Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation

111 Healing Power of Story: Making Sense of Your Life (with Adam Young)

• Season 7 • Episode 111

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Sometimes, when you feel stuck, and overwhelmed, you don’t need more and better information. Sometimes you need to engage your story, to better understand how the past influences the present. That's what we talk about with Adam Young. 

Adam Young is a therapist who focuses on trauma and abuse, and the host of The Place We Find Ourselves podcast. He currently serves as a Fellow and Instructor at The Allender Center.  Adam is the author of Make Sense of Your Story: Why Engaging Your Story with Kindness Changes Everything.

Also, check out his mini-conference hosted each month. 

Adam explains the concept of story work as a therapeutic and spiritual practice that helps individuals understand how their past experiences shape their present. He emphasizes the importance of approaching one's story with kindness and the role of attachment, neuroscience, and spirituality in the healing process. They also delve into the significance of exploring familial, cultural, and spiritual narratives to achieve wholeness and integration, or 'Shalom.' Additionally, Adam provides insights into addressing common resistance to story work and the importance of leaders engaging in this process to foster supportive community environments. He concludes by sharing information about his ongoing mini-conference series aimed at helping individuals delve deeper into their stories.

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Introduction and Welcome

Geoff Holsclaw: Sometimes you might feel stuck or overwhelmed, but you don't need more and better information. Sometimes you need to engage your story in a new and different way to better understand how the past influences the present. That is what we are talking about today. Welcome back. This is the, uh, attaching to God podcast.

I am Geoff Holsclaw, your host, and we're looking to explore, uh, neuroscience informed spiritual formation. 

Meet Adam Young: Therapist and Author

Geoff Holsclaw: As always, we are produced by Embodied Faith, and today as our guest, we have Adam Young, whom I've heard about for, uh, several years, uh, from different people. He's a therapist who is focused on trauma and abuse and is the host of his own podcast called The Place We Find Ourselves.

He currently serves as a fellow and instructor at the Dan ER Center and just published a [00:01:00] book titled, making Sense of Your Story, why Engaging with Your Story. With kindness, which I think is key, which we're gonna get to with kindness, changes everything. Adam, thank you so much for being on today.

Adam Young: Geoff, it's good to be with you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, I appreciate you making some time.

I canceled earlier, I got sick when we were supposed to schedule, but, I'm so glad that you're on today. 

Adam's Journey to Becoming a Therapist

Geoff Holsclaw: Could you, you know, we all have different kind of stories maybe about how we got into the work we do. Uh, could you just kind of lay out a little bit like what were some of the stepping stones that led you to the place of, uh, being a therapist, um, and doing all those things that you do?

I.

Adam Young: Sure. I was a pastor before I was a therapist, and the part of pastoring that made me come alive the most was, besides preaching, was engaging with people one-on-one, particularly taking them into their stories. I. Linking what they were struggling with in the present to their past story growing up and their family.

And so it was just a natural shift for me to, [00:02:00] I had already earned a master's degree in social work, um, right after undergrad. So it was, it was kind of the right season for me to dive into therapeutic work full-time. And I did that in 2013.

Geoff Holsclaw: So you didn't love, like the staff meetings and the budget

Adam Young: No.

Geoff Holsclaw: and the event planning, you didn't love the aspect of running a small business, uh, of being a pastor. I.

Adam Young: Correct.

Geoff Holsclaw: Alright, excellent. 

Focus on Trauma and Story Work

Geoff Holsclaw: So what are some of your, um, you know, like being a therapist is, is real broad, it's huge, you know, a lot of, so what do you kind of focus on and how did you kind of get, you know, really interested in your particular expertise?

Adam Young: Well, I work exclusively with adults. Um, half couples, half individuals, and the people that I work with have a history of trauma. So, um, e especially sexual trauma, sexual abuse, that's kind of what I focus on. That's my favorite, uh, category to engage. And, um, I [00:03:00] have been trained, uh, in story work methodology by Dan Allen and the Islander Center.

And so I bring in a lot of attachment science, a lot of neuroscience, uh, scripture. Spirituality and uh, story work. And that's kind of how I approach whoever I'm sitting across from

Understanding Story Work

Geoff Holsclaw: So what is story work, um, as like a therapeutic modality or even a spiritual formation kind of perspective? What, how would you

Adam Young: story work is looking at the particular narratives from your growing up years, incidents, scenes. I. That you remember, and you may not be sure why you remember them, and you likely don't remember the full story, but you remember a fragment, you remember a partial scene, and we start with what you remember, especially from zero to 18, so that we can understand how the neurons in your brain have been shaped, [00:04:00] connected, configured.

Uh, so that we can understand why you experience your present adult life the way you do, because neurons that fire together like they wire together, that's the phrase. And so when you've had an experience particularly of harm, not necessarily trauma, but harm in your younger years, that shapes the way the neurons in your brain have connected.

And we wanna understand that so we can understand you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm. 

The Importance of Making Sense of Your Story

Geoff Holsclaw: So then why does, why does making sense of your story, you wrote a whole book, right? Uh, make sense of your story. Why does that, how does that help people move forward then? Uh, why isn't it just like dwelling on the past or, you know, that's, some people might say, you know, like, my past is my past and I'm focused on the future.

So why, why does focusing on story matter so much?

Adam Young: Because in order for you to experience what the Hebrew Bible called Shalom. Integration wholeness. You have to make coherent sense of your [00:05:00] own developmental story. In other words, your growing up experiences need to be coherent. They need to make sense to you for the neural networks in your brain to be well connected, well-integrated.

The nature of trauma, the nature of harm is disintegration or fragmentation in the brain, and when you're able to tell your story coherently. In a way that makes sense and you as a boy or a girl are named well in the context of those stories, the fragmentation ceases to be fragmentation and it becomes integration wholeness.

Shalom,

Geoff Holsclaw: So what would be, I have lots of questions about the Shalom and old Tesla, so we're gonna get back to that. 

Indicators of a Disintegrated Story

Geoff Holsclaw: But what would be like indicators or markers of like a disintegrated story? Like how does that come out in your

Adam Young: I.

Geoff Holsclaw: or, or maybe in your memories and how you organize those things? Um.

Adam Young: Well, the way most people talk about it is they get [00:06:00] triggered or they have what they call overreactions. So this happens especially in relationships that are important to us. There's a look on her face, there's a tone in her voice, and all of a sudden I. We are either feeling deep levels of shame or anger or fear, anxiety, big emotions that feel to us, disproportionate to the circumstance.

And we might call that a trigger. We might call that an overreaction, whatever you call it. It's making implicit memory known, so you're remembering something from your past. You just don't have the sensation of recall, so you don't know you're remembering anything. And there in that sense. Present day difficulties can become clues to your past story.

Geoff Holsclaw: mm And and are there clues in the sense of like little bits of disintegration that are showing up and kind of invading the presence, like that kind of way?

Adam Young: It well, it's giving you a [00:07:00] roadmap to be curious about why did I just react so strongly? To in that interaction, why am I feeling these big feelings in my body? Or why am I shutting down and going numb in this interaction? And those questions, if they are questions, if they are brought with curiosity, can lead you into the truth of your past story.

Geoff Holsclaw: So how do. 

Approaching Your Story with Kindness

Geoff Holsclaw: you talk about approaching your story with kindness. Why is that kind of the, the key, um, kind of component in, in some of the story work that we're doing?

Adam Young: Because hospitality, in other words, welcome a posture of, I want to hear from you younger Adam is the key to rewiring neural networks. If I won't. Listen and pay attention [00:08:00] to the stories that my body holds, then I can't integrate those stories if I dismiss them as no big deal. Or worse, if I feel deep levels of shame or self contempt because I hate what that 10-year-old boy did.

Well, then there's a sense of the fragmentation, the cutting off, being strengthened. I'm, I've exiled that boy from, from me, rather than welcoming him, listening to him and bringing to him some care and some attention.

Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm. I just wrote down, uh, the question about like parts or internal family systems, uh, parts work. 

Internal Family Systems and Parts Work

Geoff Holsclaw: Is that, is that kind of not that, does that dovetail a little bit with this question of disintegration and stories and the

Adam Young: Oh. Absolutely the that's Internal Family Systems was developed by Richard Schwartz and one of his great insights is that human beings are a multiplicity of parts. We are not one unitary self. We [00:09:00] all, all of us, we have angry parts, we have scared parts. We have parts of us that are ashamed, parts of us that are six years old, parts of us that get aroused.

We, we are. A multiplicity of selves, and what I'm inviting the reader to do is to welcome all of those parts and listen to the younger you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. And I really like how, uh, you kind of organize, uh. different kind of story questions. 'cause you talk about, um, engaging, the story of your family of origin, but also the story of your body, the story of your, uh, sexuality, sexual life, listening uh, collective stories as well as life with God.

So those are all just kind of like different ways of engaging the story. It's, it's really compelling. For some people like me, I'll just speak for myself. Right. 

Common Objections to Story Work

Geoff Holsclaw: You know, I kind of have resistance about like exploring my story and there's a reason with, uh, like avoiding or dismissive attachment that actually doing that story work can be [00:10:00] difficult.

So what are some of the common objections to doing the story work that you run into and how do you kind of help people to engage it?

Adam Young: Well, you've already named one of them, which is the past is in the past. I'm supposed to pay attention to the present and the future, not dwell on the past. I mean, that phrase, dwell on the past is pejorative in our culture.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Adam Young: big one is I don't wanna blame my parents.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah.

Adam Young: Lots of people have the posture of, look, my parents did the best they could.

Yeah, they were imperfect people. I don't wanna blame them. I don't wanna be a victim. Therefore, I'm not gonna look back at what happened to me as a boy or a girl,

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Adam Young: and the way that I address that objection is simply you. The truth according to Jesus. It's the truth that sets you free, but the truth requires you to have eyes wide open.

To what it was like for you as a boy or a girl in your family with regard to the [00:11:00] harm that your parents did and all parents do harm. I'm a parent. I do harm. To be a human being is to at times harm others, especially our children. And therefore, what's keeping you from looking at the ways that your parents.

Harmed you when your brain was developing at the most rapid rate, namely when you were younger?

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm. Well, you don't push back, uh, exactly in the book with this phrase, but I just wanna try this out, is I often hear something like. When I'm talking about parents, uh, something like they did the best they could with what they

Adam Young: Mm-hmm.

Geoff Holsclaw: uh, which sometimes is true, but some, many times it's not. Right. Uh, so as an excuse for, uh, or dismissing, uh, kind of these harms or traumas, uh, that our, our parents kind of, you know, Engage us in. How would you address that? Because sometimes we idealize our parents when really we need to be looking at them [00:12:00] maybe a little bit more, I don't know what word you'd put in there. Critically or truthfully? Um,

Adam Young: The word I would put in there is with honor, honor requires honesty. And so if someone has the objection or the felt sense in.

Geoff Holsclaw: like it's from the Bible, isn't that like the fifth commandment or something

Adam Young: It's from the Bible. We're called to honor our parents, and if you have the objection, my parents did the best they could. That's a really odd thing for someone who self-identifies as Christian to believe, because according to the Bible, no one does the best they can.

Sometimes I do my best and sometimes I do harm and I fail and I fall short. And that's also true of your parents, but can you put down on paper three to five ways that your parents failed to do the best they could, three to five times when your parents harmed you? Can you write out those stories? And if not, what's keeping [00:13:00] you from that level of honor and honesty?

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm. Uh, as you know, the, the research for like secure attachment or earned secure attachment, um, has that ability to be honest about the failures, uh, of our parents without necessarily like making them, you know, villains in our story.

Adam Young: Mm-hmm.

Geoff Holsclaw: but we're not idealizing or dismissing or making excuses. And so, uh, it's really, it's often that. Uh, disintegration that you're talking about where, you know, we either blame our parents for everything or we absolve them from any wrongdoing, and that's often a marker of disintegration. we move into like the more spirituality kind of aspect, then, um, what would be the difference between engaging your story like at a deep level and then just kind of remembering it and listing some things, like is there a couple different practices or a couple different, like kind of ways to make sense of that difference?

Adam Young: The biggest difference is you to engage your story at a deep level. You need to write [00:14:00] down on paper. 2, 3, 4 of the pivotal stories of your life, and you may not think of them as pivotal. You may not think of them as a big deal, but you remember them and you're not sure why. That's step one, step two. You have to read that story to a trained wise guide who can help you explore it in depth.

None of us can engage our stories well by ourselves. 'cause it was just the water we swam in. It was just, it's the way things were for us. So we need other eyes, other voices to name us. Well, in the context of our stories,

Geoff Holsclaw: And when you say write that down, is that right by hand or can you type it out?

Adam Young: you can type it out.

Geoff Holsclaw: Okay. right. I know some people are very much like the, the integrative embodied aspect of, of riding by hand, so I wasn't sure. 

Engaging Your Story with God

Geoff Holsclaw: Well, so to shift then a little bit, how does all this work, like in our spiritual lives?

Like what, what does it mean to engage [00:15:00] your story with God? And maybe let's shift a little bit into like kind of attachment, um, how does God fit into this?

Adam Young: Well, to be human is to be marked by deep desires and deep disappointments. That's the nature of living in the world that we find ourselves in. All of us carry within US desires that have been unmet. Moments where hopes have been shattered Deep disappointments. Have piled up, and when we grapple with the realities of the particularity of those disappointments in your life, in my life, it implicates God because God is the one who like in all capitals, the one who could have prevented it.

So with trauma and abuse, the bind you're in, if you self-identify as a Christian is how could God have let that happen? If you're not asking that question and bringing those questions to [00:16:00] God in some sort of prayerful engagement, then what I would say is you're cutting off a big part of your heart.

You're exiling, anger, fear, doubt, because it's not appropriate for a Christian to express or feel those things.

Geoff Holsclaw: So what would be some. Like layers to work through when it comes to your story with God. Like how do you, like, how do you start like kind of peeling that onion with, uh, people you work with or when you're just kind of engaging with others?

Adam Young: Well, I just invite them to identify what they feel towards God and express it to God. And for a lot of people, that's a big struggle because they come in with a lot of Christian cultural baggage that you're not supposed to express grief. I. You're not supposed to express anger. You're supposed to rejoice in the Lord.

Always not be sad, you know? Don't let the sun come, you know, the sun go down on your anger. You, you're not supposed to rage at God. And [00:17:00] I, I get that people feel that way. Uh, the Bible strongly disagrees with you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, especially the book of soms. Well, where in the Bible then for you, because you know, you probably work with some people I've raised fundamentalist, right? So it's like the Bible, the Bible, the Bible. So how do you kind of, uh, work around some of those texts? Like where do you point people toward to show that like fuller story of, of emotional life and scripture?

Adam Young: Psalms, Lamentations, Jeremiah, book of Job, it's all over those books. If you actually read those texts, you will find, you don't have to create the language. You will find the language of accusation directed at God, expression of anger at God already in the text for you, and you can borrow it and make it your own.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, I remember, being raised. and I'd read the Psalms and there was like five Psalms. That made any sense to the theological system that I had. They [00:18:00] were like the three that were like very confessional, right? Like Psalm 51. Uh, then there was the other couple that were like very christological, which was like, uh, you know, pointed to Jews and then the rest were just like dismissed.

'cause they're like either sad or they're happy, or they're just like all the emotions. It wasn't until I developed a much more kind of rich emotional repertoire where then I was like, oh, the. The Psalms are they, they sp they speak about sadness and disappointment and joy and anger toward God, anger toward others, uh, more disappointment, disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.

And then you start trending to the last, you know, 42 more joy, uh, and things like that. So, um, yeah, our religious upbringing kind of, you know, ruins the psalms force. 

Attachment Theory and Story Work

Geoff Holsclaw: How does, um, to attachment then, how do you work in kind of the story with these ideas of secure and insecure attachment? How do you see those? Working toge, uh, how would you kind of explain insecure attachment? Just to start off with.

Adam Young: Well insecure attachment, and it can take a variety of forms, is [00:19:00] simply the lack of having what I call the big six needs that children have met in childhood. So in your family of origin, I. If you don't have your needs met and your needs are for attunement, responsiveness, engagement, I've got six of 'em, but we can just start with those three.

You needed high levels of attunement from your parents. You needed high levels of responsiveness, and you needed high levels of engagement. And if you grew up in a relationally impoverished home where those needs were not met. Then you are going to be insecurely attached as an adult.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm. So what, what's the difference between attunement and uh, engagement?

Adam Young: Attunement is your parents' ability to read something of your inner emotional state. In other words, how you're feeling, how you're doing, how your heart is. When you're 6, 8, 10 years [00:20:00] old, engagement is your parents' intention to draw out who you are as a boy or a girl with all of your quirks and idiosyncrasies.

In other words, as the Bible says, train up a child in the way they should go. Not the way I want my daughter to go, but the way my daughter has been created to be. So engagement is drawing out a child's hopes, dreams, fears, longings, so that you can know who that boy or girl really is.

Geoff Holsclaw: Thank you. That's great. Oh, um. 

Exploring Cultural and Collective Stories

Geoff Holsclaw: Sifting from the personal story then maybe to like our social or cultural kind of stories. How do those different layers of, um, stories kind of function? How do we kinda make sense of these multiple stories that we're all a part of?

Adam Young: Well, you've got a family of origin story, uh, with your parents, your siblings, whatever your family looked like, and that story needs to be explored. You also have the [00:21:00] story that your body is telling you, and that needs to be explored. You've also got your sexual story. We're all sexual beings and that needs to be explored.

But the other, another aspect of being human is you're in a culture, you're part of a collective. Actually, each of us is part of multiple collectives. So for example, if you are Korean American female, you are part of the collective of women. You need to know what it's like to be woman in a patriarchal culture.

If you live in the US you are Korean, so you've got your koreanness that needs to be explored. You've got your Americanness that needs to be understood. And then third and perhaps most complex of all, you're Korean American.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Adam Young: So that's a third collective that you belong to. And what does it mean to explore the nuances [00:22:00] of what it's like to be a Korean American woman in a white supremacist culture?

Like you've gotta put language to that, and that applies just as much. This is the emphasis of that chapter. For me to white folks, as it does to minority folks. So white folks don't tend to think of themselves as having a cultural story to explore, but they do.

Geoff Holsclaw: Right. Well, what is the, the religious, cultural story too? I remember when I was in college, I was at a secular university in California and I, uh, you know, someone, someone came up to me and was like. You know, you're a born again Christian. And I was like, aren't all Christians born again Christians? And then they start, you know, talking about, well, no, there's like, born again Christians and there's mainline Christians that are, you know, baptized as infants. And, and you know, I didn't know any denominational history at that point, right? So I didn't really know all the stories of denominations and fundamentalism and all this kind of stuff, right?

So how do, [00:23:00] how do those different stories, the spiritual stories, um, kind of fit into shape with, uh, with this.

Adam Young: Well, you, you've gotta put words to the particular strand if you're Christian of Christianity that you grew up with, and whether that's evangelicalism, whether that's mainline, Methodism, like Quaker, whatever your religious and spiritual background is, that has profoundly shaped the neurons in your brain, and you need to know something about that lens.

I. You were, that you were raised in, so that you can understand why you move about in the world the way you do. So, for example, for you, when that person put language to you're a born again Christian, it, it gave you, oh, oh, I just thought I was a Christian. I. Because it was normal for you, but his otherness or her otherness in the que in the sentence [00:24:00] opened you to new levels of understanding who you were in terms of social location.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm, mm-hmm. Yeah, and it was, it was helpful to then start peel back those layers of my own religious formation. So going back to. 

The Christian Narrative and Personal Healing

Geoff Holsclaw: What you said at the very beginning about Shalom and integration, uh, and the Old Testament is, you know, we're recording this, uh, episode right now during Holy Week, which is a particular story. Um, and part of Holy Week it comes out of, um, you know, the Passover, which is Israel's story. And, and Israel taught, you know. Moses commanded them. Like the elders are supposed to teach the children why we do this. And they're supposed to kind of live as if they had just experienced that event, even if it's a thousand years later.

They were the ones who walked, you know, were freed from Egypt and they were the ones that were, um, know, carried through, through the waters. Um, so how can we take the best of kind of our. Christian spiritual kind of story. How did, how does [00:25:00] that story, the story, the Bible story, salvation, alpha Omega, however we wanna think of it, how does that then start fitting and helping coherence in our story?

How do you see those working together?

Adam Young: Well, the Christian narrative is contained in the three days of Holy Week. Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday. Trauma crucifixion is trauma. Betrayal, powerlessness, abandonment. Saturday is. You don't know it's going to be okay that the Old Testament metaphors for Saturday is wilderness desert, valley of the shadow of death.

It's what the psalmists call the Pit. Sunday is resurrection, healing wholeness, Shalom restored. That's the Christian narrative. And, uh, Kathy Zel, my friend, developed what she calls the U diagram based on that narrative. And it's a diagram that helps you understand the healing process. There's no way to jump from the [00:26:00] trauma of Friday to the healing of Sunday without the dissent.

The descent refers to feeling big, uncomfortable feelings like sorrow, grief, terror, rage that your body holds from your traumas. But you were not able to feel those feelings and receive care for that trauma when you were a boy or a girl. And so you're now 48 years old engaging your story and these feelings come up.

You're in the Saturday experience. You don't know it's gonna be okay. It's the sense of if I start crying, I'll never stop.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm-hmm.

Adam Young: feel that terror, it will take me under and I won't be able to function as a husband, a father, a coworker. I don't know. It's gonna be okay. That's the Saturday experience, and most people wanna avoid Saturday.

They just wanna skip from Friday to Sunday and you can't.

Geoff Holsclaw: Why do you think it is that people wanna skip from [00:27:00] Friday to Sunday? Uh, much

Adam Young: Uh, because on Saturday we're out of control. We don't know that God's gonna come through for us. We don't know it's gonna be okay, and we're feeling very big feelings. That are deeply unsettling, dysregulating and uncomfortable, and very often sadly, our communities abandon us when we feel those feelings because they don't have the courage or the strength to sit with us in those big feelings.

Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm. Well that, you for that. That leads me right into my last question, which is how do you. 

Creating Supportive Church Environments

Geoff Holsclaw: How would you, um, others, whether they're pastors or spiritual directors or just people in churches to, how would you encourage them to create environments within the church that allow for that kind of holy Saturday, um, kind of processing of work?

Adam Young: Top down, the leaders have to do the work first, and then if they're doing the work, it will permeate sermons, worship community groups. It's [00:28:00] how organizations. Just happen. Whatever the leaders are doing trickles down into the, into the organization, whether that's a church or a corporation, that's the case.

That's just how human organizations operate. So the leaders need to go first and engage their own story.

Geoff Holsclaw: Hmm. Well then how do you get the leaders to do it if you're not one of the leaders in these organizations?

Adam Young: Uh.

Geoff Holsclaw: That's always the question.

Adam Young: Subversively Subversively. My experience is that most of the people that are leaders in this work, if they're part of a church community, they're doing it on the side, kind of like gorilla warfare in little pockets where they find like-minded warriors who are willing to step in with honor and honesty to the truth of the heartache of their traumas.

And very often, sadly, uh, the leadership. Uh, does not go with them on that journey, but that's [00:29:00] cowardice and a lack of maturity on the part of the leaders, and it's something to grieve.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's tragic that it feels like we have whole, uh, church systems that are. Built around avoiding that Holy Saturday moment. Uh, I just wanna live always in the, the triumph, uh, of resurrection. Um, and, and I think that's what leads to a lot of the church hurt and church abuse that, that we're seeing that's so prevalent. 

Adam Young's Conferences and Final Thoughts

Geoff Holsclaw: Well, so you're doing a lot of stuff. You have the podcast, which we mentioned. Um, you have your kind of private work, but you also kinda have this uh, uh, rolling mini conference series. Could you just speak about that a little bit?

Adam Young: Sure. I'm doing 12 conferences in 2025, so four of them have already occurred, but there's eight left and they're on the first Saturday of every month. I do it with a different collaborator or co-presenter. If you are interested, you can go to Adam Young, Adam Young counseling.com, and you know, all the conferences are listed there.

You can buy them one at a time. You don't have to [00:30:00] buy all 12, and the conferences are designed to help you step into the particularities of your story in more depth.

Geoff Holsclaw: Mm, mm-hmm. Excellent. So you can find those@adamyoung.com and your podcast and everything is there. That's the best way to find,

Adam Young: No, it's Adam Young counseling.com.

Geoff Holsclaw: sorry. Okay. Adding it to my notes here. Great. Well, is there anything else that you'd want, uh, just based on what we've talked about today, anything you'd particularly want a listener to, to kind of take away from our conversation and maybe start applying in their life?

Adam Young: Yeah, just the, I would invite people to take their story seriously. Your story matters and you deserve. To have it told by you to a trusted listener who can care for you well in the context of your stories of heartache and harm. And so the book makes sense of your story is intended to be a guide and really an invitation to take your story [00:31:00] seriously and to help you do it.

Geoff Holsclaw: Well, thank you so much for, uh, putting in the time to write that book, and thank you for taking a moment and jumping on with us today.

Adam Young: Thank you, Geoff. It was good to be with you.