Navigating Societal Expectations, Faith Crisis and Personal Growth - the Allegory “Off the Beaten Path”

Music. Welcome to a very special edition of The Virtual Couch and Waking Up to Narcissism, episodes 429 and 123, respectively. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. And I'm broadcasting today from my office in Mesa, Arizona. And I have a co-star who is a cricket that I cannot locate, but he will be featured in the background.

Now, if you are in the Mesa area, Phoenix area, looking for somebody to come speak to your church, your corporate event, please reach out to me. And I love talking about communication, improving your marriage, parenting, turning away from unhealthy coping mechanisms. And if you are savvy to the rules of the internet, then unhealthy coping mechanisms are things like corn or pornography. I hope you catch the drift, but reach out to me at contact at Tony over bay.com.

And I would also encourage you to sign up for my newsletter and follow me on Instagram at virtual couch and Tik TOK at virtual couch. I'm continuing to do live question and answer events with my daughters, Mackie and Sydney. And those are the highlights of my week. And I hope you heard and enjoyed the new intro song today.

It's a song that will be featured prominently on the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast. And it's called Not My Job. It's by Riley Hope. And she is an amazingly talented independent recording artist, composer, singer, songwriter, and producer. And she liked a reel on Instagram. And I happened to click on her account to see what she did, because she had one of those little blue check marks. And I was immediately met with the song on her account, and I was hooked.

So, I reached out to her, and she was kind enough to give me the ability to share her song as an intro for waking up to narcissism. And I thought that there was no better place to debut the song than on a crossover episode. So, my virtual couch people will have a chance to hear her music as well. And so Riley says that she is working to blend the genres of cinematic orchestral indie folk pop into a deeply emotional and unique soundscape.

She says that her music draws inspiration from the nostalgia of her earlier roots in classical music and choir. She does theater. She blends this emotion and symbolism and deeper life truths and vulnerability and storytelling with every song. If you listen to the words of Not My Job, it's beautiful because it's not my

job to manage other people's emotions. It's a deep track written in what took her years of therapy to finally learn, including self-worth and boundaries and the power of choosing yourself. So you can find it wherever music is streamed. So let's get to today's episode. And I would highly encourage you to stay until the end or come back and finish this one if you run out of time.

Because I'm going to share some things at the end today that I can actually use your help with that will have a bit to do with the topic. But first, I have always enjoyed writing, and while I think that most people

who enjoy writing often excel in classes like English, that was not the case for me. My problem was grammar. And kids, if you're listening, imagine a world where there was no such thing as the Grammarly app or browser extensions, so you were, I don't know, supposed to just know or learn what grammar was.

And grammar is tough, because I still can remember some of my favorites, the rules, I before E except after C except for when it sounds like a like neighbor and way but also how about words like weird and sovereign and foreign and height and leisure and feisty and forfeit and counterfeit and slay and then there's a concept called the split infinitive the rule against splitting infinitives putting a word between two and a verb is often taught but doesn't always make

sense in modern English for example to boldly go is a split infinitive but it's accepted and it sounds a lot better than to go boldly and then there's my kryptonite ending sentences with prepositions, because the old rule, never end a sentence with a preposition used to get marked on my papers constantly. But that can lead to some very awkward constructions of sentences. For instance, this one's attributed to Winston Churchill. He said, the kind of arrogance up with which I will not put.

Sounds far more unnatural than this is the kind of arrogance I will not put up with. But we can't end that sentence with a preposition. But one thing that I will say that I enjoyed learning about were the different ways which you can convey a meaning or tell a story. And over on the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast, I have listeners who regularly send me their poetry.

And that is a form of expression that I know that I don't truly understand how it comes about in one's mind, but I love reading the poems that people send in. And I've done entire episodes on them. And for the record, some of them don't even rhyme.

And I've been told on more than one occasion, again, over on the Waking Up to Narcissism podcast, that some of those podcasts that I do will have different meanings to people depending on where one is that waking up to their own emotional immaturity or behaviors or those in their spouse or their partner. So when you truly understand who you are and you can remain grounded in a difficult conversation, the phrase, well, bless their heart.

If they want to tell me what they think that I should do about my life, because I've realized that I am actually the one who is ultimately in charge of me. But if you're grounded, then I'm happy to hear what you have to say. But the chances are, I will thank you for your feedback about what you think I'm doing or thinking or what I need to do because that truly does sound like more of something that you are struggling with.

But when somebody is in the throes of an unhealthy relationship and they feel emotionally abused and they don't have a true sense of self, then the phrase, bless their heart, sounds like I don't have a clue of how difficult the relationship is.

Let's talk about a few literary devices and one in particular, the allegory. And we're going to spend some time on the allegory today because I've written my very first allegory and I would love for you to go on this journey with me, this allegorical journey of self-discovery.

An allegory is a story or a poem or a picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning, not like in a where's Waldo type of hiding, but typically more of a moral or a political or a life meaning that is hidden inside of a story. So it's like an extended metaphor where characters and events and settings often stand for abstract ideas or moral qualities.

A couple of just real quick examples to set the stage for today, an allegory called the garden of hearts might be a story about a gardener who is tending to different types of flowers, and each one represents a different kind of, let's say, love, romantic, familial, friendship. So the gardener's efforts to nurture each flower, despite varying conditions, would then symbolize the challenges and rewards of cultivating different types of love in one's life.

Or imagine a flock of birds that are in a cage, the doors open, but they don't fly away because they've never known anything else. This could represent people who remain in limiting situations, even when opportunities for change present themselves. That allegory speaks to a lot of the people that I'm working with in therapy.

But today, we are going to explore an allegory titled Off the Beaten Path, Finding Love and Self in a World of Conformity. And the story takes us on a journey up a hill, but it's not just any hill and it's not just any journey because we're going to follow a protagonist, a young man named Ansel, and we'll discover that sometimes the path less traveled can lead to the most beautiful destinations.

I would love for you to watch for themes of individuality, of conformity, of love, of self-discovery in a way that might just make you look at your own life's journey or the journey of somebody close to you a little differently. Let's step off this beaten path together and let's see where this story takes us. Off the beaten path, finding love and self in a world of conformity. Ansel was a young man who had spent his entire life in a quiet village at the bottom of a very large hill.

And for as long as Ansel could remember, the majority of the villagers talked about a narrow, rocky path that led up the hill to the most beautiful garden that one could imagine. And when the children of the village reached a certain age, they were given seeds to hold on to.

And they were told that one day, when they were older, if they stayed true to their promises that they had made in their youth, they would have this opportunity to plant the seeds in this beautiful garden, a garden where their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents had also planted seeds that were part of this garden. And entering the beautiful garden, planting your seeds there was truly a rite of passage, and it was this foundational principle for the people that lived in the village.

For most, if not nearly all of the villagers, the goal of taking your seeds to the top of the hill and planting in this beautiful garden was simply what you did. Few questioned this time-worn village narrative, and most of the people seemed quite content with their lives.

They were successfully learning and doing the things necessary to ensure that they lived in such a way that they would have the opportunity to not only see the garden, but to plant their seeds there and become part of the beautifully connected garden tapestry of their ancestors. And this gave them the peace and joy of knowing that they had done what was expected of them throughout their lives. Now, the route up the hill to the garden wasn't ordinary.

It consisted of a deeply rutted, worn path that featured numerous rocks and roots that at times made it really difficult to traverse. And a great deal of time was spent studying the path, learning and memorizing where each obstacle was, to the point that many of the elderly women and elderly men of the group could describe the path inch by inch with their eyes closed. To ensure that they would remember, they often associated stories or meanings with the various obstacles on the path.

So over the course of generations, these stories evolved and they grew to the point that there was often debate about what the exact meaning of these stories were and even whether or not the stories were true. Now for the youth of the village, the desire to reach the top of the hill and the praise and the adoration, the validation that came to those who could memorize the route at a very young age or tell those stories about the various obstacles along the way, that became a pretty key focus.

So as a kid, Ansel would sometimes have the opportunity to walk the path with his parents or one of the village leaders, and they would get to the park at the top of the hill with the entrance to the garden in sight and spend the afternoon having a picnic or simply enjoying the peace and calm that the park provided.

But Ansel, being the energetic kid that he was, would often venture off from his family under the guise of finding a walking stick maybe for the way back, and he'd wander over to the entrance of the garden and take in its beauty. And inevitably, one of the garden workers would kindly escort him back to his family. The grown-ups kept telling him you have to wait until you're older to actually go into the garden and plant your seeds.

But the more you get ready for it now, the better that your life will be. What Ansel could see of the garden, it did look pretty amazing. And he noticed how peaceful everybody seemed when they came back from this garden. People were always talking about these powerful experiences that they had up there. And for many of the villagers, the path, the park, and the garden formed the majority of what they talked about.

And so, they loved to share with the younger people in the village how important it was to prepare yourself to walk the path and enter this garden, this beautiful garden. Even some of Ansel's friends would go on and on about how connected they felt to the hill where the garden resided. And they would compare where each other was and memorizing the path of the garden, sharing the stories. The kids were the popular ones in the village that knew those stories well.

But as hard as Ansel tried, and he'd been trying for a long time, he just didn't feel that same connection that others did with this hill or the same desire to enter the garden. And he tried everything that people told him to do and everything that they said to try to feel the same feelings that others had about the hill or the garden on top. But that connection that everybody talked about, it just really wasn't happening for him.

And this was a really, really difficult time for Ansel because he started feeling disconnected from everybody in the village and from his peers. And he kept wondering, what is wrong with me? Why isn't this working? And he would spend hour upon hour, day after day, trying to figure out what he was doing wrong, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he would start to feel what everybody else was feeling.

Now, Ansel's parents loved him like crazy. And they were always talking to him about what he needed to do to get ready for the garden. And they tried to conduct lessons about the path and the stories about it. Those lessons left Ansel feeling like he wasn't really understanding the significance of the garden or the worth of spending hours each week talking and learning about the path.

And Ansel knew that they just wanted the best for him, but he couldn't help feeling like he was actually letting them down. They'd catch him drawing or reading things that had nothing to do with the path or the garden. And while they never said it outright, Ansel felt their disappointment. And they were more interested in him focusing on what they would call important things than what he was actually into.

As Ansel got older, he kept walking the path up the hill just to be in the vicinity of the garden, just like everybody else in his family had done. But he just couldn't shake this feeling that something was off. And everybody else seemed to fit in so easily. His friends, his family, they had no problem keeping their eyes on the path, following all the rules. And they seem to really get something out of all of the shared experiences that the villages were having with one another.

And according to Ansel's parents, he'd actually come out of the womb mischievous and curious, a combination of character traits that his parents admitted were pretty challenging at times, especially when he was young. But they were also what made Ansel the person that he was. And they loved Ansel's curiosity.

But they often tried to steer that curiosity to the things that they, as his parents, thought would help him learn more about what they believed to be one of the most important things that he could do with his life, prepare to go to the garden, plant these seeds. But the older that Ansel got, the more inner turmoil he had. And he began to feel extremely detached from his village and the desires to learn more about the path or go to the garden.

Ansel had no desire to try and convince anybody that what they were doing was wrong, but he was becoming increasingly more frustrated and isolated as he went through the motions without feeling truly connected to his village or to their shared experiences. He just wanted somebody, anybody, to tell him that it was okay for him to just be the way that he was.

But whenever he opened up to somebody, they, even being nice, would just give him the same advice about getting back on the path, climbing that hill, trying to embrace the significance of the garden, and finding meaning there. And Ansel appreciated that they cared, and he could feel that caring, but at this point, he really had heard it all before, and he had tried it all before so many times, and it just wasn't working. And he just felt like, what is wrong with me?

And to make things even more confusing, when he would attempt to jump back into the teachings and do the work and jump in there with both feet, people in the village couldn't seem to agree on how to even teach the concepts of the garden and the path that led up to it. Some of the elders took a more negative slant, more doom and gloom. These warnings about how dangerous it was if you did not stay directly on that path that led up to the hill.

They'd say things like, don't you dare take your eyes off that path or you'll end up broken. You'll end up destroyed. But then others would take a completely opposite approach and share amazing faith-promoting stories about the times that they had climbed the hill, walking the path of the garden, and what that meant to them. Many people now found peace just walking up to the hill. Ansel was lost and he'd ask his parents, who am I supposed to listen to?

The people who are trying to scare me up the hill are the people who are claiming that every single thing about the path and the hill has a sacred meaning, and so if I don't figure this out, I'm really missing out. And his parents would lovingly say, hey, whichever one keeps you on that path.

The problem was, none of them really felt like it was motivating Ansel, and he felt like he couldn't be honest about his thoughts and his feelings without somebody shutting him down and giving him advice that he'd already tried so many times. So over time, Ansel started to realize just how different he was from the people of his village. While everybody else was laser focused on the path, memorizing all the details, Ansel's eyes would actually wander and his curiosity would take over.

He would often look around while he was on the path. And some of what he saw off the path, yeah, looked pretty scary. But he also noticed these other gardens in the distance and trees and flowers, and they just look beautiful and mysterious. But every time somebody caught Ansel looking away from the path, they'd scold him, hey, keep your eyes on the path. They'd tell him, it's the only way that you're really going to make it to the top.

But Ansel couldn't help it. His curiosity was now just a part of who he was. It was what he was born with. This curiosity of his, it wasn't just about the path. It was how Ansel approached everything in life. He saw his curiosity as a gift. But when other people didn't share his curiosity, or worse, when they attacked him for it, it really hurt. Because Ansel wasn't trying to tell anybody that they were wrong. He just wanted to understand people and their experiences.

And deep down, he really wished somebody would be curious about his experiences too. Now, sometimes Ansel would try to talk about these things, these other gardens that he would see. But as soon as he brought them up, his friends would shut him down. They would tell him, hey, you're wasting your time and you need to focus on the garden at the top of the hill and not go looking at these other gardens because those are scary.

But then one day, Ansel meets a woman. Her name's Maris. She was walking the path too. She was carrying her seeds from the elders, trying to memorize every little thing about the path. But there was something different about her. Ansel felt this instant connection. And she seemed genuinely curious, especially about what they were experiencing on the path right then and there. She did want to hear what his experience was in the here and now.

And Ansel couldn't get enough of talking to Maris. And they started spending more and more time together. And Ansel found himself somewhat reinvigorated to learn and understand the path because he really wanted to learn and understand more about Maris. And as they got closer, Ansel opened up to her about his hopes and his dreams. And the best part was, Maris wanted to know more about them too.

And they talked about all sorts of things, but often the talk would turn back to concepts about the path or the garden. And while Maris' outlook was refreshing, to say the very least, Ansel still felt like he had to withhold some of his feelings, not just about the path or the garden, but especially about what he had seen off the path.

Now, the closer that they got, the more stressed out Ansel became because he worried that Maris thought that he was just like everybody else, all focused just entirely on the path in the garden. And the more they talked, the more anxious he became. And he was convinced that if Maris really knew how he really thought differently about the garden or the path and where his interest actually lay, that she would not want to be with him.

And if she found out that he'd wandered off the path and planted seeds in these other gardens, gardens that he'd discovered, game over is what Ansel thought.

And Ansel became so stressed about this that he was thinking about, I just have to spill everything to maris he figured if things were going to fall apart then better know sooner than later and he didn't want to get in any deeper only to have maris leave when she found out who he really was so just as ansel was about to pour his heart out he ran into

an elder from the village this guy was a little different from the others he was pretty calm he's pretty confident not in a show-off kind of way he just seemed at peace with himself. So feeling very lost, Ansel told the elder everything. The elder listened. He asked some questions. Then he said to Ansel, are you really ready to share everything about you with Maris? Or are you just hoping that she'll tell you it's okay to be different?

Is this about her? Or is this about your fear of rejection? Your fear of being seen for who you really are? And then the elder went on to talk about patience. And how being uncomfortable is often where we learn the most about ourselves. And we can see the most about others.

And he asked Ansel, when we're uncomfortable, what do we do? Do we lash out? Do we shut down? Do we just keep following along, even when everything inside of us is screaming that something is wrong? That I need to do something different? And this made Ansel stop, and he thought, and he realized he wasn't ready to show Maris his garden. Not because it wasn't good enough, but because he hadn't fully accepted it himself yet.

He was trying to get Maris to validate something that he wasn't so sure about himself, and that wasn't fair to her, because she was just getting to know him, after all. So instead of sharing everything at once, Ansel decided to wait.

He kept being curious about Maris, her journey, her family, her past, what she thought about the garden on the hill. He asked her how she felt about the path. Had she ever wondered about the parts that everybody else ignored? Meanwhile, Ansel kept visiting his own garden and he started to see that this was where he felt real peace and he felt connection like he had never felt before. Part of him wanted to shout it from the rooftops, but he also knew that he didn't need everybody to know.

He wasn't trying to pull anyone away from what they were doing or what made them happy. And Ansel finally started to realize he was actually okay, just as he was, and that this was his journey. All of his experiences, even the tough ones, had made him into who he was, this unique, talented person. And the more he accepted himself, the more confident he became.

People in the village started to notice. They saw that he wasn't spending as much time on the path, but they also saw this new light in his eyes, this joy in his countenance. Even better, the more time that Ansel spent with Maris and the more that he understood her and then he opened up, he started to see that Maris wasn't as rigid about the path as he thought, that she had her own doubts too because it was part of the human experience.

Sometimes she wondered if the garden at the top would be anything like what the elders described. And she even told Ansel that she sometimes imagined adding her own style on the way up the path. She was scared to speak up. She'd seen how people had shared different ideas, got shut down, and told to focus on obeying these rules that would eventually help them discover their place in the garden.

So as Ansel and Maris spent more time together, Ansel had this realization that their gardens didn't have to be the same for them to appreciate each other's beauty. By letting go of his need for Maris to immediately validate him, Ansel gave their relationship room to grow naturally, just like the wildflowers in his own garden. And end scene. So thank you for listening to this allegory, and I want to address some of the

main themes that I've written to and see if you pulled these out. One of them was individuality versus conformity, because the central conflict of this allegory revolves around Ansel's struggle to fit into a society that had pretty rigid expectations. And I think that this represents the tension that a lot of people feel between being true to themselves and then conforming to societal norms.

And what I think is so interesting here is that there's nothing wrong with someone who does need direction and guidance until they don't. We all start from this place of needing external validation to really know who we are, to really find our own sense of self. And so that is going to come from parents, that is going to come from a church community, that is going to come from a village, a family system.

There's where the acceptance comes in, that we grow up where we do and we learn the things that we do because that's the things that the people in our religious community, in our family community, that's the things that they teach us, what they're sharing, what they're projecting. But those are the experiences that we begin with. There's our starting point. That is the muse of which we begin understanding who we are in life.

It makes sense that for so long, many of us are going to just follow along with the community norms, the religious community norms, the societal norms, the family norms, because that's what we know. But then as you go through life and you experience different things, then you are going to have different feelings. Now, sometimes it's going to be a feeling of safety or security or connection, and it's going to feel like this makes so much sense to me.

But other times you're going to think, okay, the feelings that I'm feeling now are going against how I've been told I need to feel or I'm supposed to feel in this situation. So, of course, we're going to start from a place of what is wrong with me because this is the way that I was raised. These are the things that I was taught to believe. Which then I think leads into the second theme that I tried to put in the allegory,

which is about faith and doubt. While not explicitly religious, this story uses the garden and the path as metaphors for a variety of belief systems. Because Ansel's doubts, his questions, I think they reflect the experiences is so many people that I work with are struggling with their inherited belief systems. So they've been given these belief systems and that's their starting point,

which I think leads to the third theme, which is this, I love a good coming of age story, you know, self-discovery. Ansel's journey from childhood to adulthood is marked by his growing awareness that his own unique perspective and his own unique needs exist. And I think those symbolize this universal process of self-discovery that as we go through life and as we're interacting with the things that we have been interacting with that give us a real purpose or sense of self.

We're going to have feelings. And some of those, again, will feel like this connection with my experience. Others will feel like this doesn't work for me. This doesn't make sense to me.

It just kind of leads to the fourth theme, the nature of things like truth and knowledge. The village's insistence on one right path, well, that worked for a lot of the people in the village, for even generations of people, entire family systems. But it contrasted with Ansel's curiosity about the other gardens. And I think it really speaks to questions about, from an allegorical theme, absolute versus relative truth.

And I run into that in my office a lot where people will say, but I do believe there is an absolute truth, an absolute right or wrong, where then for others, they're saying, okay, but that isn't my experience. Another theme, intergenerational expectations. This one's a pretty fascinating one. You know, this pressure that Ansel feels from his parents and his community to follow tradition. I think it really highlights the challenges of living up to family or societal expectations.

And what can be so interesting and difficult about that is if someone is starting to want to go down their own path, it can often feel to the people that have already been on the path that wait, if you choose a different path, then you are thinking that that means that my path is wrong.

And this is where it is not that black or white. It's not that all or nothing thinking that the person that wants to explore who they are, their individuality, their self-discovery, maybe even their own path, then they are not saying you're wrong. Now, when there has been this psychological reactance, the instant negative reaction of being told what to do, where when someone is saying you can't do that, now that's a built-in defense mechanism. Man, now I want to do it even more.

And so, this is why the concepts of curiosity and just wanting to understand what someone else has experienced is so important and so key. It's also very scary for the person that is trying to be curious because now our adorable ego gets in the way and we feel like I must defend my ego.

If you are moving away from the things that I've taught you or the traditions of our family or our fathers, then I need to let you know that that is not the correct way to go because what our subconscious is saying is because then that might mean that I could have maybe made a different choice at some point in my life. But the reality is, sure, you could have, but here's where you are as well. I think another main theme that I wanted to put throughout the allegory is curiosity,

this concept of being open-minded. Ansel's natural curiosity is presented as both a gift and it is a main source of conflict because it emphasizes this value and the challenge of maintaining an open mind when he was growing up in a little bit of a closed system.

Gives a big challenge to theme seven, love and acceptance, because Ansel's relationship with Maris explores this theme of really an authentic connection, acceptance for who you are, self acceptance, and this fear of rejection of being one's own true self, because it will often come with being banished from the tribe and built into us is that if I am kicked out of my tribe of people, my community, then I am left in this lone world and I will die. And that is a really scary feelings.

So we often compromise our own sense of self, our own integrity for the fear of being abandoned. And what if no one will ever then love me? That's why it becomes so important, as cliched as it is, to truly love yourself. The eighth theme, it was personal growth through discomfort.

One of my favorite things over the last year or so, you know, the elder's advice, the wise elder about learning through discomfort. I think that really reflects this idea that personal growth, it comes through challenging experiences. And if you play things safe your entire life, then it can really feel like uncomfortable things are a dangerous threat.

But if you learn that there is going to be growth through discomfort, it's not that you necessarily need to go seek very uncomfortable things, although one can, but when uncomfortable things occur, then you know, okay, we can get through this. This is happening. I will be okay. I will learn through this, which that learning leads to theme nine.

I called it diversity of thought Because the allegory suggests that there's value in different perspectives and there's value in different paths, even within a seemingly uniform community. And then the last theme that I want to touch on is this journey of self-acceptance because ultimately Ansel's realization that he's okay just as he was, I think truly speaks to the importance of self-acceptance and authenticity.

At its core, I think the story is the experience of questioning or maybe leaving a family, a religious or a cultural tradition. Because I often work with those who feel like their own personal journey ends up not being so personal. So many of us in life feel like they don't quite fit the mold of their community. Particularly in terms of their beliefs or even their lifestyle. I hope that this garden really represents the promised rewards of full participation in a belief system.

And there are people that that works wonderfully for. But the path, I think, represents more of this prescribed way of living. And again, for some, it works well. But Ansel's struggle mirrors the experience of so many who find themselves doubting or questioning the beliefs that they were raised with and facing that fear of disappointment, of rejection, really of the unknown.

We just crave certainty. We crave meaning. And the story also touches on the complexities of relationships within the context that we're talking about today, how doubt affects family dynamics and friendships and romantic relationships. And hopefully it highlighted the challenge of being authentic while navigating all of these important connections with the people around you that you grow up with that you are wanting validation from.

But ultimately, I think this allegory seems to advocate for personal authenticity, open-mindedness, the idea that there could be many valid paths in life, not just one. And it suggests that true growth and peace comes not from necessarily rigidly adhering to one prescribed way. That is a wonderful place for one to start.

But then hopefully the message is heard that then if that prescribed way works for somebody, that's wonderful but then it's not the job of another person to try and convince the person who's trying to find their own path that their path is wrong or that they need to conform to the path that they are on.

And in the coming weeks, I'm going to be sharing a few more episodes that will cover the concepts of navigating difficult journeys of faith, of family systems, and of so many of you who write into me or people that I'm working with individually or as couples or who I read about in various posts and comments on social media, that stepping out of your familiar family role or your role from a church or a community,

a faith community, it can be really scary because it threatens the homeostasis or the status quo.

And for those who are threatened by somebody that they know or love who is attempting to find their own way or tried their own path it does not mean that you did anything wrong if that person wants to pursue their own path or live their own life i actually think that it can mean the opposite i think it can actually mean that you created enough space or enough safety for that person to feel like they can't explore who they are in their own way and it does not threaten who

you are or what matters to you now to be fair another reason why people almost aggressively feel the need to pursue their own path can be because they feel overwhelming pressure from a family or a church or a community to conform. And in that process of conforming, they truly believe that they are betraying their own sense of self. They're compromising their own values. They're not coming from a place of personal integrity. And there really is the concept of the body keeps a score.

You can grow through discomfort, but there are times where the more you try to lean into something that does not feel like this is something that you can do from a place of personal integrity, that people do have panic attacks, their heart rate elevates, they have hives, chronic pain, migraines. I've worked with so much of that called conversion disorder where your body is going to try and protect you, whatever that looks like.

And so, if you've learned a lot from a person, a relationship, a community, and now you feel like it has done you well and it is time to learn more, and then you try to force yourself back into that community, into that box, your body will often say, no, we can't because we're feeling such a connection with nature, with the divine, with myself, when I am now pursuing my own path. Because if somebody is compromising their values, that they're not coming from this place of integrity.

Too often, I think they're feeling that way because they have not had an opportunity to even attempt to discover or to find out who they are, what matters to them for the fear of rejection from their family or their church or their community.

So hopefully if you're somebody feeling like you need to find your own path, discover your own values, talents, abilities, if you're a religious person, to discover your own God-given talents and abilities, that you can give yourself the permission that you need, even if you aren't receiving that permission from your family or your faith community.

Because ultimately, even if they believe that they are coming from a good place, because what they are wanting you to do is something that has worked for them? Well, as we said in the beginning, bless their hearts because they truly do mean well. But that doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice your own sense of self.

Because whether you are now realizing that you have sacrificed yourself up to this point in your life or back in the religious context, that that sacrifice was already done a long time ago so that you, the listener, can live. Either way, provide you with the permission to do whatever it is that you need to do to become the very best version of yourself. Stop burning and wasting emotional calories trying to figure out what's wrong with you because the answer is nothing.

You're a human. You are a beautiful combination of your nature and your nurture, your birth order, your DNA, your abandonment, your rejection, your fears, your hopes, your dreams. And all of those amazing things make you you. So you think the way you do and you feel the way you do. And that is a wonderful, amazing thing. You're this human. You're going through life for the very first time. And what matters to you is what is going to matter to you.

And the only way that you're going to find that out is by going out and being and doing and discovering and learning. And that can be thanks to or in spite of the people who have helped get you to this point that you're at right now.

So thank you for your time today. I would love for you to share this particular episode with anybody and everybody that you think might benefit. And I would love your stories and your questions about your own faith journeys, family journeys, faith and family deconstructions, crises. And let me know if I can use what you send me on any upcoming episodes. If you're not comfortable with me discussing what you send, I still would love to read your questions and your stories anyway.

Please send your information, anything that you want to, to contact at tonyoverbay.com or go through the contact form on my website, tonyoverbay.com. I am grateful for everybody that stuck around. Have an amazing week. Music.