Living The Third Way

Why is it so hard to ask for help? Even when people are willing to give it?

In this episode, we sit with the hidden fear underneath self-reliance: What if having needs makes me a burden?

We talk about the difference between healthy independence and rigid self-reliance, why being helped can feel strangely unsafe, and how many of us learned to be capable, low-maintenance, and strong long before we learned how to receive.

This is a conversation about asking for help, receiving love, resentment, perfectionism, family culture, prayer, and the third way between isolated self-reliance and helpless dependence.

Connect with Us:

• Learn more about Third Way Mentorship: adrianandshae.com
• Send us a note: [email protected]
• Follow us on social: @adrianandshae

Every couple fights. But not every couple fights in a way that leads somewhere good. A big part of why has nothing to do with communication techniques or emotional intelligence. It has to do with where you are when conflict erupts.

In this follow-up to the previous episode, Shae and Adrian pick up the thread of Where Are You? and bring it into the messy, embodied reality of a real fight on a 30-mile bike ride with two kids in tow.

They unpack what that particular conflict taught them about the conditions that make repair possible and why most of us are trying to reconcile in environments that are working against us before we even open our mouths.

Whether you're married, in a serious relationship, or just trying to understand why you keep getting stuck in the same patterns, this episode will give you something concrete to reflect on: the space you're fighting in, the conditions you're creating (or not creating), and what it might mean to actually be found in the middle of it.

Connect with Us:

• Learn more about Third Way Mentorship, including marital mentorship: adrianandshae.com
• Send us a note: [email protected]
• Follow us on social: @adrianandshae

What do a soaking-wet bathroom floor, a three-year-old's meltdown, and the first question God asks after the Fall have in common?

In this episode, Shae and Adrian walk through a real rupture-and-repair moment with their son. From the chaos of a bath time blow-up to an unexpectedly tender conversation that left Adrian standing outside the door whispering something unprintable to himself. What started as a parenting story became a window into one of the most fundamental questions in all of human experience: Where are you?

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why "nip it in the bud" often backfires — and what to do instead when everyone's too activated to talk
• The difference between a consequence and a punishment (and why it matters more than you think)
• How Shae used parts language with a three-year-old to move him from shame and shutdown to real conversation
• What "Grumpy Gill" taught them about separating identity from behavior
• Why God's first question to Adam after the Fall wasn't "What did you do?"  and what that reveals about how love actually works
• The many ways we've all learned to hide: workaholism, doom scrolling, defensiveness, distancing from prayer
• And the question worth sitting with: Who in your life is willing to come looking for you in the bushes?

This episode is for anyone who has ever confused what they've done with who they are and for every parent trying to love their kid back to themselves after a hard moment.

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

Something one participant said near the end of their first group cohort stopped Shae and Adrian in their tracks: tending to the self doesn't just feel selfish — it feels sinful. In this episode, they unpack why that belief is so common, where it comes from, and why they believe the opposite is true: that interior attentiveness is not a detour from holiness but the very ground it grows from.

In this episode:

• Why the fear that self-focus is sinful is so deeply formed — and why it masquerades as virtue
• What self-abandonment actually looks like in everyday life: people-pleasing, lack of boundaries, resentment, numbness, and the "dam breaking"
• The difference between emotional neglect that's dramatic and the kind that quietly stacks up over time in otherwise loving families
• Why that internal voice that says "they did their best" or "other people have it worse" isn't always the voice of maturity
• What true emotional maturity actually holds: that someone tried their best and fell short, and that both things are real
• The Lenten/Easter framework: why we aren't meant to skip over the suffering to get to the resurrection
• Luigi Giussani's concept of "the I" and why losing touch with your interior life means losing touch with where God actually meets you
• The difference between processing and weaponizing — and why it matters for healing
• What it looks like to begin tending to yourself in practical, ordinary terms
• How self-love, rightly ordered, is what makes the free gift of self actually possible

Reflection prompt from this episode: This week, notice one moment when you're talking yourself out of the way you actually feel. Don't shame yourself for it. Just notice. That's where this practice begins.

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

Discover how fighting can be a gateway to deeper intimacy and growth in marriage. Shae and Adrian share raw stories, frameworks, and spiritual insights on how conflict, when approached with tenderness and self-awareness, transforms into a gift that reveals the true depth of love.

In this episode:

• Why conflict is a normal and essential part of marriage, not the enemy
• How childhood wounds and past experiences shape our reactions in disagreements
• The importance of vulnerability and raw honesty in building trust
• The role of nervous system patterns and self-protection in arguments
• Practical steps for fighting to understand, not to defend
• The symbolism of cruciformity: marriage as a path of surrender and resurrection
• Encouragement to give up the illusion of perfect understanding or control
• How to practice tenderness and curiosity during conflict
• Personal stories revealing the messiness and beauty of real relationship
• Resources for ongoing growth and connection

Resources & Links:

• adrianandshae.com

Remember: Marriage is a journey of cruciform love — embracing vulnerability, suffering, and resurrection. Fight with purpose. Keep fighting to understand and be understood, because you are worth it.

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

Self-reliance often begins as survival and slowly becomes a prison.

In this episode of Living the Third Way, Shae and Adrian explore how self-reliance forms in families where it wasn’t safe to struggle, need help, or fail. What begins as a protective adaptation can quietly turn into a belief that you must carry life alone and that suffering means you’re doing something wrong.

They examine how modern manifestation culture and New Thought spirituality reinforce this pattern by promising control over reality, while subtly placing the full weight of healing, happiness, and meaning back onto the individual. When pain can’t be “thought away,” it easily becomes personal failure.

Through the lens of Catholic anthropology and personalism, Shae and Adrian offer a different path: healing that happens in relationship, identity that is received rather than constructed, and a vision of the human person as a mind–body–soul unity. This episode invites listeners to lay down the exhausting work of doing life alone and to discover why dependence, rightly understood, is not weakness, but mercy.

Interested in deeper support?

We offer daily mentorship for individuals navigating family wounds, emotional overwhelm, and the slow work of healing in relationship. You can find out more at our website: https://adrianandshae.com 

We’re also currently building a waitlist for the next cohort of our group program, Unmeshed, which guides participants through disentangling from family enmeshment and reclaiming their God-given identity through psychological and spiritual integration. Email us to express interest or be notified about the next cohort: [email protected]

Referenced in this episode

• The Mindful Catholic by Dr. Greg Bottaro

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

The start of a new year often brings resolutions, pressure, and quiet disappointment when we don’t live up to our plans. But what if there’s a different way to begin?

In this episode, we propose an alternative to self-improvement: self-stewardship. Rather than fixing or optimizing yourself, what if this year became an experiment — a chance to see whether caring for the self you’ve been given actually leads to more freedom, presence, and life?

We explore what it looks like to tend to your interior life with curiosity instead of pressure. We reflect on how small shifts in attention, care, and responsibility can quietly reshape not only your own experience, but also the way you show up in relationships — including family life.

This conversation is an invitation to begin the year without urgency, guilt, or grand promises — and instead, to stay long enough with yourself to discover what’s truly life-giving.

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If this conversation resonates, we invite you to continue the exploration with us. Our upcoming free webinar offers space to look more closely at how self-stewardship and relational healing intersect, especially within family dynamics.

You can find out more here: https://unmeshed.online

And for those longing for deeper, ongoing accompaniment, our daily mentorship is a place to heal and practice this way of relating to yourself and others with support, clarity, and presence.

You can find out more here: https://adrianandshae.com

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

At Christmas, we celebrate a God who does not heal from a distance, but enters fully into our humanity. In this episode, we explore what the Incarnation reveals about the way real healing unfolds — not through bypassing emotion, body, or relationship, but through inhabiting them with truth and love.

Drawing from Catholic anthropology and the Third Way framework, we reflect on why God chose flesh and blood, what that means for our nervous systems, our family relationships, and our longing for peace, and how healing happens slowly, relationally, and from the inside out. We explore how integration, rather than control or avoidance, is at the heart of both the spiritual life and relational restoration.

If you find yourself caught between staying connected and staying whole, this conversation offers a hopeful path forward.

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As mentioned, we invite you to join us for our upcoming webinar, where we’ll explore how to disentangle from family patterns without cutting people off or losing yourself. You can register here: https://unmeshed.online

And for those longing for deeper, ongoing accompaniment, our daily mentorship offers a space to walk this path with support, clarity, and presence — the kind of healing the Incarnation itself points us toward. You can find out more here: https://adrianandshae.com

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

Advent draws us into a kind of waiting that’s active, hopeful, and deeply human. In this episode, we explore how holy waiting mirrors the slow, interior work of healing — in ourselves, in our relationships, and within our families.

We share how waiting became a core part of our own story: navigating old patterns, living in the tension of the “not yet,” and learning to trust that God works in hidden places long before change becomes visible.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What Advent teaches us about waiting with expectation
• The difference between holy waiting and passive endurance
• Why healing unfolds slowly and why that’s aligned with Catholic anthropology
• What is and isn’t worth waiting for in your own healing
• How to stay grounded when transformation feels delayed

Referenced:

Shadow & Light Advent Reflection: https://www.tshoxenreider.com/advent

Advent Calendar: https://shopstoryofthislife.com/

If the waiting in your own life has been stirring things up…
We’d love to walk with you. Join us for our upcoming webinar where we’ll explore how to disentangle from family-of-origin patterns without cutting people off or losing yourself. Save your free seat at the link below:

https://unmeshed.online/webinar-registration-page

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the real beginning of Third Way Mentorship — long before we ever had a name for it.

We start with a simple question we get all the time:
 What is mentorship, and how did we end up doing this work?
We share how daily accompaniment became not just a professional calling, but the very thing that transformed our lives, our marriage, and the way we relate to the people we love most.

Inside this episode, we explore:

• What mentorship actually is

• How our own mentorship journeys changed our marriage

• How moving into my parents guesthouse forced us to face wounds we had avoided

• How that season became the kickstarter for Third Way Mentorship

• And lastly, what to do when the holidays feel heavy or complicated

You’ll leave this episode with a deeper understanding of where our work comes from — not an abstract theory, but real relationship, real wounds, and real healing that unfolded in the pressure cooker of family life.

If you’ve ever wondered whether change inside your family is possible…
If you’re longing for a more connected, grounded holiday season…
Or if you simply want to understand the heart behind Third Way Mentorship…

This episode is for you.

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As mentioned in the episode — join us on November 23rd for our webinar!

We’re hosting a free live webinar where we’ll teach you how to navigate family dynamics without losing yourself, shutting down, or blowing up.

The Way of Unmeshment: How to Find Peace With Your Family Without Cutting Them Off

🗓 Sunday, November 23
 ⏰ 7pm CST / 8pm ET
 🎟 Save your seat → [Register Here]

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If this episode resonates with you and you want support as you navigate your own family dynamics — especially heading into the holidays — you can learn more or book a free call with us at adrianandshae.com.

Connect with Shae and Adrian: 

Website: adrianandshae.com 

Email: [email protected] 

Instagram: @adrianandshae