Being Known Podcast

Latest Episodes:

S4E4 Trauma and the Brain: It’s Not What You Think Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.

This week we continue looking at the mind.

If the mind goes first, it necessarily will involve the brain. Therefore, in this episode, we will explore how trauma affects the brain in particular – not least how it perceives our inner and outer worlds – and how being aware of this can give us clues to hour our healing can begin.

Join Curt and Pepper as we discover how the brain is for far more than thinking, and that paying attention to all the other things it does can usher us into the healing process in ways we might not easily guess. Along the way, we will be reminded that even when the brain has had a tough go of it, God is always able to go one better.

You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications, the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way. Scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up (not the pop-up).

As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:

Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes AND the post show conversation.)

And of course, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

S4E3 Trauma and the Mind: Shattering Beauty Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.

This week we begin our exploration of how trauma affects us at the beginning—for it is with our minds that we perceive that trauma has occurred in the first place and what its nature is. Pepper and Curt review what the mind is and how trauma affects it.

Listen in as we catch the first glimpses of the effects of trauma and what we need to pay attention to as we seek its healing. We’ll see together how, if beauty is what God has intended for all of creation—ourselves included—to become, trauma is one way evil will attempt to devour that beauty before it is realized. But keep in mind that despite the ways that trauma can shatter our mind, God never runs out of options.

Links and References:

The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD
The Soul of Shame by Curt Thompson, MD
Anatomy of the Soul by Curt Thompson, MD
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Langberg
Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
Try Softer by Audi Kolber

You can now sign up to have access to Being Known Podcast applications (scroll to the bottom of the page to sign up), the weekly exercise that connects what you are learning to your life in a practical way.

As always, we invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:

Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes)

As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

S4E2 Definitions: Encountering Trauma Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.

This week, Curt and Pepper look at the questions:

What then, is trauma, exactly?
How do we understand trauma to be different from other wounds that we experience over the course of our lives?

This much we know: although many of us are able to avoid awareness of trauma, no one avoids it altogether. It touches us as individuals and as systems, including those places we seek and expect to find refuge from it, such as our families and churches. Eventually, it extends to entire cultures where with our violence we resort to systematic cultural brutality and the support of building an empire.

Fortunately for us, the Bible is no stranger to trauma, and neither is Jesus. In fact, it is his example to which we will turn over and over to discover what it means to turn our attention toward, rather than away from trauma, for it not only to be healed, but for us to be recommissioned to create beauty in its very midst.

This episode lays the groundwork for knowing not just what trauma is, but what it begins to look like when we move from being its victims to becoming its victors.

Links and References:

The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD (chapter 4 specifically)
Being Known Podcast, season 3 episode 4
The Chosen network drama series

We invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:

Instagram
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes)

As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

S4E1 Trauma: Creating Beauty in the Bomb Craters of our Lives Mar 01, 2022

Show notes

Welcome to Season 4 of Being Known Podcast where we are looking at trauma through the lens of hope and not fear.

Description:
There are few places you go these days without being made aware that there is a thing called trauma. It has begun to take up residence in the collective social consciousness—and it’s really of little surprise that it has. From the pandemic to racial injustice to political rancor to sexual abuse in what we have assumed to be trustworthy institutions to state-sponsored violence—we are more aware of it than ever. But awareness alone isn’t enough to stop it, as is patently obvious.

In this season, we want to offer hope to our listeners. Hope for those who know what trauma is up close and personal, as well as for those who may have little to no idea that they have encountered it, let alone that others have. And that hope is ultimately to be found in Jesus, who appears to have made it his mission to redeem trauma wherever he finds it.

Part of that redemptive process includes our telling the story of trauma as truly as we can—so that evil doesn’t get to have the last word.

Each episode in this season will relate to an area of trauma, including:

Trauma and the mind
Trauma and the brain
Trauma and the body
Trauma and shame
Trauma and the church
Sexual trauma
Generational trauma
Healing trauma
And more

Links and References:

The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. van den Kolk
Suffering and the Heart of God by Diane Landenberg
Healing Trauma by Peter Levine
It Didn't Start with You by Mark Wolynn

We invite you to stay connected with us via social media and YouTube:

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

YouTube (where we post the unedited videos of each episodes)

As always, we invite you to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode and welcome your reviews on Apple Podcasts.

S3E11: Season 3 Wrap Dec 27, 2021

Show notes

Curt and Pepper spend time spotlighting each episode of Being Known Podcast season 3 which is based on Curt's book, The Soul of Desire.

Video version available on our YouTube channel!

S3E10: Practicing For Heaven: A People of Beauty Dec 21, 2021

Show notes

What happens when we faithfully practice dwelling, gazing and inquiring within the confessional community—within the house of the Lord? As it turns out, nothing short of the emergence of beauty and goodness within the community itself, the very place where the hard work of hope is done.

Goodness and beauty that then spills out into every other domain of life that the members of the community occupy. Furthermore, the very hard work that happens in the community—unlike Las Vegas—does not stay in the community, but extends through the lives of the participants to become the artistry of new creation wherever their footfalls land, be be that in their family, their place and form of occupation, their friendships and their churches.

Join Pepper and Curt to find out what glimpsing into heaven might be like—God’s heaven that is already here and is surely coming.

This episode is further discussion on chapter 10 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.

S3E9: Inquire Dec 14, 2021

Show notes

First, we dwell. Then we gaze. But eventually, these states of mind lead to our inquiring, asking questions with curiosity and without condemnation.

We live in a world that rarely creates space for such inquiries. But we will see that the questions we explore in this episode are the ones that God has already asked of us—and will continue to ask as he enables us to collaborate with him in creating and becoming the beauty and goodness that he has imagined before the foundation of the world.

This episode is further discussion on chapter 9 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.

S3E8: Gaze Dec 07, 2021

Show notes

It requires little effort to gaze upon a brilliant sunset. But what about our trauma?

What about the parts of us that we hate the most?

Who wants even to glance at that, let alone gaze upon it?

But as we will see (no pun intended), it is when we take the time, by dwelling, to look upon our wounds in the presence of others—and do so long enough to fully take them in—that we begin to experience what new creation not only looks like, but what it feels like in our bodies as our souls are renewed.

This episode is further discussion on chapter 8 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.

S3E7: Dwell Nov 30, 2021

Show notes

To remain in one place while not being continually entertained or stimulated from something outside ourselves is increasingly difficult. But if we are to become outposts of beauty and goodness—like any artist—we must be willing to remain in the presence of others and of ourselves, over and against our impulse to run away as quickly as we can to reduce our distress as expeditiously as possible.

Join us as we delve into the heart of Psalm 27:4 and discover how dwelling is a necessary step in becoming aware of our longings and our griefs, as well as those of others, and how staying put—as odd as it initially might seem—is the first step in our movement toward flourishing. But not only this. For we will see how dwelling “…in the house of the Lord all the days of my life…” is so much more than you might have imagined.

This episode is further discussion on chapter 7 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.

S3E6: Imagine That: Looking at What We Don’t Yet See Nov 23, 2021

Show notes

The emergence of beauty and goodness in our world requires that we first imagine it to be so. But trauma and shame shatter and atrophy our imagination, leaving us fearful of imagining, let alone naming the beauty and goodness we long for. For new creation to dawn, it must be led by our willingness to imagine a world we cannot yet see.

Moreover, once we catch our first glimpse of a newly imagined future, making it more permanent requires lots of practice. And that practice requires perseverance, because if we want our imagination to wire for beauty and goodness, we much repeatedly fire it to do so.

Join Curt and Pepper as we imagine with you what beauty and goodness can become, and how the people who take the stage in the biblical narrative know exactly how hard it is to imagine a world that they have never seen before.

This episode is further discussion on chapter 6 of The Soul of Desire by Curt Thompson, MD.