The Emotionally Healthy Woman

Twanna Henderson: Welcome to T Time, Spiritual Conversations For, With and about Women. I'm your host at Twanna Henderson and I want to remind you right now to like this podcast and share it with family and friends. Well, we have another amazing guest on today. Our guest for today is Geri Scazzero. Geri is the author of the best selling book, The Emotionally Healthy Woman, The Emotionally Healthy Woman workbook and DVD, and co-author of the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course, and the Emotionally Healthy Relationships course. She is also along with her husband, Pete, the co-founder of Emotionally Healthy Discipleship, equipping the church in a discipleship that deeply changes lives. Geri has served on staff of New Life Fellowship Church in New York City for the last 29 years, and is a popular conference speaker to pastors and church leaders, both in North America and internationally. Geri, welcome to T Time. Thank you, Donna, it is so good to have you here. And I want to go ahead and get started because there's so much I want to talk about with you but I want to start off by asking what made you and your husband Pete to become experts in the field of emotionally healthy spirituality.

Geri Scazzero: Well, I'm not sure what expert is. But we've been, you know, working at it and learning and growing in this area for about 26 years and what started it really was our own experience in leadership. We discovered large gaps in our own discipleship and in our in our leadership growth, that was really manifested by just good old pain. And so that pain actually led us to get some help. And in getting some help from some wise mentors, that led us to see the gaps we had, why they were there, where they came from. And you know, and then there were two big connections. One was the gap of emotional health, and spiritual maturity, and also a contemplative of contemplative life, a life of slowing down to be with God. Our tradition is very, very active.And so anyway, those are some of the things that got us on the road or actually stopped us abruptly on the road to get help, and then launched us into this whole new learning of what we now call Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.

Twanna Henderson: And you mentioned pain because there's there's nothing like pain that will push us to a whole new level of growth. Can you talk to us just about your own personal, emotional healthy discipleship with spirituality journey?

Geri Scazzero: Sure, so for me, I mean, I you know, my husband and my story is so intertwined because it was about, oh jeepers, how many years ago now? We were planting a church in New York City. I want to say was, like, over 30 years ago. And that was a time when, you know, we had no people, we had no money, we were kamikazes that we moved to New York City, and we started planting a church and doing evangelism, etc, etc. And, of course, now there's great church planning movements, there's ways to do it. There's personality testing, there's budgets for church planting, but we didn't have any of that. And so we moved to New York City with our infant daughter and began planning this church. And actually, over the next seven years, the church got planted and was growing, and there were many amazing things happening. people having conversion experiences, meeting Christ wanting to follow Christ, healings, etc. But while this was going on, the non stop way I guess, of ministry and what we were doing I mean, the needs were so great. We were going 24 seven and thankfully we would have the one day off and we would collapse. But I finally had, I was really I had gotten very, very tired. And actually, over that seven years, although we had started out with one infant daughter, we had four by the end of it. So we're, you know, we're planting a church we're birthing churches, we're birthing babies and there's just lots of, there's crisis in people's lives, staff are being burned out. And I was miserable. But I also did not want to admit, I was miserable, because good Christians, and especially good christian spouses don't, who are, you know, really spiritual don't admit they're miserable. So I was angry, I was sad. But I also had shame, for having those feelings. And so I just kept pushing them down. And over seven years, seven year period, they were getting pushed down, push down, push down, and you know, I was leaking. I was leaking my emotions. I wasn't direct with my husband. But you know, I'm letting him know, on certain terms, I'm unhappy.

But, um finally, that pressing down of my emotions became a depression. And I realized, I went into a depression, that I barely recognized myself. But what that depression did was, brought me to a place where I didn't really care what anybody thought I had been very tempted to quit the church. I wanted to quit that church so many times. But of course, I was too embarrassed. And I didn't want to rock the boat. And I don't want people to think that, oh, my goodness, you know, we might not have a great marriage, or I might not be as spiritual or as loving as people think, or as strong as people perceive me to be. And I didn't want to upset things. So I just kept going but by year seven and this depression caused me to hit the bottom and I didn't care anymore. So I came to my husband one day, and I said, you know, honey, I love you but this church brings me death, not life. Well, and actually, it actually would be easier to be single. A single parent than being married to you, because at least you have to take the kids on the weekends. Because I'm pretty much doing everything. And so I said, this church brings me death, not life, and I quit, and I'm going to another church.

Twanna Henderson: Wow!

Geri Scazzero: I started going to another church. And at that point, we had two services going on in our church. So I'm not sure that people even noticed that I was missing. Because I mean, they just figured I'm in a different service or whatever. But, you know, we were gaining a whole world, but we had lost our souls.

Twanna Henderson: Now, let me stop you there for a minute, because that's a lot. You said a lot there. And the people may not have known, some of them that you weren't there. But your husband definitely knew that you weren't there and so how did that impact him and your relationship?

Geri Scazzero: Well, let's put it this way. He's Italian and his family had mafia connections. He wanted to kill me, so to speak. Because, you know, he had embarrassment, shame.

Geri Scazzero: But obviously, he had to begin looking at himself. But what happened in the short term was just we realized after I don't even know how much time passed, I don't even think it was a few months. It just logistically wasn't practical to go two different churches, because we, you know, who are the kids got to go to church with and you know, this kind of stuff. But also we realized we really needed help to sort out whatever we needed to sort out because our, whatever decisions we made, were going to affect a lot of people, a lot of families, and we reached out and we were directed towards some very wise mentors, that would really change our life.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah. You know, Geri, so many women listening today can really identify with just kind of being in that non stop pace, whether it's ministry or your job or home or whatever, but just sort of living in that space of just, you know, no pauses and I like how you said just leaking your emotions. You know, how sometimes a lot of times in counseling, they say they come up, it comes out sideways, you know, but a lot of times with women unfortunately, we find ourselves in this space in this place where we are leaking our emotions, and we, we are just overburdened with a lot of things, and are just sort of trying to find ourselves until we kind of hit the wall up. How have you evolved? You know, since that time and in that whole process?

Geri Scazzero: Well, one of the most so when we went away to, you know, get some help. And by the way, when we went away to get help, I wanted to fix the church, the people, my kids, my husband wanted to fix me. So, but what we discovered in our time, together and with, like I said, these very wise mentors, was that the problem wasn't the church and the problem wasn't the kids or the congregants are New York City, and those are all different can be difficult things when the church planting but the problems were inside of us. That was a painful awakening. So we like to say we were born again, again. There was there such a new level of awareness. So, I had to began, I had to begin to grapple with the pain that I had been a Christian for 17 years, and most of that time as a leader in the church. And yet, I came to recognize that my core identity was not anchored in the gospel the way I thought it was. And that was painful. We had sacrificed quite a bit in our life, and we were poster kids, for evangelicals, and discipleship and for churches, and we were like, the poster children. And yet, we're finding that we had serious gaps that actually, the church never talked about. And that's why they weren't a part of our discipleship. So I began, I got on a journey of saying, "what took me so long, actually, why did you take me seven years to quit the nonsense?" And I realized that the bottom bottom bottom line was I was afraid of what other people would think.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah.

Geri Scazzero: And that lead, that leads to the fact that that means if you're afraid of what other people think, then my okayness is not coming from the gospel, my sense of okayness my sense of self, it's coming from your thoughts of me. In other words, I'm okay with me, if you're okay with me. And that was painful, because we had, we had gone overseas, like, we had sacrificed a lot, um, and yet, on finding out that when the rubber hits the road, my identity wasn't in the gospel. That is, God loves me, period, I have nothing left to prove. So as a result of that, that led to all sorts of problems which I unfold in the book, you know, lying, dying to the wrong things. I mean, if you're afraid of other what other people think, which I would say the vast majority of people are, it leads to all other sorts of problems.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah. And we, you know, we live in a day and age where people are concerned about what other people think. I mean, that's why we have social media. Because we're able to present what we whatever we feel like we need to present, really, for other people. You know, it happens every day. What are some indicators of persons really being in a place of emotionally unhealthy spirituality? What are some indicators of that?

Geri Scazzero: Um, well, so again, if I'm going to unfold the things that came out of me from that, because I was afraid of what other people think actually I have a little inventory I ask people to do and it's just two questions. And that is, after you leave a conversation or you think about what interactions over the last hour or even a day, you ask yourself, did I do or did I say anything to get the approval of the person in front of me? Or did I say or do anything to avoid their disapproval. And, actually, if you'll be rigorously honest with yourself, we'll find out that you have to be really self aware. But you'll find out that many, many times in our interactions, we build ourselves up to be perceived by people a certain way. But on another level, if things like you're lying, you're lying a lot. You know, we're taught not to lie, you're lying because if you're denying feelings, that's lying. You're not being honest in every conversation, like a lot of times, I wouldn't speak up when I didn't disagree because I didn't want the other person to think I was disagreeable. I didn't want them to think less of me. So I wouldn't really be honest in a conversation. And so you know, we can lie through our denial, we can lie through our silence. I mean we lie through our bodies. I mean, Judas kissed Jesus, that was a lie and we hug people we don't want to hug. I mean, we lie like crazy. And lie forst to ourselves and then of course, if you're lying to yourself, you're absolutely lying to other people. But we think that even if we don't say it out loud, then God might not know it either but of course, you know, that's ridiculous. So um, yeah, If you're denying your feelings, that is you don't want to even admit them to yourself, nevermind somebody else, especially anger, sadness, the ones that sometimes we've heard for some reason from church, that those off limits, those are bad feelings and we shouldn't really have those, which is not true. Blaming, over functioning, saying yes when you that's all women in particular, but everybody, does it lie like crazy. How many times do you say yes when you want to say no? We lie? So anyway, these are just yeah, these are just some of the symptoms.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, so it sounds like we really should be trying to grow to a place of, of speaking the truth in love. And then just kind of allowing the Lord just to kind of work in the midst of that?

Geri Scazzero: Well, I think it begins with just speaking to yourself.I think most people are unaware themselves of what they are feeling. And so, again, if you're if you're not admitting things to yourself, or if you're pretending everything's fine, when it's not, then you're definitely not in a place of truth.

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, that makes sense. Now, of course, we are, you know, we've been in a pandemic for several months now. People have had to deal with social distancing and, and virtual learning and running out of toilet tissue. All of these crazy things in every other new normal that we've had to experience in light of all of that, how, how do people get to a place of emotionally healthy discipleship?

Geri Scazzero: Sure. Ah, I mean, emotionally healthy discipleship begins with self awareness. And so the question is, how do you get to self awareness? And it's things like, again, to what you're thinking and feeling and being honest about that? How do you know what you're feeling a lot of people don't know what they're feeling, and you have to pay attention to your body, bodies of your body is a very big messenger. How you're feeling you know, that, that crick in your neck that, that flutter in your stomach, that panic in your chest. And of course, all sorts of physical ailments have their connection to emotional health or lack of emotional health. So the in the pandemic, I mean, if you don't have self awareness to begin with, or silence and stillness in your life. Because I need I need silence and stillness in my life for various reasons. But one is, I need silence and stillness to listen to myself. What's going on inside of me? And then I need silence and stillness to listen to God. And so you have to be able to know what's going on inside of you to know how to calm you.

Twanna Henderson: Yes.

Geri Scazzero: To be or to know or what adjustments you need to make. When the pandemic hit, we became a pod. Our adult children came back home and some grandchildren, there was eight of us in the house for six months. That that required a lot of adjustments in terms of ..

Twanna Henderson: And lying

And lying.

Geri Scazzero: No, no, but you can't believe how grateful we were for skills because it also takes very practical skills to grow in emotionally healthy discipleship. That is, how do I speak truth? How do I disrupt false peace for true peace? How do I do clean fighting? Not dirty fighting? How do I process difficult emotions? How do I how do I not make assumptions? How do I clarify expectations? And we used all of those skills. And then, you know, in the midst of living with these eight people, so it took a took adjustment to say, okay, I need some silence and stillness to figure out how to be in touch with my own fear, my own anxiety. So I am not projecting it out. What are adjustments I need to make? Etc, etc? And then what skills do we need to be communicating amongst our community of eight?

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, yeah. So is there a difference between emotionally healthy discipleship for a woman than it is for a man?

Geri Scazzero: My, my research, generally speaking, I mean, yes, and no, I mean, it's only because of the way the culture and women are kind of shaped and formed in the culture, it may be easier for them to access, generally speaking, and maybe easier for them to access their emotions. Um, and so in that sense, women may have an advantage, it may be good for them. But again, in the case of my husband and I, he was always it's always easier for him to access this emotions than it was for me. And that's just the way we were just have to do with our personalities, the way we were raised, etc.

But it's, it's takes great courage. Male or female, to, to go through transformation? But I believe that's what the church is there for.

Twanna Henderson: Well, you know, as we are approaching Thanksgiving, our rituals have been interrupted and disrupted and, and many people are grieving rituals, as well as grieving loved ones. What are some things that people can do? In light of these new norms, to get to a place of emotionally healthy discipleship, in light of what we're grieving now?

Geri Scazzero: First of all, they have to feel their sadness. Because otherwise it's going to come out of anger. A lot of times, sadness and disappointment and grief, right? The stages of grief. The first one is anger. When we're feeling angry, I would just be in touch and ask yourself, what's underneath that? You know, what am I sad about? What am I afraid of? What am I disappointed about? Um, and allow yourself to feel it because that's you can't change what you're not aware of.

And you can't heal, what you don't feel?

Twanna Henderson: Absolutely.

Geri Scazzero: So. Um, and then I think there's a piece of surrender in this. There's a surrender to God, in the sense that I can't control what's going on right now. I mean, I can do I want to do my I, yes, I can change the things that I can change, right. Lord, give me the wisdom to change what I can change, I can wear a mask, I can do social distancing. I can wash my hands, I can be careful not to gather or put other people in serious harm. If they have vulnerabilities. It's going to be big choices for people not to even travel. I mean, that's part of the the mission, but um, I have control over I can do my part and contribute to this thing ending sooner rather than prolonging it, and that's a beautiful thing. I can contribute either way. And then, so I just want to really applaud people who can really get embrace that their contribution to making this thing end and not prolong it. And so then I can move on to say, well, what are some creative ways that we can calibrate the holidays this year? You know, unpredictable things like this, are pathways to lots of creativity. And so, and I'd also ask the question, "God, how are you coming to me through all this? How are you coming to me through all this?"

Twanna Henderson: Yeah, I love how you say making a contribution. Because I don't think we always look at it in that way and so we do have the opportunity to, to make a contribution to moving this thing alone in a positive way. You know, a lot of our listeners are women leaders, and who are trying to help other women, you know, in this journey of becoming emotionally healthy and emotionally healthy discipleship and, and just trying to lead them and coach them. What would you say to those women who are just really kind of frontline people, but are really trying to help other women in this journey?

Geri Scazzero: Well, of course, the most important thing is that they themselves are growing in self awareness and emotionally healthy discipleship. Right, I can only lead others to the extent that I myself have grown in these areas. And so I would highly recommend, I mean, it's on our website. You know, of course, these are questions that are come to us all through the year. So my husband, Pete and I, we've really sought to say, Okay, how can we give this away to the world, in a very practical way. And so we created a course that has two parts two eight week courses. The first eight weeks, really deal with your relationship with God, because we say emotionally healthy discipleship is actually the integration of emotional health and contemplative spirituality.

You need both for transformation, to grow into really a loving person. And so the first part of the course, goes through the lives of, you know, several biblical people, and really get zeroed in on us and God, the second half of the course, the next eight weeks, deal with our relationship with others. How do we love others well? You can go to church, and actually you can go to church for 40 years, and still be like a one year old Christian. Yeah, you can still be doing conflict, the way your family did conflict, you can still be doing, listening, or not listening, like your family. Because, again, listening is such an important skill in the kingdom of God because for most people, listening is synonymous with feeling loved. But I, my experience has been Christian, do a lot more talking than wlistening to others. So we teach skills, like how to listen, how to speak honestly, clearly timely, how to not mind read, how to clarify expectations, how to, you know, how to know your values, and speak from places of integrity, how to do clean fighting? What do I do with my anger, my fear, my sadness? How do I know what's going on beneath my iceberg? Because we found out that people, these are experiential. That's that second option. Both courses are experiential, you have to do them. So anyway, if you go to our website, emotionallyhealthy.org. All you wonderful women leaders out there, you can look at the course and you can get trained and then bring the courses to your folks, your church, whatever, but the courses are changing people's lives.

Twanna Henderson: I absolutely agree with that and again, that website is emotionallyhealthy.org you definitely want to go to the website to get all the information that you can and to be able to get these courses so that you can train your teams, your leaders, because it would be so helpful for them to have this information and for you as well. Geri, you have been so enlightening on today and I wish we could just go on and on and on. I know that there are listeners who have all sorts of feelings right now, particularly in this season and as you said, anger or fear or sadness, a host of things. Can you take a moment and pray for them before we end?

Geri Scazzero: Sure, sure. And so Father, I pray for every listener on this, listening to this interview, and especially for those that are feeling like aware that they're having feelings about what they heard, and that I would just ask them, Lord, how are you? How is God coming to me through this? How is God coming to me through this, and I pray that your Holy Spirit would lead them to next steps, whether you're just clearly revealing to them, how you are coming, or you're leading them to steps to get a mentor or a coach, or even a therapist, to help them move through what they're feeling and experiencing, that they might be transformed into more Christ like love for the sake of the church. in Christ's name, amen.

Twanna Henderson: Amen. Thank you so much, Geri. It has been an honor to have you on T Time on today. To all of our listeners, I look forward to connecting with you the next time be blessed of the board.