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Pam King: I’m Dr. Pam King, and you’re listening to With & For, a podcast that explores the depths of psychological science and spiritual wisdom to offer practical guidance towards spiritual health, wholeness, and thriving on purpose.
Jill Westbrook: Hello, friends and listeners. I’m Jill Westbrook. I’m one of the With & For producers, and I’m introducing each episode in this current series from Pam King on the five A’s of agility for spiritual health. Now, before this episode, two things.
First, I want to make sure you’re aware that season two of With & Four is coming soon. We’ll be launching brand new episodes with amazing new guests. And leading up to that point, we’re excited to share shorter clips, practical features, and other talks and interviews from Pam. Thanks for being with us on our way to season two of the show.
And second, if you’ve been a faithful listener this year, would you head over to Apple Podcasts and rate and review the show? It’s a great way to help us reach new listeners. Thank you for not only listening, but supporting what we do.
So far, Pam has introduced and oriented us to the five A’s of agility for spiritual health. And we worked through the first step, attunement. If you haven’t heard haven’t seen those episodes yet, it might be a good idea to start with them.
In today’s episode, Pam King continues by expanding into awareness. More than simple or immediate observation, awareness asks us to reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we found in step one of attunement. What emotions are coming up for us? What thoughts keep coming into our consciousness?
This step of the practice helps us become more emotionally aware. The key with observing our thoughts and feelings is to just observe and not judge yourself. Emotions come and go, they provide information to us. Here’s Pam on step two of the five A’s of agility for spiritual health awareness. Thanks for listening.
Pam King: Last time, I told you about attunement, and today I want to talk about awareness. These two steps of the five A’s are very interlinked, but they’re importantly distinct. So as whereas attuning was being really attuned to how you feel, how different parts of your body feels and the sensations, the awareness section of the cycle is to become aware of the meaning of those sensations.
For example, if we’re feeling a pit in our stomach, that might signal us to become aware that something is off in our life. Whether that’s I’m hungry and it’s time to eat or that is there’s a decision I need to make. that’s lurking that I’m stressed about.
There’s a relationship that’s off in my life that I need to attend to. Awareness is when we start to attach our thoughts attuning. Everything from taking five minutes of silence to think through the body parts that stood out when we were attuning.
It can be actually taking time to journal and to reflect on the significance of the sensations one felt. Or to even reflect on the lack of sensations one felt. If one felt really numb, what might that say? If there was a lot less. strain or stress in your body. What is that suggesting? What do you become aware of through that reflection?
The activity of journaling can be especially powerful because it allows us to elaborate through a kinesthetic experience. So there are studies that show when we take time to write, when we use our body and move our hand, that it helps integrate and give more insight into the meaning of those experiences.
Furthermore, if we’re willing to elaborate and take the time to tell a story. about how those feelings came about or about what you’re becoming aware of. Narration and telling stories, whether it’s telling to another person or writing in your journal, also helps integrate our brain and helps us experience a fuller awareness of the meaning of these feelings.
So in the process of awareness, whether you’re journaling, sharing about this or thinking, is really important to have a posture of curiosity. A posture of welcoming these feelings. We’re often trained to suppress feelings, to get over it, pull it together move on, but the reality is you trip over rugs.
that you sweep a lot of stuff under. So this process of becoming aware is pulling that crap out from under the rugs. And I’ll tell you, I’m a professional rug sweeper under, and there’s been a lot of work in my own practices, life therapy, of sweeping out those rugs. So be curious, welcome the dust, welcome the muck, hold it, consider what it means and what it’s pointing you towards.
Avenues for pruning. Avenues for growth, avenues for loving yourself, and grace. Accept these emotions without judgment. They are real, they are true, and they’re valuable. Because it is our emotions that actually help direct us towards what matters. And this process of becoming aware is slowing down to help uncover the values that fuel our life.
Understand anger and sadness. As emotions that point us towards values that maybe are not being realized. Consider joy, delight, happiness as emotions that provide signposts towards things that matter and that we want more of in our
And I want to take a moment and I want us all to be real and lift up those rugs and look at the crap. under there. And I’m not talking about, oh, I was so excited and I didn’t want to tell people because I’m modest, the joyful emotions.
I want to talk about the yuck, like the anger, the resentment resistance sadness, anxiety, that stuff that we have learned to like professionally shove under the rug. What if we thought about those as signposts, as gifts, as offerings, is opportunities to shed light on things that matter and how our life is going?
Because if we don’t become aware of those things, if we don’t address them, we not only trip over the rug, but they will show up. Headaches, stomach aches, relationally. Like when you lose it with someone you don’t mean to because they’re tapping into stuff that you have shoved down.
So let’s think about anger. When you experience something that’s really upsetting to you, like really upsetting you, what is that saying to you? What’s being violated for you? How are you being wronged? Do you feel sabotaged? What does that say about what you value, what you hope for, and what you care about?
Can your anger be a signpost? towards these things that really matter.
Same thing with sadness or sorrow. What has been lost or marred? Perhaps there’s an obstacle that seems absolutely difficult to get around, or a loss that is so great, breath is almost hard. How do we hold these things and hold ourselves in the context of these challenges and difficulties?
And use them as signposts and also share them with others when we need to.
Becoming aware and addressing hard emotions is not easy work. It is a lot easier to shove them under the rug. But having to address things that are really making you anxious or angry or sad. It’s not always easy,
I hate to say it, but be prepared to feel those feelings. They’re real, and you can’t get around them without going through them. I often say it’s okay to linger with them, but don’t loiter and get stuck. But hold them, and hold yourself with loving arms. And sometimes you might need to find someone else to hold you and your feelings with you.
Whether a trusted friend, a pastor, a therapist, you’re not in this alone.
Jill Westbrook: Thanks for listening today. And we’re so glad you’re taking this journey with us. Next week, Pam will walk us through alignment, the practice of bringing our values and principles and beliefs to what we’re observing inside our minds.
Until then, you can find a wealth of practices and resources on our website, the thrive center. org. And if you haven’t already subscribed to within four to catch each of our weekly episodes this fall, don’t miss our next installment of the five days next week.
Pam King: With & For is a production of The Thrive Center at Fuller Theological Seminary. For more information, visit our website, thethrivecenter.org, where you’ll find all sorts of resources to support your pursuit of wholeness and a life of thriving on purpose. I am so grateful to the staff and fellows of the Thrive Center and our With & For podcast team.
Jill Westbrook is our Senior Director and Producer. Lauren Kim is our Operations Manager. Wren Jeurgensen is our Social Media Graphic Designer. Evan Rosa is our Consulting Producer. And special thanks to the team at Fuller Studio and the Fuller School of Psychology and Marriage and Family Therapy.
I’m your host, Dr. Pam King. Thank you for listening.
Pamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D.
Pamela Ebstyne King is the Executive Director of the Thrive Center and the Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science in the School of Psychology at Fuller Theological Seminary. Her life’s purpose is to help people thrive. To this end, her academic work focuses on psychological and theological perspectives of human thriving and social flourishing. Her psychological research focuses on spiritual and moral development; the role of transcendent beliefs, narratives, and emotions in virtue development; and environments that promote thriving for diverse people. TheThriveCenter.org translates research into resources that promote wholeness, thriving, and spiritual health, and she is the host of the With & For podcast.
Episode Summary
It’s not easy to reflect on our emotions without judging them or running away from them. It’s difficult to stay with challenging or frightening feelings and thoughts. But to cultivate awareness means taking an open, curious, and non-judgmental approach to observing our minds.
More than simple or immediate observation (like Attunement), awareness asks us to get curious and reflect on our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and the landscape of experience we discovered in step one of attunement. What emotions are coming up for us? What thoughts keep coming into our consciousness?
In this second step of the 5 A’s of Agility for Spiritual Health, Pam King explains how we can become more emotionally aware and open-minded about our psychological reality. The key to observing our thoughts and feelings is to simply look, and not judge yourself. Let the emotions come and go, and learn from they provide information to us.
ANNOUNCEMENT: With & For Season 2 launches on January 6, 2025!
Show Notes
- Jill Westbrook introduces the episode
- For the most enriching and helpful listening experience, make sure to start with the beginning of this series!
- More than immediate observation: we must reflect non-judgmentally
- Just observe, don’t judge yourself.
- Examining the meaning of our feelings, thoughts, and sensations
- Attach reflective thoughts to our embodied and psychological experience
- Journaling is a powerful exercise to connect kinetically with emotional realities.
- Narration and storytelling helps with processing non-judgmentally.
- Cultivating curiosity and open-mindedness
- “So be curious, welcome the dust, welcome the muck, hold it, consider what it means and what it's pointing you towards.”
- “Avenues for growth. Avenues for loving yourself.”
- Uncover the values that fuel our life.
- Understanding anger, sadness, disappointment, joy, delight—all as emotional signposts to meaning and purpose
- Emotions that direct us to what matters.
- Practical Example: Anger
- Practical Example: Sorrow or Sadness
- “Linger, but don’t loiter.”
- “You’re not in this alone.”
About the Thrive Center
- Learn more at thethrivecenter.org.
- Follow us on Instagram @thrivecenter
- Follow us on X @thrivecenter
- Follow us on LinkedIn @thethrivecenter
About Dr. Pam King
Dr. Pam King is Executive Director the Thrive Center and is Peter L. Benson Professor of Applied Developmental Science at Fuller School of Psychology & Marriage and Family Therapy. Follow her @drpamking.About With & For
- Host: Pam King
- Senior Director and Producer: Jill Westbrook
- Operations Manager: Lauren Kim
- Social Media Graphic Designer: Wren Juergensen
- Consulting Producer: Evan Rosa
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