069: You Are Not Your Pain with Monica DiCristina

What are the stories your pain is telling about you?

So often, we internalize ourselves as the problem when pain comes into our lives. However, in this episode, Monica DiCristina, the author of Your Pain Has a Name, helps us see that simply naming our pain can reveal our true selves hidden beneath it.

She invites us into an investigative process of getting curious about what our pain is saying and the meaning we make of it. You will learn about helpful starting points when your pain feels complex, the importance of being your own friend, exploring your family of origin, and how to offer tenderness towards the brilliant ways you've survived.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Monica DiCristina has been a practicing therapist for over fifteen years. She is also a sought-after speaker, podcaster, and writer on topics of emotional healing and mental health. Combining her extensive therapeutic knowledge with creativity, empathy, storytelling, and her deeply rooted faith, she is passionate about walking alongside those who are unraveling their difficult experiences and providing a path for them to do the brave and sacred work of transformation and healing.

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Links & Resources 🔗

•  Your Pain Has a Name by Monica DiCristina |Amazon | Bookshop

Other Episodes You May Like

• Episode 001: Navigating Toxic Systems and Maintaining Agency with Dr. Alison Cook

• Episode 039: Compassionate Awareness and Soft Words for Hard Days with Aundi Kolber

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Episode Transcript 📄

Monica DiCristina
Healing is understanding your worth and your loveability and what to do when you feel those feelings. That's what I believe healing is. And we have this idea that really excludes a lot of people that healing is just always feeling better. Healing is always feeling good. And that's not only not realistic, it's not really fair or attainable. So you may feel something for the rest of your life, but that is not a failure. And that does not mean you haven't healed. That is just part of it. Things that we go through change They don't determine our worth or our lovability, but they do impact us. And it's really freeing to be able to accept and name and allow that to be true.

Brian Lee
Hey, friends, welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for practical resources, sources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. As an ordained pastor and fellow survivor, I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to We don't want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why broken to beloved exists.

And, we can't do it alone. We need your help. Support our work by becoming a donor to help make our podcast and programs possible. Just head to brokentobeloved.org/support or click the link to donate in the show notes.

Today, we're talking about finding ways to name our pain. Monica DiCristina has been a practicing therapist for over 15 years. She's also a sought-after speaker, podcaster, and writer on topics emotional healing and mental health. Combining her extensive therapeutic knowledge with creativity, empathy, storytelling, and her deeply rooted faith, she is passionate about walking alongside those who are unraveling their difficult experiences and providing a path for them to do the brave and sacred work of transformation and healing.

And now, here's my conversation with our new friend, Monica. Monica, welcome to the podcast.

Monica DiCristina
Thank you so much, Brian. I'm really excited to be here.

Brian Lee
Same. I'm excited for this conversation. We were talking briefly before I hit record about how I saw your book title from multiple different sources through the algorithm. Just based on the work we're doing, to be able to name our pain is such a huge part of the healing and recovery process. I knew I wanted to talk to you, and I'm really excited for this.

Monica DiCristina
Great. I love that.

Brian Lee
Right up front, you say that pain is an invitation to find names for your pain, which is the first step to returning home to who you were made to be. I appreciate that you use the word invitation. Yeah. Because we so often think of pain as a bad thing. Yes. But it can be a signal, it can be a sign. I love that pain is an invitation. Just tell us more about your intent in this.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah. I think you're right on that we're often taught to run from pain. We're taught that it's a failure to feel pain. We're implicitly or explicitly taught that we've done something wrong if we're in pain or we're not doing enough things right. And so in all that confusing messaging about pain, we often skip over what indeed is hurting. And when we skip over it, we don't get a chance to name it, to understand it, and then to We're trying to figure out what we need. So I really do believe pain is often an unwanted invitation. I'm not going to pretend like this is someone knocking at our door that we're excited to see. But when we learn to be less afraid of pain and more open to it and more compassionate to ourselves. I've seen in my own life and in so many people's lives that I work with, we often get to a new and steadier and more healed place when we listen to pain instead of numbing or running away.

Brian Lee
I love that. And you tell a story right up front about becoming a Christian, desperate for help, looking for the help. And you tell this story of being with this pastor in the church office and being shushed. And I personally felt the heat of that shame when you talked about being shushed. So when you talk about listening, it's like when we have no idea, because so much of this pain is magnified when we are bypassed, that pain is bypassed, right? So when we have no idea what to do with someone's story or someone's pain, What can be a helpful response?

Monica DiCristina
I love this question. When we don't understand what's going on with someone, I think one of the best gifts we can give them is to say, I can tell you're hurting. I'm not sure I know what's going on, but I'm going to stick with you until you find out or find someone who does. So we refuse to abandon them to the pain. We refuse to shame them for the pain, but we also refuse to oversimplify their story to our limited knowledge. And I think we underestimate how helpful we can be by admitting that we don't know how to be helpful, but we'll stick with you until you find help.

Brian Lee
So helpful and so much more compassionate than the bypassing that we get. I think you also tell the story about or give an example of the pastor who was not afraid to admit that he didn't know, but let's find you help.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, that was my friend from college, my college roommate, but she brought us to a pastor, and she was such a great example to me. I've told her in years since that she had no idea what was going on with me, neither did I. But she refused to leave me alone in it, and she refused to oversimplify it to her own knowledge. She said, Let's try to figure this out together.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And what a beautiful patient, again, to not be left alone in your pain, but to feel like you have a compassionate witness, and especially when we're carrying or dealing with trauma with the lack of that empathetic witness, right?

Monica DiCristina
Yes, absolutely. And pain can be so isolating. I think that becomes almost a secondary pain that so many people are experiencing is that they're left alone in it because they're embarrassed about it or because no one knows what to do with them.

Brian Lee
I think, especially in church environments, there's so much emphasis on certainty. Yes. And so much emphasis on having the right answer or God just being the answer to everything. Yes. And we're not saying that he's not, but also it's okay to not know how to handle someone's story or their pain and just say, I wish I knew what I could tell you. All I can do is be here with you.

Monica DiCristina
That's right. And I just think we're often so well meaning. We really want to be helpful, and we really want to relieve people suffering. But when we don't really know what's going on, the best way to relieve their suffering is not to add to it with our own limited understanding.

Brian Lee
I appreciate even that you see that, the good intent in people like that pastor in the church basement with the secretary outside the open door who shushes you, maybe not to shame you, but because, Oh, we don't want to talk about this in front of this other person. But just knowing how it comes across and feels for you in that moment, and being able to have that empathy for other people who come to us with their stories or to know maybe what to expect if we have a story we want to share with someone else.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, absolutely. I think most people mean well, but we are I think there's too much pressure on each of us to be so helpful. I think that that is an important thing to relieve ourselves up so that we can help people find the right help. Yeah.

Brian Lee
This is related, but we see we know how to see. That's right. You write that we also see what we want to see and how those limitations keep us from finding what we need, both in professional settings and in personal relationships. When I read that part of the book, I'm thinking of all these therapists and all these modalities and all these practices that are out there that you hear about. It's like, Oh, you should try this. This is working for everyone. This is so hot right now. Whether it's EMDR or IFS or story work or talk therapy or somatic practices. It's like there's all these different things that we end up... If all I have is a hammer, everything is a nail.

Monica DiCristina
That's right. Exactly. I think that you point out something that's really important to name, too, is it's not just in church settings, but it's in therapeutic settings. Or even just your best friend went to EMDR and now thinks you need EMDR. We really think it's as simple as the newest thing. I wish it was. I wish it was, but it's always a lot more complex than that.

Brian Lee
And you also write, perfect little segue, is that complexity is not a liability. That's right. It's an important door to finding what you need. And if it doesn't feel right, keep looking. And again, I just love how invitational and grace-filled that is.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah. I think that, just like you said about certainty. We want to simplify things. We want it to be easy. We want it to be one, two, three steps to healing. And listen, that's attractive to me, too. I wish that that was true. But so often it's not because You and I sitting here, we both have our own stories, and we both have our own complex stories. And so if we were to simplify one thing as a fix for both of us, it might help a little bit, but it might not help that much, depending on our own stories, right?

Brian Lee
Yeah. And again, so that's why I appreciate the invitation that just because your story is complex, it doesn't mean it has to be impossible. That's right. It's just one step at a time, one name at a time, one thing at a time. Invite yourself into that process to find out what's at the root of it.

Monica DiCristina
That's right. I think that we're so often not comfortable enough or not taught to be comfortable enough with not knowing yet, right? And so the complexity feels scary. If we don't know what's going on with us, if we don't know what we need. I think the more that we can normalize, sometimes you don't know yet. Sometimes things are hard or things happened in your church or in your life, and you don't know yet what it was, but something doesn't feel right. The permission to be in that, I don't know, but something feels off is really important.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Let's talk about naming things. Okay. Where in the world do we start when we have no idea or we don't have language or we haven't had that light bulb moment yet?

Monica DiCristina
Yeah, that's a great question. I think there's a lot of places to start. One is therapy, others are books, others are talking to friends. But I think that first understanding that if you're hurting and you don't have a name for it, starting to listen to what are the stories it's telling about you. Because so often when we don't have a name for what hurt or what happened, what we do have are a bunch of stories and narratives about ourselves from those experiences. Is. And sometimes that is if we don't... We may not yet know the diagnosis or know the name for what happened to us in this place, but we know what we're walking around hearing and echoing in our minds and hearts. And sometimes we start by naming that. Well, gosh, I feel... I I feel like I've lost a sense of my own lovability or worthiness since I've been a part of this group. That's interesting. I need to pay attention to that. And then sometimes that's how we walk it back to naming. But I think naming in general is going to be, I talk about this in the book, it's like Sherlocking your life.

It's going to be an investigative journey that is not necessarily going to fix things, but is going to give you a huge amount of psychological relief by understanding yourself.

Brian Lee
I love that. I I think you write somewhere at the end of the book, this idea of counterfeits. The way that we discover this path to our true self or our real self, learning how to spot a fake is by staring at a real one every single day. So how do we learn to see that version of ourselves when all we know is the pain?

Monica DiCristina
Yeah. And this is going to be a long answer because I'm a therapist. Go for it. I can't give a short answer. But we get to our true selves by first naming the pain, because what I find is that very often we're buried underneath it, right? Who we really are has to be excavated. It's not that it ever changed. It's not that it ever wasn't lovely or lovable, but it was buried underneath. So I think how we get to that true self is by naming the counterfeits. But the counterfeits are often what happened to you and no one took credit for. What is happening to you currently, but you don't understand. The stories you've carried around in yourself about yourself. And Those create such a foggy confusion that is hard to know, who indeed am I? And so it's the person underneath. It's the person before. It's the person in spite of the pain. That is how you get down to who you really are. And I think what's interesting is that that sounds sometimes so out there, but I think what is interesting is that I find over and over again that people are more able to attach and understand that than they expect.

It's like hearing an old, familiar song when you begin to return to who you really are. You really start to recognize it more easily.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Well, and I think you also write about this whole idea of visualizing walking down the hill toward yourself, right? You say your pain is the way home and arriving to be with yourself. Yes. And what I hear so often from our community is that when they've experienced abuse, when they carry trauma, like you said at the beginning, it can be so isolating. It can. Sometimes the shame or the weight of the pain isolates us even further. Then if you do try to tell the story and you get shushed or you get bypassed, it shuts you down. It's like, Well, I'm never doing that again. Exactly.

Monica DiCristina
Yes.

Brian Lee
I often hear because in healing spaces, in therapy places, you hear all the time, it's like, Well, connection is the way. Connection is the way. Relationships is like, But I've tried and I can't do it. I love that you offer this way back home, if nowhere else, that you start with yourself.

Monica DiCristina
Thank you for saying that, Brian. I think that that is such an important thing that we often miss. Yes, connection is important. Yes, it is how we're wired. But what you're naming, no pun intended right now, is that so many people, they don't have that. That is their pain. That isolation or being kicked out of the group or leaving the group is their pain.

One of the things we really underestimate is that we can be a good friend to ourselves, not in a cheesy way, but in a way where you show up and you refuse to leave yourself, where you walk down the hill to yourself and you say, What's going on? What do I need? Where am I hurting? And I'm going to stick with myself until I figure it out with some help. And I think that that is so important that it can feel cheesy to listen to yourself and be a friend to yourself. But truly, I think it's one of our greatest resources, and it builds self-trust, and it builds a sense of stability inside of yourself when you learn to do that.

Brian Lee
When we find a way to do that, when we imagine walking down the hill to our self to be a witness to our own pain and say something hurts, how do we start to figure out where do we get the dictionary on naming pain? I remember, I think one of the first books my counselor talked about spiritual abuse, the light bulbs all go off. It's like, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what it is. And then you start looking for all the books talking getting all other kinds of vocabulary. What's a good place for people to start when they don't know what to name it?

Monica DiCristina
I think that it's a fantastic question, and I think it depends on the pain. It depends on the type of pain. Like, your example is a perfect example because one of the things that helps all of us is our books, our podcasts like this. And it's really essential to be able to not limit your knowledge, but to be curious and to go out and look. One of the most difficult things about writing this book for me was that I I didn't name every pain. Sure. Listen, I tried. Got a little too long. But one of the most important things that we can do is really become investigative. So whether it's with a therapist, whether it's with books, what I write in the beginning of my book is that every good knowledge that I've come into contact with is actually a type of naming, whether it's teaching you about trauma, whether it's teaching you about spiritual abuse.

And so if you're someone that's hurting, I would start with reading if Therapy can be a privilege that not everyone can get to, but if you can, to go to therapy. If not, to those one or two close friends that you know are knowledgeable, not that you're looking for them to fix it, but you can say, this is what I've been struggling with, and where would you direct me to learn more about this?

And it's really as simple as that, because in contrast to that, there's isolation, there's shame, there's not understanding, there's continued and prolonged and magnified suffering. So although it sounds like really simple things to do, it's really those first steps. And like you described, you read one book and then many books. That's what I see when people begin to understand things. It's like this beautiful set of dominoes. Oh, my gosh, this is what is happening with me. And now I understand this is how I respond in relationships. And now I understand this. And it really is a process that goes on pretty much continually as we continue to learn about ourselves.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's That's really helpful. And I think another really good one is we all came from somewhere. And we talk about family of origin, right? So I love how you talk about redrawing your inner map. And you are not your family. And so I talk a lot about GPS in my coaching, this idea that it can show you where you are, where you want to go, where you've been. And the problem is it can't help you at all unless you start moving. That's right. And if you have a starting point. And in a coaching call recently, we had this conversation that someone was so lost, they had no idea where they were. They had no orientation. I was like, Can you get in a plane and get a 30,000-foot view? Are you even on the right map? When you look down at the landscape, do you belong in the desert or in the mountains or over the prairies? Then slowly, just by identifying something, how close can you get to have some starting point? Tell us how you think about the inner map and how it helps us to figure out where we are and how to name things.

Monica DiCristina
I think the inner map in relation to our first families is that we're given a way to interact with ourselves and the world. And until we explore that, we're doing it subconsciously or without even realizing it. And so being able to first identify what's the map I was given. Our first family is really our first social group, and we all had to adapt in some way or some form, some more than others, some less. And so once we begin to understand that, we begin to see how have I adapted in a way that impacts my relationships now, that impacts how I talk to people now. And once we're able to identify that old map, then we can redraw it. And I know this is not a one, two, three step. This involves coaching and therapy and a long process, but we can begin to redraw how it is that we believe about ourselves, how it is we will believe about relationships, and create a completely different direction. But the theme, again, is that we cannot change directions. We cannot figure out our new map until we've really identified the one that we're carrying around in our backpack because we're all carrying one.

We're all carrying an understanding of who am I and who can I trust? Who can I not trust? Am I worthy? Am I lovable? We're all carrying around answers about that that may or may not be examined yet. And so learning to examine those first is how we begin to redraw the map.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And I love that as you talk about family of origin, there's this question that it's asked that, did you get what you needed?

Monica DiCristina
Yes.

Brian Lee
Or what you needed that your caregivers couldn't give you. But the real kicker for me was the follow-up that you said, what was the story you told yourself about that meant need. Yes. Tell us more about that. Can you provide examples of stories to help our listeners understand this for themselves?

Monica DiCristina
So many of us don't get what we need when growing up. And the thing is, is that there's not an all-knowing narrator that interrupts your life and says, Hey, you didn't get what you needed because mom had to work or because dad had a drinking problem. You are left as a child to conclude a reason why you didn't get what you needed. Children, by nature, are egocentric. So they believe everything is about them and everything is their fault. And so if you didn't get what you needed, you're going to begin to tell yourself stories about that, about, well, hey, if mom got really mad when she got home from work, maybe it's just because I didn't do everything perfectly enough. Maybe I didn't clean up enough, right? Or if dad was really uninterested in me, maybe it's because I'm just not that interesting or that lovable. And so if we don't first understand and name that this thing happened from my parents to me, we begin to conclude it was because of me. It was because of a deficiency in me that they were not able to love me well, that they were not able to give me what I needed.

Does that make sense?

Brian Lee
Too much. Too much sense. But I also love now that you separate lovability, or what we talk about all the time is belovedness, from our caregivers' ability or inability to love us well, to separate our pain from our identity. I love that you're right, that their inability to love you well is about them and not you.

Monica DiCristina
Yes. Because so often when you have someone who can't love you well, but they're not taking responsibility for that, You, like a really good responsible child, you take that responsibility as your own. You think, well, gosh, someone's to blame for how bad this relationship makes me feel. Maybe it's me, right? But I think that that is something that is so important to tease apart is that sometimes people are really, for their own unresolved issues, not able to love us well. But that has nothing to do with how lovable you are as a person or were as a child, or are as a church member, or are as a friend. It has to do with that person's ability and what's going on in their lives.

Brian Lee
I think that's so important because we don't even realize that's what we're carrying around with us.

Monica DiCristina
A hundred percent, yes.

Brian Lee
It's just the story we've been telling ourselves since we were children and then trying to make up for the lack of it.

Monica DiCristina
Yes.

Brian Lee
Looking for answers anywhere, really.

Monica DiCristina
Exactly. Hearing that story we've been telling ourselves since we were children is really essential. It's like hearing a sound machine in the hallway. Once you start to notice that you hear it, you can't unhear it, right? And so it's really important that we don't carry around those unexamined stories longer than we have to. Yeah.

Brian Lee
Let's talk about trauma because everyone like it. It's such a fun topic. It's an important one. It is very important. I love that you go into the nuances of different types of trauma, how it happens, how we carry it? And at the same time, because people often talk about little T trauma, big T trauma. My trauma wasn't as bad as theirs, or look at what this person had to deal with, so I should just get over it. And I love that you say it's wasted time to litigate the size, type, or validity of an event as trauma or not, when the answer to whether or not it was trauma is embedded in your body's response to it. And I love that you have this concept that you do not bounce back or, quote, go back to normal after trauma, that it's more like a wire hanger than a NERF ball. So for people who are carrying that trauma, who are desperate to find a way back or a way out or whatever it is, help us to understand what life looks like and how we reshape or get reshaped after that.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah, I think that the antiquated idea is you bounce back, right? Yeah. And that's just not fair or true. And it ends up people feeling really badly about themselves when they don't bounce It's back after trauma. What is a more realistic idea is that you build a new road next to the traumatic road. You build a brand new road of new associations in your brain, new associations in relationships, new ideas about your identity. And then the old road, it's still there. And when you get triggered, maybe you go back to the old road for a few minutes, but you've built this new, true, beautiful road that is indeed healing. And it's really unfair to people who have experienced any trauma for them to think that they are able to just bounce back because it ends up people feeling like a failure if they're still struggling when there's no failure in it. It, in fact, makes perfect sense in this how trauma works. It does rewire your brain. And so healing is going to look different than this old idea of a bounce back.

Brian Lee
And I think, again, especially in the church world, that there is just so much spiritual bypassing that happens, that there is very little room for grief or loss. And the windows of time are so short. It's like, Oh, are you still thinking about that? Are you still sad about that? Are you not over that yet? It's like, I'm going to carry this with me for the rest of my life, and I will never look the same. Absolutely. And just having the freedom to recognize that and to be okay with it, I think, will be just so liberating for people to hear.

Monica DiCristina
Yes. And that healing is not the absence of pain. Healing is not the absence of struggle. Healing is understanding your worth and your lovability and what to do when you feel those feelings. That's what I believe healing is. And we have this idea that really excludes a lot of people that healing is just always feeling better. Healing is always feeling good. And that's not only not realistic, it's not really fair or attainable. So you may feel something for the rest of your life, but that is not a failure. And that does not mean you haven't healed. That is just part of it. That things that we go through change us. They don't determine our worth or our lovability, but they It's really impact us. And it's really freeing to be able to accept and name and allow that to be true.

Brian Lee
Healing is not the absence of pain. It's not. That is so important. I think so often people get dismissed in one way or another when they do try to name their pain. I love that you say dismissal is more about someone else's discomfort with your hard thing than with the validity of your feelings. Then you give us a continuum of dismissal. Tell us about about that.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah. When I sit down with clients all the time, I find that so many of them are telling me a different version of the same story, that something hard happened and people didn't treat them well about it. And this goes across the continuum from minimizing, it's not that big of a deal, all the way to gaslighting, which is really blaming them and making them doubt their own understanding of reality. And so I think one of the most important things that we can learn how to do is to We recognize when we're being dismissed or invalidated or spiritually bypassed. Because when we go to someone else and we're hurting and they say, Oh, you're just overreacting. Oh, it's not that big of a deal. You're isolated. And then you also begin to doubt your own experience of reality. You begin to doubt the validity of your pain.

And what you don't get is the help that you really need. And this is a chapter in this book that I have heard the most from people about, because, sadly, we don't know how to help each other when we're in pain. We get very uncomfortable. When someone else is hurting, we're sometimes our worst selves because we're so anxious to end their suffering that we do all kinds of things that are not helpful, like spiritually bypass them or minimize it or invalidate them because it's so uncomfortable to see someone we care about in pain.

And so the more comfortable we can get with discomfort, with our own pain or someone else's pain, the better we're able to serve and to help each other when we're hurting.

Brian Lee
So when we are dismissed, when we feel the weight of that shame, what is a way to find our way out of that? And then I have a follow-up after. Okay.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah. I mean, one of the ways is to learn to validate yourself. Again, this could sound a little bit cheesy, but it's really not. It's really freeing that even if this person is unwilling or unable to see what I experienced, I can still hold the truth myself. I can still validate I don't have to have an internal argument with myself about whether or not this happened, about whether or not it's true, or about whether or not it wasn't okay. That I can actually learn to validate my own self. And that takes practice, especially when we have many of us been taught to put other people's opinions as more important than our own. So it takes practice. It's not an easy one, two, three step.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And so the follow-up is, how do we become better listeners? When someone brings their pain to us, how do we listen better and then how do we respond better?

Monica DiCristina
I think that one of the things that we can do to listen better is to be less concerned with what we're going to say than what that person is saying. There it is. Yeah. And then also to listen with our whole self, our whole presence. When you are trying to rehearse how you're going to be helpful to this person, you're already missing half of what they're saying. You're missing their body language, And so learning how to just be present with someone is one of the most helpful ways. And then the next is being curious without judgment. So often we think we're being curious, but we're really being judgmental. And so being curious and tell me more. What happened? How did that feel for you? And again, refusing to rush to oversimplified solutions.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's really helpful. Let's talk about creative strategies. Okay, yeah. Because this, for me, again, was such a lovely reframing of what we typically hear talk about survival strategies or coping mechanisms, and the idea that you would bring creativity into this to say, What a creative strategy you've come up with that is not just there to help you survive, but you're trying to actively do something. I love the Courtney Armstrong idea that the symptoms are allies. Yes. Normally, we think of symptoms as, Oh, my gosh, something's wrong with me.

Monica DiCristina
Huge problem. Right. It doesn't mean that symptoms don't cause suffering, because it's really important to say that they often can, but it's that they're trying to help us. And so creative strategies is my way of understanding and naming so that it doesn't feel so shameful how it is we figured out to cope. So whether it is from your family of origin or from the last group you were a part of, if something didn't feel good and something felt off, you developed a way to survive that environment as well as you could. That often looks like a strategy, inter-personally or a strategy in yourself to make it through that relationship and to make it through the next point. So often we're way too hard on ourselves about those creative strategies. But what I really wanted to name those in the book was Brilliant Strategies, because that's what I say to my clients. My editor told me that she would think that people might think I was being sarcastic, but I That I really think that they are brilliant strategies. So let's take one that's really common is people-pleasing and having no boundaries. That that is something that people are so hard on themselves about.

I would prefer to get curious, why did you develop that creative strategy? My suspicion is at some point you needed it. You needed to be a people pleaser, to feel loved, or so that someone wouldn't lose their temper at you. It's what we developed that we then And in our next chapter as adults, we often have outgrown. And these creative strategies can be more like a T-shirt that fit us when we were eight years old that no longer fits. It was brilliant then, we needed it, but it just doesn't work as well now.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And I love the external internal patterns that you name for us. Blaming is an external thing. Shaming is an internal one. Controlling is external, but escape and chaos can be... And I just love the idea that When we can recognize, become aware of, and notice that we do these things at all, then we can move to give those things a name. It's like, Oh, I'm recognizing the thing I do. And instead of shaming myself for it, I can just say, Oh, ta-da, I'm doing the thing I always do. Yeah, of course I am, because look at what's happening around me.

Monica DiCristina
Exactly. Yeah. And it's that self-compassionate posture of naming that I think really helps people exhale. It doesn't fix you, but it helps you feel more free, able to love yourself and figure out what you need. So blame and shame and control and chaos are ways that we all cope with pain. We all cope with feeling bad about ourselves. And once we begin to recognize that, it's not so scary, right? It's just like, oh, here it is again, just like you said.

Brian Lee
Yeah. And the chapter on boundary issues felt like a revelation to me. Oh, good. I mean, it's not just about the boundary or why some people are so good at them or so bad at them, but just getting underneath like you're saying to the why do I have this boundary in this first place? Yes. And then you say you're looking to create a sense of emotional safety. And I was like, oh, my gosh, is that really what the boundary is?

Monica DiCristina
I think for so many of us, we're so hard on ourselves about boundaries, but really, it was a way to be safe and to be loved is to be so pleasing to someone and to say, yes, that you would be kept in the fold, that you would not be rejected, you would not be yelled at, right? You would find a way to create emotional safety. And so it's a waste of time. We all know at this point, boundaries. We should have boundaries, right? Everyone's talking about it. But it's a waste of time to be hard on ourselves about it when we can really start to heal and change when we get curious about why. Why was it actually brilliant for you to have no boundaries at some point? Once you begin to name that, you can understand how to change because you probably... It doesn't work more.

Brian Lee
Yeah. We were just talking with Megan Febuary, she's a trauma-informed writing coach, about this idea of boundaries and for people who have had no boundaries and are starting to understand why and are starting to need to put them in place and maybe say no for the first time to someone who's too involved or too much inserting themselves in your lives, that it may not feel good.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, that's right.

Brian Lee
And there's this Holly Whitaker quote that she shares, saying no to people who want you to say yes, your boundaries with people who are used to having none will feel at first terrible and like death. And this idea of we can do things that are healthy and good for us and not feel good about it. And so even being able to name that pain to say, actually, this is a healthy step for me. This is like, surgery is not going to feel good. That's right. And yet it is the thing that is going to save my life right now.

Monica DiCristina
Absolutely. And we're taught that the right decision always feels good. And that's just not true. The right decision is often really difficult, and it can often really disappoint other people. And if you're not been comfortable disappointing other people, that can feel really scary and overwhelming. I even have in my informed consent for therapy that you may start to change, and that may be hard for some people in your life. Because when we change or when we have boundaries, it can be difficult for people who are used to us being one way.

Brian Lee
I love the hope that you provide towards the end. You You needed an answer for why you felt bad, and Shane provided one. But it wasn't true, because here's the truth, you're not bad. You're not a hopeless failure. There's nothing wrong with you. And there never was, because that wasn't the problem. The problem was the problem. What a declaration of liberation and freedom and hope. Because for years, I told myself, I'm damaged goods. I'm utterly broken, and this is my identity. It wasn't for years that I was able to recognize and reclaim this idea of belovedness. That actually broken is not who I am. It's something that happened to me, but that was the problem. It's not me.

Monica DiCristina
That's right.

Brian Lee
Help us to understand that.

Monica DiCristina
I mean, you just gave the most beautiful example of it that in the absence of naming the problem for what it was, you took on an identity. Yeah. And that's why it's so essential to name the problem as the problem, whatever it is, that could be anything. Once you begin to do that, then who you actually are, it begins to open, right? Because the problem isn't you, and you're still there, still lovable, having experienced really hard things, but that doesn't at all change who you've always been. So I think it's essential, especially if people have been hurt by others, is being able to say, That was a problem. Yes, that really hurt. But that was never who I was. I was never bad or broken or shameful. But I was hurt, and I was carrying a lot of hard things.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I think for people who are coming out of really legalistic backgrounds or churches or patriarchal societies where they're just always being pushed down or maybe they already live on the margins of things. It's such a big thing to overcome or to accept that idea. It's like, I'm not bad.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, gosh. I mean, I wish I could just pass that out, and maybe we're doing that right now. You know that so often, especially if you have a trauma history or an anxiety history or a shame history, if you're in a legalistic place, you're going to be walking around with a sense that you're bad. And I just don't believe that that's the voice of God saying that. I really don't. I think that that is wounding, and I think it's really important for people to be able to understand the difference, right? The difference between wanting to change your behaviors and being just bad, right? Yeah.

Brian Lee
I love the way that you write about tenderness. That is this greatest defense that we have against all pain, which sounds counterintuitive. It does. It's pain. I should put up the armor. I should get the barriers. I should white-knuckle and try harder through all of these things, like Andy Kolber talks about. And yet the tenderness refuses to shut down, to deny anyone's humanity. It honors our pain. Tell us more about how we move through this naming with tenderness.

Monica DiCristina
Yeah, I I think that it's really tempting to numb. It's tempting to numb ourselves to our own pain and to the pain in the world at large. There's so much pain. There's pain that we can relate to and pain that we'll never be able to relate to, depending on who we are. And so tenderness is essential because it is counterintuitive. We want to steal ourselves really strong when we're feeling pain, but then the healing never gets in. And so tenderness is allowing yourself not only to be soft with your own pain, but with the pain of others.

And I found that the more comfortable and tender you are with your own self, the more open and comfortable you are with the suffering of other people, and therefore, the more helpful you can be to other people. It's really tenderness that leads us to do acts of compassion or acts of service or to help other people. We have to keep our hearts tender. Even when we've been through things that would make our hearts not want to be tender, the healing is in refusing to give that gift away, right? Reclaiming your tenderness as your right to stay tender, even though someone may have done some things that would be really understandable if you hardened your heart about.

Brian Lee
Again, so invitational, and it feels so expansive. Yeah. I think normally that pain causes us to crumble in on ourselves. Yes. And just hearing you talk about that tenderness feels like taking a deep breath and just feeling that expansion.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, absolutely. I do think that when we are hurting, we want to close. When we are healing, we tend to open. That's a big oversimplification, but those two postures, I think, are very often related to numbing and hiding or being open to our own pain and to the pain of others.

Brian Lee
Yeah. There's a story you tell towards the end about name calling. I had never considered that name calling is like innocence being destroyed. But that was so helpful for people who've been called divisive or Jezebel spirit or a tempress or wicked or whatever it is. It's like it is. It's that sense of innocence. Like, I never thought of myself that way, but if this person in charge is calling me this, I must be this. Yes. And you, again, give us this visual of imagine yourself in the middle of this circle of people calling all the names, and you just walk out and walk down the hill towards yourself or whatever it is, and then removing yourself from that circle and looking back and realizing that they're still standing around calling names because it was never about you. It was about them.

Monica DiCristina
That's right.

Brian Lee
How transformative Yes.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, because again, as humans, we're meaning makers. We want to make meaning of our pain. But so often we make the wrong meaning. Now, when someone calls us names, we're trying to understand, what does this mean? It so much, maybe it's true. But it's not that pain and toxicity always is coming from the name collar. It is coming out of them being lobed at you. And you talked about innocence that sometimes it's the shock of having never been called this name before that makes it stick almost because you never expected to be called this. And then you start to wonder, do they know something about me that I don't? It starts to put in this self-doubt. But as you said, it never was about you. If we were to really break it down, the name didn't start with you. It started with the person calling you that and their story. It may have nothing to do with you, in fact.

Brian Lee
Huge. That illustration for me was worth the price of admission, although there were many things that were worth it.

Monica DiCristina
Yes, good. Well, that was one of my favorite parts of the book to write, actually, so I'm glad that was meaningful.

Brian Lee
It shows because it shows. As we wrap up, we're We're talking about recognizing our pain and looking for ways to give names, and you give so many names in the book that people should just get the book and find it for themselves. But I want to end on this note of hope for people. You write at the very beginning this idea that Dr. Barnes was the first person to help you finally name your pain. What did that feel like for you and for people who are doing that work to try to find a name? What is your hope for them?

Monica DiCristina
My hope would be that the false story stories that they've believed about themselves can be retold. They can be rewritten in a more truthful way. That would be my hope, because when you have unnamed pain, it's not just innocuous sitting by. It's typically casting a shadow or a narrative over your life. And so my hope for people would be as they investigate, whether it's this book or other books or podcasts, what's going on with them, that they'd be able to begin to understand understand they're not their pain, and they're not the stories that they've believed about themselves from the pain. There is so much hope in really understanding your own belovedness and your own lovability. That doesn't mean that everything's perfect or fixed. But it's a really, really peaceful place to rest and to live from.

Brian Lee
Thank you. If people are looking for you, where can they find or connect with you?

Monica DiCristina
They can find me on Instagram. I'm at Monica DiCristina, and DiCristina has no "h" in it. That's a common mistake. Or my website is monicadicristina.com. From there, you can sign up for my newsletter, which is really my favorite way to communicate with people and find out where my book is. It's at where that books are sold. Yeah, so Instagram and my website.

Brian Lee
Which are both very popular. We'll have all those links in the show notes. Thank you. Everyone, go get a copy of Your Pain Has A Name: A Therapist's Invitation to Understanding Your Story and Sorting Out Who You Are From What Hurts. We'll provide links for everyone in the show notes. Monica, thank you so much. This was such a delight.

Monica DiCristina
Thank you so much. I really love talking to you.

Brian Lee
What an incredible conversation. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to follow Monica and say thanks for being on the show. You can find links and all the things in the show notes. Coming up on the show, we have Elise Heerde, Ben Cremer, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, and so many more. Next time, we'll be talking with Megan Hampton about her work online and in real life with Soul Care for Families. Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review or share with your friends. It really helps us to grow and continue providing quality content for you.

And a special thank you to our listeners who make this show possible through their financial support. If this show is valuable to you, consider donating today at the link in the show notes. This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and postproduction by Lisa Carnegis.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness. Together. I'll see you next time.