Healing Out Loud

Kim Carson’s interview with Sandi Brown, author of Healing Out Loud

Authors Sandi Brown & Michelle Caulk, PHD, LPC

Today my conversation is with Sandi Brown, who has a Christian radio ministry reaching 500,000+ listeners a week. In her book, Healing Out Loud: How to Embrace God’s Love When You Don’t Like Yourself, she shares some insight from her one-year journey through counseling told from both sides of the couch. Walk with Sandi and her former counselor through her therapy journey, answering the question, “What do I do when I know God loves me, but I don’t like myself?”

Kim Carson: Thank you so much for talking with me today. Sandi Brown: Hi Kim. Thank you. Kim Carson: Sandi, you had me with the first three pages. The bridal shower, who can’t relate to what you’re talking about? Let’s start there. Sandi: Yes. I couldn’t figure out why I never really felt good about myself, right? I could go to a bridal shower amongst friends and family and feel like the odd one out. These women are all - they have it all together, and their life is shiny and perfect, and I’d cry all the way home, and it was deeper than that too. There are good things in my life. I have a great marriage great family. I know they love me.

KC: You have a great job! Sandi: Yes. It really measures of everything

I have dreamt of in life, and there’s a lot of good there, but yet when I put my head on the pillow, it just feels like I’m a failure, like no one likes me, like I’m not good at relationships,

I’m not good at being a mom, a wife, a woman. It got to the point that it was so disruptive. I reached out to a counselor, and then I found out I’m not the only woman who feels this way, so when you said you could relate, that’s what we’re hearing from people literally right off the bat.

KC: Yes, and sometimes it’s harder for

Christians to ask for outside help. Sandi: Yes. It’s harder, I think, to admit we need help because we know God loves us.

We know that that’s a game-changer in our lives, and so then, on top of feeling bad, I feel like a really horrible Christian because why - this isn’t God’s best for my life. This is not how He would talk to me, so why do I talk to myself this way? I was 52 when I went into counseling, and I had never heard anybody, especially a believer, say, “I love God, and I don’t like myself, and I didn’t even know if it was okay to say that.” That’s what this book is about.

Let’s be honest and say God does love us enough to help us unpack and figure out why we might be feeling this way. Hey, if we’re feeling it, it’s the truth, and He honors the truth. He honored people in scripture just calling out to Him, “Where are you?” He can do anything He wants to do in an instant, but He sometimes takes time, and what if His healing plan for us is one that takes time?

Creation took time.

Raising Jesus from the dead, He did it over time. So, let’s give some grace to ourselves to go, “Maybe He plans that I see a counselor, that I navigate through and unpack some things.” He’s no less God; it’s no less healing, right? KC: Right! And you wrote this book with your former counselor; it’s a unique perspective for the reader. Sandi: Yes, you get her unpacking not only what we did in a counseling session; it’s like you get a healing journey from both sides of the couch, and you get a healing map that is yours. You get the invitation to start from where you are and journey on. So, it was an incredible experience for me to find healing in this way, but the purpose of the book is really for the reader, “Hey, reach out to the

Healer. There might be the healing map; there might be some markers that you discover as you go along. There is a way to better.”

KC: Sometimes, you don’t feel like you’re making any progress in life. That’s why the healing map is so helpful; it’s step by step.

You tell your story from a journal you kept, then your counselor jumps in with questions for the reader, and there are biblical scriptures. It’s just really wonderfully written. I love your dedication. “To all those who are on the courageous path toward healing and wholeness, God sees you, and

He walks behind, beside, and ahead of you.” It’s hard when you’re in those places.

You touch on how shame impacts a person.

Shame we may not even know is there. Sandi: Very early on, Michelle Caulk, my former counselor, said, “You’re wrestling with shame.” I immediately had a reaction.

I shook my head, and I said, “Look, I’ve known my issues longer than you have.

You just met me. I don’t deal with shame.”

She said, “Okay, well do you relate to any of these things?” She just [unpacked] it, and I started to cry, and she said, “Why are you crying?” I said, “I don’t want to admit that I deal with shame, but that’s a mirror to my life.” This feeling like no one likes me, I don’t like myself, tried to really cover up with good things and with humor and all kinds of things and so yes. It’s amazing what you can see when someone turns the light on, right? KC: So many things that affect us are buried in our unconscious, things that have happened that get stuffed down. Sandi: Things that are either said to us or that we say to ourselves, our difficult situations we go through that stick. As you said, I work hard. I love being present and working on projects in the future, and I was just unaware of how many sticky things there were that had really taken root in my mind and heart. What I heard was, “You’re not good enough.” I believed it, and I took that same message from some painful situations like when my dad left or some abuse there. And if you would’ve asked me had I done that,

“No, I’ve put that all in my past. I’ve moved on from that,” you try to cover it up with good things, but it doesn’t work, and that’s a good thing because God comes to set us

free, not to just put good things on top of bad things, right? In hindsight, while counseling was painful in the moment, it sets you up for a true recovery down the road, and I would say that’s what counseling did for me. KC: Don’t you think that sometimes God just sets us up to walk this walk of faith. I mean, when times are good, you just enjoy them.

Life is great. You’re not really growing and learning. It’s a season you’re in. Sandi: Yes. There are so many scriptures full of people like that, too, right? Their closest encounters with God were right after a realtime of hardship and difficulty. So I think we like the idea of falling in love with a

God on a mountaintop. Still, I’m telling you what, when you discover Him in the valley or when your heart is breaking, that’s why

I think the scripture that says “He’s close to the brokenhearted” that’s when the Healer comes close when we acknowledge we need a healer, that’s when he comes close.” KC: Yes, I felt that when I went through colon cancer. My parents thought I had a breakdown because I was so calm. At that point, you realize this is completely out of my control. I never felt closer to God. It’s so hard to explain, but it was like I was floating along; life was great, everything was beautiful, and I saw miracles happening everywhere. People say, “Yes, but you wouldn’t want to go through that again, would you.” I would not want to go through it again, but I would never want to remove it from my life either because it was a real growth period. Sandi: There’s nothing more powerful to speak to the evidence of who He is and His goodness than to see someone suffering acknowledge His goodness in their life.

That’s just powerful. KC: Your book is built from your daily journal. I think everybody should journal.

Journal your thoughts, feelings; write them down, words that people say. Once you’ve unloaded them, they’re out of you. Reading your story Sandi, you were a strong little kid to make it out of that and do what you’ve done with your life. Talk about the exercise you did in Chapter 5: The Memory Bag. Sandi: We did some very clinical things in our counseling exercises. If my memories are in a bag and there are all kinds of emotions attached to them, I’m going to walk over on a bridge, and I’m going to take some things out of that bag. I’m just going to throw

them away. All the untruths about me being unwanted not true. Dad left, true. Unwanted, not true. Just the power to go through it and go, “Wow.” I get to decide what I put back into my bag was so freeing. I took out some untruths that I had been saying to myself, and I put some things in like compassion and grace. God doesn’t just call us to be compassionate to other people. Why wouldn’t He want us to be compassionate to ourselves, too, right? KC: So how does it feel to know that all your stuff is out there, you’re free? Sandi: It’s been a journey. Michelle and I were just talking about this a couple of days ago.

For me to think back into her office when

I’m like, “You want me to tell somebody now? Oh, my gosh.” To now, writing a book and having it all be out there is evidence of the work God’s done in freeing me up. I’m not attached. I’m not bound by anything anymore, and it’s just so freeing. I hope that’s the invitation, right? For others who may feel like, “There’s no way I could ever say anything to somebody.” Well, why not?

Maybe it’s not day one, but what if it’s day 365 or something? Let’s start on a journey that just sets us free. There’s no way I wanted anything in my past to continue to control my today or my tomorrow. No way. I just didn’t know how to get there. So, that’s what counseling and that’s what hopefully this book is to show us the healing map, show us a path to where we can truly make peace with our past and not let it control us today or tomorrow. KC: Healing Out Loud is available at your local bookstore and, of course, online. Do you have a website? Sandi: Our website is HealingOutLoud.com.

Seriously, I want to know your reaction and, more than that, how God uses this book in your life. So, if it moves the needle, please, please tell me. Otherwise, I [got naked] in the street for nothing, man. [Laughter] KC: I think you’re going to hear lots of positive stories from your readers. Thanks so much for your time Sandi. Sandi: Kim, it was awesome. Thank you, and

I’m so glad you liked the book.

Kim Carson

Kim is an Author/Podcast/TV/ Internet personality. Watch and listen for her on WGVU TV’s Kalamazoo Lively Arts and J. Schwanke’s Life In Bloom. Learn more at kimcarson.online and fb.com/kimcarson