With & For / Dr. Pam King

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Latest Episodes:

The Gift of Mutual Relationships, with Dr. Jessica ChenFeng Jun 09, 2025

Meaningful relationships are mutual. Balanced with give and take, equal influence between partners, and a vibrant dance of loving responsiveness and caring attention.

Marriage and Family Therapist and professor Dr. Jessica ChenFeng is calling us toward a more justice-oriented approach to relationships and to mental health and well-being, She invites us to open-hearted and empathic perspective taking, and seeking an integrated wholeness that incorporates all of who we are—highlighting the gift of mutuality in our most intimate relationships in marriage and family life.

In this conversation with Jessica ChenFeng, we discuss:

The importance of integrated and whole experience of ourselves—allowing racial, gender, and cultural identities to weave together in our sense of vocation and contribution to the world
The importance of mutuality in relationships—but particularly in marriage and family systems.
The ways emotional power flows in a relationship and impacts marriage and family dynamics
The difference between partners focusing on meeting their individual needs and caring for the health of an intimate relationship
And she offers a guided practical exercise to help us lovingly notice and accept our inner experience with a heart open to justice, vulnerability, and the reminder that we are beloved in the eyes of God.

Episode Highlights

"Systems of power harm everyone—and to live life to the full, we have to see each other fully."
"I believe our move toward life to the full requires us to see the world through a third-order lens: not just family systems, but the racial, gender, and societal systems they exist within."
"Mutuality means not just expressing our needs but being willing to be changed by the needs of others."
"If we're not attuned to the pleasant sensations in our bodies, we miss the invitations to thrive."
"Cultural norms are not God-given realities; they are social constructs we are invited to discern and transform."
"Knowledge without authentic relationship keeps us from truly seeing the embodied experiences of others."

Helpful Links and Resources

Check out the programs in Marriage & Family Therapy at Fuller School of Psychology www.fuller.edu/school-of-psychology/
Fuller Asian American Center aac.fuller.edu/
Socio-Emotional Relationship Therapy (SERT) Overview
Circle of Care Model Explained
Positive Psychology and Emotions
Jeanne Tsai's Research on Culture and Emotion
Asian American Values Scale Reference
Race and Trauma Resources
Jeanne Tsai’s research on culture and emotion – Stanford SPARQ
John and Julie Gottman Relationship Research
Asian American Values Scale – Paniagua & Yamada (Academic resource)

Show Notes

Jessica ChenFeng shares her "yes and" identity as a second-generation Taiwanese American grounded in both math and creativity.
How earthy aesthetics and connection to nature shape Jessica's professional and personal flourishing.
The integration of Christian faith with clinical work at Fuller Seminary.
"Seeing systems of systems" — why thriving requires understanding how race, gender, and cultural forces shape individuals and families.
Introduction to socio-emotional relationship therapy (SERT) and the value of mutuality in relationships.
Defining mutuality: mutual attunement, mutual influence, mutual vulnerability, and mutual relational responsibility.
"Mutuality asks: Are both people tending to the relationship itself?"
Practical signs of mutual and non-mutual relationships, including emotional attunement and willingness to be influenced.
The importance of humility and relational awareness in building mutual relationships.
The Circle of Care model: cultivating healthy relational dynamics through attunement and responsiveness.
Discerning relational power dynamics in marriages, friendships, and work relationships.
"Thriving is an open heart, even on a stressful day."
How emotional self-control in Asian American cultures is often rooted in relational ethics, not personal repression.
The risk and gift of navigating cross-generational emotional communication in immigrant families.
Differentiated selfhood: balancing authenticity with cultural respect in relational dynamics.
Race, culture, and relational healing: why systems of privilege harm everyone.
"Love your neighbor as yourself" as an ethic for mutual flourishing across racial and cultural difference.
Building trust by leaning into discomfort and courageous conversations.
The need for embodied encounters with real people beyond theories of race and difference.
Mindfulness practice: Jessica leads a guided exercise in attuning to pleasant sensations in the body.
The transformational power of positive emotions and embodiment for creativity and resilience.
The relational impact of systemic racialization and why "colorblindness" fails to honor real lived experience.
Final reflections: How knowing who we are through systemic and relational lenses allows deeper thriving.
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
Each of us in the human family is a beloved child of God—and we need to continue to shape society to reflect this foundational truth.
The path to meaning and fulfillment in a relationship starts with noticing and acknowledging the flow of emotional power, and its destination is mutuality and humility
Thriving means incorporating all of who we are—our heritage and histories especially—into our love of ourselves, our love of others, and love of God.
Our intimate relationships need care and attention as a third reality beyond our selves and our partners.
And finally, thriving means opening our hearts each day, connecting our inner and relational realities, and learning to love patiently the multitudes we all contain.

About Jessica ChenFeng

Dr. Jessica ChenFeng is Associate Professor at the School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary, and is also Director of the Asian American Well-being Collaboratory at Fuller’s Asian American Center. Prior to her time at Fuller she was a professor at Loma Linda University and California State University, Northridge.

Jessica is known for her clinical expertise and scholarship integrating socio-contextual lenses of race, gender, and generation into work with minoritized individuals, families, and communities. In the last few years, her primary clinical focus has been the well-being of physicians, especially through pandemic-related trauma and burnout. She’s co-authored two books, Finding Your Voice as a Beginning Marriage and FamilyTherapist, as well as Asian American Identities, Relationships, and Cultural Legacies: Reflections from Marriage and Family Therapists. She received the 2022 American Family Therapy Academy Early Career Award.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

How to Restore a Relationship, with Dr. Terry Hargrave May 26, 2025

Romantic relationships are sacred, powerful, and life-giving. But I don’t have to tell you how difficult it is to love and let yourself be loved.

Marriage and family therapist Dr. Terry Hargrave has been helping couples in crisis restore broken relationships for decades, teaching them how to get unstuck, improve communication, and move beyond destructive coping mechanisms—to find reciprocity, self-affirming confidence, emotional regulation, and a joyful, lasting love.

In a world marked by loneliness, disconnection, and emotional dysregulation, Hargrave offers powerful insights on the human need for identity, safety, and belonging—and how we can heal the wounds that keep us stuck. Drawing on decades of therapeutic experience and deep personal reflection, Hargrave explains how coping mechanisms like blame, shame, control, and escape can damage relationships—and how the peace cycle of nurture, self-valuing, balanced give-and-take, and connection can restore wholeness. He discusses his unique approach to the healing and restorative power of relationships, which lifts us up to our potential, encouraging us toward a nurturing, self-valuing, non-controlling reciprocity, and true connection.

In this conversation with Terry Hargrave, we discuss:

How to turn around a relationship in crisis and get off the emotional rollercoaster
How to build security and trust in order to improve or repair a marriage or long-term relationship
Coping mechanisms of blame, shame, control, and escape
Practical steps to learn emotional self-regulation
What to do when only one partner is working on a relationship
The role of the brain and neuroplasticity in relational repair
And the spiritual underpinnings of Terry’s approach to restoration therapy

Episode Highlights

"It don't mean a thing if you ain't got that swing—until you claim your belovedness for yourself, nothing will change."

"Relationships are a mirror—we discover who we are through how others see us."
"Blame, shame, control, and escape—nothing good comes from these coping mechanisms."
"Understanding doesn’t produce change. Doing produces change."
"When we nurture, self-value, connect, and cooperate, unleashed joy happens."
"Thriving is doing more of your best self, not learning something new."

Helpful Links and Resources

Show Notes

Introduction to Terry Hargrave and the importance of Restoration Therapy today
"We are still the same humans, but with a bigger pipe of problems and fewer emotional connections."
Emotional dysregulation linked to identity and safety threats
Relationships as a mirror to the self and necessary for human thriving
"For there to be a me, there has to be a thou."
Why relationships are difficult: imperfection, wounding, and unmet needs
How family of origin wounds influence coping styles
"Families don't mean to screw each other up, but somehow they manage to."
Introduction of the four major unhealthy coping mechanisms: blame, shame, control, and escape
How overachievement, perfectionism, and withdrawal are survival strategies from early wounding
"Your greatest strength might actually be an old coping habit getting in the way of intimacy."
The relational signs that coping mechanisms are damaging relationships
Healing through self-regulation: speaking truth to yourself with love
"Put your hand on your heart and remind yourself of who you really are."
The difference between co-regulation and self-regulation in emotional healing
Restoration Therapy’s peace cycle: nurture, self-value, balance, connection
"Nothing good comes from blame, shame, control, or escape."
The role of practice and neuroplasticity in forming new relational habits
"Doing, not just understanding, is what rewires the brain."
How thriving relationships move from neediness to adventurous partnership
Intimacy as knowing yourself more fully through connection, not just need satisfaction
Cooperative growth and mutual flourishing as hallmarks of thriving
Application of restoration principles to broader societal healing and reconciliation
"Unleashed joy happens when we choose nurture and connection, even with adversaries."
The critical role of faith in affirming belovedness and ultimate identity
"Everyone else and even God can tell you you're beloved—but you have to claim it for yourself."
Practical advice for knowing when to seek therapy
Where to find Restoration Therapy-trained therapists
Resources for learning more: Mindful Marriage and other Restoration Therapy books
The key takeaways that I will carry with me from this conversation are the following:
You can change. Your relationship can change. But it takes a daily practice of hard work to create lasting change.
And though you might fail, there is hope that you can begin again.
Our coping mechanisms are not superpowers. They hurt us and the people we love.
Understanding is not enough. Action and behavior has to follow for change to occur.
[Any others?] It takes two to tango, but that doesn’t get you off the hook from doing the work on yourself.
And finally, a thriving relationship creates joy all around it, within a family, in a community, and it shows how personal relationships can change society.

About Terry Hargrave

Dr. Terry Hargrave. Until he retired recently, he was the Evelyn and Frank Freed Professor of Marriage and Family Therapy at Fuller Seminary, and a nationally recognized therapist known for his pioneering work with intergenerational families.

He’s most well known as the founder of Restoration Therapy, which combines advantages of Attachment Theory, Emotional Regulation, and Mindfulness—all in an efficient and organized format that allows both the therapist and client to understand old habits and destructive patterns of behavior and promote change in both individual mental and spiritual health, in order to transform our most intimate relationships.

Terry has authored or co-authored over 35 professional articles and fifteen books including Restoration Therapy: Understanding and Guiding Healing in Marriage and Family Therapy and Families and Forgiveness: Healing Wounds in the Intergenerational Family.

In his latest book project, he worked with his wife Sharon, also a licensed marriage and family therapist. It’s called The Mindful Marriage: Create Your Best Relationship Through Understanding and Managing Yourself, and it’s a practical manual co-written with Ron and Nan Deal about how they healed their relationship after almost losing it.

He’s presented internationally on relationship dynamics, family and marriage restoration, the complexities of intergenerational families, healing and reconciliation, and the process of aging.

His work has been featured on ABC News, 20/20, Good Morning America, and CBS This Morning as well as several national magazines and newspapers.

You can learn more about Terry Hargrave and his work—and find books, practical resources, and professional training materials at: restorationtherapytraining.com.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Why Morality Matters: Gratitude, Loyalty, and Hope, with Dr. Mona Siddiqui May 12, 2025

You can’t be moral on your own. That’s a radical idea in this time of moral outrage, but thriving in public life requires a sense of mutual accountability, belonging, and hospitality for each other.

Mona Siddiqui is a professor of religion and society, an author, commentator, and public intellectual, and she suggests that the virtues of loyalty, gratitude, hospitality, and hope can lead us through the common struggle of being human together, living forward into a thriving life of public faith and renewed moral imagination.

As Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, Assistant Principal for Religion and Society, and Dean international for the Middle-East at the University of Edinburgh, she is an international beacon of hope that we might find restoration, hospitality, and flourishing in our world of struggle. Working through questions of loyalty, responsibility, belonging, gratitude, robust faith, and what we owe each other, we can find abundant resources for thriving and spiritual health.

In this conversation with Mona Siddiqui, we discuss:

What is a moral life?
The connection between faith, spirituality, and living a moral life of responsibility and integrity
The difference between cultivating virtuous character and doing justice
How to thrive in a pluralistic society marked by constant struggle and conflict
The promise of gratitude and hospitality in a life of thriving
And how to pursue a hopeful, forward-looking approach to restoration in the wake of harm, loss, pain, and suffering.

Episode Highlights

"Our moral life only becomes alive when we are in a relationship—you can't be moral on your own."
"Life is all about searching. Life is all about introspection. Life is all about reflection."
"The good life is hard; it's not about ease, but about living with accountability and responsibility."
"Hospitality isn't just welcoming—it's negotiating belonging, loyalty, and a sense of shared life."
"Gratitude can liberate, but it can also create hierarchies and transactional indebtedness."
"Hope is not naive optimism—without hope, how do you live, build relationships, or carry forward at all?"

Helpful Links and Resources

Follow Mona on X (Twitter) at @monasiddiqui7
*Christians, Muslims, and Jesus,* by Mona Siddiqui
Human Struggle, Christian and Muslim Perspectives, by Mona Siddiqui
A Theology of Gratitude: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, by Mona Siddiqui
My Way: A Muslim Woman’s Journey by Mona Siddiqui
The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4

Show Notes

Mona Siddiqui’s personal background in Islamic jurisprudence and public theology
“I got into Islamic jurisprudence because of personal connection and intellectual curiosity.”
Navigating public discourse post-9/11 as a non-white, non-Christian scholar
Importance of pluralism and living within diverse identities
"I need to create a space that appeals to a wider audience—not just about what I think."
Growing up with intellectual freedom in a traditional Islamic household
How faith upbringing seeds lifelong moral introspection
"You are always answering to yourself—you know when you have not lived rightly."
Developing comparative theology through seminars with Christian scholars
Overlapping themes between Islamic and Christian thought on the good life
The significance of accountability over blanket forgiveness
"Belonging is crucial to being a good citizen—you can’t flourish alone."
Exploration of loyalty: loyalty to people vs loyalty to principles
Civic loyalty and critical engagement with the state
“Because I feel loyal to my country, I should also be its critic.”
The role of prayer in cultivating internal moral awareness
Reflection on virtues: gratitude, loyalty, hope
The dark sides of gratitude and loyalty in institutions
Parenting with a focus on integrity, accountability, and faithfulness
“Live so that whatever you say in public, you can say at home—and vice versa.”
Emphasis on public engagement: speaking clearly, making complex ideas accessible
"Radio became a gift—people want complex ideas made simple and meaningful."
Remaining hopeful despite the culture of outrage and cynicism
Young people’s resilience and persistent hopefulness
Hospitality as a fundamental ethic for creating trust and belonging
Struggle as a normative, transformative experience that shapes flourishing
"Thriving is not just freedom—it’s centering, writing, speaking, and deep human connection."
The importance of relationships in thriving and flourishing
“Most of us realize—relationships are the hardest, but the most rewarding.”
Redefining gratitude: avoiding transactional gratitude, cultivating authentic gratefulness
Struggle cultivates introspection, resilience, creativity, and a deeper moral life
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
I can’t be moral on my own. But my decisions are my own. In the end, living with integrity means living with virtue.
Personal and public flourishing are deeply connected to our lives of faith and spirituality; and all of us need to bring the depths of our personal spiritual commitments into public life.
We can offer hope and freedom from fear to each other when we expand our hospitality to all persons.
The practice of gratitude in the face of our vulnerability is easier said than done—but is a strengthening response to uncertainty and suffering.
And finally, human struggle is something we hold in common, and it can be redeemed for creativity, beauty, healing restoration, and a reminder of our dignity as human creatures.

About Mona Siddiqui

Mona Siddiqui is Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies, Assistant Principal for Religion and Society, and Dean international for the Middle-East at the University of Edinburgh.

Her research areas are primarily in the field of Islamic jurisprudence and ethics and Christian-Muslim relations. She’s the author of many books, including Human Struggle: Christian and Muslim Perspectives,Hospitality in Islam: Welcoming in God’s Name, and My Way: A Muslim Woman’s Journey. A scholar of theology, philosophy, and ethics, she’s conducted international research on Islam and Christianity, gratitude, loyalty and fidelity, hope, reconciliation and inter-faith theological dialogue, and human struggle.

Mona is well known internationally as a public intellectual and a speaker on issues around religion, ethics and public life and regularly appears as a media commentator on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland’s Thought for the Day and The Moral Maze.

A recipient of numerous awards and recognition, she is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, she gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures in Natural Theology. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as an International Honorary Member. And Dr. Siddiqui was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire, which is just steps below the highest Knighting—specifically for her public interfaith efforts.

To learn more, I’d highly recommend her books, but you can also follow her on X @monasiddiqui7.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Live Like You Mean It: Emotional and Cognitive Wellness, with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang Apr 28, 2025

Applying neuroscience and psychology to education and formation, pioneering researcher Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang draws connections between emotions, relationships, brains, stories, meaning, and purpose to shed light on how we learn, grow, and thrive.

Her research on the brain shows how we’re woven together in an intricate and glorious network of life, and when we synthesize the neurological, the psychological, the physical, and the social, we’re able to come to a deeper and more impactful understanding of human development and flourishing.

From the intricacies of adolescent brain development to the emotional and spiritual scaffolding of a meaningful life, she explains how transcendent thinking, story, and emotional engagement fuel identity formation and long-term flourishing. Drawing from cutting-edge research and humanistic insight, she explores how young people co-create their worlds and how adults can support them in becoming adaptive, wise, and agentic.

In this conversation with Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, we discuss:

The value of integrating neuroscience with educational, emotional, and moral development
The strange and glorious case of the adolescent brain—how we mature, learn how to think, feel, and exercise our agency, and strive to become wise
The emotional and relational nature of education and moral development—expressed in nurturing conversation between caring adults and youth
The importance of agency, intentionality, and transcendent thinking in human thriving
Neural plasticity and the capacity to change our brains throughout our lifespan
And, the big picture of thriving, that brings together our mental life, neurobiology, and other physical processes—with relationships, community, and society at large.

Episode Highlights

"Thriving is really about living like you mean it."

"We co-construct one another’s lived experiences by the virtue of being there together."

"You learn how to have an instinct—it’s not something you’re just born with."

"Transcendent thinking literally grows the adolescent brain."

"Meaning-making is an abstraction, a transcendent story we construct to bring coherence to our lives."

Show Notes

Thriving as dynamic, purposeful engagement
Emotional experiences shaping brain development
Co-construction of identity in social relationships
Adolescence as a time of neurodevelopmental remodeling
How transcendent thinking fosters brain growth over time
Adolescents’ drive for deeper moral and ethical narratives
Meaning-making as a tool for personal and societal transformation
Linking personal experience with historical and social narratives
Default mode network and its role in reflection and creativity
From instinct to insight—how the brain learns to feel
The relationship between emotional health and physical well-being
Gut-brain connection, serotonin, and embodied cognition
Transcendence as a cognitive-emotional developmental milestone
Influence of media, anxiety, and political division on adolescent minds
Brain-based evidence of narrative engagement growing identity
Learning to align present feelings with long-term purpose
Brain science dismantling the myth of "subjective = unimportant"
Agency, presence, and intentionality in thriving
Integration of neuroscience with humanistic and applied methods
Role of narrative in therapy, art, education, and spirituality
How adolescents learn to feel, not just what to think
Culturally-rooted belief systems shaping neural responses
The importance of reflection, introspection, and deep conversation
Adolescents’ innate capacity for moral concern and big-picture thinking
Learning through story: case studies in adolescent empathy
Reclaiming agency from external cultural and tech influences
Identity as a lifelong, evolving narrative—not a fixed outcome
Growth as intentional reflection, not cognitive acceleration
Spiritual wellness as iterative construction of meaning and values
Parenting and mentoring for deep reflective growth
Adaptive wisdom: balancing immediacy with long-term vision
Signs of flourishing: self-liking, relationship quality, agency
Importance of diverse experiences and safe, supportive relationships
Adults thriving through neuroplasticity and meaning-making
The lifelong role of story and belief in shaping purpose
Cognitive engagement and values-based direction over passive success
Emotional safety and time as prerequisites for transcendence
Listening, asking why, and welcoming the unknown as virtues of thriving
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
Brain science isn’t better or worse than other perspectives on human life, but it offers incredible insight for how we grow and thrive.
Stories and narratives are the essential threads that hold our lives together; how you think and the story you’re telling yourself matters for your thriving.
Education isn’t just a cognitive process. Our emotions and our bodies and our sense of connection and safety in relationships play a central role in learning.
Spiritual health connects how our transcendent thinking informs our identity and how we live in reciprocity with the world beyond ourselves
Thriving involves an agile agency that helps us live with skill and intentionality—so “live like you mean it.”

About Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is the Fahmy and Donna Attallah Professor of Humanistic Psychology at the University of Southern California. And she’s the founding director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education. Candle is just a lovely image for Mary Helen’s work that brings so much light to the world.

She’s also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has received several national awards for her ground breaking research and its implications for education

With a focus on educational psychology and the role of emotions in brain development and growth, she’s an expert on the neuroscience of learning and creativity. And her approach offers insight on how our brains shape human culture, morality, and relationships.

She works with adolescents and their teachers (particularly in low socio-economic environments) to understand how we build meaning together—looking at abstract, systems-level, and ethical implications of learning complex information, navigating social situations, and narrating our identities.

Her research underscores the active role youth play in their own brain and psychosocial development through the narratives they construct, and capacities teachers cultivate to support student belonging and deep learning.

To learn more about Mary Helen and her work, check out candle.usc.edu.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Living Artfully: Creativity, Attention, and Making Art, with Makoto Fujimura Apr 14, 2025

"Beholding is a countercultural act—it requires us to stop, to receive, and to fully see.” — Makoto Fujimura

"Slow art is an invitation to linger, to notice, and to let the world unfold before us." — Makoto Fujimura

You are a beautiful masterpiece. But the practice of living artfully comes slowly, often through brokenness, weakness, or failure. Contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura integrates traditional Japanese styles with abstract expressionism and Christian theology, to explore the beauty that can emerge from the ashes pain and suffering. Both his art and his writing call us to behold the gift of creation, participate in its redemption, accentuating the cracks and fractures in our lives, so that grace might abound.

Makoto Fujimura—renowned artist, writer, and theologian—joins Dr. Pam King to explore the deep connections between art, faith, and flourishing. Fujimura shares how his Japanese heritage and study of traditional Nihonga painting have shaped his understanding of creativity as a sacred act. Through themes of brokenness, beauty, and slow art, he challenges us to rethink success, embrace imperfection, and create from a place of love and abundance. Whether you're an artist, a person of faith, or someone seeking meaning in a hurried world, this conversation will invite you to slow down, behold, and embrace the mystery and beauty of life.

Mako Fujimura integrates his artmaking, theology, and culture care advocacy into a beautiful expression of thriving and spiritual health. Through his breathtaking expressionist style, distinctively Japanese methods, and his rooted Christian convictions, he’s bringing beauty into being, and inviting us to do the same.

In this conversation with Mako Fujimura, we discuss:

What art is, what creativity means, and the human capacity for making beauty
How we can live artfully through imperfection, brokenness, trauma, and suffering
How the practice of a gift economy can lead to mutual thriving
The slow art of pausing, stopping, and beholding that contributes to our mental and spiritual health
And the connection between knowledge and love in a life of creativity and artmaking.

Helpful Links and Resources

Follow Makoto Fujimura on X @iamfujimura
View Mako’s art at makotofujimura.com
Makoto Fujimura’s Writings
Makoto Fujimura’s Books
Nihonga Art and its Traditions
Refractions: A Journey of Art, Faith, & Culture
Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life
Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering
Art and Faith: A Theology of Making

Episode Highlights

"Art is fundamentally what human beings create—it is our capacity to make, and in making, we come to know."

"Beholding is a countercultural act—it requires us to stop, to receive, and to fully see.”

"We worship a wounded, glorified human being—our brokenness is not something to escape but something to offer."

"Creativity is not about self-expression alone—it is about giving yourself away in love."

"Slow art is an invitation to linger, to notice, and to let the world unfold before us."

Show Notes

Makoto Fujimura discusses the intersection of art, faith, and flourishing
The importance of beholding in a fast-paced world
How brokenness and imperfection reveal deeper beauty
Nihonga painting and the wisdom of traditional Japanese art
Creativity as an act of love and gift-giving

The Art of Beholding

Why slowing down is essential for creativity and spiritual growth
The practice of beholding as a way of seeing the world more deeply
How art invites us to be present and pay attention
The connection between contemplation, creativity, and flourishing
"Beholding is a countercultural act—it requires us to stop, to receive, and to fully see."

Creativity, Faith, and Human Flourishing

How art and faith are intertwined in human thriving
The spiritual discipline of making and creating
Why true knowledge is connected to love and experience
"Art is fundamentally what human beings create—it is our capacity to make, and in making, we come to know."
How community fosters creativity and growth

Brokenness, Beauty, and the Theology of Making

The Japanese tradition of Kintsugi and embracing imperfection
How Jesus’ wounds and resurrection shape our view of brokenness
The gift economy vs. the transactional economy in art
"We worship a wounded, glorified human being—our brokenness is not something to escape but something to offer."
Learning to see beauty in what is discarded or overlooked

The Practice of Slow Art

Why slowing down is essential for deep engagement with art
How layers in Nihonga painting reveal new depths over time
"Slow art is an invitation to linger, to notice, and to let the world unfold before us."
How slowing down fosters healing and deeper connection
The role of patience and attentiveness in both art and life

Living a Creative and Generous Life

How to cultivate creativity in daily life, even outside traditional arts
The role of community in sustaining creative work
Why generosity and self-giving are essential to true creativity
"Creativity is not about self-expression alone—it is about giving yourself away in love."
Practical steps for integrating creativity into everyday living

Pam King’s Key Takeaways

Whether you think of yourself as artist, we’re all creative. Mako’s message is intentionally not just for artists, but is an invitation for all of us to live artfully—no matter what we do for a living.
Because creativity comes in so many different ways, from leadership, to scientific research, to parenting, to cooking, we all have the daily creative capacity to add beauty to the world.
And to that end, remember your first love, the playfulness and creativity of giving beauty to the world
A gift economy of beauty offers a radical resistance to consumerism, competition, and comparison.
Art and the making of beauty is a part of thriving. And the invitation to live artfully starts with a daily practice of slowing down: pause, stop, and behold. Smell the roses. Consider the lilies.
And finally, there’s a path to beauty through brokenness. Grace comes to us through failure. And strength is made perfect in weakness.
And finally, though the wind may be blowing through our lives, may we all learn to behold the moonlight leaking between the roof planks.

About Makoto Fujimura

Contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura is a painter, an author, a speaker, and an imaginative maker with a gift for theological integration.

Mako’s message is intentionally not just for artists, because creativity comes in so many different ways, from leadership, to scientific research, to parenting, to cooking, we all have the daily creative capacity to add beauty to the world. Working out of his Princeton, New Jersey studio, his work has been described by David Brooks as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.” Art critic Robert Kushner placed Mako’s art at the forefront of a contemporary movement about “hope, healing, redemption, and refuge, while maintaining visual sophistication and intellectual integrity.”

A blend of fine art and abstract expressionism, Mako describes his work as “slow art,” being influenced directly by the distinctively Japanese Nihonga style, which is patient and methodical, using slow drying pigments from ground minerals.

Mako’s art has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, as well as notable collections in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library in California, and the Tikotin Museum in Israel.

From 2012 to 2017, he served as vision director of the Brehm Center here at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Mako is the author of several books, including Refractions: A Journey of Art, Faith, & Culture, Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life, and Silence and Beauty: Hidden Faith Born of Suffering. His most recent is entitled Art and Faith: A Theology of Making. And his next book will be available soon—titled, Art Is: A Journey into the Light. And with his wife Haejin, he’s producing a new work on Beauty and Justice.

Follow him on X @iamfujimura, and view his beautiful work at makotofujimura.com.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Life and Faith After Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma, with Dan Koch Mar 31, 2025

"Spirituality is like nuclear fission—it has the power to illuminate and energize but also to destroy when mishandled." — Dan Koch

"Thriving isn't about a perfect life; it's about alignment between our deepest values and our lived reality." — Dan Koch

On our path to spiritual health, we need to keep our eyes open to the ways religion and spirituality have been exploited to coerce, control, and create chaos. Focusing on the intersection of religion and psychology, licensed therapist, researcher, and podcaster Dan Koch is creating a public conversation about spiritual harm and abuse, helping victims learn how to deal with spiritual trauma, and offering insight and guidance toward healthy religious and spiritual experiences.

From his own personal journey of religious trauma to his extensive research on spiritual abuse, Dan shares insights on how faith communities can both wound and restore. The conversation covers the psychological impact of religious trauma, the complexities of self-diagnosis, and practical strategies for self-knowledge and healing for anyone who has wrestled with faith, struggled with past church experiences, or have lost their religion.

In this conversation with Dan Koch, we discuss:

The psychological study of spiritual abuse and harm, including conceptual definitions and the many factors that come along with them.
The symptoms and most recognizable patterns that point to spiritual abuse
The impact of abuse and trauma on psychological and spiritual health
How to reappraise and challenge harmful core beliefs
And how to find healing, joy, and transcendence as we deal with past trauma.

Spirituality: Pro-Social Benefits, with a Shadow Side of Harm, Exploitation, and Violence

Through With & For, as well as the broader work of The Thrive Center, we regularly explore the expansive benefits and positives that emerge from our inherent spirituality as human beings, and how that relates to our individual and collective thriving.

Religion and spirituality can be an immense force for good, offering countless pro-social benefits to the world, helping us our innate spiritual capacities is an essential factor in what it means to thrive.

But we have to acknowledge the harm and vice and corruption—the violence— that has been perpetrated through religious and spiritual contexts. Spiritual abuse is a serious matter and there’s no way we can cultivate a full understanding or integrated experience of healthy spirituality without coming to terms with its prevalence and effects.

Dan Koch’s attention to spiritual harm and abuse is about clearing the way toward a healthier spirituality grounded in care and healing. By exposing and exploring past traumas in the context of heathy and respectful relationships, we can grow into a more joyful faith and transcendent spiritual life.

About Dan Koch

Dan Koch is a licensed therapist supporting patients working through the trauma of spiritual abuse; and his work and insight in this domain emerges from his empirical research. He’s also host of the You Have Permission podcast. With a background in philosophy and theology, he explores questions of faith, doubt, and spiritual well-being. His research focuses on the psychological effects of religious trauma and how individuals can heal from spiritual abuse.

Find more of his work at dankochwords.com.

You can find his podcast, You Have Permission wherever you listen to podcasts and find exclusive episodes at patreon.com/dankoch.

Helpful Links and Resources

Dan Koch’s Website
Join Dan Koch’s Patreon
You Have Permission Podcast
Dan Koch’s Research on Spiritual Abuse
The Spiritual Harm and Abuse Scale Clinical Screener
Development of the Spiritual Harm and Abuse Scale (Article, May 2022)

Quotable

"I would just distinguish between self-knowledge and self-diagnosis—one leads to growth, the other can lead to unnecessary fear."

"Avoidance is both a symptom of trauma and a cause of it—it keeps the rest of the symptoms around."

"Spirituality is like nuclear fission—it has the power to illuminate and energize but also to destroy when mishandled."

"You can't worship a villain—when spiritual abuse distorts your image of God, it becomes almost impossible to stay in faith."

"Thriving isn't about a perfect life; it's about alignment between our deepest values and our lived reality."

Show Notes

Dan Koch on spiritual abuse, religious trauma, and healing
How beliefs about God shape emotional well-being
Practical self-knowledge exercises to promote healing
The impact of fear-based religious teachings on mental health
Strategies for deconstructing harmful religious experiences

Understanding Spiritual Abuse and Religious Trauma

Definition and key elements of spiritual abuse
Difference between spiritual harm and abuse
The role of power, control, and coercion in religious settings
How religious trauma manifests in daily life
Connection between religious trauma and PTSD

The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Religious Trauma

The interplay between faith, fear, and mental health
The long-term effects of toxic religious teachings
How avoidance perpetuates trauma symptoms
Self-diagnosis vs. self-awareness in spiritual healing
The importance of challenging harmful core beliefs

Practical Strategies for Self-Knowledge and Healing

Dan Koch's guided self-knowledge exercise
How breath work can regulate anxiety from spiritual trauma
Recognizing and reframing harmful core beliefs
The power of contemplative practices in spiritual healing
Using evidence-based approaches to reconstruct faith

How Churches and Communities Can Foster Spiritual Health

How leadership can avoid coercive control
Creating spaces for questioning and spiritual growth
The importance of transparency in religious institutions
Encouraging self-agency in spiritual communities
Redefining authority and spiritual guidance in a healthy way

Pam King’s Key Takeaways

Spirituality is like nuclear fission: its incredible power can be harnessed for abundant good that is essential to thriving, but when it is exploited or used irresponsibly, the fallout is catastrophic for human well-being.
Thriving is an integrative process that can be better understood and better lived when we draw from psychological, philosophical, and theological sources.
Sometimes our core beliefs are the source of spiritual harm and trauma, and these can be reframed, reappraised, and challenged—aligning us with self-respect, truth, and love.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Recovering the Sacred in an Age of Anxiety, with Dr. Varun Soni Mar 17, 2025

We need a recovery of the sacred in our secular world. Because the mental, emotional, and psychological struggles haunting society right now can’t be solved without addressing meaning, purpose, and the longing for connection to something beyond ourselves.

In other words, spiritual health is an essential part of mental health.

An attorney, religious scholar, and university chaplain, Dr. Varun Soni is Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California, and is leading us back to our true north, through spacious and life-giving spiritual conversations and sacred practices that realign us to our values and identity.

In this conversation with Varun Soni, we discuss:

Finding the sacred in our secular culture.
Religious pluralism and what it means to build trust that reaches across religious lines of difference.
The transformative power of finding your “truth north”—your North Star—to orient our journeys of faith and spirituality.
Varun shares six pillars of flourishing; how to align our actions with our values; and the benefit of listening to the cultural narratives and stories we tell.
He reflects on the missing elements of spirituality in our understanding of mental health today, evidenced in his work with teens and emerging adults.
He offers us a Hindu meditative practice to provide inner clarity, stability, and calm.
And he comments on compassion and a cultivation sacred spiritual practices to counteract the loneliness, anguish, and suffering in our world.

Show Notes

Dr. Pam King welcomes Varun Soni, Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at USC
Journey from Hindu attorney to first Hindu Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life in the U.S.
“What does it mean to be Indian? What does it mean to be Hindu? What does it mean to be American? What is this Indian American experience?”
1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act
Inspired by grandfather’s connection to Mahatma Gandhi
“ What it meant to be Hindu was to be like Gandhi. What it meant to be Indian was to be like Gandhi. What it meant to live a meaningful life was to live like Gandhi.”
“ I continued to study religion as a way of understanding myself.”
Sitting with the Dalai Lama on Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday
Mentorship from the Dalai Lama
Deepak Chopra’s influence
“Interfaith trust building”
University Chaplaincy
What is thriving to you?
"Thriving is the alignment of purpose and practice—it’s not about arriving, but about moving in the right direction."
“What is my north star, and how do I get there?”
Spiritual well-being about asking the right questions, not having all the answers
Religion once provided meaning, rituals, and community—now young people seek new structures
"What is sacred to you? If you can’t answer that, you’re drifting without a compass."
The urgency of time when turning 50 years old
“I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone anymore.”
“Put the process before the answer.”
6 pillars of thriving and well-being: diet, sleep, exercise, contemplative practice, emotional intelligence, connection to nature
Basic physical pillars of thriving: Diet, Sleep, Exercise
Spiritual pillars of thriving: Contemplation, Emotional Intelligence, and Communing with Nature
Finding what is sacred—faith, relationships, personal values
51% of USC students non-religious, 80% spiritual
Record levels of loneliness, imposter syndrome, comparison culture
“Not just a mental health crisis, but a spiritual health crisis.”
Loss of intergenerational religious experiences—key protective factor against depression
"We took away religion and replaced it with social media, then wondered why anxiety skyrocketed."
Social media fuels disconnection rather than community
"We weren’t built for this much bad news. Our brains weren’t designed to process global suffering 24/7."
“There’s no right way to do contemplative practice.”
Find moments built into your day
Exercise: So Hum breath meditation: Inhale “So,” exhale “Hum”
Using meditation as a spiritual technology or tool
"You are not your thoughts—you are the awareness behind them."
Identity shaped by personal narrative—"If you don’t like your story, rewrite it."
Telling the story of who you will become
"Every individual is the hero of their own journey, whether they realize it or not."
Cultural mythology, from sacred texts to Marvel movies, reflects search for meaning
Spirituality helps build redemptive life narratives
“There power in being part of something bigger.”
The Spiritual Child by Lisa Miller—research on spirituality and mental health
"It’s hard to hate the people you love—universities are one of the last places where people can learn to love each other across differences."
Technology and mediated relationships
What is sacred to you?
"Gen Z’s greatest superpower is empathy, but they’ve never been lonelier."
Building protective factors for young people
Gratitude rituals shift focus from anxiety to appreciation
Care, justice, and connection
Mental Health Crisis
Mental Health and Spiritual Health
Awe-inspiring moments—nature, music, relationships—essential to well-being
"Awe, wonder, and gratitude aren’t luxuries—they’re survival tools."
“You can’t doom-scroll your way to joy. Presence and connection matter.”
Religious institutions declining, but human need for transcendence remains
Creating new rituals and meaning-making for a secular generation
"Spiritual health is just as important as mental health—ignore it, and you miss a key part of the equation."
What is your North Star? What gets you up in the morning?
How do your daily practices align purpose and action?
How do the stories you tell shape your identity and thriving?
Try So Hum meditation as a daily mindfulness practice
Engage in one act of gratitude—write a note, express appreciation, savor a moment
It’s all too easy to fragment our lives into secular and sacred, but thriving and spiritual health require wholeness and integration of every aspect of ourselves, including our faith and spirituality.
Future generations of leaders need our guidance and support in their connection to community and their search for meaning, purpose, and hope.
Keep your seat-belt firmly fastened, your seat-back upright, tray table stowed, and secure your own spiritual oxygen mask before assisting others.
We can counteract the outrage, anxiety, and information overload with simple, daily practices that bring stability and clarity.
We thrive when we align our actions and our values, our behavior with our beliefs, and our practices with our purpose.

About Varun Soni

Varun Soni is the Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. He received his B.A. degree in Religion from Tufts University, where he also earned an Asian Studies minor and completed the Program in Peace and Justice Studies. He subsequently received his M.T.S. degree from Harvard Divinity School and his M.A. degree through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He went on to receive his J.D. degree from University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where he also completed the Critical Race Studies Program and served as an editor for the Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law. He earned his Ph.D. through the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Cape Town, where his doctoral research focused on religion and popular culture. As an undergraduate student, Dean Soni spent a semester living in a Buddhist monastery in Bodh Gaya, India through Antioch University’s Buddhist Studies Program. As a graduate student, he spent months doing field research in South Asia through UCSB’s Center for Sikh and Punjab Studies.

Dean Soni is currently a University Fellow at USC Annenberg’s Center on Public Diplomacy and an Adjunct Professor at the USC School of Religion. He is the author of Natural Mystics: The Prophetic Lives of Bob Marley and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Figueroa Press, 2014) and his writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Huffington Post, Crosscurrents, Jewish Journal, and Harvard Divinity Bulletin. He produced the critically acclaimed graphic novel Tina’s Mouth: An Existential Comic Diary by Keshni Kashyap, which is currently being adapted as a feature length film. He also produced and hosted his own radio show on KPFK-Pacifica that showcased music from South Asia and its diaspora. In 2009, he was one of the organizers of the historic Concert for Pakistan, a benefit concert at the United Nations General Assembly Hall featuring Salman Ahmad, Sting, Outlandish, Jeff Skoll, Deepak Chopra, and Melissa Etheridge.

Dean Soni is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Academy of Religion, and the Association for College and University Religious Affairs. He is on the advisory board for the Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement, Journal for Interreligious Dialogue, Hindu American Seva Charities, Future45, and the Parliament of the World’s Religion. Prior to joining USC, Dean Soni spent four years teaching in the Law and Society Program at UCSB. Born in India and raised in Southern California, he has family on five continents and they collectively represent every major religious tradition in the world.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Wondering Our Way to Courage, Emotional Health, and a Life of Listening, with Kelly Corrigan Mar 03, 2025

In our world of urgency, certitudes, and immediate access to a flood of information, could it be that a humble curiosity, inspired awe, and delightful wonder might give us the strength to heal and thrive?

Using an expansive emotional vocabulary matched with wit and care, TV host, podcaster, and author Kelly Corrigan is inviting the world to relational vulnerability, compassionate curiosity, and stalwart bravery to face our biggest problems through listening and loving wonder.

In this conversation with Kelly Corrigan, we discuss:

Her approach to having conversations that feel transformative—the kind that unlock and open us up
How wonder grounds her spirituality and personal vocation
The profound lessons she learned from her mother and father, and how each showed up for her when she was at her lowest
How to learn wisdom and leadership through coaching and mentoring
How to build the emotional container of home for a family
What it means to be brave in our world today
And how to communicate love through the simple act of listening through three simple invitations: “Tell me more!, What else?, and Go on.”

About Kelly Corrigan

Kelly Corrigan is a journalist of wonder. Through hundreds and hundreds of conversations with some of the world’s most interesting people, she approaches both timeless questions and contemporary problems … through focused and generous listening, an attitude of awe, and a joyful expectation to be surprised and delighted, even in life’s most challenging and painful circumstances.

She’s the author of four New York Times bestselling memoirs: Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, and Lift. Her most recent offering is a children’s book, Hello World, which celebrates the people in our lives and explores the meaningful connections that come from asking each other questions.

Her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, is a library of conversational wisdom ranging from current events, to arts and entertainment, to psychology and philosophy, and an approach to spirituality and transcendence through the gift of everyday, ordinary life.

A master of conversational hospitality, downright funny storytelling, and journalistic listening, she’s also the PBS television host of Tell Me More, and recently spoke on Bravery at the 40th annual TED Conference.

You can find her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you listen to podcasts and her full library of resources at kellycorrigan.com.

Books and Media by Kelly Corrigan

Listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders
Visit [KellyCorrigan.com](http://KellyCorrigan.comhttps://www.kellycorrigan.com/)
Watch Tell Me More with Kelly Corrigan (PBS)
Read Kelly’s books, such as Tell Me More, The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue, Hello World!, and Lift.

Show Notes

Kelly Corrigan’s storytelling and journalism
Kelly’s interviews with famous figures like Bono, Bryan Stevenson, David Byrne, and Melinda Gates.
Celebrities are just people.
“What happens almost instantly… is that they become people.”
“You are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”
Core questions to know a person: ”Who raised you, and where, and what happened that you still remember vividly.”
Finding the extraordinary in the ordinary
”All the quotidian facts of their life that make us equals in some weird way, it puts you at ease.”
“There's this story about how being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one of billions And holding in the other pocket that you are a never to be repeated miracle. And that adulthood is knowing when to pull out which piece of paper.”
Childhood and parental influence reveal deep insights into a person’s adult self.
Vivid childhood memories help shape storytelling and personal understanding.
“A strong, detailed memory of an experience is an indicator that there’s a lot there for you.”
Famous people also deal with everyday concerns, which makes them relatable.
“They’re just looking for a sandwich at lunchtime.”
Perspective shifts with age, realizing that many things once thought important aren’t.
“There’s 8 billion people here. It doesn’t matter what I say and do.”
Embracing the paradox of being both insignificant and uniquely valuable.
“Being an adult is holding in one pocket that you are ashes to ashes, dust to dust… and in the other pocket that you are a never-to-be-repeated miracle.”
Kelly’s father, George Corrigan, was an enthusiastic listener and deeply engaging with others.
“The thing you need to know about me is I’m George Corrigan’s daughter.”
Her father’s ability to find something lovable in everyone influenced her deeply.
“He wasn’t looking for people just like him… he could become engaged in something he knew nothing about.”
Kelly Corrigan's TED Talk, "To Love Is to Be Brave"
Her mother, Mary Corrigan, was structured, disciplined, and devoted to family. “She went to church every single day.”
Passed away six weeks before the interview, leaving a strong legacy.
”I felt like I had been loved and people cared about me. Not excessively, not obsessively, but you know, like I was safe in the world.”
Getting the love you need
Recognizing bravery in everyday family life and personal struggles.
Nick Hornby’s experience of receiving a book—that filled him with a sense of pride and recognition
Coaching JV Lacrosse in Piedmont, CA—and seeing the impact of “seeing people” and offering loving recognition—the power of making young girls feel seen
Parents handling difficult conversations with children require immense courage.
“There’s so much happening inside every house that’s deeply brave and very complex.”
Kelly Corrigan’s spiritual upbringing—raised Catholic and participated in church traditions but felt distanced from the institution because of patriarchy and abuse scandals
“The dominant feeling I had in Catholicism was that there’s this superstructure of men who tell you if you’re good or bad.”
Disillusionment with the Catholic Church following abuse scandals.
“My religion is wonder.”
Finds spiritual connection through nature, puzzles, painting, and observing small details.
“I mean, I can really go crazy on a leaf.”
Painting as a practice of attention: “ it slows you way down and you have to focus on something so minute.”
How to deal with emotional flooding through physical practices like walking
Kelly Corrigan on Thriving—deeply connected to being in service to others.
“I probably thrive best when I’m in service to something.”
“And then they say, ‘Okay, Kelly, we're ready. Action.’ And then it's just me and this other person and the fullness of our attention to one another is thrilling by virtue of the fact that it's so damn rare. And sometimes when I'm finished, I'm like, there's almost like a romance to it. You know, like where I'm like, I, I love you. I love the experience that we just had.”
Clarity and purpose often come in caregiving moments, like her parents’ passing.
“90 minutes of pure connection.”
Pam King’s experience of her daughter’s hospitalization after a rare infection
Kelly describes her experience of cancer in her thirties.
Be mindful of what you consume—both media and information.
“Junk in, junk out.”
Engage in hobbies that disconnect from screens, such as painting and cooking.
“Read poetry. Read it out loud.”
You should be really careful what you let in your head.
“If you're small in the frame, you're just going to move more freely. And if you're big in the frame, if you're the most important thing in your whole life, God help you.”
Politics and voting or acting against your own self-interests
Kelly Corrigan’s conversation with April Lawson on abortion
Redefining bravery
“And the reward is a full human experience.”
The meaning of family
The experience of selling her childhood home after 55 years and how that raised questions about the meaning of family and connection—“We bought it on July 7, 1969, and it sold on July 7, 2024.”
“Will it hold? … Is it durable? … A place of comfort?”
“I think most parents would say the biggest project they've ever undertaken was to try to build a family.”
“Is this thing that was the most important thing I ever built durable?”
The emotional container of home
An expansive emotional vocabulary
“More questions, fewer statements.”
Encouraging curiosity in her children as a lifelong tool
“Ask questions. Tell me more. What else? Go on.”
“Just ask questions. Nobody’s listening. So just be the person who listens. It’s like the lowest bar.”
Enabling someone to get over themselves
Creating space for another person’s life, story, and emotions to unfold
“So embrace intellectual humility and just assume that you do not have any relevant information to give them and that your only work is to keep saying, tell me more, what else go on? And they'll talk their way into a solution.”
“And so it's a little bit of like physiological adjustment. And then it's also this intellectual pause. And it's also a big emotional pause. So like, do your dishes slowly with a scent that you like. … It’s like a tiny reset.”
Live takeaways from Pam and Kelly
“Wonder is cheap and accessible and effective. It’s like, free!”
Embody wonder into the power of listening.
“Part of the reason why Christy Turlington is so beautiful is her posture. So sit up straight.”
“500 questions before you marry someone and commit your life to them is not a bad idea.”
“Junk in, junk out. Like be careful what you put in your head. Your head is a sacred space. Do not put junk in there. Don't listen to junk. Don't watch junk. Don't read junk. Like, it's sacred. Think of it as like a cathedral. You wouldn't take like a shitty meatball sub and eat it in the backseat of a cathedral. You know what I mean?”
“ The fullness of life involves this full cup that is full of joys and sorrows.”
“ It only takes one person. It only takes one person to correct for a lot of absence. Doesn't mean it's going to be perfect. It doesn't mean it's going to wipe away every ounce of pain, but one person investing can compensate for a lot that's been missing.”
Deep interviews as rare opportunities for pure connection
“It’s weirdly unusual to have a full hour of pure connection.”
Facing fear and hardship as part of the full human experience
“A full human experience includes all the emotions at full maximum dosage.”
Finding purpose in slowing down and being intentional with habits
“Evaluate your diet—not just food, but content, relationships, and daily habits.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Listening to Our Emotions: Healing Through Self-Compassion, Grief, and Acceptance, with Dr. David C. Wang Feb 17, 2025

Emotional health is deeply intertwined in an ongoing journey with spiritual health. This involves opening to our pain, grieving our trauma, and patiently cultivating a resilience that stabilizes and secures our relationships and our sense of self.

With compassion, pastoral presence, and emotional attunement, psychologist Dr. David Wang is using psychological and theological tools to help us understand and adapt to emotional realities, explore the wounds of our past, and find healing and strength through acceptance and grief.

In this conversation with David Wang, we discuss:

The difference between human development and spiritual formation and how to understand maturity
The centrality of relationships in human life and growth, and how that’s grounded in divine relationality and our communion with God
How to become friends with ourselves, offering self-compassion and being moved by our own suffering
The impact of childhood trauma on adult emotional, psychological, and spiritual health
And finally, how a practice of grief can help us understand and work through traumatic experiences and move toward healing.

Show Notes

Christian theology and formation
A philosophical approach to theologically informed strategies for transformation and growth
How the relational aspects of God ground an approach to therapy and spiritual formation
What are the markers of maturity?
Relatedness and connection to others facilitates the process of human growth and development
Emotional building blocks and relational capacities for maturity
Dave Wang on spiritual health and thriving
Theological and psychological frameworks of thriving
Holding the beautiful beside the broken
Becoming friends with ourselves
Show compassion, be moved by our own suffering, and accept limitations as we strive toward the hard work we’re all called to.
Two paradoxical needs to achieve spiritual maturity and health
We are made for relationships, but we also need independence
Balance
Spiritual and emotional maturity
Formation through practice, education, and healthy development
Can virtue be taught?
Can maturity be educated?
Can we learn to thrive and be spiritually healthy?
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Gabor Maté writes that “The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain.”
When our brains and our bodies go into survival mode
Avoidance as a coping mechanism or strategy
Childhood trauma in childhood
“When the psychic pain is so unbearable, the felt threat so intimidating, we mentally and emotionally try to escape.”
Childhood trauma can reemerge in adult behaviors, relationships, habits, language, even physical illness or conditions.
Do I have trauma that I haven’t dealt with?
The symptoms or signs of trauma
How to approach the process of seeking help and healing.
Concrete practices that can help and heal traumatic experience
Learning to grieve
Christian spiritual practices of prayer
The emotional practice of grief and acceptance
Dr. Pam King’s Key Takeaways
Human beings need both relationships and independence. And learning how to balance and integrate them is a marker of our maturity.
Though we may try to escape from pain, to deal with trauma we need to practice acceptance and grief. It’s a difficult and complex relational process that brings us closer to healing and wholeness.
We can befriend ourselves in our pain through a practice of self-compassion.
In this life, we have to hold beauty beside brokenness. Cultivating the capacity to do so is the hard work of growth into spiritual and emotional maturity, and the joyful journey of thriving.
www.drdavidcwang.com
https://www.seminaryformationproject.com/

About David Wang

Dr. David Wang is a licensed psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he’s also the Cliff and Joyce Penner Chair for the Formation of Emotionally Healthy Leaders and scholar in residence at Fuller’s Center for Spiritual Formation. He speaks and trains leaders globally on trauma informed care. And he conducts research and teaches courses in Trauma Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Multicultural Psychology, and the Integration of Psychology and the Christian faith. He is also Pastor of Spiritual Formation at One Life City Church in Fullerton, California.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Psychology of Disaster: The Impact of Calamity on Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health, with Dr. Jamie Aten and Dr. Pam King Feb 12, 2025

“Meaning making is so fundamental to who we are as humans, and when that’s ruptured, it’s devastating.” (Dr. Pam King, from this episode)

“Spiritual fortitude is different from resilience … it helps us to realize that we still learn to live in the midst of suffering. … It helps us metabolize our suffering.” (Dr. Jamie Aten, from this episode)

One of the hopeful things in the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires is how I have seen people within L.A. show up with and for each other. And I'm especially grateful for this audience because I know you are all people who care to show up with people, and for people. Thank you for being light in these hard times.

And I was talking with Evan Rosa. The producer and host of For the Life of the World (Yale Center for Faith & Culture) about the turbulent times that we are experiencing in Los Angeles.

And I was also speaking about experts who deal with trauma, disaster, psychological first aid, spiritual first aid, and also reflecting on my own experiences of watching the community around me evaporate. Evan had the great idea to invite me and Dr. Jamie Aten, the head of Wheaton's Humanitarian Disaster Institute, for an interview.

And I think you'll resonate with a lot of the themes of this episode, even if you aren't living in the midst of a disaster.

We all have challenges, and these are great moments to dig deep and live connected with each other and for each other in purposeful ways.

So what follows is sharing our interview with Evan Rosa. Thanks for listening.

Show Notes (from the episode page of For the Life of the World)

Disaster preparedness is sort of an oxymoron. Disaster is the kind of indiscriminate calamity that only ever finds us ill-equipped to manage. And if you are truly prepared, you’ve probably averted disaster.

There’s a big difference between the impact of disaster on physical, material life—and its outsized impact on mental, emotional, and spiritual life.

Personal disasters like a terminal illness, natural disasters like the recent fires that razed southern Californian communities, the impact of endless, senseless wars … these all cause a pain and physical damage that can be mitigated or rebuilt. But the worst of these cases threaten to destroy the very meaning of our lives.

No wonder disaster takes such a psychological and spiritual toll. There’s an urgent need to find or even make meaning from it. To somehow explain it, justify why God would allow it, and tell a grand story that makes sense from the senseless.

These are difficult questions, and my guests today both have personal experience with disaster. Dr. Pam King is the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology, and the Executive Director the Thrive Center. She’s an ordained Presbyterian minister, and she hosts a podcast on psychology and spirituality called With & For. Dr. Jamie Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert, helping others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute Wheaton College, where he holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership. He is author of A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.

In this conversation, Pam King and Jamie Aten join Evan Rosa to discuss:

Each of their personal encounters with disasters—both fire and cancer
The psychological study of disaster
The personal impact of disaster on mental, emotional, and spiritual health
The difference between resilience and fortitude
And the theological and practical considerations for how to live through disastrous events.

About Pam King

Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. She hosts the With & For podcast, and you can follow her @drpamking.

About Jamie Aten

Jamie D. Aten is a disaster psychologist and disaster ministry expert. He helps others navigate mass, humanitarian, and personal disasters with scientific and spiritual insights. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute and Disaster Ministry Conference and holds the Blanchard Chair of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College. And he’s the author of A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience.

Show Notes

Humanitarian Disaster Institute
Spiritual First Aid
Jamie Aten’s A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience
The Thrive Center at Fuller Seminary
Pam King’s personal experience fighting fires in the Eaton Fire in January 2025
5,000 homes destroyed
55 schools and houses of worship are gone
“Neighborhoods are annihilated …”
Jamie Aten offers an overview of the impact of disasters on humanity, and the human response
1985: 400% increase in natural disasters globally
Japan 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami
Haiti 2010 earthquake
Physical, emotional, spiritual
Infrastructural impacts that set up disasters
USAID support
Jamie Aten’s experience during Hurricane Katrina
Personal disasters
Jamie Aten’s experience with colon cancer
“Evacuation Impossible”
Impact of disaster on personal sense of thriving
Thriving vs surviving
Understanding trauma
Collective traumatic events
The historically Black multigenerational community in Altadena
What constitutes thriving?
Thriving as adaptive growth: with and for others
Self-care is not just me-care, but we-care.
Trauma brain and the cognitive impacts of disaster
The psychological study of disaster: grapefruit vs beachball
Humanitarian Disaster Institute
Spiritual First Aid
A rupture of meaning making
Place and spirituality and the impact of disaster on sense of place
Bethlehem pastor Munther Isaac’s “Christ in the Rubble”
Finding meaning in both the restructuring or rebuilding, but also in the rubble itself
Hope embodied in service
Everything is a cognitive load
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz’s The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything
Psychological and trauma-informed care
”One of the things that we found was that when people received positive spiritual support, that they reported lower levels of trauma, lower levels of depression and lower levels of anxiety.”
BLESS CPR
BLESS: Biological, Livelihood, Emotional, Social, Spiritual
“What’s the most pressing need?”
Spiritual health
Spirituality and our ultimate sources of meaning
Transcendence
Lament as a practice for dealing with disaster
Prayer or sacred readings
Meaning making and suffering: Elizabeth Hall (Biola University) and Crystal Park (University of Connecticut)
Baton Rouge Flood 2016
Navigating suffering
Religion in disaster mental health
Faith as a predictor for resilience
Meaning making outside of religion
Mr. Rogers: “Look for the helpers”
Best disaster preparedness: “Get to know your neighbor.”
“Proximity alone is not what it takes to become a neighbor.”
Neighbors helping neighbors
Managing burnout in helpers
“Spiritual self-aid” instead of “self-care”
Self-care is like surfing
“God holding the fragmented pieces of me”
“God’s love is with me.”
Spiritual fortitude in personal and natural disasters

Production Notes

This podcast featured Jamie Aten and Pam King
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, Zoë Halaban, Kacie Barrett & Emily Brookfield
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School **https://faith.yale.edu/about**
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: **https://faith.yale.edu/give**

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

From Rupture to Repair: Relationships, Emotional Regulation, and Our Social Brains, with Dr. Tina Bryson Feb 03, 2025

Our brains hold our relational history—all the joys, all the ruptures, all the repairs. And even in the most difficult childhood or parenting circumstances, the science of relationships and connection can give us hope for whole-brain and whole-life transformation.

Therapist, bestselling author, and mom—Dr. Tina Payne Bryson is seeking a connection revolution that brings neurobiology and practical relational wisdom to bear on both how we were parented, how we parent, and how we relate throughout our lifespan.

In this conversation with Tina Bryson, we discuss:

The science of childhood relational development and growth into strong, adaptive adults
The brain as our most social organ—capable of holding a lifetime of relational and emotional history
How to emotionally co-regulate with another person to achieve a calm, peaceful, and vibrant relationship
Neuroplasticity and our ability to change with intention toward our deepest held values
And we explore how the science of connection, attachment, and interpersonal neurobiology sheds light on how we were parented, and impacts how we might parent ourselves and how we relate to everyone.

Books by Dr. Tina Bryson

Follow Tina Bryson

TinaBryson.com Instagram X The Center for Connection

Show Notes

Dr. Tina Bryson: an expert in neurobiology, parenting, child development, and attachment theory.
Highlighting Tina’s unique perspective as both a clinician and science-engaged researcher.
This conversation focuses on parenting, but it’s relevant for everyone—whether you’re a leader, mentor, or someone reflecting on your own upbringing
The importance of connection, attunement, and emotional regulation in today’s world.
"I feel so aware that this is not an easy time to be a child or a teenager in the world."
Kids today face unique challenges that are very different from previous generations:
More stimulation, information, and pressure than ever before.
Earlier onset of puberty and adolescence, with young adults taking longer to launch.
"We often talk about the challenges of youth, which are absolutely real, but we don’t want to forget that in many ways, the world is actually safer."
Positive shifts in youth well-being: fewer teen pregnancies; safer environments (cars, car seats, public spaces)l greater awareness of mental health, substance use, and emotional well-being
What Do You Say?: How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home, by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson
The brain is a social organ—we are profoundly shaped by the people around us.
"A huge contributor to some of the struggles youth are having is because their grownups are not thriving."
Interpersonal neurobiology teaches that children’s well-being is tied to their caregivers’ ability to regulate their own emotions.
Takeaway: Parents who are anxious, reactive, or dysregulated create environments where their children struggle to regulate their emotions.
"The greatest gift we can give each other is a calm presence."
“History is not destiny.”
Emotional offloading or outsourcing
Safe haven or safe harbor: cozy, safe, calm
“My mom will never listen.”
Understanding teenagers
“Please don’t chase your child and force connection.”
Non-eye contact feels less intrusive and they’ll open up more
Understanding Attachment & The Four S’s: Safe, Seen, Soothed, Secure
Secure attachment is a key predictor of well-being in children and adults.
Attachment is built through repeated experiences of the Four S’s:
Safe: "Do I feel physically and emotionally secure with this person?"
Seen: "Does this person understand and acknowledge my emotions and experiences?"
Soothed: "When I’m in distress, does this person help me feel better?"
Secure: "Do I trust that this person will be there for me consistently?"
Set an intention: "When my child walks through the door, I want them to feel at rest, safe, and accepted."
Practical Parenting Tip: If your child pushes you away, don’t force connection. Instead, say: "I can see you need some space right now. I’m here whenever you’re ready to talk."
Managing Teen Independence: When teens ask for space, don’t take it personally. Instead, try: "I’m here if you want to talk later."
"Would you be open to a short walk or helping me in the kitchen?"
The basics of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth
Mama Bears
Not just brain, but whole nervous system
Secure Relating: Holding Your Own in an Insecure World, by Sue Marriot and Ann Kelley
"Without awareness, we don’t have choice."—Dan Siegel
History is not destiny. We can rewire our brains and create new, healthier patterns in relationships.
The availability of your presence creates a secure environment
Regulation & Emotional Resilience
Definition of Regulation: The ability to monitor and modify emotional states rather than reacting impulsively.
It’s NOT about being emotionless—it’s about responding intentionally
”When we mess up, the research shows that as long as we make the repair, the rupture itself was actually beneficial.”
Tina Bryson’s Fragility Formula: Adversity minus support or plus too much support = fragility. Adversity plus the right amount of support = resilience.
Real-Life Example: The Yahtzee Incident
Tina shares a personal story of losing her temper while playing Yahtzee with her kids.
She repaired the rupture by apologizing, taking responsibility, and asking for a do-over.
Pink Flags vs. Red Flags
Pink Flags: Subtle signs that you’re getting dysregulated (irritability, sarcasm, tension)
Red Flags: Full-blown loss of control (yelling, throwing things, shutting down)
The Three R’s of Parenting: Regulation, Responding, Repairing
The Window of Tolerance
Gentle Parenting vs Responsive, Respectful, Regulated, Intentional parenting
Regulation: Managing your emotions first
Responding: Engaging with your child in a safe, attuned way
Repairing: Acknowledging when you mess up and making amends
Reduce pressure—kids should not feel they must "perform" to be loved.
The Power of Breathwork: The Physiological Sigh
Quick, evidence-based technique to reduce stress and reset the nervous system.
Take a double inhale through the nose, followed by a longer exhale.
"It’s the quickest thing we know to calm the nervous system."
Non-eye-contact conversations (e.g., driving in the car) help teens feel less pressured.
The science of thriving vs. surviving: "Survive and thrive are not separate categories. What we do in survival moments can lead to thriving."
The River of Well-Being: A Person is Like a Boat on a River
The FACES Model for Well-Being (essentially a definition of thriving)
Flexible: Open to change and new ideas
Adaptive: Able to adjust based on new circumstances
Coherent: Emotional and cognitive stability
Energized: Engaged and present in life
Stable: Grounded and consistent
Family Dinner Time: Keeping it light, being more present
Practical Exercise to Regulate Emotions: The Deep Physiological Sigh
Turn down the reactivity of your nervous system
“The key is: Make your exhale longer than your inhale.”
“At his worst is when he needs you the most.”
Pre-frontal cortex development: Not mature until late-20s.
“The prefrontal cortex is changeable throughout the lifespan.”
The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child, Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson
The YES Brain Approach: Four pillars that cultivate resilience in children BRIE (like the cheese)
Balance (emotional regulation)
Resilience (bouncing back from challenges)
Insight (self-awareness and growth mindset)
Empathy (understanding others’ experiences)
"Thriving isn’t about avoiding hardships—it’s about learning how to navigate them."
Recognize your influence: "Your child's nervous system mirrors yours. Take care of yourself first."
Discipline and morality
Harsh, punitive discipline doesn’t change behavior or develop a moral compass. It teaches them to hide the behavior.
Healthy Guilt vs Toxic Shame
“The way we don’t get kicked out of our group is our conscience.”
Guilt “is one of your superpowers.”
“No one can lose each other’s love.”
Give yourself permission to wait and not respond in the moment.
“My number one job is to keep you safe.”
No lecturing. “What do you think I would say here?” “What’s your plan to keep yourself safe?”
Tina Bryson on Faith and Spirituality
Healthy spirituality leads to feeling safe, seen, soothed, and secure.
The power of narrative and journaling: Making sense of our lives and integrating our brains
*Parenting from the Inside Out,* Dan Siegel and Mary Hartzell
*The Power of Showing Up,* Dan Siegel and Tina Bryson
Practical Exercise: Acknowledging, Noticing, and Accepting
“Negative emotions does not mean something’s wrong.”
“Emotions are important information, but they don’t make the final decision.”
Are your emotions making the decision?
Curiosity in order to bring softness and nurture.
Practice daily regulation: Set a personal cue (e.g., getting in the car) to check in with your emotions.
Embrace repair: "Making mistakes in parenting is inevitable—what matters is how you repair them."
Parenting is about progress, not perfection. "Every small shift you make has a ripple effect on your child’s well-being."
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
We’re inherently wired for connection, and our brains store all of our relational history.
Rupture is inevitable, but our capacity for repair can strengthen our bonds with each other when we make the effort to reconnect.
Thriving involves and integrates all our most intense emotions. We get closer to thriving when we can learn to regulate and integrate our inner emotional experience.
Attuning and paying attention to our nervous system is a core emotional and relational skill—and goes a long way in healthy, intimate relationships.
We were all children once. We were all parented, for better or for worse. Learning to integrate every aspect of our relational history can keep us on the path to thriving.

About Tina Bryson

Dr. Tina Bryson is an expert in applying interpersonal neurobiology and neuropsychology to maybe the most central part of human life: our closest, most intimate relationships. A bestselling co-author (with Dan Siegal) of THE WHOLE-BRAIN CHILD and NO-DRAMA DISCIPLINE, she has written several other books on parenting and the brain. Her latest book on the science of play came out in January 2025.

Tina is a psychotherapist and the Founder and Executive Director of The Center for Connection. She speaks and advocates widely, has appeared across media outlets like TIME Magazine, “Good Morning America,” Huffington Post,Redbook, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Her doctoral research explored attachment science, childrearing theory, and the emerging field of interpersonal neurobiology. But Tina emphasizes that before she’s a parenting educator, or a researcher, she’s a mom.

Tina is an absolutely brilliant and motivating and encouraging communicator, breaking down the science of connection in a way that’s clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful.

For more resources from Tina, including her books, and science-packed relationship tips, visit https://www.thecenterforconnection.org/ and tinabryson.com.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Cultivating the Conscience: MLK on Love, Disobedience, and Community, with Dr. Lerone Martin Jan 20, 2025

To realize MLK’s vision of a Beloved Community, we’re all called to live from a moral conscience that interconnects and permeates society with justice and peace.

Working at the intersection of politics, religion, and education, Dr. Lerone Martin of Stanford University is carrying forward the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in a social and historical context desperately in need of renewed moral imagination, connection across racial and economic divides, and the transformative power of love.

In this conversation with Lerone Martin, we discuss:

How his spirituality integrates with the meaning of education and formation
The legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., his vision of thriving and justice, and the relevance of his life and writings for the contemporary world
The role of emotion and affect and music in Christian faith and spirituality
We dive into the core elements of MLK’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
We explore the joint power of courage and love in non-violent action
We look at practical insights about the kind of morality that leads to thriving,
And we close by asking the question posed in Martin Luther King’s final book, Where do we go from here?

About Dr. Lerone Martin

Dr. Lerone Martin is the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor in Religious Studies, and the Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

He’s a historian of 20th-century religion and a cultural commentator. He’s written books about White Christian Nationalism in the FBI, as well as the making of modern African American Christianity—as well as a book about MLK’s adolescence and his early sense of vocation and calling.

He stays deeply connected to teaching and community service, teaching the “Why College?” freshman course at Stanford, inspiring underserved high school students in Los Angeles and St. Louis, and developing programming and teaching courses for the incarcerated.

Visit the King Institute online at kinginstitute.stanford.edu or follow him on X @DirectorMLK.

Show Notes

Lerone Martin’s spiritual background and early Pentecostal faith, concerned with personal morality
Teaching and Preaching
“Why College?” Course at Stanford University
Individual Conscience and Life in the Beloved Community
Josiah Royce (1913) coined the term “Beloved Community”
Lerone Martin on: What is thriving?
Connections to community
Thriving as living out your vocation, love God, neighbor, and self
Set apart for something
“Set apart for the beloved community.”
What gave MLK his strength and resilience?
MLK’s adolescence and early sense of vocation for ministry, pastoral service, and leadership
Working in a Hartford, Connecticut kitchen to serve others and catch a vision for Beloved Community
The rediscovery and inspiration of MLK on young people today
References to Old Testament scripture in civil rights language
Centrality of “One Love” in MLK’s political activism
“Let justice roll down!”
Benjamin Elijah Mays: The love of God and love of humanity are one love.”
Thriving and living with dignity and respect
One love in a pluralistic setting
“We can’t just rely on expediency.”
Values and guiding North Star for morality
Teaching as a guide for students
His spirituality was shaped by his mother’s moral and cultural formation and his father’s ministry.
MLK and music
“The musicality of his voice.”
Spirituality as a jazz man
“I Have Been to the Mountaintop” (Delivered by MLK in Memphis on April 3, 1968, a day before his assassination)
“I’ve seen the Promised land.”
“The musicality of his voice moves people.”
What is the role of music in Lerone Martin’s life: hip hop poetry, awe in gospel music, and improvisation and teamwork in jazz
“Music reminds me to be in my body.”
Non-violent direct action theory
The grit of practitioners of non-violent resistance
“ There's really nothing passive or weak about non-violent resistance.”
“ King would see a love as an action. For him, it's love in action because the means that you use have to be commensurate or match the ends that you seek.”
Despite the fact that someone’s oppressing you, you still love them.”
Changing how we define citizenship
The effectiveness of non-violent campaigns
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (April 16, 1963)
“In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”
The four steps of a non-violent campaign: (1) collection of facts, (2) negotiation, dialogue, disagreement, or communication, (3) self-purification and self-reflection to cultivate resilience, and (4) then direct action.
When does patience become passivity?
How do we live out “Letter from Birmingham Jail”?
Read it regularly, recognize the difference between just and unjust laws
Practice civil disobedience, but willingly, openly, and non-violently
The power of sacred texts
Cultivating the will to do justice, via love, courage, and discipline
Where Do We Go from Here?: Chaos or Community?
A path toward spiritual life or spiritual death?
Cultivating civic virtue, bringing it back into our politics and our homes
“Means must become commensurate to the ends we seek.”
Virtue and values
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
For justice to roll down, we need to see our interdependence, interconnectedness, and live into the unity of One Love.
There’s a difference between just and unjust laws, the challenge is in cultivating the moral sense to tell the difference, and the courage to do something about injustice.
Furthermore, the civil disobedience of MLK was grounded in the wisdom of community, accountability, and integrity.
Courage and love are deeply connected, and work together to guide us toward love of neighbor, stranger, and enemy.
Pursuing justice takes true grit and an agency that emerges from deep character formation, spiritual connection, and an unwavering commitment to realizing the beloved community.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Activating the Science of Happiness: Healthy Habits, Self-Compassion, and Meaning, with Dr. Laurie Santos Jan 06, 2025

Science can change your life. The more we study what makes people develop, grow, learn, and flourish—the more we see how the practical application of scientific findings can help us transform our life and experience—into a life of value, meaning, purpose and true thriving.

Yale psychologist Laurie Santos has spent her career investigating the human brain and how it thrives. From her popular Yale course to her podcast, The Happiness Lab, she’s communicating actionable and hopeful lessons for how to build lasting habits, cultivate self-compassion, manage complex emotions, and realign our lives toward meaningful happiness.

In this conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos, we discuss:

How the mental health crisis affecting young people changed her, and how she teaches psychology
How our brains lie to us
The role of positive and negative emotions in a good life
How feeling good can lead to doing good
The psychological and relational benefits of faith and spirituality
And she offers practical insights, science-backed guidance, and powerful exercises for managing misalignment and difficult emotions.

Laurie Santos on how to activate psychological science for more happiness and meaning (from the episode):

“Some of these factors that we know scientifically do work. From simple behavior changes like being more social, doing nice things for others, just healthy habits like sleeping and moving your body, to mindset shifts, to becoming a little bit more present, to becoming more other oriented, to becoming more grateful, more self-compassionate, and so on.

There are shifts that we can make that can have a huge effect on how we actually interact in the world.

We need to understand that we're not perfect, we're just human. And we will mess up a little bit too. But it's really the journey that matters.”

About Laurie Santos

Dr. Laurie Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of The Happiness Lab podcast. Dr. Santos is an expert on the science of happiness. Her Yale course, Psychology and the Good Life, teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints about how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. Her course recently became Yale’s most popular course in over 300 years, with almost one of our four students at Yale enrolled. Her course has been featured in numerous news outlets including the New York Times, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, GQ Magazine, Slate and O! Magazine. A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, she was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young minds, and was named in Time Magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast, The Happiness Lab, has over 100 million downloads.

Listen to The Happiness Lab podcast

Visit [drlauriesantos.com](http://drlauriesantos.comhttps://www.drlauriesantos.com/)

Show Notes

How Laurie got up close with the mental health crisis affecting young people
Self-care
The history of The Happiness Course at Yale University
The impact of COVID-19
“Things have gotten worse.”
Statistics: More than 40% of college students report they are too depressed to function
Anxieties provoked by technology (Jonathan Haidt and Jean Twenge)
Stress levels across the developmental lifespan
How our brains lie to us
Behavioral changes and healthy habits
Mindset shifts and dispositional transformations
The importance of science for validating spiritual beliefs, values, and practices
Sometimes spiritual traditions get some things right, but can also be wrong, and need empirical study
Manifestation
Imagining the positive outcome isn’t as good as planning out the if-then strategy.
“The science can help us with the nuance so we can really get things right.”
Laurie Santos defines happiness
Psychological approach to happiness: “subjective well-being”
Positive vs Negative Emotions and the role they play in a good life
Why is happiness helpful to us? Is happiness really the goal?
The “feel-good, do-good effect”
Any cause-based activism requires
Laurie Santos answers: What is thriving?
Mindset and behavioral change
Non-judgmental response
Self-compassion and curiosity
“It’s really the journey that matters.”
Helping others
Burnout and Self-care
Stressors that lead to burnout
The impact of rest on productivity
Religion and Happiness: Are religious people happier than non-religious?
Social connection
Growing up Catholic
Comparing Beliefs vs Behaviors and Mindsets
It’s less about religious beliefs and more about religious practices
Communal Practices
Transcendent Emotions
Oversimplifying transcendent emotions
Awe and Wonder often come along with a disturbance, such as feeling very small, feeling out of control, feeling disoriented, feeling overwhelmed, etc.
Dacher Keltner’s tourist studies “Draw yourself in your scene”
Feeling tinier, and yet more connected
“I’m part of everything, but I am nothing. How do I deal with that?”
Evolution and the human mind
What is our brain for? It’s for survival. It’s not for feeling great.
Negativity Bias
Kent Barrage: Neuroscience of Hedonic Pleasure
Liking vs Wanting
Drugs of Abuse
“If there was one thing I could change about the brain it would be …”
Psychedelic drugs such as psilocybin
David Yaden (Johns Hopkins) on psychedelic drugs
We can change (and a lot of people are shocked by that)
Can’t change vs. Changing circumstances
Sonya Libermursky
“Yes, you can change, not by changing circumstances, but by changing your habits.”
Netflix and a glass of wine? Or something healthier?
Introducing new habits over time
Meditation Practice: Cultivating Presence When Things are Feeling Bad
“Nauseously Optimistic”
Tara Brach and Radical Acceptance
R.A.I.N. (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture)
Fundamental needs
Natural selection and cravings
Craving doomscrolling on Reddit
*Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing* (Justin Barrett and Pam King)
Self-flagellation, frustration, and criticizing ourselves
Kristin Neff on Self-Compassion
Self-Compassion: Mindfulness, Common Humanity, and Self-Kindness
How to talk to yourself
Self-compassion is helpful for cultivating new habits
Practice: Self-Compassionate Touch
“The beauty of self-touch is that your brain is stupid. It doesn’t know who’s touching you.”
Taking stock and paying attention to our own emotional dashboards
New Year’s Advice: A moment of fresh starts and new beginnings

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Experience Love — Advent Meditation (Week 4) Dec 22, 2024

Christmas is about the love of God given to us in Christ. Love compels us forward through darkness and light—enabling us to grow and change, connect and relate, forgive and let go, and make a difference and seek justice.

This December, we’re celebrating Advent with you by offering four guided meditations by Dr. Pam King—considering how to cultivate the Advent virtues of hope, peace, joy, and love into our lives this year.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

Jesus said, "As I have loved you, you must love one another.”
“Love compels us forward through darkness and light, with its power to connect and heal.”
Love for God, love for others, and love for yourself
You are beloved.
Breathing practice
Attuning to sensations of love in your body
What are these feelings of love saying about you, your values, your beliefs?
What does love say about your deepest beliefs about what matters most in life?
Who needs love from you today?
How do you live out love in the world?
What is one thing you can do to lean into love or to live out love?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Embrace Joy — Advent Meditation (Week 3) Dec 15, 2024

Joy is more than a feeling. It’s a virtue. And it’s something we can cultivate. We live into joy when we encounter who or what matters most to us. It’s associated with our life's deepest yearnings and connection.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

The Shepherd’s Candle—symbolizing joy
Joy is more than a feeling. It’s a virtue.
Cultivating joy through encountering who and what matters most to us
Breathing practice
Loving and joyful presence of God
How are you experiencing joy in your body?
Joy’s insight into our values, opening us up to creativity and connection
Does pursuing joy require you to step out of your normal routine?
What can you do to bring joy to another?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Discover Peace — Advent Meditation (Week 2) Dec 08, 2024

Peace can be elusive, but if set an intention to be instruments of peace—both in offering it and experiencing it—it has the power to transform us. Peace is often an indication that life is in balance and going well, either in the immediate or the eternal sense.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

“Peace can be elusive.”
Peace is more than a feeling—it’s an indication that “all is well.”
Consider the Prince of Peace, who comes to dwell with us this Christmas
Breathing practice
What brings you peace?
Where do you feel peace in your body?
What has been preventing peace for you?
“Peace is often an indication that life is in balance, and that life is going well, either in the immediate or the eternal sense.”
Setting an intention to pursue peace
“Peace I give you.”
“May the peace of God be with you and pervade your life this week as you anticipate the coming of the Prince of Peace this Christmas.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Take Hold of Hope — Advent Meditation (Week 1) Dec 01, 2024

Hope is powerful. It’s more than a feeling. It’s a foundation for getting us through even the darkest of times. The season of Advent provides the opportunity to attune to hope, become aware of our deepest hopes and desires, and then align our lives to hope.

We’d be grateful if you considered the Thrive Center in your year-end giving. To make a year-end tax-deductible gift, visit thethrivecenter.org/contribute.

Don't forget that Season 2 of With & For launches with all new episodes on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

“Hope has the power to transform and involves our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.”
Take hold of hope with simple steps of attunement, awareness, alignment, and activation
Breath work
Attune, in order to feel sensations of hope in your body.
How are you experiencing or feeling hope in your body?
Notice, don’t judge.
What do the feelings of hope say about your deepest desires?
Where does your hope come from?
How can you align your day with your hope?
How can you align with hope to reflect God's desires for you?
What is one thing you can do today to lean forward into hope?

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Season 2 Trailer! Reconnect, Repair, Rebuild in 2025 Nov 25, 2024

SEASON 2 is launching January 6, 2025! Subscribe to With & For today!

How can we reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world?

We need grounded scientific insight that we connect us with what is good, true, and beautiful. We need wider perspective that guides us toward purpose, community, wisdom, and spiritual health.

Developmental psychologist, ordained minister, and professor, Dr. Pam King introduces Season 2 of With & For, which launches on January 6, 2025. Inviting guests with expertise in psychology, spirituality, and leadership, this new season will tackle practical questions with courage, openness, and hope—focusing on insights, stories, and exercises for how to reconnect, repair, and rebuild our fractured world. How to find psychological, emotional, and spiritual health, and how to find one another in love.

This season, episode topics include:

The power of positive emotions like awe, wonder, curiosity, and transcendence, along with other research backed practices that encourage them.

The dangers of spiritual and religious abuse, the psychological impact of childhood relational trauma, and how to heal from the wounds of the past.

The neuroscience behind our emotional health, its impact on how we develop, learn, grow, and make meaning.

The science behind core human relationships, the emotional vulnerability and power dynamics of intimate romantic relationships, as well as the challenge of parenting and being parented.

Why and how our moral lives and cultivating virtues are fundamental to joy and thriving.

The legacies of racial justice and consider the spiritual and moral underpinnings of nonviolent resistance. The healing properties of art, creativity, and beauty, and how they offer comfort and strength beyond words.

And much more.

Subscribe to With & For wherever you listen to podcasts and visit us online at thethrivecenter.org/podcast.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Individual, Relational, Aspirational: The Three Pillars of Thriving with Dr. Pam King and Nada Jones Nov 18, 2024

Dr. Pam King joins longtime friend, entrepreneur, and inspiring podcast host Nada Jones on for a conversation on thriving and self-discovery in mid-life. Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. She has a regular podcast where women in the middle third of their lives share their journeys of self-discovery.

Together they discuss Pam’s approach to thriving as a developmental psychologist; the adventure of women entering and exploring the middle third of their lives; Pam’s definition of thriving; and what might get in the way of thriving during this challenging period of life.

Pam shares resources from psychology and spirituality that can provide for people to grow and support others, describing three pillars for a thriving life: individual, relational, and aspirational.

Show Notes

About Liberty Road podcast and organization
“Pursuing your future doesn't end at 40. In fact, it may mark the beginning of knowing who you are, what you're capable of, and what you really want.”
What is the Thrive Center?
The intersection of psychological science and spiritual wisdom
“The irony of the term of mental health is that it's actually defined by mental illness, or pathology, or depression, or anxiety.”
What can go right with people?
Explicit interest in spirituality: “There’s gotta be something more.”
“A historical rift between religiously or spiritual things and psychological science.”
Research-backed spirituality
“A thriving life is a life on-purpose.”
“It’s not just the journey, it’s the direction.”
Thriving at the intersection of three pillars of life: individual, relational, and aspirational.
“In the deepest part of my being, I really want to enable people to thrive in a very holistic way. And live more fully into who they are. Living more authentically, living with deeper connection and, and with deeper purpose.”
Not just another self-help platform
“How do you help us understand purpose or thriving when maybe we haven't put ourselves first?”
Balance and moving through extremes
Life is fluid and dynamic
Middle age as a period of flux
Looking at opportunities in challenges
Motherhood and service for others
Finding joy
Examples for each three pillars
Stay-at-home mom moving into a new phase of life
“Start with loving ourselves and giving ourselves grace.”
“Bring out the best in yourself. Love yourself.”
What images come to mind as positive memories of competency and strength?
Obligations in relationships
What are we actually living out? Is it consistent with our values?
Change your environment or change yourself.
What is spirituality?
“Spirituality is people’s perception and experience of transcendence. … But also our response to transcendence.”
Spiritual health and psychology—”Not all spirituality is helpful or healthful.”
“I think we're living in a spiritually void time.”
“Have we deprived ourselves of something in an effort to not deprive ourselves of anything?”
Pam King on life in the “middle third”
Reprioritizing and making professional shifts
What keeps you grounded? 10 minutes of silence of meditation.
What are you currently reading? Open and Unafraid by W. David Taylor / Strength That Remains, by Tracy Kidder
What is a skincare musthave? SBLA Facial Wand
What has surprised you about the good life? There’s more losses than anticipated.
What has your work done to liberate you? Reworking and reconsidering purpose; “Diving deep in conversations with people has been liberating and wonderful.”

About Nada Jones

Nada Jones is the founder and CEO of Liberty Road, a podcast and organization for entrepreneurial women focused on growth, wisdom, sharing stories, and finding purpose. Discover more of her work at www.liberty-road.com.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Human Relationality and Growth: Psychological and Theological Perspectives with Dr. Pam King & Evan Rosa Nov 11, 2024

“How do I grow as a fully differentiated person in relationship and increasing intimacy, increasing contribution with the world around me?” (Dr. Pam King, from the episode)

Dr. Pam King joins the Yale Center for Faith & Culture podcast, For the Life of the World, for a discussion of human development, purpose, relational intimacy, and spiritual connection—all through the integration of developmental psychology and theology.

With host Evan Rosa (Yale Center for Faith & Culture), she reflects on human change and plasticity in the midst of a whole complex life; relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration and ultimate purpose or meaning; the proper place of self-love; God’s enabling and loving presence as the ultimate secure attachment figure; the importance of learning, gaining skills, and the pursuit of expertise; the prospects of regaining emotional regulation through relationships; the game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices to move us well beyond surviving to a life of thriving.

Announcement! With & For Season 2 is dropping on January 6, 2025! And until then, every Monday from September to December, we’re sharing some shorter clips, practical features, and other talks or interviews featuring Dr. Pam King, to offer insight into what it means to thrive and pursue spiritual health.

Show Notes

Martin Buber’s I and Thou
John Bowlby and Attachment Theory
Trolick’s Still Face Experiment (Video)
Justin Barrett & Pamela Ebstyne King, Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing
Developmental psych as the observational study of human change in the midst of a whole life of complexity
Plasticity of the human species
Relational attachment for the sake of intimacy and exploration
The Impact of environment on genetic expression
Law if reciprocity
Fullness of creation, redemption and consummation
Theology as establishing ends, and psychology as developing towards gods purposes
How psychology aids in the process of becoming our full selves as selfhood
The proper place of self-love
God’s enabling and loving presence
Thriving as psychological, vs Flourishing as philosophical
Meaningful life in eudaimonic and hedonistic terms
Imago dei
“Back to the future”—understanding the end toward the beginning
Reading psychology through a teleological lens
Linear stage theories of development
Life as a series of cycles
We can have a telos as a dynamic process
Thriving as pursuing the fullness of self
Reciprocity beyond ourselves when life is hard
Colossians and Jesus as the perfect image of God
Conformity is not uniformity
Parenting as helping children to become their unique selves
Telos as inhabiting the self, the relational, and the aspirational—purpose is found at the intersection of all three
William Damon on purpose
Purpose as enduring actionable goal, meaningful to the self and contributing beyond the self
Learning, gaining skills, and pursuit of expertise
Meaning making as a dynamic life-long project
Orienting life in the present moment by tethering to a consummate vision of the future
Sociality as inherent to human nature
Goals: self, expertise acquisition, and what we aspire to
Roles: who we are in our social networks
Souls: what ideals are most dearly held and most meaningful
The fundamental rejection of pre autonomy and independence; embrace of our relational selves
How malleable our brains are through intentional practices
Making meaning can change your brains
Surviving vs thriving
Attachment and regulation
Regaining emotional regulation through relationships
The game changing impact of deliberate psychological and spiritual practices—intention, motivation, and goals
Possible cutoff point — The relation of psychological science and theology
Psychology as a God-given tool to enable thriving and flourishing
Known, loved, and loving others
The role of suffering and loss as part of the thriving process
For the cynical and jaded: thriving that is real to loss, grief, vulnerability, and daring to thrive

Production Notes

This podcast featured Pamela Ebstyne King
Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
Hosted by Evan Rosa
Production Assistance by Macie Bridge and Kaylen Yun
A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give‍
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Roots to Fruits: How to Live Out Love in Turbulent Times, with Rev. Dr. Pam King Nov 04, 2024

If we want to bear good fruit in our lives, we must have strong roots. Good fruit must lead to love. As the Rev. Dr. Pam King offers in this episode, “Root into love so that you can live out love.”

Speaking on Jesus’s parable of the Tree and Its Fruits in Luke 6, she draws on theological and psychological resources to reflect on the role of active and intentional love in a thriving life.

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”

Show Notes

Luke 6:43-45: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit. For each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes bramble bush. The good person, out of the good treasure of the heart, produces good. And the evil person out of evil treasure produces evil, for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.”
“I believe this scripture … redefines reality and redefines fruit.”
True love in *The Princess Bride — “Wuv. Twoo Wuv.”
“True love is the greatest thing in the world.”
“Root into love so that you can live out love.”
What is thriving? What New Testament parables of Jesus express thriving?
Redefining “Good”
What is good?
“Good” is a four-letter word
There’s always a right answer in Sunday School: “Jesus”
Defining the Relationship? Or Define the Reality?
A reordering of values
“… a radical reordering of values and a re sanctification of sanctioned behaviors. He describes the kind of conduct that is appropriate for this kingdom that he will be leading. It is love your enemies, do good out of love. Give generously out of love. Lend without expectation. Love your neighbor.”
Fruit is a symbol of love
Miroslav Volf and Ryan McAnnally-Linz, “The Home of God”—what is to come is coming now. “Inbreaking”
Flux in congregational or community life
The Reciprocating Self
Conformity is not synonymous with uniformity
“We are each invited to bear fruit out of our own giftedness.”
“Bear fruit as yourself.”
“Pam, you’re a good Pam.”
“We bear fruit by living out God's love. in this world as ourselves.”
Tree imagery in the Bible
“A tree firmly planted, or some versions rooted, by streams of water, that does not get blown when the winds come by.”
What kind of tree are you?
How do you root into God’s love?
Eli Finkel and third-person perspective taking
“When people take a benevolent third person view in the Christian worldview, God's perspective, and they actually write those things about a person, the conflict is still there, but they're able to interact and care for that person more effectively and see that person more wholly.”
“80 percent of Americans young people are lonely. We are in a cultural mode of despair in many ways. We are losing our relational capacity.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Assessment: How to Reflect on Our Progress Toward Spiritual Health with Dr. Pam King Oct 28, 2024

“How did it go?” As we pursue purpose and spiritual health, we need regular opportunities to take stock and understand how our efforts are making an impact in our lives and in the lives of others.

In the process of pursuing purpose, cultivating joy, and connecting more deeply to ourselves, we need to learn how to audit and assess how its going as we live out our spirituality and refine our values.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains assessment—the final (and absolutely essential) step in the process of cultivating agility and adaptivity for spiritual health. At this stage, we take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.

Show Notes

Audit and assess
Take stock, adapt, and flex, ready to start fresh and begin anew each day.
Consider cycles and frequencies of assessment
The Ignatian Prayer of Examen
Becoming aware of where God is most fully active in our lives
Slow down, connect with God, and take a different perspective
What are we made and created to do?
What is our purpose as full human selves?
The importance of patience and pausing
Accountability
Utilize emotions as signposts
Drawing on the first step of attunement
How to facilitate the final step of the cycle and move toward beginning again

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Activation: Intentional Steps Toward Your Purpose with Dr. Pam King Oct 21, 2024

“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”

Activation is the practical step in the cycle of 5 A’s for Agility in Spiritual Health—where we implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King walks through the fourth step of the 5 A’s: Activate. This step in the cycle draws from each previous step, going from non-judgmental observation, internally connecting to our values, and then puts our values into action for the sake of living out our purpose.

Show Notes

Implement a practice or exercise, make a move toward our values, or experiment with something to help us grow.
“What is one thing I can do today to more clearly align my life to those values and those sources of joy and mattering that I thought about when I was considering alignment.”
An attitude of discovery
Enacting intentional behavior; bringing our values into real life
“Activate your skills, gifts, and passions for the benefit of others.”
Activating your purpose
What will get us one step closer to our purpose?
Stay mindful of the feelings we attuned to in the first step of the 5 A’s.
Positive, expansive feelings
Small microsteps forward
Moving toward what matters most

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Alignment: Connecting Our Experience with Our Values with Dr. Pam King Oct 14, 2024

“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains the 3rd step in the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health. Alignment is the process of becoming more reflective, drawing connections between our thoughts and emotions—and our beliefs, values, habits, and the experiences that shape us.

This is the step where we look for our intentions and expectations and hold them up to our raw experiences and the possible meanings associated with them. We begin by identifying what's true or what's false in our feelings and thoughts so we can more clearly move toward our purposes.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

“Alignment involves aligning the insights that you gained from taking inventory and attuning to your feelings and becoming aware of their meanings of then aligning these feelings to your ideals, your values, and what you assume matters.”
What matters to you?
Taking stock of what we attuned to, and what we became aware of
How do we align what is with what we want?
How to practice alignment
How do you spend your time?
Reflecting regularly on life goals
“When our life is aligned to what truly matters, that is when we experience the most enduring joy.”
Resilience and stability

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Awareness: Non-Judgmental Reflection on Our Emotions and Thoughts with Dr. Pam King Oct 07, 2024

It’s not easy to reflect on our emotions without judging them or running away from them. It’s difficult to stay with challenging or frightening feelings and thoughts. But to cultivate awareness means taking an open, curious, and non-judgmental approach to observing our minds.

More than simple or immediate observation (like Attunement), awareness asks us to get curious and reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we discovered in step one of attunement. What emotions are coming up for us? What thoughts keep coming into our consciousness?

In this second step of the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health, Pam King explains how we can become more emotionally aware and open-minded about our psychological reality. The key to observing our thoughts and feelings is to simply look, and not judge yourself. Let the emotions come and go, and learn from they provide information to us.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
For the most enriching and helpful listening experience, make sure to start with the beginning of this series!
More than immediate observation: we must reflect non-judgmentally
Just observe, don’t judge yourself.
Examining the meaning of our feelings, thoughts, and sensations
Attach reflective thoughts to our embodied and psychological experience
Journaling is a powerful exercise to connect kinetically with emotional realities.
Narration and storytelling helps with processing non-judgmentally.
Cultivating curiosity and open-mindedness
“So be curious, welcome the dust, welcome the muck, hold it, consider what it means and what it's pointing you towards.”
“Avenues for growth. Avenues for loving yourself.”
Uncover the values that fuel our life.
Understanding anger, sadness, disappointment, joy, delight—all as emotional signposts to meaning and purpose
Emotions that direct us to what matters.
Practical Example: Anger
Practical Example: Sorrow or Sadness
“Linger, but don’t loiter.”
“You’re not in this alone.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Attunement: Paying Attention to Our Feelings, Thoughts, and Sensations with Dr. Pam King Sep 30, 2024

What’s happening right now? What do you feel? What physical sensations are present from head to toe?

The first step in practicing the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health is Attunement—a simple, direct process of connecting to reality, perceiving your experience of the present moment, and paying attention to our physical sensations. It’s as simple as a clear-eyed consciousness: listening, feeling, acknowledging, being aware of basic sensations.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King explains attunement and the foundation it lays for cultivating greater agility and adaptivity. She oconsiders theological and psychological grounding for the benefits of attunement, and offers practical techniques, including a body scan and breath exercises.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!
What is attunement? And how does it support personal agility and adaptivity?
Connecting to reality, the present moment, and our physical experience and sensations
Clear-eyed consciousness
Listening, feeling, acknowledging, noticing sensations
Embodiment and rooting in the body
Our bodies are part of the created order.
God has given us bodies to know and serve God.
Pain and stress, joy or pleasure
How do we attune?
How to perform a body scan
Breath exercises
Walking as a spiritual practice of attunement
Breathing
Andrew Huberman’s breath exercises: “the physiological sigh” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSZKIupBUuc

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Agility and Adaptation through the 5 A's of Spiritual Health with Dr. Pam King Sep 23, 2024

How can we cultivate agility and adaptivity in our chaotic, shifting times? Dr. Pam King offers a research-backed cycle of practices to incorporate into the rhythms of your daily life—helping you navigate change and work through life’s obstacles. She calls them the 5 A’s of Spiritual Health: Attunement, Awareness, Alignment, Activation, and Assessment.

In this episode, she introduces the 5 A’s, explaining the context, process, and benefits. She comments on the contemplative practices and psychological science that support this cycle of habits and offers reflections on why these simple movements can be so transformative.

ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!

Show Notes

With & For Producer Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
“Why do we need to develop agility as a practice?”
Developing agility and adaptivity
What the 5 A’s are: “a cycle of practices synthesizing, research on different contemplative practices from different spiritual traditions …. and psychological research around the efficacy or the impact of different types of spiritual practices on human well being and health.”
Attuning to our bodies and physiology
What sensations might mean
Engaging emotions, thoughts, values, actions, and behaviors that lead to a thriving life
Dealing with complexity and unpredictability
Tuning into our sources of meaning and purpose
How to cultivate more spiritual vitality and sense of purpose
“At the center of thriving is adaptive growth.”
“We want to be able to grow in a purposeful direction.”
“Thriving is living life on purpose.”
Agility allows us to balance goals, relationships, and values.
Attunement
Awareness
Alignment
Activation
Assessment

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Psychology-Backed Framework for Healthy Spirituality with Dr. Pam King Sep 16, 2024

“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.”

The precarious times we live in fill us with anxiety. The rifts and shifts of culture, politics, and religion are leaving us feeling unmoored, disconnected, and alienated from ourselves and each other.

And a psychologically informed approach to spirituality is the antidote.

In this episode, Dr. Pam King discusses why spirituality is so essential to the human experience, and how it operates as the antidote to the culture of anxiety and despair around us.

She works through the Thrive Center’s 6 Facets of Spiritual Health (T.H.R.I.V.E).

1. Transcendence & Spirituality

2. Habits & Rhythms

3. Relationships & Community

4. Identity & Narrative

5. Vocation & Purpose

6. Ethics & Virtues

ANNOUNCEMENT! With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025!

Show Notes

Learn more about the 6 Facets of Spiritual Health at thethrivecenter.org.

With & For Season 2 launches on Jan 6, 2025!
Living in precarious times, which gives us a sense of unrest and dis-ease
Feeling “unmoored” and paralyzed by shifting religious affiliation and beliefs
Spirituality is the antidote to the anxiety of this cultural moment.
Spiritual health slows us down, and helps us reflect and connect.
How Thrive aims to help you move toward and align with healthful and helpful spirituality
What is spirituality? A definition
Spirituality as experience and response to transcendence
Spiritual and religious harm and abuse
Harm is done at personal and communal levels
“Spirituality is deeply rooted in love, enables us to receive and experience love from beyond ourselves, and enables us and invigorates us to live out love as ourselves.”
Thrive’s spiritual health framework is a unique, research-backed psychological approach to faith and spirituality that contributes to whole-person thriving by focusing on 6 key areas of human life and experience.
Facet 1: Transcendence & Spirituality
“Awareness of and connection to a source of invigorating love offers meaning and inspires purpose. For many this is God, for others it may be a higher power or nature.”
People experience transcendence in many different ways
Examples of transcendence: Prayer, Worship, Nature, Beauty, Contemplation, Reason, and Music
“Transcendence is important because it is invigorating. It's emotional, as well as mind opening.”
Points to meaning and purpose beyond ourselves
Practical Questions for Transcendence & Spirituality: Do you feel cared for and loved by God or a higher power? Do you have practices that connect you to awe or bring you joy and meaning?
Facet 2: Habits & Rhythms
“Habits and rhythms have to do with healthy spiritual practices and regular rhythms that allow us to slow down, to gain insight, connect to love and energize us into purposeful endeavors.”
Forming us and changing us
Practices to help us regulate, relate, and reflect
How traditional spiritual practices contribute to thriving and well-being
Examples: Sabbath, Celebration, Play, and more
Practical Questions for Habits & Rhythms: Do you have regular rhythms of rest or sabbath? Do you have practices that help you regulate your emotions? Do you engage your gody in spiritual practices like breathing, walking meditations, or singing?
Facet 3: Relationships & Community
“Connections provide a space of belonging where we can be fully known to ourselves and others and learn to give and receive love.”
We’re relational beings created to be known and loved.
“When we are known, seen, and know that we matter, our brains relax and we’re able to grow.”
Practical Questions for Relationships & Community: Do you have a spiritual community in which you feel loved and supported? Do you respect people who practice their faith differently from you?
Facet 4: Identity & Narrative
“Growing in clarity about who we are as a beloved, unique, embodied person and how we are related to others and the greater world.”
The stories we tell ourselves and others about who we are
“It’s hard to get a clear sense of our identity.”
“Our identities are spread so thin, it's hard for us to have a cohesive story about our lives.”
Who you are
Whose you are
Where your life’s going
Is spirituality a journey of finding a static “true self”?
Considering the evolving narrative of our lives
Earliest attachments
Meaning, hope, and direction—a sense of being beloved, with all the beauty and the brokenness
Practical Questions for Identity & Narrative: Do you understand your life as part of a bigger story? Do you seek to understand who you are and who you are becoming?
Facet 5: Vocation & Purpose
“Contributing our strengths to the world by living out our response to love.”
Spiritual beliefs point us to purposes beyond ourselves—bigger than ourselves, noble, and life-giving
“Our lives are part of a much bigger story than ourselves.”
Strengths, who you serve or love, and who you’re becoming
Finding purpose in the most mundane or quotidian (daily) practices
Practical Questions for Vocation & Purpose: Do your beliefs motivate a sense of purpose in your life? Do you seek to contribute your gifts and talents to contribute something good to the world?
Facet 6: Ethics & Virtues
“Our beliefs about love and how we live out love through values, views of right and wrong, and cultivating virtuous habits.”
Moral compasses that point to the true north of virtue, the good, the just, and the right
Practices that enables us to become the good people that we want to be
Examples: forgiveness, patience, and compassion
Practical Questions for Ethics & Virtues: Does your spirituality/religion guide how you treat others? Do you seek to stand up for what is right even when it is difficult?
“Healthy spirituality invites us into practices that cultivate habits that enable us to be virtuous and to be good people in situations that are complex. How does spiritual health enable us to live out love? It's one thing to talk about love—it sounds good. It's another thing to live it out.”
We all want to thrive, and in the 6 faceted spiritual health framework, we have the tools and resources and practices to enable ourselves and others to become whole.
“As humans we’re in this together. We need to be with and for others.”

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Six Facets of Spiritual Health with Pam King & Dan Koch (You Have Permission) Sep 09, 2024

Pam King joins licensed therapist Dan Koch on his podcast, You Have Permission, for a discussion of the six facets of spiritual health.

Announcement! With & For Season 2 is dropping on January 5, 2025! And until then, every Monday from September to December, we’re sharing some shorter clips, practical features, and other talks or interviews featuring Dr. Pam King, to offer insight into what it means to thrive and pursue spiritual health.

Show Notes

With & For Season 2 is dropping on January 5, 2024!
Subscribe to Dan Koch’s podcast, You Have Permission and his Patreon at patreon.com/dankoch
Pam’s research interests: positive developmental psychology and theology
How do psychologists perceive religion, spirituality, and theology?
How does spirituality and religion factor in human development?
William Damon (Stanford University) on moral development in the wake of the Columbine shooting
“My work has really focused on how do we offer people insight into the psychological benefits available in spirituality and religion at their best.”
Youth group
“What's the question I could ask that would get her thinking about the potentially harmful theology?”
Purity culture at youth group
The Thrive Center’s rubric of Six Facets of Spiritual Health
What are the six facets of spiritual health?
Transcendence and spirituality. Habits and rhythms. Relationships and community. Identity and narrative. Vocation and purpose. Ethics and virtues.
“This model comes from is comes from existing research that highlights potential resources available through religious participation or being a spiritual person that can promote our well being.”
How religion and spirituality buffer against mental illness
Psychological benefits of spirituality
“Mechanisms of change”
Benefits mediated through relationships with other people
“Young people need relationships.”
What is the nature of healthy spiritual community?
“But increasingly, with the fragmentation of our society and our very transient and digital affiliations, we don't have the richness and the thick connections that we once did.”
Polarization and culture wars and Robert Putnam’s “Bowling Alone”
Transcendence: ”something beyond the self”
Spirituality: “experiencing and responding to transcendence”
Habits and rhythms.
Creativity and music
“The reality is, as humans, we often find freedom with some structure.”
Atomic Habits
Contemplative neuroscience
Fight, flight, freeze
Built in rhythms of work and rest
Sabbath
Ancient rhythms and practical wisdom that give us permission to rest
Listen to Pam and Dan discuss facets of “Relationships and community” and “Identity and narrative” in the Patron-only second half of the conversation, available via patreon.com/dankoch
Vocation and purpose.
Teleology and Telos (end, goal, purpose)
Reciprocating relationships
Pursuing purpose as an “enduring goal that is actionable”
Mary Helen Immordino Yang (USC) and the default network
Meaning making
“The moment that I was able to admit that I was a theological liberal was when I felt through contemplative practice directly accepted by God.”
“If God exists, then I’m God’s kid.”
“And if there is God, and if these spiritual experiences actually correlate to something, then the clearest thing I know is I'm good. I'm loved. I'm accepted.”
Ultimate transcendence and connection to divine love
“Ultimately spiritual health involves an identity in which we are the beloved.”
Contemplative practices
How to make changing diapers a spiritual practice: “Oh, we got a pooper!”
Directionality to narrative
Ethics and virtues.
Ethics as “real-world application to moral thinking.”
Virtues as “building up certain regular capacities in ourselves such that we will naturally make good ethical choices.”
Intercessory prayer and loving-kindness meditation
How youth approach morality in the context of community and family

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Body Scan for Awareness Jun 10, 2024

Close your eyes, press your feet into the floor, notice your bottom in your seat, feel your lower back in the chair.
Notice other sensations in the body and any tension in various places.
Notice the movement of your chest.
Starting at the top of the head and moving through each area of your body - paying attention to any sensations, energy, numbness, cold, hot, slowly moving your attention, noting the sensations.
Notice and accept what is in your body.
Bring attention back to the feeling of the body in your seat.
Allow awareness to return to any sounds and the space around you.
Open your eyes.

S1:E9 Responding to Trauma: Psychological Tools for Resilience and Recovery with Dr. Cynthia Eriksson. Here Dr. Eriksson guides you through a body scan to identify places of tension and discomfort in order to access and identify complicated emotions you might be experiencing.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller on Closing Doors so Others Can Open Jun 03, 2024

Invite a time when you really wanted something - a job, a person to say, “yes,” or an acceptance letter.
Imagine that you grabbed the handle of the red door and it was stuck. You kicked the door because it was stuck. You were prepared to go through it but couldn’t,
You shifted 180 degrees because it was stuck - and saw a yellow door, wide open.
You crossed over to an opportunity that was open and good.
On the other side there was someone who was more right for you, or you got into a better school program, or got a better job - better for you than you had wanted.
When you think about the time of the stuck red door and the hairpin turn to the yellow door - was there anyone there who was your guide encouraging your turn?
This is a trail angel who guided you to a hairpin turn.
How are these moments formed, or are some of the most important parts of our lives guided in some way - who helps us discover our journey?
Where in your road of life is God or your higher power? Are they in the open yellow door and in the stuck red door?
Are they in the trail angel?
What are the guiding moments and deep kind of knowing and perceiving that is our birthright?

Listen to the Full Episode - S1:E1 Loved, Held, Guided, and Never Alone: The Science of Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller. Here Dr. Miller guides you through a practice that will help you understand how to recognize doors that are open to you and doors that are closed, so helpful for finding a path forward when facing obstacles.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Richard Davidson on Gaining Insight May 27, 2024

Find posture, check in with your body, and take several deep, calming breaths.
Be intentional about your motivation and find a place in us to understand that practices to cultivate our own wellbeing can also help others.
This is a radical act of generosity
Bring into your mind a situation that has been challenging in some way in the recent past - whether work, family, etc.. not too difficult, but something challenging. Identify what it is.
Reflect on your own beliefs and expectations about that situation. What beliefs and expectations are we bringing to that situation?
Envision how things might be different if we came to the situation with a different set of beliefs and expectations.
Would it be different with the different beliefs and expectations?
End practice by dedicating whatever insight we may have gleaned to the benefit of others.

Listen to the Full Episode - S1: E3 Cultivating a Healthy Mind: The Neuroscience of Awareness, Connection, Insight, & Purpose with Dr. Richie Davidson. Here Dr. Davidson guides you in a practice to gain insight into your life.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Lisa Miller and Your Table of Spiritual Companions May 20, 2024

Close your eyes and take 5 deep breaths.
In your minds eye - set a table before you.
You may invite anyone living or deceased who truly has your best interest in mind.
Ask them if they love you.
Invite your higher self - true eternal higher self - ask you if you love you.
Ask you higher power if they love you.
With all at your table sitting there - what do they need to tell you now?
This is your counsel - they are always there for you.

Listen to the full episode - S1:E1 Loved, Held, Guided, and Never Alone: The Science of Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller. Here Dr. Miller guides you in a practice where you use your imagination to call up the people in your life who have loved you.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Cynthia Eriksson on Grounding in the Body May 13, 2024

Practice modified from Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Begin with breathing into the nose and out through the mouth
Notice the space you are in - turning to the left and looking behind you, then turning to the right to see behind you. Feel the stretch.
Take in the space. Notice where the wall meets the ceiling. Notice the dark and light and colors in the room. Name them to yourself.
Take 3 deep breaths, noticing where the air moves in and out of the body.

Listen to the full episode - S1:E9 Responding to Trauma: Psychological Tools for Resilience and Recovery with Dr. Cynthia Eriksson. Here Dr. Eriksson guides you through a practice to ground you in your body in order to settle emotions.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A Practice: Dr. Richard Davidson on Developing Awareness May 06, 2024

We reflect on our motivation for doing the practice.
We attempt to frame the practice from the idea that practicing is altruistic - helping ourselves and others.
Bring into your mind and heart someone you know and love.
Consider their difficulties. As we breathe in, we practice removing their difficulties, and as we breathe out, we extend our love and our wishes for that person to be happy and free of suffering.
Dedicate the practice - any insight or benefit to the wellbeing and welfare of others.
Reflect on how a simple practice like this in our lives can be cultivated for the benefit of others.

Listen to the full episode. S1: E3 Cultivating a Healthy Mind: The Neuroscience of Awareness, Connection, Insight, & Purpose with Dr. Richie Davidson. Here Dr. Davidson guides you through an awareness practice.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Big Picture on Thriving & Spiritual Health — Season One Wrap Up with Dr. Pam King & Dr. Jill Westbrook Apr 01, 2024

Help inspire the future of With & For! Click here to take our short survey! Four respondents will get a special box of goodies from the Thrive Center!

Show Notes

Visit thethrivecenter.org for more resources on thriving and spiritual health!
Why podcast about thriving and spiritual health?
Pam’s deep desire for people to thrive and become who they’re meant to be, with and for others
Practical and applicable insights for personal growth and well-being.
Bringing in experts from different research methods, spiritual traditions, and cultural backgrounds
Richie Davidson on declarative and procedural learning
Dan Siegel on integration
Growing through the throes of difficulties
Cultivating virtues and deepening relationships
Pam’s personal experience halfway through the season: caring for a child with a medical emergency
What helped Pam through the recent trauma?
When under threat, we go to what’s automatic
5 x 7 breathing
“Her crisis was exacerbated by the fact that her coping skill was not possible.”
“My holding her hand was very calming for her.”
Cynthia Eriksson on trauma and activating the parasympathetic nervous system for
Alexis Abernethy on self-care, rest, and rhythms
“Coming home to my body… listening to my body… aware of the natural rhythms of my body… trusting our bodies more.”
“A nerd with lipgloss.”
Feeling Alone
Pam King’s deeply relational theology
Becoming is linked to our belonging and connection with others?
Shared and validated by another
Pam King’s co-authored book, The Reciprocating Self
Dan Siegel’s approach to “intraconnection” and research about attunement and awareness of others.
Alexia Salvatierra: “If you’re community is not well, then you are not well.”
Richie Davison on neuroplasticity: we have agency in our life changing and growing
Engaging in psychological or spiritual practices to expand our attention, deepen compassion, gain more insight into our values, and identify our purpose.
Find the Center for Healthy Minds Innovations App (FREE)
Purpose and Life Review with Bill Damon
Belle Liang on telling a story and finding your purpose through your own life narrative and “letting your life speak”
Sarah Schnitker and t he virtue of patience as a relevant and timely approach to life today
Miroslav Volf on joy and sorrow in the context of Christian faith and redemption
Hope for God’s presence amidst the sorrow
Psychology of belief
Theology is not just the study of God, but the knowledge and love of God, and seeking the kingdom
Life unencumbered and free
The Black experience and longing for living and dreaming unencumbered
Thriving involves systems of access and justice
“True human thriving contributes to a flourishing world. And our world will not be flourishing until all people live unencumbered.”
Dwight Radcliff on hip-hop theology and an embodied response
“Art engages us at the sensory level.“
Susan David on emotions as signposts
Art and beauty
Three tips for thriving based on Season 1 of With & For
1. Lean into love for yourself—finding compassion and grace for yourself
2. Find love in your relationships, co-creating meaning and purpose
3. Lean into love in the narrative of your life and your place and purpose in your community and the larger, bigger story of the world
“Beyond-the-self” purpose as a central podcast value
What’s coming next for With & For
Thank you to our expert guests this season, our wonderful production team, and the administration and faculty of the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage & Family Therapy at Fuller Theological Seminary

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Power of Patience: How to Wait Well, Persevere Through Suffering, and Navigate a Fast-Paced World with Dr. Sarah Schnitker Mar 25, 2024

Help inspire the future of With & For! Click here to take our short survey! Four respondents will get a special box of goodies from the Thrive Center!

“People who are patient are not less assertive, they are not passive, and if anything they actually achieve their goals more successfully. Anything worthwhile, you'll have to wait and you'll have to suffer. And so we need patience to be able to suffer well. Patience is not an eradication of emotions. It is the ability to feel those emotions, but to stay level headed to regulate through them. As a virtue, patience, I see as doing that for something beyond the self. So patience is really staying engaged continuing forward and pursuing the good.” (Sarah Schnitker)

We live in a high-speed, high-efficiency, get-it-done-yesterday society. Why would we talk about patience? But the old adage, “Patience is a virtue” is true. A core ingredient to our spiritual health in our frenetic modern world is the ability to live fully in the moment, exercise control and stability through arduous or challenging (and even traumatic) circumstances—doing so with poise and style.

Research psychologist Dr. Sarah Schnitker of Baylor University has pioneered the scientific study of patience among the virtues, exploring the physical, emotional, spiritual, and philosophical dimensions of this timeless and timely virtue. She defines patience as the ability to remain calm in the face of adversity and suffering—being able to wait well and not become inordinately overwhelmed by anxiety or sorrow.

Patience makes us ask not just “What’s worth waiting for?”, but “What’s worth suffering for?” Our English word for suffering comes from the Latin word for “enduring suffering.” And Sarah Schnitker brings theologically rich dimensions to her psychological study of patience.

In this conversation with Sarah Schnitker, we discuss:

The definition of patience as a virtue
The essential role patience can play in our pursuit of meaning and purpose
The connections between waiting and suffering—and the theological and spiritual context for patience
How patience is related to goal-setting and complementary to courage
And Sarah offers guidance for how to cultivate patience in our own lives, using a research-backed strategy to identify, imagine, and think.

Show Notes

Learn about Sarah Schnitker’s research on virtue and character development on Science of Virtues Lab.
Pam King introduces Sarah Schnitker (Baylor University)
Biblical concept of patience as “long-suffering”
David Bailey Harned—eradicating problems and losing faith in patience
“Anything worthwhile you’ll have to wait and you’ll have to suffer.”
“I think many people don't have that clarity about what it is in their life that they are willing to suffer for. So I think that search for meaning and purpose involves that.”
Patience as a “beyond the self” virtue
Definition: “the ability to remain calm in the face of adversity, suffering, and waiting”
“It's not that you don't get emotions. It is the ability to feel those emotions, but to stay level headed to regulate through them.”
Patience and goal-setting
Patience and self-control as different but working together
“Patience is really part of that facilitation of adaptive goal pursuit, which is really cool to find and also to show that meaning really matters too. That meaning pushes you to be more patient.”
Telos: “the intersection of our goals, our roles, and our souls”
Patience and courage
Habits to help us reappraise meaning and purpose in the world
“This moment is not forever…”
Kendall Bronk on patience in emerging adults
Patience as “the ability to stay calm, but actively engaged in the face of frustration or suffering.”
Depression, mental health
Mark Labberton’s story of allowing the rituals and habits of Christian sacraments and liturgy to calm and regulate and provide meaning
Autopilot as the virtue
Gratitude and patience as a communal practice—what is communal patience?
What is your gratitude? What is your growth?
Virtues help us as a fuel system and guidance system
Patience in Sarah Schnitker’s personal life
Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome
Virtue Ethics and Greek philosopher Aristotle
The “Golden Mean” of virtues
Impatience is too little of the virtue of patience (the vice of deficiency)
Passivity (or the spiritual vice of “acedia”) is too much of patience (the vice of excess)
Weaponizing patience is not a virtue.
How patience pairs well with courage
When you have both patience and courage, that’s when you’re pursuing your goals well and loving boldly, seeking justice
Patience and loving your enemy
Practical Steps: How can we become patient?
Identify, Imagine, and Sync
Identify your emotions, notice what you’re feeling, developing a larger emotional lexicon
Imagine, think about things differently, think differently, reappraisal to bring down the emotion, perspective taking
Sync, moving forward with a goal based plan connected to meaning and purpose
“Patience is a whole-life game.”
Patience and the Muslim practice of Ramadan
Measuring the impact of fasting during Ramadan on the cultivation of patience
Understanding the sacred practice of spiritual fasting and its connection to virtue development
Patience increased significantly during Ramadan
Practicing patience as a spiritual community
How practices connect us to our bodies, purposes, and beliefs
Sarah Schnitker on “What is thriving?”
Loving God and loving others for the sake of justice in society
Pam King’s key takeaways:
Waiting is not easy, but in our fast-paced world, we need to slow down and cultivate the timeless virtue of patience.
Patience helps us both to regulate and reappraise our emotional life, helping us deal with really difficult situations.
We can learn and cultivate patience in a variety of contexts in the family, school, work, and its uptake is enhanced when supported by a spiritual community.
When paired with courage, patience has the potential to make us truly resilient.
Patience is transformative for our thriving and deeply connected to our pursuit of meaning and purpose.

About Sarah Schnitker

Sarah Schnitker is Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a PhD and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has procured more than $3.5 million in funding as a principle investigator on multiple research grants, and she has published in a variety of scientific journals and edited volumes. Schnitker is a Member-at-Large for APA Division 36 – Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, is a Consulting Editor for the organization’s flagship journal, Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, and is the recipient of the Virginia Sexton American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Mentoring Award. Follow her on Twitter @DrSchnitker.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Redeeming the Past: Owning Your Story, Cultivating Courage, and Finding Peace with Dr. William Damon Mar 18, 2024

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"The life review is a way of going back in a systematic way into your past and looking for things that you never understood—mysteries. And I had a big mystery in mine, which was: Who is my father?"

We hang on to so much from our past. Regret, remorse, guilt, shame, rumination, unforgiveness… How should we think about our past? Can we reframe and redeem it for the present?

Developmental Psychologist William Damon has spent his career studying the human lifespan and for almost 30 years at Stanford University's Center on Adolescence. Since the 1970s, he's been conducting research that has shaped our understanding of human growth and thriving.

He’s the author of numerous research articles and several books, including The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, having written widely on character virtues, the moral dimensions of work and vocation, and moral formation for children and adolescents, and more.

In the last 20 years, William has systematically studied purpose and how to operationalized it for human thriving. He defines purpose as “an enduring life goal that is both meaningful to oneself, but also makes a difference beyond the self.”

But more recently, he's building a new area of study around life review. His latest book is A Round of Golf with My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace with Your Present. in it, he articulates a process that he's developed for investigating and kind of interrogating your life and your past for clues about your direction and purpose.

William shares vulnerably about his own discoveries regarding mystery and his own upbringing that has shed new light on the latest chapter in his life.

In this conversation with William Damon, we discuss:

Positive youth development and the opportunities of childhood and adolescence.
The practice of a life review, and how to look at our past in ways that lead to a healthy and fruitful future.
The definition of purpose and how it plays a central role in human thriving.
And he explains how charting a path to purpose took a very personal turn for him when he came to learn about the father he never knew, and how that impacted his life and his perspective on thriving at 60 years old.
In that context, we discuss the emotional connections between courage and curiosity, particularly when it comes to pursuing self-understanding and exploring our sense of purpose and a life of thriving.

Show Notes

Get your copy of William Damon's book, A Round of Golf with My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace with Your Present
Read about Bill Damon’s approach to Life Review at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley
Stanford - Center on Adolescence
“How does where you've been contribute to where you're going? How does your story shape your sense of purpose?”
“I had a big mystery to uncover.”
“Regret, remorse, guilt, shame, rumination, unforgiveness. How should we regard our past?”
Living life on purpose
Definition of Purpose: “an enduring life goal that is both meaningful to oneself, but also makes a difference beyond the self.”
Pam King introduces William Damon and summarizes the episode
Studying purpose through lifespan psychology
Young people and their potential
Whole person, not just cognitive development.
John Gardener: “What we have before us is breathtaking opportunities disguised as problems.”
Peter Benson: “Everyone young person has a spark.”
Positive youth development
Youth development: Focusing on strengths and assets rather than character flaws or trouble
William Damon on a scientific study of purpose
Enduring and long term
Personal and meaningful
Transcendent and beyond the self
Agency and energy
Purpose doesn’t do it all—it doesn’t bring ethics or happiness
“Purpose is not a silver bullet.”
Purpose is not a replacement for a moral code, or a guarantee of bliss or happiness.”
“Telos”—Greek for purpose or goal
“Purpose is a lifespan developmental capacity.”
“Purpose is never really complete.”
Life Review and Robert Butler
Who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’re becoming.
Forward-looking doesn’t mean you ignore the past.
William Faulkner: “The past is not dead. It’s not even the past.”
William Damon reflects on growing up without a father
“A Round of Golf with My Father”
What is a life review? A systematic way of looking into your past and history in order to understand who you’ve been and what that means for your present and future.
How to do a life review
“Making a case study of yourself”
Role of difficult emotions in dealing with your past and finding your purpose
From blaming to claiming to gaming.
Courage and Fear
How to develop and cultivate courage
Aristotle on courage
Overcoming challenges and the role of courage in leveraging your purpose to thrive
Small steps make a big difference.
Moral exemplars and heroes—faith, courage, and self-regard about managing risks, danger, and threat
Religion and faith as an object or source of purpose
“Purpose is not an elite endeavor.”
“It’s not all about you.”
Purpose, growth mindset and teaching undergraduates life review and purpose
William Damon reflects on “What is thriving?”
“Thriving is becoming the person you always dreamed you’d become.”
Erikson: “I am what succeeds me.”
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
All of us show up in this world with a spark, and it's a gift we give to each other to help fan that spark into flame. So we might ask ourselves, how am I fanning that flame in others today?
We don't ever have to stop learning about ourselves. And the procedure of a life review can facilitate this growth. And to learn more about the life review process, head to our website at thethrivecenter.org.
It takes courage and curiosity to confront the difficult or traumatic aspects of our past. Cultivating this courage is an essential virtue of a thriving life.
And finally, purpose extends beyond our personal motivations and self made goals to include a wide range of psychological, moral, relational, historical, and spiritual factors

About William Damon

William Damon is the Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, Professor of Education at Stanford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Damon's research explores how people develop purpose and integrity in their work, family, and civic life. Damon's current work focuses on vocational, civic, and entrepreneurial purpose among the young and on purpose in families and schools. He examines how young Americans can be educated to become devoted citizens and successful entrepreneurs. Damon's work has been used in professional training programs in fields such as journalism, law, teaching, and business, and in grades K–12 character education programs. Damon’s most recent books are A Round of Golf with My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace with Your Present; The Power of Ideals, and Failing Liberty 101. His other books include The Path to Purpose: How Young People Find Their Calling in Life, Taking Philanthropy Seriously, and Greater Expectations, winner of the Parent’s Choice Book Award. Damon was editor in chief of The Handbook of Child Psychology, fifth and sixth editions. He is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and the American Educational Research Association. Damon has received awards and grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Thrive Foundation for Youth, and the Pew Charitable Trusts. Before coming to Stanford in 1997, Damon was University Professor and director of the Center on the Study of Human Development at Brown University. From 1973 to 1989, Damon served in several academic and administrative positions at Clark University. In 1988, he was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Puerto Rico, and in 1994–95 he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Dreaming Together: Dealing with Conflict, Finding Belonging, and Doing Justice with Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra Mar 11, 2024

"What does a healthy community look like? This beautiful image of being unafraid, of everybody having what they need, of everybody having the opportunity to reach their dreams, everybody being able to take care of themselves and not having it taken away from them—all of those are part of the vision of a good life. It's not just an individual good life, it's a communal good life. Concertación, if you were just literally translate it, means 'coming into harmony' and the way that it works in our communities is to hear somebody else with your heart. You hear them from the heart. And when you hear them from the heart, you spontaneously shift. You are automatically standing on common sacred ground and you just shift generously." (Alexia Salvatierra)

Wellbeing begins with we. “If your community is not well, then you are not well.” Thriving is collective. But our atomic individualism and narrow focus on ourselves is constantly pulling us away from the mutual belonging, reciprocity, and vibrant flourishing that can only be found by seeking the good of the wider human community—the neighbor, the stranger, the migrant, the farm worker, and the poor.

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is a scholar, organizer, activist, and pastor, and is Academic Dean of the Centro Latino as well as the Assistant Professor of Integral Mission and Global Transformation at Fuller Theological Seminary.

She offers a healing message for those who wrestle with the pain and suffering caused by structural and systemic injustice, calling for listening, empathy, and action. Alexia’s faith is rooted in community and kinship. She affirms the wisdom of the body and cautions against over-intellectualization, offering instead a larger emotional vocabulary, emotional attunement, and the ability to hold and live with complex feelings.

The power of community is on display in our ability to celebrate and suffer together. And in Alexia’s work as an activist, she shows how fractured communities can reconcile through the power of a shared dream.

In this conversation with Alexia Salvatierra, we discuss:

The unique wisdom that Latin- a/o culture brings to spiritual and theological conversations about thriving and spiritual health
The complex, communal, and collective nature of thriving
How her theology as a Lutheran pastor was formed by compassion and concern for the poor
The challenge of Western Christians to see beyond individualistic rationality and the atomic unit of the self when thinking about wellness and thriving
The transformative potential of a common dream to unify and reconcile
The power of beautiful stories that are deeply connected to truth and goodness
Seeing relationships as not just an end goal of thriving, but a means to thriving.

About Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra

Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra is the Academic Dean of the Centro Latino at Fuller Theological Seminary, as well as the Assistant Professor of Integral Mission and Global Transformation. Her work is a beautiful mosaic of immigration reform, faith-rooted organizing, cross-cultural ministry, and building vital holistic Christian community. Throughout her career, she’s played a central role in founding and convening communities for social justice, including the New Sanctuary Movement, the Guardian angels Project. Matteo 25 a bipartisan Christian network to protect and defend families facing deportation, the Evangelical Immigration Table, and the Ecumenical Collaboration for Asylum-Seekers. She is co-author of God's Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants and Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resiliency of Marginalized Christian Communities.

Show Notes

Explore Alexia’s work in God's Resistance: Mobilizing Faith to Defend Immigrants and Buried Seeds: Learning from the Vibrant Resiliency of Marginalized Christian Communities.
“If your community is not well, then you are not well.”
Pam King introduces Alexia Salvatierra
Mision Integral and Liberation Theology
Alexia Salvatierra answers, “What is thriving?”
Bien estar—”wellbeing”
Isaiah 65:17-25: “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord—and their descendants as well. Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.”
The sounds of healthy community
Equal value
We all want to belong
Frederick Buechner: “Vocation is where the world's deep hunger and our own deep gladness meet.”
Trauma and faith, agency to combat hopelessness
Spiritual gift of justice
Dolorismo: ennobling suffering, suffering in silence
Orthopathos: when suffering can be useful to make a change
“The Holy Spirit is your consolation, your consuelo.”
Surfing the Spirit: Fluidity and dynamic balance
Serenity Prayer
“I don’t make the collective an idol.”
The importance of freedom, while critiquing “super-individualism”
Discern in the context of community
Individual discernment
Liberation theology: “You learn by doing.”
Meditative Prayer Practice: The Serenity Prayer (In English and Spanish)
Civil War in Guatemala and Panama
Dr. Oscar Arias of Costa Rica—informal peace process behind the scenes
The Dream Exercise and Concertación (”coming into harmony”)
The difference between concertación and negotiation
“It’s about generosity.”
Generosity vs dividing up the check
Dream Exercise
“As poor people, we have trouble believing that our dreams can come true, period.”
Eli Finkel’s All-or-Nothing Marriage: How the Best Marriages Work
Social capital and trust
Jesuits in Asia
Enculturation: Encountering the truth (and each other) at the intersections of culture
Orthopoesis and beauty
Knowing God through beauty, not just truth or goodness
“De Colores”—the joy of all the colors
Adrienne Marie Brown and Community Social Transformation
Peter Heltzel and “revolutionary friendships”
“We’re a very graceless society. A society at war is a graceless society.”
Reconciliation: Navajo on opponents instead of enemies, and South Africa
Hoyt Axton’s “Less Than The Song” (1973)—”I cannot rest easy until all your dreams are real.”
The co-evolutionary relationship
“Seeing the wholeness of the other” in concertación
Loving the child in the other; calling the best forth in each other.
Truth, Beauty, and Goodness
Pam King’s key takeaways:
If your community is not well, then you are not well. Thriving is collective.
We all have a core psychological drive to belong and be received and contribute in our families and communities.
Caring for our emotional brains and bodies is essential in seeking collective thriving.
Thriving involves a necessary commitment to justice, and is beautifully captured by terms like shalom and concertación.
The Christian tradition of compassion and concern for the marginalized can pull us out of our heads, out of our tunnel vision, and move us toward the transformation of society.
Communicating a common dream or shared vision can help us move from an atomic individualistic mentality to loving community and reconciliation.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Responding to Trauma: Psychological Tools for Resilience and Recovery with Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Mar 04, 2024

Note: This episode contains content about trauma. Listener discretion is advised.

The path toward hope and healing is often charted through pain, suffering, loss, and grief.

Coming from two decades spent studying post-traumatic stress disorder, researcher and clinical psychologist Dr. Cynthia Eriksson Cynthia has worked with individuals and communities in the wake of major tragedy. Her psychological and spiritual perspectives emerge from first hand experience with Cambodian children exposed to the atrocities of war, Ugandan refugees, Haitian victims of earthquake catastrophe and infrastructure collapse, or at home in Pasadena tending to frontline workers who are often left burned out and traumatized from relief work.

Cynthia Eriksson discusses how to pursue resilience and recovery by reflecting on the role of faith and spirituality; habits and rhythms of life; and relationships and community.

How should we understand the difference between resilience and thriving?

Resilience focuses on the adaptive capacities that people need to bounce back from trauma, creating the capacity to bounce back, and the skills to increase one’s ability and agility to recover. Whereas thriving refers to adaptive growth through adversity, trauma, challenges, and opportunities, all the while in pursuit of one’s purpose.

Both resilience and thriving recognize the complexities of life, and both affirm and require the actualization of human agency.

In this conversation with Cynthia Eriksson, we discuss:

How leaders and helpers and caretakers can identify trauma in themselves, and come to recognize, accept, and respond.
The importance of paying attention to our brains, bodies, and environment.
The 5 R’s of resilience to trauma and recovery from trauma.
Spiritual responses to suffering and pain—which can often result in incredibly profound experiences with God—and this includes expressing anger at God within a struggle.
And practically, we talk about how to deal with avoidance, defensiveness, and blaming others or ourselves—basically, the potentially destructive nature of coping mechanisms.
And we close with a beautiful grounding practice that connects us all to our bodies and emotions, to engage trauma, and stay on the path to thriving.

Show Notes

Resource: "Thriving through Trauma: Five R’s for Resilience and Recovery" (via thethrivecenter.org)
Resource: "Practice: The Five R’s of Resilience and Recovery" (via thethrivecenter.org)
Practice modified from Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Resilience versus thriving—what’s the difference?
What is trauma? A threat to existence.
Extending from trauma to suffering and helping other people build resilience and recover
Cynthia Eriksson’s personal experience of trauma (and not realizing it)
Problem solving and seeking control as a coping mechanism and defense against acknowledging and dealing with trauma
Dissociation
Experiencing trauma is not the same thing as being traumatized
Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn (”tend and befriend”)
The symptoms of trauma and areas of disruption
What happens in our bodies
What happens in our minds (thinking)
What happens in our relationships
What happens in our sense of meaning, justice, and making sense of the world
Resilience
“What are some of the things that we can all do that help us to build some muscles when it comes to navigating life's suffering?
Resilience as a skill everyone can cultivate through personal growth, rather than a static trait
“Neurons that fire together wire together.”
The Five R’s of Resilience
1. Regulation: bodies and emotions
1. Reflection and Right Thinking: truth and factual acceptance
1. Relationships: community, connection, friendship, and support
1. Respite and Rest: disengagement and Sabbath healing
1. Reason: meaning and transcendence
How to deal with big, overwhelming feelings in the wake of trauma.
Grounding and settling practices: feeling where you are. “I’m here now, and I’m safe.”
Lament as a healthy spiritual response to trauma
Anger at and with God
Spiritual practice of lament
Asking a hard question of God: “Why aren’t you here, God?”
Lament and anger at God as a practice to stay in relationship with God
“There’s this tension of: “If I show up for God, will God show up for me?”
Orienting to the pain and suffering of others: “How do I show up for the people that are around me who are in pain what does it mean for me to actually open myself up to the pain of others and stay present?”
“Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly.” (Micah 6:8)
Coping mechanisms: substances, shopping, Netflix, avoidance
Unhealthy responses to trauma-based emotion: the dangers of replaying, ruminating, and regretting
Rumination is not a constructive processing.
What kind of grace can I show myself?
Book: Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Book: Lisa Najavits, Seeking Safety: A Treatment Manual for PTSD and Substance Abuse
Guided meditative practice: Grounding
Explaining the science behind Grounding Practices
Practical ways to get help
Book: Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Braim, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Book: Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
Book: Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
National Child Traumatic Stress Network (currently under website maintenance as of March 4, 2024; contact helpdesk at help@nctsn.org or in an emergency, dial 911)
National Center for PTSD
Cynthia Eriksson on What is thriving?
Joy and Freedom
Pam King’s Key Takeaways
A life of thriving on purpose actually includes pain and sadness. A history of trauma is not a disqualification from thriving.
Coping strategies are tricky. They tempt us towards avoidance, defensiveness, defensiveness, substance abuse, blaming, and self judgment. Our goal is not coping. Our goal must be thriving.
Lots of R's here, but regulation, reflection, right thinking, relationships, respite, and rest, and reason are core components to developing resilience and enacting recovery.
It's okay to be angry at God, and it helps to tell God that's actually the case.
We can find emotional grounding and regulation through intentionally enhancing a deep connection between our bodies and minds.
And the path to thriving is often one where our minds need to follow our bodies and all their glorious complexity.
For more information about resilience recovery, org. In Cynthia Erickson's framework of five hours, visit our website at thethrivecenter.org.

About Cynthia Eriksson

Cynthia Eriksson is Dean of the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy, and is a Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Psychology Department.

Her research is particularly focused on the needs of cross-cultural aid for mission workers, as well as the interaction of trauma and spirituality. This work has included trauma training, research, and consultation in Monrovia, Liberia; Kobe, Japan; Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Barcelona, Spain; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Gulu, Uganda; and Amman, Jordan.

Eriksson also collaborated with colleagues in the US, Europe, and Africa on a longitudinal research project on stress in humanitarian aid workers funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. She also participates in the Headington Program in International Trauma at Fuller.

She has completed research on risk and resilience, exposure to stress, and spiritual development in urban youth workers funded by the Fuller Youth Institute.

Eriksson and her students are currently exploring the intersection of cultural humility and culturally-embedded resilience practices through collaborations with ministry agencies and Fuller colleague Alexia Salvatierra.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

From the Inside Out: Relationships, Mental Health, & Interpersonal Neurobiology with Dr. Dan Siegel Feb 26, 2024

“Our relationships really shape how we feel, how we think, how we remember things, how we tell the story of who we are, the sense of self, where you focus your attention, what gives you a sense of purpose.

Relational integration in a family leads to the growth of neural integration inside the child's nervous system. Every time you say regulation—like regulating emotion or your mood, regulating attention, thought behavior, self-understanding, morality—it depends on integration in the brain. So the neural integration is the basis for optimal regulation, but it comes from relational integration.

We all can follow Picasso's suggestion, which I think is really beautiful: The meaning of life discovering our gift. The purpose of life is giving it away.” (Dan Siegel)

In developmental science, there are lots of debates between nature and nurture. And Dr. Dan Siegel’s groundbreaking work in interpersonal neurobiology demonstrates that we are naturally wired for nurture—and furthermore, we cannot thrive without it.

Over the past five decades, he has sought to explain through attachment theory and a study of the brain, how relationships shape our feelings, thoughts, memories, stories and personal narratives, and how all these offer an opportunity for us to integrate all of our personal subjective with the world outside us.

Our relational tendencies and inner being are malleable—always growing and changing. We are under construction our entire lives, and that’s good news for those of us who feel the weight of loneliness, relational struggle, or the challenges of mental illness.

Dan Siegel’s work helps us become deeply present to others—in friendships, romance, or parenting—by becoming deeply attuned to your inner life, including all of our emotions, plans, pain, and our ongoing and evolving stories.

His research shows that caring and attuned relationships provide a safe and secure environment in which we can experience integration and gain insight into what is most meaningful to us. He calls this concept “mindsight”—how we gain an inner sense of self is intertwined with how we relate to others.

And he offers how mindfulness and meditation are important to this process of becoming intraconnected. Life today is characterized by isolation and fragmentation, but Dan’s wisdom and practices offer helpful guidelines on how we can grow whole—and persons in deepening, reciprocating relationships.

Dr. Dan Siegel is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He has authored numerous research articles, books, and accessible materials that apply what we know about the brain to our most sacred and significant relationships. His many books include the groundbreaking introduction to interpersonal neurobiology, The Developing Mind—as well as Mindsight, Parenting from the Inside Out, The Whole Brain Child, and his most recent book, Intra-Connected.

In this conversation with Dan Siegel, we discuss:

The connection between the mind and the brain, and why that matters for our thriving
Coming to terms with big, challenging emotions—especially fear
How psychological integration creates flow and harmony and helps us deal with chaos and rigidity
The scientific connection between focused attention, open awareness, and compassionate intention
He walks us through a mindfulness exercise he calls “the wheel of awareness”
The neurobiology of interpersonal relationships
And we discuss how that impacts not just our spirituality and relationships, but society as a whole.

About Dan Siegel

Dr. Siegel is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization, which offers online learning and in-person seminars that focus on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic biological processes. His psychotherapy practice includes children, adolescents, adults, couples, and families. He serves as the Medical Director of the LifeSpan Learning Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Blue School in New York City, which has built its curriculum around Dr. Siegel’s Mindsight approach.

He is author of many books, including, The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation, The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind, Survive Everyday Parenting Struggles, and Help Your Family Thrive, Parenting from the Inside Out: How A Deeper Self-Understanding Can Help You Raise Children Who Thrive, and his most recent, IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging.

Show Notes

Explore Dr. Dan Siegel’s Website Resources
Dan Siegel’s latest book: Intraconnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging
Practicing the Wheel of Awareness (guided meditative exercises): https://drdansiegel.com/wheel-of-awareness/
Emotional realities reverberating throughout our lives
Picasso on meaning and purpose: “The meaning of life discovering our gift. The purpose of life is giving it away.”
Host Pam King introduces Dr. Dan Siegel
Living life on auto-pilot
“For those of us feeling isolated, lonely, or cut off. You are not a finished product. … We are under construction our entire lives.”
“What in the world is going on?”
Growing up with an undercurrent of fear; Dan Siegel shares about his adolescence and his family dynamics
Understanding internal, relational ecosystems
Communicating and connecting with people in crisis; Dan Siegel on working for a suicide prevention service
Vivek Murthy and the epidemic of loneliness
John Lennon’s assassination and the mental illness of his murderer
“What would a healthy mind be?”
The 1990s: The Decade of the Brain
What is the relationship between the mind and the brain?
“Our relationships really shape how we feel, how we think, how we remember things, how we tell the story of who we are, the sense of self. So, you know, whatever you call those things. Feelings thinking, narrative meaning making, where you focus your attention, um, what gives you a sense of purpose.”
Attachment research and linking relationships to the mind and the brain
The difficulty of defining the mind for scientific study
How could they all be correct?
Energy transmission and connecting neurology to sociality
Emergent Properties and “optimal self-organization that creates harmonious flow”
Relational integration and integration in the brain
Differentiation and linkage
What does “integration” mean?
Environmental factors and the shaping of attachment styles
Parenting from the inside out
“Feeling felt”
Presence, attunement, regulation
Curiosity, openness, acceptance
What is thriving?
Living as a verb and avoiding “nounification”
Rashid: “Having abandoned the flimsy fantasy of certainty, I decided to wander.”
“Wander with them through the journey of life.”
Understand your own childhood experiences and then liberate them
Patterns of developmental pathways
Life is scary and full of uncertainty.
“We've identified three subcortical networks that involve agency, which is a drive for empowerment; bonding, a drive for connection; and certainty, a drive for safety.”
Agency - feeling seen
Bonding - feeling soothed
Certainty - feeling safe
“Who we are is really energy flow.”
Finding harmonious flow between the shores of chaos and rigidity
VUCA life: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous.
Minimize exposure to information
Picasso: “The meaning of life is discovering our gift. The purpose of life is giving it away.”
The Wheel of Awareness
attention to be focused, awareness to be open, intention to be kind
The hub of the wheel: the source of knowing
The rim of the wheel: that which is known
Creating a loving state inside you
“Empty but full.”
“Connected to everyone and everything”
Feeling an open sense of love
Christian contemplative tradition and centering prayer
Silence and stillness—leading to heightened awareness
The illusion of certainty
Me + We = MWe
Well-being and thriving
Adaptive developmental regulation
Leaning into love: “the manifestation of love is kindness and compassion”
Spiritual health and being “intraconnected”
Intraconnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging
“Feeling into the truth of our intraconnected identity”
Host Pam King’s Key Takeaways:
We are embodied creatures with glorious brains that we're still only beginning to understand.
Caring attuned relationships can create opportunities for us to be and become who we are, realizing our deep connection to others.
There's a constant balancing act between chaos and rigidity, and the path of spiritual health is marked by a steady recovery of harmonious flow. A process called integration.
When life is scary and uncertain, we need safe relationships to ground us, help us attune and regulate and navigate the most challenging circumstances.
And finally We need a new paradigm for reciprocal relationships in society, seeing the ways we're intra connected Knit together with and for each other.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Freedom from Fear: Mental Health, Justice, and Hope for an Unencumbered Life in the Black Church with Rev. Dr. Dwight Radcliff Feb 19, 2024

“It really has to do with this ability to, to dream and to live unencumbered.” — Dr. Dwight Radcliff

Seeing justice, equity, and social transformation through the lens of hip-hop culture and Christian faith, Rev. Dr. Dwight Radcliff offers a vision of freedom and unencumbered life for the future of the Black community to which we can all bear witness.

Raising challenging questions about the meaning of thriving in a culture dominated by fear, he speaks in a prophetic voice, interweaving the powerful, compounding effects of the language of the Gospel and the language of hip-hop.

As a cultural theologian, community leader, and pastor, one of Dwight’s many gifts is presence—presence to emotion, to the realty of injustice, and to the complexities of thriving in the context of race and gender.

He speaks about the power of purpose and calling in his life, pointing out the unique insight hip-hop, rap, and R&B music can offer the human experience. He calls us to be attuned to the whole reality of pain, suffering, trauma, and struggle when discussing psychological and spiritual health and thriving. And he bears witness to fear, anger, and grief—re-sensitizing us to our pain and vulnerability—speaking truth for the sake of beauty and justice.

In this conversation, we discuss:

Thriving as the ability to dream and live unencumbered, and the ways the Black church embodies that thriving
The grievous reality of Black double-consciousness that results from systemic racism
And his personal experience as a Black man today
Mental health in the Black community
The power of sanctified purpose
How hip-hop culture and music help us understand thriving at embodied, emotional, and familial levels, beyond the horizon of rational understanding
And how the prophetic vision of hip hop operates in the same tradition of justice spelled out by the Gospel that Jesus taught and lived.

Show Notes

Check out Rev. Dr. Dwight Radcliff’s Hip Hop Playlist (Note: Explicit Content)
What is it to live unencumbered?
“Hip-hop culture keeps me in check. It reminds me that the church of Jesus Christ is also supposed to be a prophetic and subversive voice.”
Hip-hop and the Black experience
Introduction: Rev. Dr. Dwight A. Radcliff
Dwight Radcliff: What is thriving?
“I think it really has to do with this ability to dream and to live unencumbered.”
Fear and the experience of Black men
“The American dream is not available to all equally.”
“What is unencumbered life for Dwight?”
W.E.B. Du Bois and Double Consciousness
W.E.B. Du Bois’s book, The Souls of Black Folk (Project Gutenberg)
Double consciousness is “fatal to self-confidence,” producing “a peculiar wrenching of the soul, a peculiar sense of doubt and bewilderment.”
“I don’t get to just be me.”
Dr. John M. Perkins
“Where does our pain come from? Why are you hurting? And I give you your pain and I say that you are hurting; and you give me my pain and we say that we are hurting.”
Honest, vulnerable conversations
Trauma and inherited trauma
“Why do we have to be Black?”
“One of the things that I'm lamenting right now in our society is our inability to have honest conversations—our inability to say, ‘Hey, this happened, this was horrible.’ There are ramifications and ripple effects of that. How do we address it, talk about it, and begin to take corrective action so that all of our children can begin to dream and live unencumbered.”
Where are honest conversations happening?
“I might not change the world, but I'll damn sure inspire the mind that does.” (paraphrase of Tupac Shakur)
Socioepigenetics: the impact of genetic inheritance for emotional trauma, depression, anxiety, and the effects of social injustice
Mental health in the Black church and broader Black community, and the mistrust of mental health providers
Barbara Holmes on Black contemplative practices and spirituality
Hip-hop culture and expression of pain and suffering
Dwight Radcliff’s journey through hip-hop
Pentacostal Holiness church and seeing hip-hop as the devil.
“You’re more concerned with the curse words than the cursed worlds.”
“I began to do a dangerous thing: I began to read the Bible.”
James Cone, The Spirituals & the Blues
West African spirituality and “holding all things together”
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, “The Message”
“Don’t push me, cuz I’m close to the edge / I’m trying not to lose my head”
“It’s like a jungle sometimes / It makes me wonder how I keep from going under”
2Pac, “I Wonder If Heaven Got a Ghetto”
C. Dolores Tucker, a Black congresswoman and critic of 2Pac
Hip-Hop as a way of life, unencumbered and wholly oneself
J. Kameron Carter on poesis and creativity
“Poesis… making a haven in a ghetto.”
“I am hip-hop.”
Lament and Good News

About Dwight Radcliff

Theologian and pastor Rev. Dr. Dwight A. Radcliff Jr. is Academic Dean and director of the William E. Pannell Center for Black Church Studies and is Assistant Professor of Mission, Theology, and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Fuller, Dr. Radcliff taught at Vanguard University, Azusa Pacific University, and the Southern California School of Ministry.

He has published in The Journal of Hip Hop Studies, and is a recipient of the Parish Pulpit Fellowship graduation prize and the Hooper/Keefe Preaching Award. He completed post-master’s studies at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas and the University of Oxford.

He currently serves as senior pastor of The Message Center in Gardena, California, where he leads with his wife, DeShun Jones-Radcliff, who serves as the church’s director of administration. He and his wife have two daughters.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Life Worth Living: Faith, Flourishing, and What Matters Most with Dr. Miroslav Volf Feb 12, 2024

“Love of God, love of neighbors. Seek the kingdom, the good of the world. And in that good of the whole, your own good. And be attuned to what is around you in joy and also in sorrow.” (Miroslav Volf)

We’re in a crisis of meaning. It’s like our existential compasses are off kilter. Uprooted from faith, social, and civic communities—the very institutions that once supplied narratives, a sense of identity, and belonging.

But meaning and purpose are central to our spiritual health and therefore thriving. And theology comes into play because psychologists are more concerned with how meaning is made descriptively—looking at the cognitive and affective processes of our brains and behavior. Whereas theologians are concerned with prescriptive meaning, commenting normatively about how we should live.

This episode features renowned theologian Miroslav Volf (Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School / Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture) and author of the bestselling book, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most.

We need stories of love and hope to define our lives. And much of Miroslav's life's work has been devoted to understanding what constitutes a life worth living.

In our conversation, he shares about a God who is with us, who is loving, and who created us for love, calling us to an active role in the flourishing of this world.

In this conversation, we discuss:

How to discern what really matters and how to be intentional about a life worth living
The need to challenge the hyper individualistic assumptions of our day, focusing on thriving life as a life of connections and convictions
Spiritual health as dependent on our relationships with one another, with God, and creation
Spiritual practices that quiet, create space, and slow us down—allowing us to attune a broad and secure space for human becoming and unfolding
Miroslav speaks openly and vulnerably about his own experiences of faith, suffering, hope, and flourishing

Show Notes

Learn more about the Yale Center for Faith and Culture
Check out Miroslav’s best-selling book, Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most (co-authored with Matt Croasmun and Ryan McAnnally-Linz)
Reorienting theology around the concept of human flourishing
Honor everyone, love God, love neighbor, seek the kingdom, stay attuned in joy and in sorrow
Crisis of meaning and the need for deeper reflection on what matters most
“We need stories of love and hope to define our lives.”
Interdisciplinary research in psychology and theology
Miroslav reflects on his early life in 1970s Croatia (then Yugoslavia)
Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life
Miroslav’s early faith: “Jesus is alive.”
“His experience was that people who believe are idiots, that they can't know anything, that they are these parasites that want to undermine whatever the society's trying to do. And so that was my first initiation, so to speak, in the public living of my faith. … but, it was also beautiful.”
A way of life that is worth suffering for—holding a treasure.
“Another occasion where we were actually beaten and chased out of a village that was completely communist-dominated. And we kind of disrupted it by … We spoke about Jesus … and they chased us out of the city to beat us up … and then we had this kind of sense of joy.”
Practices vs Reflection
Moral practices and felt experience
“There's always a kind of excess beyond what we can actually say, what we can describe, what we can explain. We stutter often when we try to—especially describe experiences like joy or like suffering. They're beyond the words. That's the beauty of them—giving oneself to them.”
Miroslav Volf on thriving
Thriving is framed around three elements of human experience: agency, circumstances, and emotions—knit together through the lens of the kingdom of God and Christian imagination
Agency: Love God and Love neighbor.
Circumstances: “Thy kingdom come” vs “give us this day our daily bread”
Emotions: Attune to the world. “Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.”
“Love of God, love of neighbors. Seek the kingdom, the good of the world. And in that good of the whole, your own good. And be attuned to what is around you in joy and also in sorrow.”
Primordial goodness: Goodness is always prior to evil.
Spacious public faith and Christ as the key to flourishing life
Christ as a moral teacher and exemplar
The “aliveness” and presence of Christ
“I often don't experience God.”
Martin Luther on faith: Christ as a gem, encased in our faith
Church fathers on the presence of Christ as “heated iron in fire”—the heat doesn’t come from the iron but from the fired—similarly, God heats us from within.
Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation
Porous boundaries and our nature as relational beings
Jürgen Moltmann’s autobiography A Broad Place
“Religion really cramps our style… But in Miroslav's theology, personal wholeness in Christ is spacious and freeing.”
Exodus 3: God promising to lead Israel out of bondage and constraint and into freedom and a broad space
Love
Relational image of God and relationality
God as ultimate lover—”God loves us while we are still so far away”
Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most
Christian faith and pluralism
Articulating a coherent answer to what it means to live a life that’s worthy of our humanity
The Recipe: “You can’t put all the ingredients together as you wish. They have to fit together.”
“We make truth claims.”
“I think we go wrong when we don't honor people's own search for truth. The whole book is about having truth-seeking conversations about something that has a claim upon your life. And argue with others, but argue in such a way that honors everyone. And so for me, this is a kind of central Christian conviction that comes straight from the Bible, from 1 Peter. Short commandment: Honor everyone. That's what I need to do. Whatever they do, whatever they think, especially honor those who've spent so much time trying to think through some of these issues as many of the figures have that have, that are not necessarily Christian.”
“Honor everyone.”
Nurturing the ascetic practices of self-reflection and discipline
Spiritual exercise by Pam King: Creating Space
Teresa of Avila and the Interior Castle
Relationality, reciprocity, and mutual flourishing
Robin Wall Kimmerer in *Braiding Sweetgrass: “*All flourishing is mutual.”
“Human thriving isn't thriving when it's the expense of other people's thriving.”
“And it's a kind of strange paradox. At our disposal, but it's all reference to me and to my experiences. … We have a really narrow scope of concerns.”
Mary’s Magnificat: “God coming and taking the mighty down from their thrones and transforming the entire world.”
“What I want is the expansion of the horizon of concerns. Our horizon of concern is the horizon of God's mission in the world. God’s mission is our mission.”

About Miroslav Volf

Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany. He has written or edited more than 20 books, over 100 scholarly articles, and his work has been featured in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, and several other outlets, including NPR, On Being with Krista Tippett, and Public Television’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.

His books include Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, Allah: A Christian Response, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity, A Public Faith: How Followers of Christ Should Serve the Common Good, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World, Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World, For the Life of the World: Theology that Makes a Difference (with Matthew Croasmun), and The Home of God: A Brief Story of Everything (with Ryan McAnnally-Linz).

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

The Science of Relationships: Healing, Emotion, & Connection with Drs. Sue Johnson & Jim Furrow Feb 05, 2024

“Our society doesn't want to hear about how interdependent we are—doesn't want to hear that if we want to thrive, we have to put people first and we have to create community. And people need connection with others like they need oxygen. If you create a world where that connection isn't very available or it all happens on a screen, you are going to have huge problems. You are going to have huge problems with depression, anxiety, suicide, emptiness—people are going to make terrible choices.” (Sue Johnson)

We need each other. We are relational beings, and our thriving—or languishing—often hinges on relationships. In this episode, psychologists Sue Johnson and Jim Furrow not only explain why relationships are so important, they offer practical advice on how to pursue healing, emotional regulation, and lasting thriving in all kinds of relationships.

Sue Johnson is the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy, the gold standard in tested, proven interventions of couples and author of many books including Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Jim Furrow is a marriage and family therapist and an internationally renowned trainer of Emotionally Focused Therapy.

This conversation goes from profound to practical, covering the biological and psychological science to explain why belonging gives way to becoming. We discuss the rampant emptiness and loneliness, fear, and depression people today experience and the connection between relationships and a sense of meaning in life. Sue and Jim also provide a framework for how to understand your attachment style and the way it impacts your relational health. And they discuss the practical ways we can grow and change so that we can engage in and sustain fulfilling and life giving relationships.

In this conversation with Sue Johnson & Jim Furrow, we discuss:

What it means to be fully alive, in all the existential fullness that being human means
How to bring together the spectrum of emotional realities with our lived experience
The crisis of loneliness we face today, and what we can do about it
The role of empathy and caring in the healing process
An introduction to attachment science, the role of attachment figures in thriving relationships
And the therapeutic and relational practices that lead to security, a sense of worth, empowerment, and competence in life.

About Sue Johnson & Jim Furrow

Sue Johnson is the creator of Emotionally Focused Therapy and author of many books including Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. Jim Furrow is a marriage and family therapist and an internationally renowned trainer of Emotionally Focused Therapy.

Show Notes

Learn more about Emotionally Focused Therapy (including ways to find a therapist)
Sue Johnson’s book, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love
We’re made for relationships.
“We need to understand how crucial relationships are for us. They are oxygen. We need to help people value them and learn how to have them.”
“If we're not willing to risk and we're not willing to reach, we're not going to necessarily be found.”
“You can't be a self or by yourself. I think that says it all. That's the most basic human interaction. Do you share my reality? Is my reality valid? Do you see what I see? Can you make sense of it? Can you help me make sense of it? Is what I'm feeling making sense? Can you share it? Am I alone? I mean, this is the most basic human contact of all.”
The purpose of our being and our means to becoming.
Episode Summary
Pam King welcomes Sue Johnson and Jim Furrow.
What is thriving meant to you?
“Full existential living… fully alive.”
Carl Rogers
“Trust yourself to go through life in an active way.”
“Fulsome being… not only who I am, but who I’m with.”
Purpose, meaning, and connection
Therapy is not only about reducing thriving to the treatment of symptoms.
Coherence vs Binary Thinking: “How does all of this cohere in a new way of making sense?”
Mother and Child: Explaining reality and needing other people to do so
Unexpected, unknown, and fear
Attachment figures
Fullness vs. Emptiness
The relational isn’t just a means to an end. It’s our purpose.
Sue’s relationship with her father: “He was an amazing attachment figure.”
“I’m an ardent feminist.”
Understanding attachment through loss and grief
Sue Johnson on working with trauma survivors
John Bowlby: “You do unto yourself as you’ve been done to.”
“Just to have some sort of sense of who you are, coherent sense of self, you need the recognition from another person. Yes, you matter. Yes, you're important. Yes, you have meaning. Yes, I see you. … to not feel seen, to not feel like you matter to anybody is, it's excruciating for human beings.”
“One safe relationship with a loving other. seems to protect us and create resilience.”
Jim’s loss of his father: “I know he's going through a difficult time, but I believe in him and I know he will make it.”
The power of attachment
Fully oneself, fully connected with another
Attachment to God: foundation, protector, shield, transcendent
Spirituality and experience of attachment through the beauty and transcendence of nature
“My life is part of this beauty.”
Animate, invigorate, create.
“Your worth comes from your connection to others.”
“But no, we're not enough. But I think our society doesn't want to hear that. It doesn't want to hear about how interdependent we are. Doesn't want to hear that if we want to thrive, we have to put people first and we have to create community.”
Interdependence and affective dependence
How to forge relational bonds.
Attention
“Love and bonding is about attention and if you don't give attention to the other person in your relationship, which means if you don't take the time, make it important enough and focus down and spend time, then whatever connection you have naturally erodes.”
ARE—Accessible, Responsive, and Engaged
“It’s more than date night… it’s about engaging with the other person.”
“Loneliness and depression are going to be the main problems for the next century.”
Relationship-driven church communities
“One of the things that is a heartbeat in our work in emotionally focused therapy is calling individuals into opportunities to share vulnerably with one another.”
John Cacioppo (loneliness researcher): we have changed deep relationships from an essential to an incidental.
Vulnerability and loneliness
Depressed or heartbroken?
The impact of smartphone technology on relationships
Empathy and caring in the healing process
“When the vulnerability becomes specific and makes sense and is accepted, then people have words for it, they can tolerate it, and they start to be able to share it. And when they do that, they pull their partner towards them. They evoke empathy and caring. That’s the only solution to human emotional pain that there really exists—s the empathy and caring of another. That is true in religion too. It's the empathy and caring of a God figure. That's about bonding. It's about sharing vulnerability.”
“No one goes through vulnerability alone.”
Belonging leads to becoming
Pam King’s key takeaways:
Being fully alive means finding coherence and connection with others. finding meaning in human and spiritual relationships.
Relational bonding is built in to our genetic code. We're built for connection and made for relationships and we have to work at it.
Relationships are powerful. They are capable of bringing sorrow and joy. To the extent that they're able to break us down, they're even more able to build us back up and bring us to healing.
Longing for relationships is natural and normal. While loneliness can be so frightening, it does not need to be stigmatized. But it does need to be worked through.
Often healing comes through the very wounds we're hurting with. We heal when we open up in vulnerability, when we seek transcendence and connection with others, and ultimately with a loving and caring God

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

How to Navigate Life: Psychological Tools to Find Your Purpose with Dr. Belle Liang Jan 29, 2024

“We all have a story because we all have a future and a past. … And story is really about making the influences in our life explicit to ourselves. Oftentimes, when we're not living intentionally, it's like we don't know what our story is. And we're not living in a way that is aligned at all with our purpose—so that you know what your story is, and so that you can be explicit in your intentional current behavior, feelings, and decisions.” (Dr. Belle Liang)

Do you know your purpose? How do you understand your own life story?

The science of purpose promises many positive outcomes: mental health, psychological wellbeing, physical health, even longevity, not to mention academic engagement, career fulfillment, and even nurturing relationships. Who doesn’t want purpose?

But as much as it captivates us, can be an elusive, ephemeral object dangling in front of us. We want it. We can sense it. We should have it. But we can’t quite attain it.

A deep sense of purpose and vocation are central to our spiritual health. Purpose is understood as an actionable and enduring goal that is meaningful to oneself and contributes to the world beyond oneself, is crucial to our spirituality bc it serves to integrate our beliefs, values, understanding of ultimacy, and love into action.

In this episode Dr. Belle Liang (Boston College, author of the bestselling book How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond), offers research-backed practical guidance on how to identify and pursue your purpose, identifying essential elements of purpose: (1) character strengths, (2) skills and expertise, (3) deeply held values, and (4) a sense of contribution to the world.

During the interview she guides listeners through a real-time practical exercise for aligning with our purpose and explore how it can help us navigate the journey of life.

In this conversation with Belle Liang, we discuss:

How family history shapes us as individuals
The importance of differentiation and emerging from early family dependency into a healthy sense of oneself as an individual
The role of faith, spirituality, and community in our understanding of purpose
A psychological definition of purpose as using strengths and skills and values to make a positive impact on the world
And the practical elements of finding and living your purpose as an individual, with Belle guiding us through a practice of reflecting on our past and finding our purpose

About Belle Liang
Dr. Belle Liang is a professor of Counseling, Developmental, & Educational Psychology at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. As the founder and Principal Investigator of Purpose Lab, she is committed to advancing understanding of positive youth development, including mentoring and relational health, through her research. Her expertise in purpose interventions, including those that are technologically mediated, is reflected in her current work leading the development of True North, a curriculum and web-based application aimed at helping individuals and organizations cultivate purpose with data analytics.

With over 100 publications, Dr. Liang is recognized as a knowledgeable speaker and collaborator in the field of positive youth development. She is grateful for the opportunities she has had to contribute to the field and to translate research into practical application, as demonstrated by her recent co-authorship of the bestselling How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, & Beyond, published by St. Martin’s Press.

Show Notes

Check out How to Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond by Belle Liang and Timothy Klein
“What is your life dream?” Learn more about Belle Liang’s Purpose Labs
“Purpose is knowing more of yourself and living in ways that are aligned and consistent with those values, strengths, beliefs, and, desires.”
Pam King introduces Belle Liang and this episode
Belle Liang’s family of origin
Growing up the daughter of Asian immigrant parents with very impoverished backgrounds
Understanding sacrifice
Learning how to listen to herself and identify her vocation and purpose
How Belle became a psychologist
“It was pretty tricky for me early on to make some decisions that had to do with my own interests, my own intrinsic motivations versus doing what seemed to be the most strategic pathway to success.”
Parker Palmer and “letting your life speak”
Listening to the inner voice that reveals purpose
How to define purpose in order to study it through psychological research
Purpose as “living a life that is personally meaningful and intended to contribute to the world beyond oneself.”
Positive outcomes of finding and living your purpose
Improved mental health and well being
Physical health and longevity
Better academic engagement
Increased career fulfillment
What are the elements of purpose?
Character strengths
Skills that you're motivated to learn and master
Values that you're willing to stand for and sacrifice for
Needs of the world that you want to contribute to
“Purpose is not like finding your one true love.”
Romans 12—offering our lives as “living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God”
Practical or Passion: they’re not mutually exclusive
“Purpose is not like you have to sacrifice a paycheck, in order to do the thing that you love and the thing that is aligned with your purpose.”
Living life to the fullest
Pam’s purpose: “To enable people to thrive and become who God created them to be.”
Belle’s purpose: “To be a blessing … translating research and spiritual language into plain language. … translating across the lines.”
Practical resources and tools for finding your purpose
Purpose defined: “Using your strengths and skills to make a positive impact in the world that's aligned with your core values.”
“There's a lot that we don't know about ourselves because we've never been given the space to reflect and given the scaffolding to ask those kinds of questions of ourselves.”
Recommended practice: Journal for 3 to 5 minutes
“How do you want to be remembered?”
Look for key words and think of them as strengths you want to be remembered for.
“What's one thing you can do in one minute that's going to move you one step closer to your purpose?”
Example: Cultivating courage
Creating a “moment that matters”
“We want to connect our envisioned future, whatever that, that aspiration is for growth and that strength or that skill with where it came from, which is reflecting on our past and what informed it with the action in the present, and to have people come alongside us as to journey with us, um, as we develop those skills and strengths.”
Purpose Practice: “In an ideal world, what does success look like for you.”
Pick out a few words that stand out, share them with trusted people.
Envision the future based on these strengths and successes.
Consider the past.
What are certain experiences that you've had that are formative?
What are certain relationships that were meaningful in your life that gave you that sense of the kind of success that you aspire to?
What impact did this have on you?
Did you learn a harsh truth about yourself or the world?
Did it cause you to believe or to accept or trust something or someone?
Did it cause you to commit to an action that altered the course of your life?
Craft a story based on these reflections: (1) Set the stage, (2) Something happens, (3) Impact on you, (4) Success revealed.
Purpose should be more like a verb than a noun—it’s a deeply relational endeavor.
“We’re purposing people.”
Living toward an envisioned future, informed by our past.
“You want to be able to tell your story. And it’s so helpful to have done the work of identifying what truly matters to you and putting it together in a story.”
Weaving our stories into other stories
Reclaiming our own life events and experiences and making meaning of those
At the end of ourselves
Relying on faith in God, prayer, and seeking God in seeking a life of purpose
The Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”
Is purpose just for the privileged? No
Sometimes purpose is associated with choice, but the research shows that those who have encountered adversity and trials and trauma are more deeply connected to their purpose.
What is thriving to Belle Liang?
“Living in your joy.”
It's making the impact that you care about making in a way that's really aligned with your deepest core beliefs and values.
“Purpose is not just about an individual mindset. It's about shifting culture.”
Pam’s key takeaways
We are relational beings with deep dependencies on our families of origin, and we need to differentiate and individuate in order to thrive and find out who we are and enter into even more healthy relationships.
To find our purpose, we can let our lives speak. And there is transformative power in personal storytelling when we do so mindfully and intentionally.
Faith can be fertile ground for finding purpose, especially when practiced in communities of thriving and healthy spirituality.
Spiritual health includes our own awareness of our evolving sense of purpose. and an application of that to our daily lives, w ork, vocation, and all the relationships we find there.
Purpose is something you grow toward, and from it emerges all sorts of pro social benefits and positive personal outcomes for physical and mental health.
Lastly, purpose is for everyone, not just a privileged few.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Cultivating a Healthy Mind: The Neuroscience of Awareness, Connection, Insight, & Purpose with Dr. Richie Davidson Jan 22, 2024

“Humans are born to be kind. They're born to love. It is part of our nature. … we're actually nurturing a capacity that is part of the nature of who we are as human beings to begin with.” — Dr. Richie Davidson

Dr. Richie Davidson’s research has revolutionized the way we understand the brain and how plastic and malleable or changeable the brain is. Just like we train our physical bodies and go to the gym, he and his team at the Center for Healthy Minds have shown that we need to train our brains and work them out as well.

As a result, he is changing the way we understand well being—to think of it as a skill—something we do and practice as active agents of our own well being.

His research can give us a whole new appreciation of Christian contemplative practices or disciplines. Although we can't control all that happens around us or to us, we do have some control on how we respond, merging helpful insight with concrete practices that make a difference for our minds, so that we can become more regulated, peaceful, receptive, open, and even more trusting. Not just so that our personal well being increases, but so that we become more engaged in thriving humans that contribute to a flourishing world.

In this bountiful conversation with Richie Davidson, we discuss:

Two kinds of learning—declarative and procedural—that need to be integrated in order to cultivate mental and spiritual health
The four pillars of a healthy mind: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose
How to cultivate a mindset for healthy relational connection
How to understand the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and how this impacts our well-being and spiritual health
The over-emphasis (even approaching hype) on mindfulness that seems to be present in our culture
What a healthy approach to meditation might be in our spiritual lives
The science and spirituality of love and compassion

About Richie Davidson

Dr. Richie Davidson is a pioneer in contemplative neuroscience, and does cutting edge research on the neuro-correlates of emotion and meditation. He's also the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where he's the William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry.

Show Notes

Check out the Healthy Minds App (free!)
Learn more about the Center for Healthy Minds
Science intersecting with spiritual experience
“I've always considered spiritual experience to be part of the human repertoire. I think that humans are born to touch into those qualities that we come to label spiritual because it is within our capacity to have experiences that in many ways we can say go beyond ourselves, connect us to something larger.”
Richie’s experience with the Dalai Lama
The neuroscience of kindness and compassion
The development of the Center for Healthy Minds: “to cultivate wellbeing and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind.”
Learning to approach thriving and well being as a skill
Two kinds of learning: declarative and procedural
Brain plasticity and well being
Well being requires practice!
Declarative learning, e.g., learning the value of kindness or honesty. This won’t make you kinder or more honest, though.
Procedural learning— a skills-based roadmap, complementary to declarative learning.
Mental hygiene
The four pillars of wellbeing: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose
Insight: changing the narrative and changing the relationship to the narrative
Self-esteem
Finding your true north in life
Nurturing our capacity for compassion and kindness
“Humans are born to be kind. They're born to love. It is part of our nature. … we're actually nurturing a capacity that is part of the nature of who we are as human beings to begin with.”
The power of appreciation
Cultivating a sentiment that others would be relieved of their suffering
Lovingkindness meditation that moves from a person who’s easy to love to others, including those who might be very hard to love
“An elixer for the soul” … to “regain our humanity”
MEDITATIVE PRACTICE for connection: Richie Davidson leads listeners through a meditative exercise to send love and wish for that person’s healing and relief of suffering.
Comparing to Christian intercessory prayer
Exploring the pillars of awareness and insight
The default network or default mode
Research on depression and cognitive behavioral therapy
“What does that mean: ‘I am sad.’”
“The narrative we carry around acts as a filter.”
Developing a healthy relationship with the narrative we have about ourselves
“A lot of people I think don't even recognize that they have a narrative. … And that the narrative is actually powerfully guiding their behavior and experience in the world.”
Mary Helen Immordino Yang on meaning making and the default network.
The default network is almost always about ourselves.
The connectivity in our brains can change.
MEDITATIVE PRACTICE for awareness and insight: Richie Davidson leads through an exercise to imagine a different approach to a challenging personal situation. “Can you imagine a different set of beliefs or expectations?
“Let’s see if we can envision how things might be different.”
Understanding purpose
Cultivating rituals that connect us to purpose
What are the pitfalls that lurk near the practice of mindfulness or meditative practices for cultivating the skill of well being.
Blaming the victim.
“The best form of meditation is the form of meditation that you actually do.”
A gap in the scientific study of love and compassion.
Vivek Murthy: “an epic struggle between the forces of love and the forces of fear.”
What is thriving to you?
“From my perspective, I would say thriving is nurturing all of the innate capacities that we've been given. And here, the four pillars of wellbeing in our framework are critical, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. And I think when we are expressing these qualities to their maximum, we are thriving by definition. And I would say perhaps the most important manifestation of that is our capacity to both receive and to express love.”
Pam’s takeaways
“We have a robust and glorious agency to cultivate our personal well being.”
“Transformation comes from the integration of declarative and procedural learning.”
“We have the power to shift our relational experiences to more loving places that align with our deepest values.”
“Discerning and articulating your purpose will keep you grounded and directed in your journey towards spiritual health.”
“Perfect love casts out fear.” (1 John 4:18)

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Rhythms of Work and Rest: Leadership and Self-Care After Trauma and Burnout with Dr. Alexis Abernethy Jan 15, 2024

“We have so many demands before us, we feel that we cannot stop. There is too much to do, and we're not stopping. … Know that if you follow the rhythm of this world, you'll likely be overworking and stressed out, if not traumatized, so I actually get more done following the rhythm of my body and paying attention to it. Rhythms of deep work and deep rest. This is how I want to lead. For me to survive and then actually thrive in this kind of environment, I need to have a different rhythm.” — Alexis Abernethy, Fuller School of Psychology

Coming from decades of research, clinical work, and practice in the field, Dr. Alexis Abernethy cuts through theory and ideals, addressing the complex realities of life: loss, trauma, systemic racism, the grinding and wearing away from the stresses of everyday life, and the pressure to lead in the face of unsolvable suffering and need.

Alexis keeps spiritual health real and accessible, addressing research-backed principles on sleep, concentration, irritation, relationships, and burnout.

Absolutely essential to spiritual health and thriving in our chaotic and frenetic days, Alexis describes rhythms that we can internalize before we get to those soft symptoms or signs of stress.

This is a rich and robust conversation about self care at the deepest and most impactful levels in our physical, mental, and spiritual lives—tending to the complexity of our humanity and addressing the deep, pervasive practices that engage us and intertwine us with others and with the sacred, so that we can find and stay aligned with our purpose.

In this conversation, we discuss:

Her research and therapeutic work with traumatized pastors after Hurricane Katrina, emphasizing the necessity of self-care for the caregivers.
How to identify the symptoms of burnout and how to respond.
The Christian practice of Sabbath rest, worship, and singing, which Alexis personally experiences as a source of healing and restoration.

Show Notes

“Rhythms of deep work and deep rest. This is how I want to lead.”
Alexis Abernethy’s research and expertise
How leaders can heal and thrive, taking care of themselves and leading their communitities, even amidst traumatic circumstances and the threat of burnout
Caring for pastors and local leaders in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana
“It's just this complete devastation. That picture is seared in my mind, and then you go in other communities, and you don't see that same kind of devastation.”
“Frankly, a deep anger just really was rising in me. righteous indignation at that injustice.”
“This is an interaction of an uncontrollable hurricane and man's decision making.”
Dealing with and holding all the anger that rises up as we develop a care and recovery process for healing after trauma
How to help the helpers? How to care for leaders who care for others?
Surviving to Thriving, Resilience, and Cultivating Relationships
Pastors’ Empowerment Program
“What happens in the body?”
Trauma’s effects: physically, psychologically, emotionally, interpersonally—”how it affects how you engage in the world and how some people over-engage”
Emotion regulation
Theology of Sabbath
The symptoms and root causes of burnout
The Body Keeps the Score
Restorative and restful sleep
Irritability
Attention and awareness: “Whose really in control here?”
“First, know that if you follow the rhythm of this world, you'll likely be overworking and stressed out, if not traumatized, okay? But definitely overworking and stressed out, because that's the rhythm of our world.”
Take a personal inventory for the purposes of making small adjustments that prioritize the balance of work and rest.
How efficiency follows rest
How to reorder the rhythms of life
Alexis’s response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020—feeling traumatized
“I actually needed the world to be much smaller around me. I had to retreat. I had to withdraw because I didn't have what it took to be my more typical empathic self.”
Phil Allen’s film, Open Wounds
Intellectualizing (as opposed to emotional presence) as a response to trauma
The pressure to have it all together and know what to do
Permission as leaders and caregivers—in order to be present, we need to be absent.
Microdoses of rhythm and rest
Theological insights and Sabbath principles
How to implement Sabbath principles
“Deep work. Deep rest.”
“How’s that unboundaried life working for you?”
Exercise: What is your relationship to time?
What is your theology of time?
“God is in charge of time.”
The image of God
Comparing time and tithing: God’s provision and principles of discipline and trust
How to deal with burnout in professional life and leadership
Compare and contrast where you’ve been with where you’re going
Emotional exhaustion
Attending to various domains: the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual, the relational…
“There are mindfulness that we can use words that are totally comfortable with anyone's tradition or background.”
The difficulty of sharing about burnout, and the shame or fear that prevents connection with others about what you’re experiencing
Languishing and depression sometimes requires an override in order to seek professional help and talk about difficult emotions that come from burnout.
Prayer, scripture, and a brief emotional expression to God: “Jesus!” “Lord, have mercy!”
The healing practice of singing together
“Music was my first language.”
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child … a long way from home”
“The power of music transcends religious experiences.”
Psychological research on corporate worship experiences.
“You’re seeking a common note … It's communal not only that we're singing together, but we're singing toward a purpose … glorifying God.”
“Bind us together, Lord, bind us together in love.”
What does thriving mean to you?
Thriving means walking toward discovering and experiencing the calling that God has for my life. It doesn't mean I'm always in it. It's walking toward it. The discovery is really rich. You know, you think of calling as a destination. It's not. It evolves. It evolves.”
“I don’t thrive by myself. There’s no way I can thrive by myself. I do it in community.”

Pam’s Key Takeaways

Catastrophes don't hit us all the same. We all weather life storms in different ways. It's when we find healing and restoration in community that we can integrate personal, relational, and political thriving.
Limitations can be our friends. Irritation, lack of concentration, fatigue are all signposts to the need for self care.
Burnout is complex, often involves a shift in our context, making our environment or job not a good fit for who we are.
To quote Bessel van der Kolk, our bodies keep the score. Burnout and psychological stress are often manifested with psychosomatic symptoms.
We need to be aware of our relationship to time and how our trust and faith come into play when it comes to rest.
I need more microdoses of rest and perhaps macrodoses of sleep.
We thrive when our vocation lines up with our work. but we need to address our culture's workaholism by talking more about strategies for rest that contribute to spiritual health.

About Alexis Abernethy

Alexis Abernathy is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology in the Fuller School of Psychology, where for over 25 years she has served as Chaplain to the Faculty, Chief of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and her current role as Chief Academic Officer at Fuller Theological Seminary. She graduated from Howard University with a BS in psychology. She received her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her primary research interest is the intersection between spirituality and health and her Spirituality and Health Lab includes three research teams: Experience of Spirituality and Health-Related Outcomes; Spirituality, Cancer, and Health Disparities; and Spirituality, Culture, and Eating Disturbance. She is author of many journal articles in psychology of religion, as well as Worship That Changes Lives: Multidisciplinary and Congregational Perspectives on Spiritual Transformation (2008). For more information, visit her faculty profile.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Loved, Held, Guided, and Never Alone: The Science of Spirituality with Dr. Lisa Miller Jan 05, 2024

"Loved, held, guided, and never alone. We are wired to be able to perceive that. And when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, of all the dimensions of lived spiritual life, that which most strengthens the awakened brain is love of neighbor—to one another. We are able to draw closer to God.” — Lisa Miller (Columbia University, author of The Awakened Brain)

What does science have to say about spirituality?

Dr. Lisa Miller, clinical psychologist and researcher, has made the case through years of research collaborations that spirituality is a birthright to the human species. In her best selling book, The Awakened Brain, she notes the glorious complexity of the human spiritual brain, revealing an innate capacity for transcendence. But she's not content to stop at these psychological capacities. She wants to help people with practical, tangible, evidence backed interventions that lead to their thriving and spiritual health. Lisa not only gives words, but explains scientifically why spirituality is so transformative. She challenges us to reimagine religion, faith, and spirituality as an experience of love from beyond us.

Her research suggests that spirituality has less to do with the dos and don'ts of religion, and rather offers a richer experience of how to encounter the love of God. Even if you don't believe in God, spirituality provides access to powerful transcendent emotions such as awe and joy that help our resilience and are necessary for thriving. These emotions broaden and build our capacities and help us develop narratives around love and goodness.

In this conversation with Lisa Miller, we discuss:

The neuroscience of spirituality
Guided meditative practices to fortify spiritual health and a sense of love, purpose, and possibility
How paying attention to our inner mental and spiritual life builds awareness and resilience
Research findings from the science of spirituality that we're wired for transcendence
How transcendent love fortifies our brain in ways that buffer against depression and anxiety
How human connection and spiritual guides are vital for a healthy life and even a thriving democracy
And we explore all of these experientially, working through the ideas with practical exercises to increase our awareness

About Lisa Miller

Dr. Lisa Miller is bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, and researcher and professor in clinical psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University. Learn more on her website.

About Dr. Pam King

Show Notes

"Loved, held, guided, and never alone. We are wired to be able to perceive that. And when we do, everything in our world is reordered. And in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens the awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God.”
What does science have to say about spirituality?
About Lisa Miller and The Awakened Brain
An experience of love from beyond us
With & For’s approach to practical resources and exercises
The power of asking a council of advocates in your mind: “Do you love me?”
Meditative practice: The Hosting Table
“We can ask what's on our heart. The capacity to be in a deep transcendent relationship is our birthright.”
“God is working in us and through us.”
Dr. Gary Weaver on trauma and spiritual or moral injury
Urgency and hope, curiosity and openness
Neuro-docking station: “There’s one spiritual brain and we all have it.”
The research that led to The Awakened Brain
“Every single one of us is born with natural spirituality. There's an innate Human capacity and every single, just as we have two eyes, two ears and a nose, we are born with a neuro-docking station, the capacity through which to experience a transcendent, living relationship.”
Longitudinal research on twins
“This capacity to perceive and feel and know a transcendent relationship is one-third innate. We are all born with the wiring hardwired, but two-thirds environmentally formed.”
Ken Kendler: What is the awakened brain?
Neurological correlates while people told sacred stories of transcendent relationship. “The same neural correlates ran in every single person.”
“Loved, held, guided, and never alone.”
Supporting religious people across faith traditions
Lisa Miller’s personal struggle with infertility and the desire to have a child
Meditative practice: The Trail Angel Exercise
“Less cogitative, and more exciting”
“Are we actually discoverers of our journey where we don't get what we want, we get something so much better?”
“Where in your road of life is God? Where is your higher power? What is the deep nature of life?”
The difficult balance between achievement and awakening—action and contemplation
Head, heart, and hand
“We are knowers in many forms.”
“We can use all forms of knowing together, and when we do, we can literally track on an MRI. That we have built highways, if you will, myelinated tracks between regions of the brain, multiple organic forms of knowing, different inborn epistemologies, and we have a far more rich engagement with life because we are engaging through all of our channels of knowing.”
Knowledge, spirituality, and our connection to the world
Neuroplasticity and adaptation to the lived environment
Resilience, depression, and hope
As of September 2022—48 percent of Gen Z “reported moderate levels of a disease of despair. The rate of death by suicide rivals the rate of death by auto accident. All three of my Gen Z kids have talked someone back from suicide.”
“There is radical desanctification of life in the youth culture that is transmitted through the phone. So the phone is not the problem. It's not the phone. It, because the phone could have been a source for great spiritual connection. And in some cases is. But very often the phone is a place where a culture is transmitted that is effectively a public square minus a spiritual core. It is radically transactional, what can you do for me? It is radically material, what do you look like, what do you have, what are you going to vacation? It is It's basically a big golden calf delivered over the phone.”
Spirituality and the spiritual muscle of the awakened brain is neuroprotective against depression
“Beyond-the-self love”
“It is relational spirituality beyond the self love and whether I am feeling that deep loved, I'm loved, felt guided by God or I show up as to be loving, holding and guiding of my family or my neighbor in need. I'm using the same neuro docking station and in fact, of all the dimensions of live spiritual life, that which most strengthens. The awakened brain is love of neighbor to one another. We are able to draw closer to God, which strengthened the awakened brain.”
Having a strong spirituality: 250 percent more likely to have gotten there through profound struggle and depression within the past 10 years.
Long-term clinical study vs fMRI studies and giving of alpha-energy
“Is love real? Is God real?”
“We have the equipment, but we have to use it. We have to develop it.”
The hard work of meaning-making
How to help children move towards transcendent love
Authentic inner spiritual awareness
Religion vs spirituality
Religion and faith tradition is 100% environmentally transmitted
Spirituality is 1/3 innate, 2/3 environmentally transmitted
Lisa’s early childhood experience of her Jewish faith and the love her mother
Spirituality and democracy
How spiritual pluralism and spiritual diversity can impact public life
“We hold these truths to be sacred…”
Finding common ground through shared spiritual dignity
“Democracy is a verb.”
“Our soul's code, our natural telos in relationship to fellow human beings and fellow living beings … in relationship to others, we go together. And we go together whether or not we're Republicans or Democrats. And we go together whether or not we agree or disagree. We are souls on earth going together on a journey.”
Invoking generosity on all sides
What is thriving to Lisa Miller?
“Living in alignment with God’s will.”
Pam King’s takeaways from her conversation with Lisa Miller:
Our brains are amazing.
Our spiritual capacity is like a muscle we can exercise with daily practices of attention, meditation, imagination and prayer.
And we hold the spiritual capacity for transcendence. In common with each other, it's knit into our relational essence as human beings.
We can find a renewed sense of agency and power and resilience when we open up to what's inside: our feelings, our senses, our perceptions, and our core experience of God.
Healthy spirituality allows us to know and experience that we are loved, held, guided, and never alone.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

A New Podcast on Spiritual Health, Wholeness, and a Life of Thriving Dec 15, 2023

With & For is a new podcast exploring psychology, spirituality, and culture, with the aim of helping you grow wholly alive, with and for others, and a higher purpose. In this introductory episode, podcast host Dr. Pam King shares elements of her personal story and background, along with the goals of the podcast, and let's this season's guests share their personal take on what it means to thrive.

With & For is hosted by Dr. Pam King—the Executive Director the Thrive Center and Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Show Notes

Dr. Pam King introduces the show. Drawing on twenty years as a psychologist, pastor, and parent, her mission is to help people thrive.
Our approach to spiritual health is informed by years of psychological research that provides empirical insight into how aspects of spirituality can be helpful for thriving.
What is thriving?
"Thriving is growing wholly alive with and for others and a higher purpose."
"By pursuing spiritual health, we become equipped with the skills that we need for resilience in hard times, and also for pursuing purpose and meaning and connection throughout it all, given that we all thrive differently."
Season 1 guests share their responses to one of Pam's favorite questions, "What is thriving to you?"
Alexis Abernethy: Thriving means walking toward discovering and experiencing the calling that God has for my life. It doesn't mean I'm always in it. It's walking toward it. The discovery is really rich. You know, you think of calling as a destination. It's not. It evolves.
Miroslav Volf: Love of God, love of neighbor. Seek the kingdom, the good of the world, and in that good of the whole, your own good, and be attuned to what is around you in joy and also in sorrow.
Belle Liang: Thriving is living in your joy. It's making the impact that you care about making in a way that's really aligned with your deepest core beliefs and values.
Dwight Radcliff: Thriving is not a one size fits all answer or solution from my embodied incarnated experience as an African American man in America. I think it really has to do with this ability to, to dream and to live.
Sue Johnson: Thriving for me means full existential living, fully engaged in your experience. You basically trust yourself. to go through life in an active way and you can create a coherent reality for yourself that includes others, that includes a safe relationship with others.
Sarah Schnitker: Thriving, to me, it's loving God and loving others and living in a society where we have love and justice.
Jim Furrow: The word that comes to my mind is a fulsome sense of being and that that being is not only who I am, but who I am with and a part of and that life is full of engagement and vitality.
Lisa Miller: Living in alignment with God's will.
Dan Siegel: The mind wants certainty so it can guarantee survival. But in a way, the irony is, thriving happens when you let go of this flimsy fantasy of certainty and you allow yourself to wander as a verb through the journey of life.
Alexia Salvatierra: The word bienestar means well being, but it's not just individual. Bienestar is the translation for shalom. So it always has a communal dimension because our cultures are much more communal. So there's really this sense that if your family's not well, you're not well. If your community is not well, you're not well.
Bill Damon: Thriving to me is becoming the person that you've always dreamed that you want to become. As long as you're alive, you're continuing to make progress. And there's always that possibility of getting further along the road.
Cynthia Eriksson: For me, thriving is to be able to be fully myself, to really know that I am loved by God.
Richie Davidson: I would say thriving is nurturing all of the innate capacities that we've been given. And I would say perhaps the most important manifestation of that is our capacity to both receive and to express love.
Living with and for others
Suffering, pain, and loss
Growing to become wholly alive
Pam King's spiritual background as a Christian and a Presbyterian minister
"God wants us to be fully alive, to be fully the people he created us to be."
Thriving across all of life's domains: physical, psychological, social, spiritual, moral, vocational, educational, relational, and more
Practical insight, tools, and guidance for real-life transformation
"It's imperative that we pursue relationships where we are known and truly loved."
"This is an invitation to join me and the Thrive Center in a new podcast community that is going to explore the multifaceted nature of spiritual health and guide you along a path to your own thriving life."

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Our Spiritual Brains: The Science of Our Innate Spirituality - Lisa Miller Nov 20, 2023

With & For is launching in January 2024! Subscribe now in your favorite podcast app.

"Every single one of us is born with natural spirituality."

This preview clip features With & For guest Dr. Lisa Miller—bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, and researcher and professor in clinical psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University.

Lisa shares about her findings in the science of spirituality; our innate capacities to perceive, to feel, and to know a transcendent relationship; and the amazing role of the human brain in seeking out this transcendence beyond ourselves.

Show Notes

Don't forget to subscribe to With & For, which is launching in January 2024.
Happy Thanksgiving from Dr. Pam King and The Thrive Center!
How gratitude and positive emotion enlarge our capacity for joyful transcendence and activate our innate spirituality
Pam King introduces Dr. Lisa Miller—bestselling author of The Spiritual Child and The Awakened Brain, and researcher and professor in clinical psychology at the Teachers College of Columbia University.
"Every single one of us is born with natural spirituality."
"This capacity to perceive and feel and know a transcendent relationship is one third innate. We are all born with the wiring, but two thirds environmentally formed gives way to a tremendous impact of our environment."
"Although this is our birthright, it must be cultivated, and it is an opportunity of our lifetimes to do that."
"We invited 18 through 25 year olds to come in and tell us about a time where you felt a deep personal connection to God. ... The same neural correlates ran in every single person."
Credits

About Lisa Miller

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

What Makes a Healthy Mind? Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose - Richie Davidson Nov 06, 2023

With & For is launching in January 2024! Subscribe now in your favorite podcast app. In this preview clip, With & For guest Dr. Richie Davidson—a pioneer in contemplative neuroscience—shares how his research on the neuroscience of emotion and meditation has led him to identify four pillars of well-being and human flourishing.

Show Notes

Don't forget to subscribe to With & For, which is launching in January 2024.
Pam King introduces Dr. Richie Davidson, the William James Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Pillar 1: Awareness
Pillar 2: Connection
Pillar 3: Insight
Pillar 4: Purpose

About Richie Davidson

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

About the Thrive Center

Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
Follow us on X @thrivecenter
Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

Welcome to With & For: Spiritual Health, Wholeness, and a Life of Thriving Oct 16, 2023

Listen now and subscribe to With & For—a new podcast from The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Starting January 8, 2024 the show will explore insights from psychology to understand what it means to become spiritually healthy and thrive.

Every Monday, Dr. Pam King will host expert guests whose work sheds light on practical steps toward growing fully alive, connected, purposeful, and whole.

And don't miss "Playing with Light", for a weekly series of short reflections from Dr. Pam King, all in the With & For podcast feed.

Show Notes

Coming January 8, 2024 from the Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary, this is With & For, a podcast for growth seekers and people focused leaders that plumbs the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance toward spiritual health, wholeness, and a life of thriving.
About Dr. Pam King: "It's my life's purpose to help people thrive."
I've spent the last two decades at the intersections of psychology and spirituality, wrestling with the most practical questions of how people grow, relate, and become their whole selves. We're all walking a path towards spiritual health, discovering that it's something we pursue in deep relationality with each other, and always for a greater purpose than ourselves.
Obstacles to spiritual health
Life's hustle and bustle, he relentless bombardment of stimuli, the frantic pace of life
Epidemic of loneliness, relational strains, and a misleading culture of self reliance
Crisis of purpose and vocation, and the meaning of work
"The tears in our social and moral fabric are eroding a sense of who we are, as relational creatures that thrive with and for others."
"With & For is my invitation to pursue thriving through relational connection: who we're with. And through purpose: what we're for."
Weaving scientific insight with spiritual wisdom
Concrete practices that keep us on the path towards spiritual health and thriving
Season 1 topics and themes
The hallmarks of a healthy mind
how to find purpose
what to do when you encounter trauma and suffering
Compassion
Self care
Rest
Patience
Relational neuroscience
Reorientation of theology around human flourishing and a life worth living
The psychological dynamics of racial and economic justice
Our innate capacities for transcendence
"Each Friday, I'll share a short practical reflection that I'm pondering, in a series on the pod I like to call Playing with Light."
Both science and spirituality are showing us that we are interconnected, relational, purposeful beings, and we truly thrive with and for others.
Subscribe in your favorite podcast app today so that you can join us when we launch on January 8th!

About Dr. Pam King

About With & For

Host: Pam King
Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa

Special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy.

About the Thrive Center