat it you'll be in a wheelchair and in braces it you know for a while it lasted almost 2 years but he'll be fine well it just so happened that random assignment of that enormous teaching hospital to this one woman who had just moved there had been trained by the two doctors that had discovered the treatment at that time for this disease and so that you know it wasn't like I I was on the other end of it I'm in the wheelchair right but and I didn't walk for a couple of years um but that that was that was pretty defining there was this narrative that God did something but I come out of the wheelchair six years old and as a psychologist I didn't know this then but I I had I dove head long into sports and I think I was trying to prove I'm not a crippled kid anymore because I you know I was a crippled child yeah and and then I just dived into sports ultimate a lot of them and I wrot about it in the book um kind of obsessively I wanted to say diving Championship was recruited to train for diving for the Olympics bunch of sports but golf kind of what became the one and then I started to pursue that as a competitive golf were recruited to play golf in college and that's when disaster hit yeah so you were you you talk about being bullied as a kid you know or made fun of because you had braces you know you couldn't walk like the other kids you talk to us about that what what happened and then what was the impact on you well I think you know part of it um you know I was called that was my name and um I think the biggest the biggest part of it carrye was um feeling on the outside you know you go to birthday parties and the kids are riding the pony and they're playing you know had the handkerchief or what everybody's running around I'm sitting in the wheelchair um and I and I I just remember feeling um uh I guess you call a lot of Shame a lot of kind of like different and um but um when I got out of it um I think I just you know blocked all that out moved on until it reemerged well I was gonna say can you block that out successfully oh yeah there is a such thing called PTSD [Music] [Laughter] so that wounded you to hear the kids call you that and to feel excluded yeah and I think I felt um I think it set up some sort of performance drive you know I'm not GNA be that I'm gonna be this yeah and I literally blocked it out right what your body can do right it does that yeah yeah you know this this comes up again and again I had some interviews uh recently and I was interviewed for something in the UK but the number of leaders who have a traumatic past whether that was a medical incident like you you know a condition that led to being ridiculed or feeling excluded when they were little or you know extreme poverty or abusive dad or somebody who left or whatever when they were younger seems to propel us into leadership and or Propel us into you know for you it was well I'll show them I I can be an athlete right and you got into swimming you got into diving you got into golf and I'd heard for years that you're great karate and basketball carate and basketball too wow yeah I mean all I wanted 10 or with Kim in third and 10 State all South karate championship in high school my goodness and the only reason I did that was i' been to a frat fraternity party you know they start recruiting you in high school I went to a fraternity party at Old Miss and I was I was on the dance FL and I saw this guy just get his you know what kicked in a fight over some girl and I'm I'm like you know not a big guy and I'm going oh crap I gotta get ready for college learn how to fight I gotta learn how to fight I got I can't go to college I you say basketball like Henry you're not 67 like uh you got into basketball I was now not to be weird but in in junior high school yeah um I played point guard and I was I was good okay um I don't mean to sound weird but in a championship game all County one time um I think I went eight for nine from the free throw line and in the last two minutes they kept fouling to stop the clock I mean I I I was really good until that summer they um you know going in the 10th grade had summer training and they put these big two big high schools together and I drove down to the key and I faked and this kid jumped up to block me and I was looking at his kneecap and Carrie I remember thinking it's golf I'm done wow you're gonna play I can't I'm too I'm too short I can't I'm not going anywhere in this game and and that was another defining moment my goodness yeah but you know it's interesting like we're going to we're going to toggle in and out of your story but when you think about those setbacks early on and that kind of traumatic moment in your childhood what do you make as a psychologist of what that does to some people like because there are a disproportionate number of leaders who have had a similar experience does that just Propel you to stand out and what's behind that like in your opinion as a psychologist well you know one of the things we know about trauma is all trauma even the same trauma does not have the same effect because you always have to answer who does it happen to I mean we know that all various kinds of abuse that some people develop PTSD and symptoms this and the other and and others don't some become abusers and others become Healers of abusers so yeah you have to ask you know there's a when an earthquake hits like I lived in La for a long time earthquake hits some buildings go down and some just sway depends on how they're constructed and so you can't say trauma equals this that's why it drives me crazy I see these stupid people somebody somebody it's just ridiculous somebody say well I got I'm depressing at this oh well you must have been a sexually abused or you must be this that that is no relation to reality at all we have to ask from a diagnostic perspective the structural issues that were going on when that earthquake hit and so I don't think we can say it has the same effect on everybody what we can say it is it has an effect yeah and we have to get to know the person and know who it happened to now what I found out later when I really crashed which I talk about in the book extensively about how bad that was um I I also you know as a four-year-old kid I didn't have the best structural Foundation underneath that either you know uh without going in into a lot of detail um I had um we had a family business and and both my parents worked in the business and um I was raised by nannies and uh the one there was a primary my primary Nanny and she she just kind of worked most of the time and I was a kind of an isolated um latchy latchy kid so I didn't I didn't have a lot of emotional grounding going into that and and I found out later how significant all that was but you know fortunately um when I hit bot and reached out to God he showed up yeah so let's talk about golf you pour yourself into golf and I had heard through the grapevine you know before I knew this backstory to you Henry's an incredible golfer like really good he's excellent used to be used to be right I think you can still hold your own on the course uh especially if you're playing with a bunch of leaders right but uh I'm I'm curious I said especially I think you can hold your own on the course even especially if you're playing with a bunch of leaders who are you know didn't do it there was a time there was a time well I've been I I mean I don't know if I ran into you in the last few years um so and um I spent the better part of the last few years in a wheelchair I don't know when we ran in each other at the summit I was probably Chicago yeah you were you were walking but you were you were in a wheelchair for a while yeah so um in the last three or four years I haven't been able to play and I've just started back again and if anybody wants to come take my money Now's the Time to do it I I suck what what happened with the wheelchair Henry oh I I had um well end of 19 I hit the I hit I was on S my C and I hit the deck I couldn't stand up the pain was so bad they took me emergency room and shot me up and I couldn't stand up had severe nerve pain down my leg and uh it took about a month to get a diagnosis and pick a surgeon then they decided I need a total knee replacement and then we it takes a while for rehabs I couldn't I didn't have any free time really till April we scheduled it in April and Co hits in March and so it got delayed till the latter part of the year and um that took up the first year and then I get out and I recover and I got severe nerve pain um still and then the other leg they decided it's my spine so I went through months of epidurals and diagnosis and all this and then finally the following April they did spine surgery and I was out for the better part of that year and it did not help and then they said well it's traveling north from your other knee so you did a second total knee replacement so I was traveling speaking in a wheelchair hobbling to the airlines Wheeling you to the plane getting on get off do the same thing um because I was fine if I sat down but I sat on my butt for four years and got fat stiff and now I can't play gol wow well you know you I think when we were together last summer you were walking but it was it was still slower so are you fully recovered now or relatively fully recovered other than the stiffness you know yeah it's you gota get back there and you stop I'm so stiff yeah but I'm working on it so good good to hear about my yeah yeah yeah yeah no but um let's get back with this tale of wo over here no but it's it's it's you know what I mean people admire your strengths but they resonate with your weaknesses and you know this when you really talk to people everyone's got a story every story is different every challenge is different everything's different and so I appreciate you being so transparent and I'm sorry for the the pain that you've been through um but you had a major moment in college right that you've kind of hinted at already do you want to talk about how it got real what happened cuz it involves golf well that that's when I mean I can say I didn't know what suffering was until then um so I'm floating along I get recruited to play golf in college went out um started off my freshman year and then I had a hand injury um in my left hand and started having you know pretty significant pain when I I I'd take it back and I'd have shooting pain down my arm and shoulder um so I struggled with it for a couple years um and finally into sophomore year I had to quit and my girlfriend and I broke up at the same time and so everything I mean my life had been um I mean pretty significantly probably since I was about 12 or so headed with down competitive Golf and that was my guide I mean I I was I was kind of a Believer yeah but you know in the old crew little circles who's on the throne well you know my golf was on the throne of my life but then I lost I lost my purpose I lost everything I was working for I lost it's really an organizing principle of my life and get out of class of 12 go the golf course until dark in the summer I was up at 6 o' on the range for two hours played 36 holes work on a short game till it's time to go to bed I mean it was that's what it's like and that was gone and I'm looking at a blank day every day and then so remind me what happened again to take golf away it turned out um they could figure out I went to like 14 doctors and they were calling it to nice but steroid shots and electrom muscular interventions and all that just didn't you were playing with Payne Stewart I mean you know he was a roomate a classmate uh he a teammate yeah um and we had three all-americans on the team you know it was good good GP and I was struggling but um two years after college I I found a surgeon who actually said he could fix it and so I had surgery and I got my golf game back and then I had a choice for the first time and I actually dropped out of graduate school one summer for a minute to try to go you know Chase the Dream again but then I had a God moment and decided I want to go into psychology and pursue this calling and so that's what happened but when all that happened I I really got deed I mean if I as a psychologist Looking Back Now I would have put me in a hospital immediately I mean I couldn't function and in the book I chronicled the way the rest of that summer went ultimately ending up I couldn't go back to school in the fall I I just couldn't and um that's when it uh that's when God kind of got on the throne so to speak what what did depression look like like and feel like for you Henry at that time well it was um i' put it in three ways one is just the physiological inability to move I mean if you've ever you know people say yeah I'm going through a depressing time well it usually they're saying they're going through a hard time and they're bummed out I mean there's they have a lot of pain in life that's but that's different than the real a real clinical depression the way I describe it and the way in treating a gazillion people the best best way if you've ever lived in a cold place and you went and started your car in the morning and that battery had gone down and he goes and then it goes and starts clicking that's what it feels like a great description wow can't move you wake up in the morning there's this it's like a black hole there's no no future there's and the second part is the just the cognitive part of that everything you think is is negative you know people a lot of times we hear from cognitive therapy you know thinking causes depression it yes but depression causes negative thinking there's a physiological driver of brain stuff that happens and and one of the symptoms is painful thinking now your thinking can drive painful feelings too but they're literally it's dark and you know I talk a lot about the 3ps it gets personalized I'm I'm orst I can't do anything I'll never be you know why don't even think I could be a leader or a golfer or a whatever in life and then it goes per pervasive everything turns bad and then it goes permanent it's not going to be any different so that that's kind of what it felt like until one day yeah one day what happened that day well this was I I would say that this is the defining Moment In My Life um I'm sitting there towards the end of four year I'm sitting in my room and Carrie I'm thinking about all these aspects of Life how am I going to get undepressed I've tried and it's not working how do you get a relationship to work how do you find the right girl how's that ever going to happen what am I GNA do to make a living what am I going to do to as a career I was an accounting and finance major thinking that if I didn't do something in the golf world I'd go to law school but I had taken a bunch of Business Law at that point and I I didn't want to do that read briefs all the time and write contracts and I was going how do you find and I was just thinking about it's like this laundry list of how do you figure this stuff out what do you what am I going to do and I'm sitting there in my dorm room and I look up on the bookshelf randomly I'm just sitting there and my Bible was up there which I hadn't opened since I'd been in college they didn't read a lot of Bible at the fraternity parties I was going to didn't didn't come up but it was sitting there and I and I felt this I don't know how to describe it but sort of like it it stood Out Among the Thousand books and I said maybe there's something there and I walk over and I pull it pull it off the shelf and open it up randomly and I look down and this verse jumps out and it says seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you as well and I looked at that verse said all all what things all these things I'm sitting here worried about you look for God first and I thought well crap nothing else is working and so so then well you can't do this in a dorm room right so I'm G to commit myself to God whatever that looks like I got to find a church so I walk across campus this empty Little Chapel on the SMU campus and I go down the altar I remember it was dark Sunday afternoon and I went down to the altar like I'd seen happen and I knelled down I say God I don't know if you're even there and I believe in you but I don't know if you're really there but I need help I don't know what to do I need I need help and Carrie I guess I had seen on TV where people get zapped I reach out you know it's like and I'm waiting and it was the worst silent moment nothing happened I had reached out to God nothing happened and I it was the lonliest moment I think I've ever experienced and because I was I was waiting to get zapped and nothing it's like I jumped out of the plane for the first time and I pulled the rip cord and the Sho didn't open yeah because everybody thinks God's there somewhere he was like the parachute one day you know yeah you get this nice warm feeling and your life's happily ever after so I'm like okay well call me you know I don't know so I go back to my dorm rooming and the phone rings and right I can't remember exactly how long but soon thereafter and it was a fraternity brother of mine he said I don't know why I'm thinking of you you're the last person I would invite to something like this but we're starting a Bible study at the front of the house and I want to invite you and so I saw that as maybe an answer God had heard me and so I went and I got this this Bible study um with a a really good guy he was a um he was a third or fourth year student at Dallas Seminary and um that's how I got into the path and then um kind of goes home from there but it didn't get the depression didn't get better and as school ended um I went I went back home from Dallas to Mississippi and I spent the summer there and I was just going downhill and then I had um I had I would say my first two Supernatural experiences it showed me a couple of things God definitely was there A and B it's possible for God to be there and with you and he's not healing you in the way you want to be healed sometimes we don't see him do anything we doubt his existence or presence sometimes we when we know he's there we think he's that means he's going to do something there was no doubt he was there I had a couple things happened early on three or four that summer that I I just couldn't deny and he wasn't healing me and so ultimately I couldn't go back to school um and I went my parents took me back back to ashers and um because you know they determined through a whole experience I talk about in the book that you know that they're better give me some professional help and so ushers is a hospital yes it's the same Hospital actually they taken me to when I was four gotcha okay yeah so they took you back there that's how bad your Depression was they decided to take you back to the hospital yeah they nobody know what to do wow um and actually one of the one of the you know talk I've got about 10 or 12 little short two or three page stories in there about miracles I don't know if you saw yeah I did yeah um but one of them actually was one that got me there which was I had I had gone to this church um because it was a church that I'd heard from somebody you know they prayed for people and healing and all this and so I went there and um and I kind of sat back and I I didn't want to go down front and all that um but I listened I listened to the guy I thought he was you know pretty credible it's not the church my family went to kind of outside of town and but I knew I wanted to talk to him and so I went I went home and I asked my father where where did where does he live I want to go find him and and my dad said I don't know but I think he lives somewhere north of town out there and he kind of gave me some area about 20 25 minutes away through and so I was desperate I got in the car and I prayed um God help me find that Pastor and Carrie I start driving and this say 25 minutes through multiple directions and subdivisions and all this and I would come to an intersection and I would feel turn right turn left turn and I'm following these nudging and then I get to the street it it's turn right I turn right and all of a sudden I there's a mailbox and it was his name and the second right when I pulled up and I don't I've only I've experienced this two times in my life for sure and one other kind of sort of I the entire atmosphere in the car changed I was no longer in whatever realm we live in it's like you can feel the atmosphere around you wherever you are you know kind of all of a sudden and the only way I know to describe it it is the word still it's like and you know eternity when you enter exit this realm into eternity there's no time it was the most it's like God is in this car whoa and I'm telling you it's there's no way to deny it and I'm looking at that pastor's name and it wasn't any doubt that what had happened he had taken me there and then he became the path you know to get me ultimately to where I needed that's incredible Henry um it's interesting though you know as you say this is the defining moment of my life and I was almost expecting you know the Angels the zapping all of that stuff and it's not it like it goes on the depression gets worse get worse um I think that's hope for people I think that's hope for people absolutely I mean one of the reasons I wrote the book I mean I wanted my friends to know the God is real but I also wanted people to know that wherever you are and however bad it is a it doesn't mean he's not there and be it doesn't mean that he's not going to do something so accounting tax possible law golf you know pretty pretty linear path to becoming a clinical psychologist put your quarter in the bus get right there get right there exactly yeah straight path no turns how did you end up in Psychology like what what caused that shift when I came to Faith and deepo so what happened was I I left New Orleans and the guy that had led the Bible study here's another interesting one they lived in Dallas he went to Dallas Seminary his wife starts telling him for about a month she says God is laying on my heart somebody's supposed to come live with us I mean these are graduate students with a 14mon old they have no time and energy for anything it's not like they have any money yeah and she and she keeps telling him somebody's supposed to come live with us he's going we can't have any you know it's like what are you you know are you lonely what what's WR wrong she said I'm just telling you and so I'm in New Orleans and they just is it wasn't good they weren't doing anything helpful and the same friend that had called me to go to the initial Bible study was the brother of the wife of this couple my fraternity brother and he called me and he said your parents told me he said I'm coming to see you he flew to New Orleans and he said they're not helping you we got to get you out of here so he calls he calls his sister and brother-in-law because they had a he was taking classes with the counseling classes with the psychiatrist at Dallas Seminary and he said he said maybe you can get him to see him and when they when I called bill turned to his wife and said I think this is the one he supposed to wow so they took me in and that's when I found started to get some help but but Carrie I was basically in a seminary residential Seminary with them I lived with them for you know four or five months um and a lot of healing you know that was happening um but in that time I just fell in love with Theology and so getting how do I get into Clinical Psychology so I I was spending the days I used to been on the golf course I spent in the stacks in the library Dallas Seminary and really was uh deep into in theology gave me a great grounding um in the beginning but at the same time I'm reading a lot of the you know Christian psychological stuff and long story short but it became clear I mean God made it very clear change your major to psychology you're going into psychology and I didn't know anything about it it but it was a clear call and I had to do it I I I appreciate how tender these stories still are to tell um thank you from it's not I'd say this to people in pain um when I talk about it now and I feel it it's not pain it's gratitude but what God has done in a life that was not going anywhere probably you know going down to worst pain um yeah I'm not hurting over any of that anymore it's just car and one of the reasons I wrote this book was I just want I'm so grateful what God did through all of that and for people to know he can and he will and I'm also grateful the the book is riddled with interventions of people that he used yeah and I'm so grateful why did you not give up what why did you not give up why did you not quit why did you not take your own life why did you not just succumb to to the darkness I don't know yeah it's a good answer man that's a good answer Henry I don't know some kind of I'm sure it must have been tempting at times well I wanted to die but I never I could never say I was seal um I just wanted to wake up and have it all be gone you know for some people that's kill themselves um I don't know maybe maybe and I I literally don't know I'm guessing um I do think that um there's probably you know the Bible says that that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance character and character hope and I think maybe you know I'd gone through a significant illness as a little person and the world had gone dark you know you tell a three and a half year old they can't walk anymore yeah when they've been out there doing everything and all of a sudden they're going to be in a chair um it it's significant and I think I think probably maybe I had learned somewhere that perseverance gets to Hope and so I guess I just it was somewhere damped into that experience that you keep going maybe so you moved to LA what what brought you to La um well it's interesting I after I changed my major um I and there I was deep into a lot of lot of training in Psychology I was having an equivalent graduate school experiences while I was still in college I was going to outside training and workshops and and all this kind of stuff that professionals were going to sign up and go and I just wasn't Carrie honestly I was so disillusioned with the Christian models of psychological treatment and the models at the church because and and I knew all of them really well yeah and it just didn't and it's not like there wasn't some helpful stuff in there but it certainly wasn't something I could commit my life to sure but I knew God was telling me to so I decided to take a year um I'm I'm looking at the screen here you got me all te I got red eyes um I decided to take a year out before graduate school yeah and work in a in a psychiatric hospital um and you can't do anything with a bachelor's degree so I went to work for $333 cents an hour in a psychos fille as a college graduate my father thought I was crazy like crazy but I told him I had to do it and I did learn something that year though you can't survive on $3.33 an hour especially in La yeah but I learned that eating disorder patients don't eat their food so a lot of them would refuse the Trad and they go Nur nursing station so I just that's how there's some food yeah and odd jobs at night and all that but I got a year of experience there in the hospital was equivalent to like a residence in Psychiatry and um and in in that time I I really got to know um I don't know if you remember uh men the Meyer I don't know Christian psychiatrist who started really kind of opened up the church really to Psychiatry and and people getting you know medical treatment and psychological treatment anyway um I got to know them pretty well and they were actually giving me a lot of experiences in their groups and following their patience and all of this and I really learned a lot and they offered me um an opportunity to come into their practice to you know you when you go to graduate school after two years you'll have a masters you can start working watch you to work with us they were going to help me you know and there was Financial Security I was had a community there in Dallas I thought my future was so and so I started applying to graduate schools and I thought South Southwestern Medical School they had a good program there in Dallas University of Texas um Baylor uh applying also applied to Emy and um Banner built and few others and then all the good writings the best writings were coming out of rosem me with Bruce narmore and John Carter back then and I said almost in an application rosby kind of more like you know people do to Harvard they're never going to go but send an application so I'm I'm would going to California I was from Mississippi I lived in Dallas California is might as well go to you know Soviet Union Just Another Universe and anyway so they sent me a letter and said I got an interview and they send people around the country to interview prospective students so I had a um interview we were on our my roommates and I were going to go skiing we're driving to tal for um spring break their spring break and I said I got to stop by the airport for an interview they're like what what kind of interiew I well school and C you're not going to California I said I know it but I just want to do the interview so they're really mad at me and they're waiting in the parking lot and I go to the interview and I'm talking to the guy and while we're talking about school and schools and training and all of that I had this mystical experience parallel to it where my head is getting turned around in some way and I left the room going I'm going to California and I knew you knew it wasn't a linear cognitive decision it was a knowing I'm going to California so I had to go back and leave everything secure you know I told Frank menth I said I appreciate it I I I'm leaving I gotta I gotta leave so I moved La I didn't know a soul I put all my worldly possessions in my little Toyota drove to California wow and that's when that's when I through a lot of training a lot of experiences a lot of clinical experiences bun stuff happened um I really started to to learn and see what I went into the field for was depressed people becoming no longer coping with depression but no longer depressed Eating Disorders having a normal relationship with food panic disorders people don't have anxiety anymore I was I was seeing real real treatment really work and then I went into a spiritual crisis because it was wasn't the Christian formulas and models that were producing this there were processes that were producing this and I was kind of like what do I do with this am i g to be a Christian one who does this and isn't helping much or am I going to be somebody Sly helpful but not because it didn't seem overtly like the models I'd learn which we could in the book I go into specifically but and so then I I I had been in practice a few years at that point and Carrie I the crisis was so significant that I dropped out of life other than I was working but I kind of quit everything else except golf I was playing golf but I I quit everything else and said I'm gonna do one thing I'm going to read my Bible and I'm G to read any of this other no theology no Christian stuff just going to read the scriptures and for about two years I'd say most of my time was in the scriptures and the only way I know how to describe it was I was born again again because everything that I was seeing that trans formed mental illnesses we'll call it the non-biological parts of it it's right there in the Bible yeah so many of your books are that beautiful tapestry between scripture and psychology right well it came out of that period yeah that tapestry is the right word because what I saw was there's not there's not Two Worlds that have to be integrated there's one One Creation one fall one Redemption and I just kind of what it did was it created an operating system where I just I I see situations and I would describe it as I just I see God's ways in the in whatever it is whether it's psychology or theology or whatever these are his ways and he's talked about and the other thing that happened was the so-called Christian model all of this we not in there can you give us an example of an old Christian model that you couldn't find scriptural support for well one of the uh see I I kind of broke him down into you you look at you know there's there were three or four different prevailing camps one was the sin model and that's the back then the J Adams World newthe counseling you still see that in a lot of those circles and their whole model basically especially at that time was you know if you're hurting there's a sin behind it what what is your UNC confest in Henry bring it out right that that idea or even um well unconfessed um unknown maybe okay because they would dig to find out the pro the model is this if if something's wrong there's a sin that you have not confessed your repent right right that's still out there yeah it's called ntic counseling was what Adams named it newo is the Greek word for admonish or confront okay it comes out of other places 1 Thessalonians 5 which also says help the weak heal the fainthearted newo the unruly but be patient with all in the one verse it says that there's there's more than one answer but they want to confront everybody huh you know the the uh a little bit of a cousin of that in today's world you hear a lot about the the idols right there's an idol in your life um so here's the problem there's truth to that but if all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail yeah and there are people think that well and I'm not going to mention the name but you could plug in three or four big names into this sentence I heard one of them say every all emotional problems come down to a wrong view of God if I tell you a name people would go wait a minute or others H okay you tell you tell a woman who was gang raped and is suffering debilitating depression and all sorts of stuff from that that her problems are from the a wrong view of God and I would see Christians doing everything possible all these formulas were telling them and sometimes driving them to the point of wanting to kill themselves because now they're blaming themselves so that's the sin model then you had the truth model if you have enough Bible and you know you stay in the word memorize the word and all this kind of stuff then you know it's going to heal you well is there is there truth that God's word is powerful and of course there is but the flagship you know then you got the position in Christ people and name your claim your position and that's going that's never prescribed it's described in the scriptures but it's never prescribed as a cure and what we've got is that it it's so interesting Carrie you know you if you ask a I've asked audiences this for years you know what verse do you hear about power of God's word to heal you and all of this and everybody can answer that question you know you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free so get in the word get in the word get in the word and trust me I am a word guy I believe the whole banana all of it and then I ask the audience the second question read me the whole passage for memory they don't know it what it actually says is if you hold to my teachings if you follow in my teachings and there is an experiential language there then you shall know not just in your head the truth and the truth shall set you free it is God's ways that heal us which he's written down but the Bible says you cannot be just hearers of the word but doers and he says what like the man built his house on the rock everybody says I'm building the rock of Jesus what the passage says he who hears my teachings and puts them into practice shall be like the man so I begin to see the New Testament and the Old Testament described all of these practices and processes that directly feel the major ideological aspects of what we call emotional relational problems all the stuff that the field psychology addresses to and so there were these models like and then you got the the you know there's a demon behind every disorder and right then you gots exorcism yeah and while there's truth in all of those cu when I studied them and looked at it over and over and over and you analyze J's friends sermons there they are it J's friend sermons are like a walk through a Christian bookstore and in the end God said they did not speak the truth of me as my servant job did which and I mean we go deep into the meta Theology and psychology of all this but ultimately The Fault in and the Genesis of a bunch of those is they all are prescriptions of things that we can control you can change your thinking you can make right choices all of the stuff that we can control when the Bible see what the Evangelical models of this stuff don't realize is that our will which is actually a very complicated construct it's not just the Chooser but they act like your Chooser can do this stuff and then you're you're going to get well or your mind can do this stuff and you're going to get well not understanding that the Chooser is Fallen also the Chooser is broken that's why people say you got to make a commitment get off of drugs well any addict that's really recovered will tell you it wasn't until they came to a point of surrender that they were unable to make the right choices that healing began and then they had to do a U-turn that was based in powerlessness and dependency and see what we don't understand is that that mental characterological relational all growth has got to start with a dependent need based attachment to God and people outside of ourselves and so much of these models you don't really need I mean you can be asking but kind of don't need God or other people to change your thinking the cognitive CBT does that all the time CBT was developed by an atheistic Che originally h and then it got kind of baptized into the Christian World it wasn't even CBT then it was cognitive therapy it got baptized in the Christian World by Larry Krab who wrote a book on it way back when and then because it's so easy to line up with scripture you can kind of make it everything but we're we're much more complex than just our thinking or Chooser so I wrote about a lot of this in the book they yeah yeah so I'm interested you know it's it's connecting a lot of dots for me you have have written I don't know how many books a lot if there was one book you have that sort of outlines your philosophy for people who are interested and I mean you've just got so many you got boundaries necessary endings your book on trust and and countless others is there a particular book that sort of has like the whole philosophy in one or is it spread out over the body of your work I I kind of say yes and no it if the easiest way to see what I think about this topic that we're talking about now is is this book why I believe gotcha okay when you go to the to the psychology section it's kind of a summary of a lot of these issues now I break it down much further in my original book changes that heal because that was written right when I began to understand all of this and it was an apologetic really to the anti counseling movement of the time right um which you had famous voices saying that you know psychology bun of secular humanist we still hear Echoes of that what year was that that you published that changes that heel and what was the era when there was an anti- coun was that in 90 two yeah okay 92 now used to debate all those guys um John Townson and I did a uh I I'm not going to mention the names um You probably have some of them on your podcast everybody does um but we did a theological critique in the classical categories of systematic theology showing where they deviate from Orthodoxy when they get into talking about emotional issues oh wow literal heresy huh is that available for public consumption anywhere no that was that was way back when but I I could give you an example sure um I won't quote him or I won't quote the name but a big anti- counseling book said the only possible reason and I'm I won't get the words exactly right but the only possible legitimate reason to send somebody to a counselor and should only be a pastoral counselor would be that the counselor can point them to Christ well that's not what Systematic Theology that's not what the doctrine of ecclesiology would tell us that's heresy wow Ephesians 4 says from the head the whole body heals itself as e held together and joined together by the NIT the ligaments and Senus the body held together meaning us the people heals itself as each part does its work and each part's got to do its work through healing the Brokenhearted supporting the weak confronting the unruly modeling new things confessing your faults to one another strengthening one you know all these all these things that the body like your body heals itself right well what if somebody said the only reason of the body is to have an out-of- body experience to connect to God then you'll never get over an infection because you're designed to have an immune system that clears it out contains it you get the infection new oxygenated blood flows in it you know you don't get me started you probably had to sh we got to do what the Bible says do yeah not what people's dead I minut it makes me crazy systemat IC theology which I love but they take it and that gets in their minds their Systematic Theology is inherent and it's applicable to everything where it doesn't fit there's a lot it doesn't fit in those cookie cutters and you get into the area of healing people's hearts Souls minds and strength and you better go to the scriptures and not your Doctrine you probably as you and John Townsen pioneered this this different approach one one more book if you're talking to pastors um um after changes deal our book how people grow yeah um that was a book we actually wrote two Pastors in the beginning and we organized the chapters over the classical categories of systematics and then hin said well you know you want this for normal people too and I just F so they changed the names titles from um like justification they changed it to the warmth of forgiveness so normal people could read it and they did I mean they were right I guess how did you handle your critics you must have gotten a lot of criticism when you're disrupting the waters especially back in the 990s when you come in with this new approach what did you was your there were books written in websites about you know what a what a heretic I am how do you respond to that so much fun I respond to it like great respond to it theologically and what you find is they don't know their Bibles in these areas they can give you they can give you their you know their systematics and all this but I would just let's just I would find it with the scriptures wow and I loved it so much fun I I had a guy I had a guy one time I was doing a training in a big Ministry and I was talking about that the leaders excuse me look you if you don't if you don't learn to open up and start to be vulnerable with somebody and these biblical processes begin to actual happen and you know we're in this training about all this this guy stands up and he pounded his on the table he says I cannot allow this to go on any further I said what first of all it's not your meeting so we'll decide who can allow it and who can't but but what are you talking me it's this this Distortion of the word of God I said the last thing I want to do is distort the word of God what did you tell me he said people grow not there's people don't grow from getting vulnerable and press people grow from the teaching and the preaching of the word of God that's how my life was changed I said well dude first of all that's all with the Bible schs but we'll get to that but secondly you have got a they say do disconnect Bubba because what you are saying is not what you do and it's not what happened and I knew a little bit about his story in the ministry that his life has changed in I said you're telling me that all you have was the teaching and the preaching of the word of God here's the truth here's the video you were a frat rat lost upside down in life and this campus ministry started visiting the basketball court started playing basketball with you and you struck up a friendship with this guy and he invited you to this group you get in this group you start learning God's word but you're also when you come to God's word like James 5:116 it says confess your faults to one another so you can be healed you started talking about what's going on inside of you and that same guy when your girlfriend broke up with you came and held your hand through the night as you sobbed your eyes out and they started helping you clean up your act they developed some new skills and they called out some gifts in you and over the course of a few years your life Changed by the preaching and the teaching of the word of God yeah by doing what the word of God says so don't as Jesus said lay those heavy burdens upon men's shoulders so that they can't enter in you are teaching and right there in Matthew 23 says the traditions of men not the Oracles of God and Carrie this happens over and over and over what was his response oh it gets better he said well he actually says yeah but you're talking about all this you know opening up in the you know and then he said the it's all about I said well let's just you said the teaching and the preaching of the word of God and you're saying that what I'm saying about opening up said let's just randomly open and this is in a big room I said let's just randomly open up that bible you're talking about and I randomly open it up to 2 Corinthians 6 and Paul says we have we we have opened up our lives and given you our lives oh Corinthians and now I say as a like Exchange open wide your hearts to us also I say so just sit down and try to listen for the rest of the session I mean let's just go to the Bible wow Henry this has been absolutely fascinating I got a couple more questions for you one is you know a couple of major depressive episodes when you were younger in your younger years what has your battle with depression been since your 20s um I haven't had it wow it lifted um I did I tell I did have um because I was I I mean you know I was very fortunate to get good help and I talk about the processes that happen um the only thing that I would you know and I did talk about some later healing that I have had to have my soul and a couple of you know there's 10 or 12 miracles in there that I experienced um in in seeing a bunch of those I could share a couple of those yeah as teasers but but the other I would call diagnosable kind of um in' 08 um and I was I mean this is only what however many years ago I was by the then I was speaking to Arenas and in big audiences had been speaking forever and um in OA my mother died and my father died and my brother-in-law who's a Navy SEAL who is like my brother um was killed in Iraq and all within several weeks and there's a lot going on I was I work in leadership at Big a lot of work on Wall Street when the crisis happened in ' 08 at the same time I was on planes going back to Wall Street all the time and and I had to help my you know my family um and then you know obviously my my sister-in-law and they had a new infant and um and a lot of business things and all of that and throughout the rest of that year after those three deaths um I was just on go mode and I never stopped and was that a response to the the the difficulties like you just kicked it into high gear or well it was more necessity it U no I wouldn't run it from anything it was just okay the world was falling down and I had to help sure um and especially in the family stuff and just all of it and so we go through that year well the next spring I'm I'm speaking on a Women of Faith tour big Arenas you know and I get up on stage instead of been early part of the next year I get up on the stage like I always do and start to talk and all of a sudden the the arena starts spinning and I'm starting to like Panic inside and I'm going what is going on and I'm still giving my talk and I'm a psychologist and I knew within seconds I said this is a panic attack I never had one except for one time I was doid diving and run out of air but I I knew I knew this was that's what I was having and then I said do not leave the stage because that's the worst thing you can do is Retreat from panic because it reinforces it de spread so I just continue to talk over here while I'm freaking out I don't know how I got through it but I did and then I made it through it and I went back to my seat and I asked him if I did that I said no that's fine it's literally so split and then I said well I got in at two: in the morning I missed a flight I hadn't eaten I'm fatigued and I just rote it off to blood sugar I was in Rochester New York well next week fly to some other city and I get up it happens again and then happened again and then I began to develop panic over even next week and so I started thinking about it and I said what the heck is going on with me and then I realized I asked myself the question I asked youbody Ela what's been going on in your life in the last year and so at that point I said you know oh c I gota go see a shrink so I I went in and spent a lot of time you know processing a lot of those losses and U that's the only other time I mean that other stuff had to work through is in you know relational stuff and all that you see in the book but um you can work that through in real time I guess I guess I say that to show the people you know you people get better but God's ways have got to be present what are some disciplines or habits or changes in your daily rhythms or behaviors that have helped you stay relatively healthy over the last 30 years what are some of the practices because you're right God's ways have to be present in your life I've made huge change you and I have talked a lot you know I've made huge changes in my life dayto day since I burned out in 2006 18 years ago and you know it's those rhythms and the grace of God that have sustained me from another burnout and have made my life better qualitatively over the last 20 years I'm just wondering do you have any practices that you know wow if I stop doing this it's probably not a good road ahead well let let me reframe that a little bit because I don't want it to sound like you're doing these things to ward off the boogeyman yeah right yeah because I want people to see the boogeyman isn't always creeping at the door right and we're doing these things to White Knuckle it and hold on you know Psalm two says that that it PS this picture of being deeply grounded and thriving doesn't mean you don't have problems doesn't mean all that but I think it's like you don't have to ward off burnout you have to have life where burnout is not the picture anywhere we don't seeing it even on the horizon you might go through trauma or problems yeah so I would um i' probably categorize those um as the most important life sustaining and the Bible says it over and over and over and over and over and over and over is connection connection to God connection to others a lot of people have connection to God but scripture is pretty clear how you love a god you can't see if you can't love your brother whom you can't see and they don't as a discipline or a habit build in structured connection times from vulnerability and from weakness and so that's always been a big menu of mine um you know touring out a coup's group um that we were in before we made you know for 20 years I um at my own individual and then it varies points through the years I've had um an you know individual trength that I would go you know process stuff with and a group of friends so connection is is it is it builds everything from your immune system to your brain I mean it there's no more science on anything than that it's just the clear saying we yeah now a lot of Evangelical practices are Solo they are that's so true I've never thought of it that's so true they're solo go read the books oh wow that doesn't mean that those don't have their their place but there's a difference a difference in solitude and isolation and people can go do solitude from an isolated place anyway I think that's that's that's a big one I think another is um an ongoing ongoing awareness audit um commitment to ownership of a life that I'm a steward and to the extent that I'm not experiencing what the existentialists are call true freedom and responsibility um anytime being externally determined or circumstantially determined or feeling like a victim or any of that creeps into the picture um that's a that's a real discipline um for us to remain um this is where I am that's my problem and how do I and guide and help and actions and choices and know that take ownership and responsibility that and respond to it in the best way I can and then I think individual habits and and I'm not going to play Perfect over here but I um I have a 100% adding average but my my daily routine with god um which um are like food but they're also aligning you know got um anyway and then um and then I I try to spend some portion of time every day in what I would call study um learning and I have other structured things like continuing yeah still take 36 hours continuing ad from experts in the world um and listen to podcast and blah blah blah I mean I could go on and on but but but basically I tell this to some people you know some addicts and they talk about like go you know recovery is I go dude don't act like recovery is a program that you got to do all that happens in recovery is you learn to live like people live who have good lives they recognize their dependency on God they own their crap they make a moral inventory all the time they're cleaning things out they're making amends they're reconciling relationships and they do this with other Travelers together that's not a program that's life they're not in Discovery they're just doing what the Bible says do you idiot don't act like this is just some big burden I love your reframing of that you know what cuz it has been 18 years and at first it was just like okay I don't never want to go back there I don't want to feel the way I felt what do I need to do but you're right it's more like a s 2 thing these days because burnout really I don't know how far away I am from it but it's not in the immediate field of vision and the habits and The rhythms that I have have if you uo the tree if you uproot the tree the leaves can get brown burn out again but not like if you're still you know working the program exactly no that's that's a really good reframing but the other thing about the habits is um you know I continually I mean as recently as right before we got on the air I mean I triy to as best I can I write about this in um in in the how people grow book in the Holy Spirit section um I try to live a dual consciousness kind of like even especially when I'm working with clients or gnarly situations or whatever I'm always trying to that's the prayer without ceasing I think the listening and awareness God help me how do I answer this what you know and there's the sort of the building the an abiding with him kind of all our conscious moments that's that's a you can call that a discipline um but I'm always always one of my biggest displ car is I'm always asking for God's help always and guidance one one of the chapters in the book The Miracle chapters um it I mean God's guidance is incredible um we had years ago John tals and I you know we had written some books and and then uh I can make this short somehow they we were we were about to signed about a five-year publishing deal that would have really organized our next 5 years and it was great and we've been working on it for months and we knew the publisher we were going with and it was all going to be great in my prayer time I had been hearing a in my head not an audible voice but every time I would pray God would tell me he was taking me out of that h of what I was doing and specifically knew it meant the Christian focus and it made no sense because everything I was doing was organized around Christian Media we had a syndicated radio show on 200 stations speaking and all this kind of stuff writing Christian books and I kept hearing this voice and been going on for about a year but we're about to sign this deal and Tori and I are having dinner and the phone rings and it was a woman that I was on a board with of a homeless Mission I saw twice a year she lived in San Francisco she called me she knew nothing she called me and she said I just had a vision about you and I said what and she said well you were in a yard with a fence around it talking to people in the yard and the Lord said he wants to remove the fence so you can talk to people outside of the yard immediately I knew that was just the Christian audience and and supposed to go to the marketplace wow okay she says this and now she's got my attention because it resonated now maybe that's what it meant maybe it didn't but then she says this she said and you're about to sign something I think it's a book thing that if you sign it it will lock you into the yard and the Lord says don't sign it wow talked to her twice a year yeah yeah your book is full of stories like that I mean even what was her name althia or something like that that therapist al Alia yeah holy cow like the number of times that just those coincidences have shown up so you didn't sign that what year was that approximately that you Chang it would have been right before I wrote Integrity um so 2004 so and I didn't know what I was going to do and and then all of a sudden from nowhere um I get introduced um to and and then other things happened but I knew I was supposed to write a business book that was outside of the Christian World a leadership book and and um uh based on on course I had Tau for years and the book's called integrity and then out of the blue another story I could go into around time but now we are for yeah I knew I needed to get a New York agent um out of the Christian world and she fell out of the sky number one agent in the world and for some reason she took me on and we went to New York and did the the book integrity and then the New York Times got a hold of that wrote a big thread on you know it the best leadership book of the bunch and all this and that developed a whole business leadership track it never would have happened if it hadn't been for that woman's phone call Henry I feel like I feel like we could spend another hour easily uh and we have taken a lot of your time today if there's a final thought or and I want to underscore one more thing you said too you know when you're getting at agency like what is the line from one of your books I can't remember which book but you are ridiculously controlling in control of your life like that's well it was it's I guess I am ridiculously in charge yeah yeah a leader it's it's it's out of boundaries for leads yeah uhuh it's such a great line and it's like cuz we can sit there playing victim all day long like oh this is happening or the economy or this you have to remember it doesn't say in control it says in charge in charge okay ridiculously in charge are being in charge to surrendering for what we're not in control of well this is this is why you do what you do and people like me ask the questions so this is this is great Henry if there's a final thought or word or piece of advice you would have for leaders today what would you like to tell them oh gosh um you're in a Netflix movie you hit pause what happens a box comes around a scene there's another scene after that there's another scene after that there's another scene after that there's another scene after that but all of that is turning into a big story arc don't ever think the scene that you're in if it's a bad one is the whole movie but don't say in that box either because there's a screenwriter who's writing that movie and he's invited you to be a co-author work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for this God who is at work within you to Will and to do of his good pleasure so whatever scene you're in in to total dependency stay connected to him and he will make your path straight but if you're in an isolated scene with him and nobody else because of First Peter 4 says speaking the word the very words of God to you that you don't have that those are the two most important things you can do he will direct your steps boy that's great that's really helpful well the book is called called why I believe it's a fascinating semi-autobiographical book there's a lot about you in there and I thank you for sharing today so vulnerably and emotionally in the book uh book is available everywhere Henry if people want to track with you online these days what's a good spot to do it um I have two different online platforms one one's called boundaries.me it's a website boundaries.me and I've got over a hundred courses on there and about 20-some long form seminars on every issue in the world and then on for leadership go to something called leadership University but it's Lead You Le a d the letter U lead you.tv awesome well Henry uh I know we'll have lots to talk about next time but thank you so much for all that you do for the church all you've done for leaders today in this conversation and personally everything you've done for me I've learned so much and grown so much so I'm truly grateful I'm glad it's been helpful Carrie thanks for all the good stuff you do and getting just getting so much good stuff out to people you've been a good Steward of that and God bless you thank you