Naming the Real

Do we see desire as good or as something warranting our suspicion and judgment? In this episode, we explore the role of desire in Western history and, specifically, the different conceptions of desire within Greek and Hebrew thought. Far from being a mere academic exercise, understanding how desire has been framed in history can help us understand our own relationships to desire. This is paramount, because only when you are willing to address your core desires can you truly live into a flourishing life.

In this second episode on Internal Family Systems, we explore how to integrate our exiled parts. Ultimately, integration happens through conversation—through naming, labelling, and talking about the exiled parts of us, and by learning how our unwanted behavior is the very thing pointing us to the legitimate needs and desires which must be addressed if we are to live a flourishing life.

A consistent practice of gratitude will change the structure of your brain and transform the way you see the world. In this episode, we explore the gratitude ladder—a simple rubric for giving thanks no matter the challenges or circumstances you may be facing.

No bad parts. That's the mantra of Internal Family Systems thinking, which explores the notion that each of us is made up of various parts (including exiles, managers, and firefighters), each with a different function, within our personality. This episode explores Internal Family Systems with the goal of helping you become self-aware and a fully integrated human being. And it's about how each of us changes our behavior through a life of awareness, non-judgment, and compassion.

Differentiation is the antidote to anxiety. Differentiated people refuse emotional reactivity, they stay rationally grounded, they refuse to take on the anxiety of a system, and they are able to form meaningful relationships and connections. In this episode, we explore a rubric for practicing differentiation in everyday in life, in order to live a life of courage and hope.

All communities involving human beings can be held captive by anxiety. In this episode, we explore the core ideas of Family Systems Theory: that in unhealthy systems, the entire system may orient around the anxiety of its most anxious member(s). That systems are resistant to change. That triangulation is a function of codependency. And that the only path out of anxious systems is through self-leadership and differentiation, through which a new and extraordinary future becomes possible.

Everyday there are things we know to do and that we avoid doing. Such norms and customs make up the stuff of culture. But where do these cultural rules of engagement come from? In this episode, we explore how all culture traces back to our desire and, ultimately, to our desire to be known, included, and accepted. Far from being an academic exercise, understanding where culture comes from can change the most intimate details of your life.

Human beings tend to see differences as a threat, but to feel safe and secure we look for people who look like us or who we deem similar to us. These dynamics may be natural, but they can lock us into very low levels of relating to others and to the world. In this episode, we explore how our core, common desires are the key to establishing connection with others, no matter how different they might seem. And we explore how storytelling can open up new worlds of connection that literally change everything.

This episode launches a new series within the Naming the Real Podcast, which is an exploration of the nature of human desire. In this episode, we explore the core human desire, which we call love—the desire to know and be known with affection and without fear. And we explore the implications of human desire, because human motivation is quite simple: we act in pursuit of love or in pursuit of power. Understanding these dynamics can make us better students of human nature and, ultimately, better human beings.

We change the world through care and curiosity, which humanizes those around us. But there are forces of fear and anxiety at work in our culture of entertainment and endless stimulation which must be recognized and named if we are to build lives of courage and hope. In this episode, we explore the ways technology is creating a push towards tribalism and mass psychosis, and how—like totalitarianism—a technological culture creates a culture of fear which is not easily deconstructed.