Stephanie Gutierrez: Welcome to Modern Day Missionaries, where we help missionaries thrive on the field in their daily lives. We want to help you be well so you can serve well, spirit, soul, and body, and as missionaries ourselves, hey, we get you and we got you. I’m your host, Stephanie Gutierrez, and today’s episode is for the missionary whose relational and spiritual life feels well off.

So you’re doing all the right things in your relationship with God. You’re praying, you’re reading, you’re worshiping, you’re trying in your relationships with other people, you’re spending time together, investing in that relationship, and encouraging them. I don’t know, but your connections just feel disconnected. Maybe you’re emotionally numb, you’re just fatigued, you’re exhausted from crying to make these things work. Or maybe you’re just disconnected from your own soul. But what if this was not a failure of faith or effort or love, but it was just part of how your brain works under pressure? 

My guest today is Dr. Karl  Lehman. He’s a board-certified psychiatrist with over 30 years and 40,000 hours of clinical experience integrating medical science, mental health, and Christian spirituality. And he is also the creator of the Immanuel approach, which is a relational prayer model used around the world to help people actually experience the presence of Jesus and receive healing, especially in those hard, hidden places of their hearts. So today we’re exploring what neuroscience reveals about the missionary brain under stress and how those insights can help you reconnect with God and with others, even when you feel totally disconnected. So let’s jump into today’s episode with Dr. Karl  Lehman.

Hey, Dr. Karl, welcome to the podcast. It’s so good to have you.

Karl Lehman: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay, we’re gonna have a fun conversation today. I’m very excited about it. We’re talking about the intersection of brain and spirituality as both a psychiatrist and a passionate follower of Jesus–which I know you are from all of our conversations–who also happens to be married to the pastor of his church, Charlotte, who also has her doctorate.

What did you just say that somebody called the two of you, now that you’re both doctors?

Karl Lehman: Paradox, we’re a “par-a-dox”.

Stephanie Gutierrez: I love that. So you have these two sides, the brain, the mental side of things, and you’ve got the spiritual, and you fuse those in a way that I’ve never seen before. I mean, even to the point where you developed a groundbreaking research-based way for people to heal from trauma in Jesus’s presence. We will get to some of that. 

So let’s begin here. A lot of missionaries hit these points on their journeys, where they feel just really disconnected, whether it be from God, from their spouse, their kids, their teammates, or people back home. But there’s just this feeling of like dryness, numbness. And I’d love to just ask what is going on in the brain when we’re feeling that sense of disconnection, whether it’s a spiritual disconnection with God, or just any type of relational disconnection with those around us. 

Karl Lehman: So, as will happen many times, there’ll be more than one thing. There are several things that almost always happen. One is, you know how God designed us to be; we’re designed to be relational beings, to be in relationship with each other and with God. And God actually designed a part of our brains to provide the neurological hardware for relationships.

And I call them relational circuits as a term that Dr. Jim Wilder and I came up with, you know, different brain scientists call ’em different stuff, but the kinda the layman’s sort of the name is in the meaning is in the name. They’re relational circuits. They’re a part of your brain that has been designed to do the hardware for relationships.

Two different reasons. If you have a negative emotion that’s more intense than you have learned to cope with, to be able to stay relational, to keep your relational circuits online at the same time as experiencing a negative emotion, that’s a skill that you actually learn. Babies come out of the chute without being able to do that.

And one of the things you learn, hopefully in a healthy family, in a community during your childhood is you actually learn how to keep the relational circuits in your brain online and functioning while experiencing sadness or anger or fear or hopeless despair, or whatever the handful of core negative emotions are.

But initially, you cannot do both. And so, like a small child or infant, anytime they feel a negative emotion, their relational circuits go off,  and they kind of become little non-relational beings. Hopefully, we get that, get that skill through childhood, young adulthood, so that you can feel a negative emotion and still feel the presence of other people in the room. You can feel your spouse’s or your friends or the Lord’s heart. You’re aware of other people’s hearts, their presence, and the relational connection. You can feel it and be supported by it, even while you’re feeling a negative emotion. 

Now, that’s the theory. I have never met anybody yet who actually can do that well, with all the negative emotions, in our very broken world. Most people get to adulthood with holes, and also kind of in each one – is, it is not a yes or no question– it’s an intensity. How intense fear can you handle and still stay relational? How intense can anger get and you still stay relational? How intense can hopeless despair get and still stay relational? 

And so, one of the biggest causes of kind of feeling disconnected is that you’re feeling a negative emotion that’s more intense than the skill you’ve learned neurologically in your brain of being able to do both of them at the same time.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So, to clarify. With relational circuits, the idea is that I can maintain a connection to someone while experiencing these huge, heavy emotions, and that connection stays firm. Is that right?

Karl Lehman: That’s when it’s working as designed.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So, like, an example, let’s say we’re, you know, we’re talking about one of our missionaries and they’re with their spouse. So what would that look like?

Karl Lehman: One of the most common ones that people can do well is sadness. So you’re with your spouse and you have some loss, some grief, you’re feeling deep sadness…your mom dies, you’re, you lost your job. I mean something, you know things. We all have sadness. There is a hundred percent chance you’re gonna feel intense sadness during your life.

And when it works well, you can feel that sadness, you might even be crying, but you can still feel your spouse is here with you. And you can feel not just cognitively, oh, I know my spouse is on my side, I can feel Charlotte’s attunement. I can feel her presence. I can, it feels true that she’s with me and that she cares about me. I’m feeling sad, I’m crying, and I feel connected to Charlotte, and I can feel her support. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: These relational circuits are for all of our relationships, or just those most intimate relationships?

Karl Lehman: They’re there for all your relationships.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Ok, because I’m thinking of our single missionaries. So if they’re like with a teammate or friend.

Karl Lehman: Teammate, friend, sibling, pastor, counselor, coach, mentor, supervisor, supervisee, and God. The same relational circuits also, as far as I can tell, are in the middle of our ability to actually sense God’s connection and have an experiential connection with God. Not just a cognitive, here’s what I believe in my left hemisphere, but that experiential connection. I assess that our relational circuits are in the middle of that connection with God in the same way as, yeah, spouse, sibling, friend, mentor, pastor.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay. So let’s talk about when that looks bad. So you explained really well what that looks like when it’s…I don’t know if the word would be healthy or strong. 

Karl Lehman: Optimal, working as designed

Stephanie Gutierrez: So, what does it look when our relational circuits are offline with another person and then also with God, which is what we’re talking about?

Karl Lehman: Right. So two of the bigger fears and anger, you know, like the fight or flight reaction, is mostly an either-or, like you know, the fight or flight reaction has been, it is not about community. Your relationship is about climbing the tree fast before the bear eats you. So the anger or fear are the two biggest negative emotions for turning off your relational circuits.

So you’re really frightened about something, and you’re with your spouse, or you’re really angry, and it’s the most challenging when you’re angry at them. And so what that looks like is I don’t feel Charlotte’s true heart. I feel like she often, well, if you’re really honest, it feels a lot closer to her actually being an adversary than being on your team.

It’s not that we have a problem, and we’re on the same team together, and we have a difficult problem that they’re trying to work on. I might be stressed out about the problem, but I feel like I’m on the same team with Charlotte when my circuits are on. When my circuits are off, it feels like, well, actually, it feels like either she’s a resource, and like she has assets that I want to use to fix the problem, so I can stop feeling bad about it. It is just, she’s a resource, or she’s a problem that needs to be fixed or moved. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: So when our circuits are online, we are feeling connected with other people, our relationships feel supportive, whether it’s with another person or with God. What are some of the things that either keep our relational circuits from turning on or that turn them off?

Karl Lehman: You want to be relational. Your brain tries to tell you if, if left to its own devices, your brain’s gonna want to go into relational mode as well as your mind and your spirit. So that’s where you kind of want to live. And that’s where your brain kind of goes if it’s left to its own, if it’s not being disturbed in some way. So the big question is what turns them off? 

And like I said, one is a negative emotion that’s more intense than the neurological skill you developed. And then the other one is being triggered to an unresolved, painful memory. If you have a painful experience and you process it well, it’s not trauma; it just makes you wise and empathetic and strong and increases your capacity and your empathy and your wisdom. Now, if you do not process a painful experience successfully, then you have a trauma. 

And then Dr. Wilder and I, our assessment is the number one place. It breaks down. I mean, it’s, it’s more than we have time to discuss all the details, but there are several tasks you need to succeed at. And the number one place things fail is when you’re in a painful experience, you lose it, your relational circuits. So you no longer can feel your community or your friends and family or God with you. You feel isolated in the painful experience. And to make a long story short, that’s one of the most common ingredients in trauma, and that’s the most common place the processing breaks down. That’s kind of the most common cause of, or it’s the first piece of sort of trauma unfolding for your relational circuits to go off and to feel isolated in the pain as opposed to, this is bad, but I feel I’m in community and I can feel the presence of God.

Almost all trauma includes your relational circuits going off, and that’s actually a part of what’s carried in the memory for that trauma. So, guess what happens when that trauma gets triggered and loaded back into your active like computer ram. When that memory gets triggered and loaded back into your mind, the content of that memory comes forward and feels true right now in your current experience. So almost always, if an old trauma gets stirred up and activated and comes forward, it’s gonna turn your relational circuits off.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Yeah. Okay. So each time we have that trigger experience flashing us back, we usually feel that we haven’t processed, well, you said we’re feeling kind of isolated, so we’re wanting to withdraw from people, withdraw from God. Is that how that plays out?

Karl Lehman: You’re not gonna think about withdrawing. It is just that in a matter of seconds, as your circuits turn off, you don’t even feel that relationships are important. You don’t feel like you want to… Charlottee and I joke about there being two versions of each of us. There’s a relational mode, Karl, and there’s a non-relational mode, Karl. Like, when my circuits are off, I’m really a different person in a very profound way than when my relational circuits are on. When they’re on, when your circuits are on, you want a relationship. You can feel the desire for a relationship. And any person who’s with you, with whom you feel connected, feels like a resource that you feel joy in being connected to. That feels like a community that you want to be a part of, and you can perceive their true heart, a nd you feel compassion for them. When your circuits are off, just the way your brain spontaneously works, there’s no choice in the belt. It’s just the way it’s wired. If your circuits are off, you do not feel desire for connection. You don’t feel connected, and you don’t even feel the desire for it. 

I did this lab myself. I mean, I started my healing journey, to my profound sobering, humbling, horrifying discovery that I was subtly triggered and my relational circuit kind of dimmed, almost off or off most of the time. And I had learned to be obedient. My left hemisphere was very strong. I was very productive. I tried to choose to obey all the things that the Bible teaches. I would choose to try to be a life-giving person. I would choose to not be malicious. You can be honest with your relational circuits off. You can work hard. You can keep most of the 10 commandments just by choice, with your relational circuits off. But you don’t feel connected. You don’t feel joy. You don’t feel community. You don’t feel a desire for community. The circuits that do empathy, like the spontaneous, compassionate empathy thing, those are your relational circuits. When you’re off, you can know you’re supposed to do it, but it just doesn’t flow. And you can try to make yourself do what you’re supposed to. I know I’m supposed to be empathetic to my wife in this situation, because my marriage counselor told me, this a part of the story where I should be offering empathy.

And you can kind of try to simulate it just behaviorally, but it’s not real empathy, because your relational circuits are the core of the engine that does empathy. And without them, you can kind of fake it, even good-hearted. But any person on the receiving end is like…In fact, Charlotte and I have had this conversation: “Sweetheart, I can tell you’re trying to empathize with me. I appreciate the effort. I mean, I appreciate that you’re trying to do the right thing, but your relational circuits aren’t on,” and it’s like, “Why don’t we take a break and fix that, and then I will really appreciate real empathy.”

Stephanie Gutierrez: So if we think about this in kind of a reverse engineering way, then, if I find myself on the field in this dry, burned-out type place, a question I might want to ask myself is, are my relational circuits off? Where’s this coming from?

Karl Lehman: That is, if you consulted me, if you paid for a consultation about, “Hey, Dr. Karl I feel dry, I feel, I feel numb, I feel disconnected, I feel a lack of joy, I’m just, all those things.” The number one thing I would do, the first thing I would do, would be to talk about relational circuits. I would explain them and say, “Okay, let’s go through in the Outsmarting Yourself book. There’s a whole checklist, there’s a list of questions, a very practical checklist, like, do I feel like I want to be connected? Do I feel connected? Am I able to offer empathy? Can I see a person or my spouse’s true heart? Do I feel compassion for them? Do I feel like they are an ally that I want to work with, or are they a resource or problem to be fixed?” There’s a whole list of questions that are pretty straightforward, and the book includes a whole page of examples of this is exactly what this would look like in the actual world, as an example for each of them.

And to learn about relational circuits and then be able to learn to recognize when they’re on or when they’re off, that’s the first thing I would talk about. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay, so this is good. Not only is this good for our human relationships, and for our relationships with the Lord. I’m just thinking, “What if that’s me? What if I find myself in that place and I’m like, all right, I guess my relational circuits are off. Where do I go from here, with God, and now what?” 

Karl Lehman: A hundred percent chance every single person, right now, Stephanie, and every person listening will sometimes have their relational circuits off. I have not met a single person that I’ve been with for a day, where they’re not at least a little in places where someone cuts them off in traffic, or they drop a phone call that’s important, or they step in dog poop and track it onto their carpet. I mean, like, there are a thousand things that will turn a person’s relational circuits off for a little bit in a mild way. Not a single person in the world gets through life, actually, not anybody gets through a week, let alone your whole life, without little bumps where you lose your relational circuits. Then, of course, much bigger things, they’ll turn them all the way off for hours or days. But I can promise everybody listening, occasionally, your circuits go off, at least for a little while, for various reasons. 

So, that question applies to every single person in the world now. So, back to the question. So what do I do? Well, yay. That’s a very important question, because the next thing I would talk about is, so what are relational circuits? How do you tell if they’re on or off? And then the next piece is, so when you notice they’re off, here’s the specific things you can do. Two parts of the plan. The first half of the plan is to get them back on track right now. 

One of the most important things you can do is know about them and recognize when they turn off. When you notice they turn off, then you can use specific tools to get them back on again. And that book has a whole chapter on each of the four main tools that I practice, I used in my own life I teach about. 

So one is deliberate gratitude. You can specifically you can choose to think about a positive memory, picture it in your head, like, you know, kinda close your eyes, imagine yourself there, “I am, you know, at my high school graduation with my best friend, or there I am on my wedding day with Charlotte. There I am when we were in the Grand Canyon having this, you know, beautiful, fun, nature experience together,” you picture it and then talk about the details until you can feel the memory, and especially focus, and the point is to focus on the things you’re grateful for. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: So it’s gratitude. It’s not just like I’m thankful for coffee. You are going into a memory and experiencing it.

Karl Lehman:  The I’m thankful for a cup of coffee, is like a little drop. And if you did 20 of those, and I mean if you, if you literally took 15 minutes and you did 20 or 30, I’m thankful for a cup of coffee. I’m thankful that it’s sunny today. I’m thankful that I can afford, afford to pay my rent. I’m thankful for… Those are common; that’s what most people are familiar with. Make your list of gratitude. If you’re in a Sunday morning church and they say, “What are we thankful for?” People will say little things like that, but mostly if your circuits are off, you’re a fairly unhappy camper. And just try and remind yourself that you have a cup of coffee. It’ll be like, yeah, thanks. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Not enough. So, enter into a memory.

Karl Lehman: Yes, entering into a specific memory that actually happened to you neurologically. That’s especially powerful. It focuses on the details until you start to feel gratitude. Now there’s a verse about the sacrifice of praise. This, this will feel like a sacrifice because when your circuits are off, you don’t want to go to a positive memory. You can’t feel that it’s gonna help. Your internal response is, you know, “It’s a waste of time. That’s stupid. And why would I want to think about, try to find something positive about my wife anyway? She’s a poop head, and I want to whack her.” And when you do find them, for the first five minutes, you can’t feel it. It’s obedience, which the more you do it and prove it, it works, you’ll trust me more. But at first, it’s particularly hard because it’s a faith walk. It’s like when your circuits are really off, you don’t feel like you want to, you can’t feel that it’s gonna work. It is just like, it’s pure obedience. I’m gonna do this crazy brain thing. Dr. Karl said, “Close your eyes, enter the positive memory. Focus on the details until you can feel the memory…” and it helps. It’s especially effective if you can talk to another person about it…

Stephanie Gutierrez: Karl, that makes sense to me because I’m picturing…so, I got some really hard news a couple of days ago. And it threw me, and I felt a little bit like I was disassociating for a second. I’m sure my relational circuits were offline. My heart was racing, and I was like, what’s, what’s happening? And so I felt that disconnection that you about. And I remember just kind of sitting there for a little bit, kind of dazed, and I will say that the biggest way that I was able to pull myself back in was with another person. It was with my husband, Danny, and we actually did exactly what you’re talking about. We went back, I was thinking about the Israelites, where God was like, “Go back and remember what I did for you.” And back to faithfulness and together talked about those, felt those, and for me it was even more powerful doing it with him instead of by myself because we got to stir each other up and got to this place where I felt settled, peaceful, and probably back online. 

Karl Lehman: God designs our brains to work best in community. I mean, your brain is actually designed to work best in community in a whole bunch of ways that could be at a whole other hour. It’s fascinating and cool, and amazing and beautiful. One of the ways in which that’s true is when you share with another person any content like when you’re connecting with a positive memory, and you’re describing the details that you appreciate most as you describe it to another person, it actually pulls it through your brain in a way that helps you feel it more intensely and recognize its importance more powerfully is just the way your brain’s wired. 

So, what you just described then is one of first “Dr. Lehman’s Prescriptions” of how to get your relational circuits back on: think about a positive memory, with another person, and think about a series of memories, and focus on the pieces you’re grateful for until you feel gratitude. The way your brain is wired, it’s impossible to feel grateful and stay in non-relational mode at the same time you’re wired, so that if you do this specific positive memory until you feel gratitude. As you feel gratitude, that will bring your relational circuits back on again, as the way your brain’s wired.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So, what does that do with our relationship with God? How does that help us with Him again?

Karl Lehman: Turning your relationship circuits back on again is gonna help you connect with God just as centrally as it’s gonna help you connect with anybody else. When your circuits are off, you cannot feel the actual, tangible, personal presence of God when your circuits are off. Because that’s like that, that’s the hard work God gave us to actually be in the middle of that felt experience. So turning them back on will actually put your brain back into place where you once again can feel connected to God, which is a really big deal. And that’s actually the most important part. It’s nice to have this with your spouse and with your boss, and with your friends, and with your family. But the most important application for all this stuff is our relationship with the Lord.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So this is not just for moments of trauma or being re-triggered; this is in any moment of any type of stress where our relationships go offline. 

The way we can get back online with those around us and with God is by entering into these positive memories, stirring ourselves up, you know, like the Bible talks about. And getting to that point where we’re settled again, we can feel other people’s presence and God’s presence. 

What a great way, just for people to know when they’re feeling dry, when they’re feeling off, when something’s offline, to that positive memory. So you’re saying that’s the number one thing that people can do to establish reconnection with others in God.

Karl Lehman: That’s one of four. There’s actually one that’s even more powerful than that; that’s one of four. And there’s one that’s even better. So, I’ll do a little suspense here. I’m gonna give you that one third.

So, the gratitude thing and the worse you’re feeling, the harder it is at the front end it is to do that positive memory piece. So just giving people a heads up. After you’ve done it a few times and you’ve proven to yourself, “Oh my goodness, this works!” you’ll make yourself do it. The most difficult is when you’re first starting, and the worse you feel, the harder it is to do. That is the crash course on first intervention, positive memory, and appreciation. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: And like you’re not saying don’t feel your feelings, like go into toxic positivity. You’re not saying that. You’re just saying, with all those feelings, this is what you can do.

Karl Lehman: Yes, you acknowledge the feelings, you validate them. Yes. If you invalidate somebody’s negative emotions and try to justify them by hopping to gratitude without validating them first, it’ll just make them angry. Just try it. Well actually everybody has, everybody listening is gonna be thinking, “Yeah, I’ve tried that. It doesn’t turn out well.” Not with a child or not with your spouse, or not with anybody else you worked with. “I’m uncomfortable with your negative emotions. Can you please stop feeling them so I feel better? Just be happy.” They’ll say, “Come a little closer so I can punch you in the nose.”

Stephanie Gutierrez: I used to do that. That’s how I know it doesn’t work.

Karl Lehman: That’s a very good point. And it’s actually gonna come back in a little bit to amplify the third resource. 

So the second one is just calming. Anything that just physically calms the negative emotion. Remember, I said the first thing that turns your circuits off is just to feel a negative emotion more intensely than your neurological skill. So anything that just brings the intensity of the negative emotion down will make it easier and easier for your brain to get back into relational mode. So any technique you’ve learned, deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation. I mean, if you Google relaxation techniques, you’ll get 1,562,153 hits. So, there are really good resources about physically calming. The key is to find one that works well for you, as far as, “Okay, I’m really triggered. My circuits are off. I’m afraid I’m not gonna be constructive here. I’m gonna take a break and go walk around the block.” You know, like physical activity is as simple as that. Some people, if you’re not too upset, just walking around the block, taking some deep breaths, and getting active can do it. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: Would this be good to do before this positive memory piece? 

Karl Lehman: Actually, yes. And if you do this experiment, you can do it. Be upset or catch yourself being upset with your relational circuits off. And try to just go straight to the positive emotion, to the positive memory, and appreciation. Do that experiment. It’s very hard. It’s possible I’ve done it, but it’s very hard. Then try, “I’m upset. My relational circuits are off. First, I’m gonna decrease the intensity of negative emotion. Then I’m gonna do the positive memory and appreciation.” You can do that experiment in your own home, and I can promise you that it’s when you put the two together in that way, it works better.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Okay. Good. Now you’ve been teasing us with this giant third…

Karl Lehman: Yes. So, the third one, the circuitry that God designed for the most powerful way to bring your relational circuits back on again, is to receive attunement, is to have community. Have another person or the Lord, who…you actually kinda get words for what’s upsetting you. You kind of focus it, get words for it. “I’m really, really angry because my best friend just betrayed me in the business, took my bonus, and took credit for my project.” Or, “I’m really, really frightened because I just lost my job and I’m afraid we’re gonna lose a house.” But get words for this is why I’m really upset, and articulate it clearly enough so you can kind of, it makes sense, and you can really feel it intensely. And have somebody hear that you feel…they hear it, they’re with you in it, and they’re glad to be with you, and you can feel their relational caring presence with you in your place of struggle and pain. They offer attunement, and you receive it, and that’s the circuitry that’s the most powerful. In fact, if you have community, as you get better and better at that one, you’ll actually use all the other resources.

 I almost never use any of the other ones because a part of the Immanuel approach is you learn how to be able, able to have a connection with the Lord and the best possible scenario, the best possible final outcome, is that you learn how to be able to perceive and connect with the Lord even when you’re feeling bad. And even when you can’t feel him yet, you can still perceive his presence, and you can learn to say, “Oh, I’m really upset. My relational circuits are off.” You figure out what’s going on. You tell that you get words for it. And then say all that directly to Jesus. And even as you’re doing it, you’ll be able to feel the truth that he’s getting it. He’s listening to you. He correctly understands it. He has correctly perceived it and understood your heart.  Why am I upset? Get words for it. Say it directly to Jesus. Perceiving the truth that He’s with you and hearing it, and attuning to you, that will actually calm you down. It gets your relational circuits back on and calms you down more effectively than any of the other tools. 

And the cool thing about that is Jesus is always with you. He’s never triggered. Like your spouse might be triggered with you, your friend may not be present. I mean, how many times do you wake up at three in the morning and you’re all upset about something? And most people don’t want to get a call at three in the morning. There are lots of times when you’re the most upset and you need help the most, where your human community is hard to get to, or they’re struggling. They’re also struggling. You know, if you and your spouse are in the same crisis. They might be triggered and non-relational and needing help at the same time. You’re both drowning and holding onto each other as you go down feels a little bit better than being all by yourself, but not much. It’s not gonna get your circuits back on in the same way as somebody else whose circuits are still on, which they need to be to offer attunement.

You know, and the cool thing is this does work for the community. I mean, this is one of the huge things for parents. An ideal thing for a parent to be able to do is to understand attunement and be able to recognize when your kid’s on fire. Their negative emotion is bigger than their relational circuits. They’re upset, their low circuits are off. They’re in non-relational mode. They’re in a miserable, neurological brain, spiritual mind, heart place. And if you can help them, “Sweetheart, what’s the matter? Okay. What? You know, you tell me to help. Help what? Help me understand why you are so upset. You look so frightened. You look so frightened and upset. What’s the matter, sweetheart?” You help them get words for what the problem is and as as you then attune to them, you’re with them in their place of distress, they can feel that you get it, you’re listening, you’re actually even helping them get words and they can feel you’re with them, you understand them, you understand their pain in the problem as you’re able to offer attunement and they’re able to receive it. 

That is one of the biggest resources you can provide for a child as a parent. Same thing for a spouse. And you can see good parents do this, and even if they don’t know any of the brain science, they are good parents…and you can be third-world culture, a third-grade education in some first in in jungle in Africa, and if they had good emotional training, you’ll see good parents do this, knowing nothing about brain science. 

And you can watch it work. I mean, you see a parent find the child in distress, join them in that place, offer attunement, and you can see as a child receives that too, as they feel seen and hurt. I’m no longer hurt. I’m no longer alone. I’m understood by my parent. She understands why I’m upset, and she’s with me. Here, you can just see, ah, they feel connected again. They calm down, their stress goes down. I mean, it almost feels like magic when somebody really does it well, when, when a person is really able to offer attunement effectively in intensity, it feels like they have a superpower.

Stephanie Gutierrez: It is like an Alka-Seltzer for the soul. You can see it most profoundly with kids, but you can feel it as adults. I love this particular point because in each one of these points we’ve been talking about things that we can do to get back online and, you know, can reconnect with God and with others. This is something that I mean, all of them we can help other people with, but this one, so evidently, we can not only seek this out, but we can be this for others. 

I know you know so many people in the mission field, all people in the mission field, we’re working with other people, and we’re working with triggered, who are frazzled, who are, as you know say going offline all the time. And so by attuning to the people in our lives, we are doing the spiritual work of being with them, feeling with them, helping them come down into that place where they can get back online again with other people, with each other, or with the Lord. That’s the point. 

I was just with a girlfriend this morning. We regularly take walks, and we each had really big things to share with each other this morning. That was my experience. I mean, when I was sharing, just immersed in the story with me, and then she was sharing her big story, and I was right there with her. And I came home feeling like a million bucks. I mean, we were just almost like giddy by the time we said goodbye. And I mean, it was really heavy stuff that we had to share, but that experience of carrying it together, wow, is that powerful.

Karl Lehman: Yes. And you just described that so well, Stephanie. You can feel it. You just described, you really had suffered a big negative event. You were feeling terrible. I’m sure your circuits were off, and you could feel how profoundly positive, powerful it was for her to offer attunement. You don’t have to even call it attunement, but that’s what she did. She was with you in that place of suffering, and she understood your heart, and you could perceive that she correctly saw your heart, and she understood what you were saying, and she was with you there, and you could feel, “Oh my goodness. That was unbelievably helpful.” And you’re exactly right. 

Stephanie Gutierrez: About this, too, so this was the same event that had happened to me a couple of days ago. And so interestingly, you know, this isn’t always a one-and-done thing. So I’m thinking about that amazing experience I had with my husband and God the other day felt so good then was just feeling it a little bit again yesterday, a little bit again today.

And so, as with many types of healing, this is something that can be progressive as well. And so having multiple people in our life that we can share things with––not everybody has that––but if you do, having a couple of safe people who you can, you know, continuously have that experience with or with the same person over and over again. 

And, you started to hint at this a little bit, but for people who maybe are more isolated, lonely, and don’t have those type of resources, there is obviously the resource of looking for a counselor or looking for a mentor or looking for and there is, as you said, the 3:00 AM when you’re like, it’s me, myself, and nobody else. How can we receive attunement from God?

Karl Lehman: Yes. Which is, that’s the infinite, that’s the superpower. The infinite resource is that Jesus is always present. He’s never triggered; his circuits are always on. So it’s never like even, okay, I’m upset, and I’m with my spouse, but he’s just as upset. So we’re both on fire.

Well, Jesus is never on fire. He, he’s always with you. He’s always glad to be with you, and he is always able and happy to provide attunement. So like, the core of the Immanuel approach is, you know, a hundred different ways to learn the skill of being able to perceive the Lord’s presence and establish a connection that’s back and forth, interactive in all kinds of situations.

And when you get that in place and you remove a lot of the blockages so that it happens easier and faster, and you’re, you’re, and you’re able to do it when you’re in distress. No matter what’s going on, 3:00 AM or, you know, fill in the blanks of all the different, situations where there’s not, you do, you do not have community with you or not, or you don’t have a community that has the skill to offer attunement.

If you are able to get to this place in your Immanuel lifestyle, you can do this with Jesus, and you can receive his attunement. And it’s that, that’s the always present and always enough. And in fact, this is a story for me. I have a weird neurological thing, kind of some kind of chronic virus stuff that it’s kinda comes and goes, and occasionally I’ll have terrible neurological pain that it’s very unpredictable.

Sometimes it’ll last, for a few minutes or a few hours, and be mild, and occasionally it’ll fire up, and it’ll be terrible for weeks to the point where it’s, you know, if it’s bad enough…Thankfully, it has only happened in the last 15 years for a whole week.

That’s just unbearable. But even just for a few days, and it’s intense enough is I mostly can’t sleep. If you’ve ever done the experiment, if you’re in a lot of pain, you’ll be unable to sleep until your fatigue is so extreme that you basically just pass out. You’re so exhausted that you can fall asleep even though you’re still in horrible pain. But you wake back up again as soon as you get a little bit of rest, so you wake back up again, and you’re still exhausted.

You’re not mindbogglingly exhausted, but you can get a couple of hours a day when you’re so utterly exhausted you just pass out. But it’s horrible…if you do that for like three days, it just, it feels like..When this happened to me for three days, and it’s like the third night and I’ve had, a couple hours of sleep at night, and it’s three in the morning. And also at that point, I don’t know, is this gonna go on? This could go on for a week. I mean, it’s like, it’s an untreatable, kinda unpredictable… I mean, actually, as far as I can tell, I mean, there’s sometimes there’ll be… that neurological pain is fired up in certain places, kind of more mildly and stayed for months.

So there I was, three in the morning, and I’m thinking, what if this stays like this for six months, where I’m getting two hours of sleep at night? I can’t function. Like if I don’t take pain meds, I’ll be in so much pain, I won’t be able to function, and I’ll get two hours of sleep at night. If I take enough pain meds so I can sleep and not just be feel I’m in torture, I’ll be unable to function. I won’t be able to see my patients. I’ll be totally disabled and I could not…I can’t picture how I can survive. This just feels impossible. And I remember thinking, If this, if this stayed like this for six months, you know, every day the number one thing would just be like, not commit suicide today.

Stephanie Gutierrez: So, how did you experience God’s attunement in that type of moment?

Karl Lehman: Yeah. So I thought to myself, Hey, I wrote the book on this. I’m like, Hey, wait a minute. You know, like Jesus is here. Initially, when you’re in that place, you can’t feel ’em at the front end, but like when you get enough skill at this, the faith piece will be strong. You can apply the theory even when you can’t feel it at first.

So I know Jesus is right here. Lord, I welcome your presence. And I got words for like, what are all the things I’m panicking about? What feels hopeless? What feels terrifying? What feels unbearable, including the excruciating pain right now? I just started talking, you know, okay, I know he is here right in front of me.

And I just started talking to him directly, just sharing all the words I had, just got about what exactly is so hard and why is it so frightening? Why is it so hopeless? Why does it hurt so much? And as I did that, within 30 seconds, I could start to actually perceive a subtle image of his face. I could; it felt true that he was there with me listening. And then in 30 more seconds, I could feel his attunement. I could feel his presence with me. 

And here’s what’s crazy. In two minutes, where it felt like he was there with me, and he was understanding…I could feel his attunement as long as I was looking right at his face and just talking directly to him about the pain and the fear and the hopelessness. It was like I was okay. I mean, I kid you not, in 30 seconds, I could start to perceive his presence. In a minute, I could feel attunement. 

In three minutes, I’m like, this is really, really hard, but as long as I’m focusing on Jesus and talking to him, I’m okay. I felt like I was completely fine. I’m walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and I’m looking in the face of Jesus, and I’m okay. I mean, it sounds crazy and bizarre, but it’s like, it felt like I’m completely okay. And if I looked away and started thinking about other stuff for one minute, I was back in horrible land,

Stephanie Gutierrez: You were like Peter on the water, just staring into the face of Jesus. I mean, when I’ve read through the Immanuel approach…You’ve done this approach with thousands of people, and a lot of them have been missionaries––I mean, that’s what was so fun. That was, I think we, where we initially connected. You’ve seen this work for people on the mission field, those who are sent and those who are serving, which I think is just powerful. I want to make sure we don’t miss that fourth step though. I’m nervous we are going to miss it.

Karl Lehman: So calm the intensity of the emotion. Bring that down. The positive memory is easier. The best one is attunement. The more you master that one, you’ll find yourself not even needing the other two. But it’s nice to have a rich toolbox, especially for teaching folks.

Then the fourth one is just clean, nonsensical, sarcastic humor. It’s kind of just a little bit of icing on the cake. That’s not what I pull out of the bag if somebody is totally on fire in some huge trauma. But you’ll notice that is a circle of friends or if you’re on a team together…ifknow somebody well…you’re a partner, a colleague, or a circle of a team, you’ll learn that if you can develop the skill as a team, if you can kind of say, is there any way can we see any funny side to this? And if you can do that and laugh about it, it’s like in 15 seconds where you’re actually feeling humor and laughing, your circuits will be back on. 

So it’s a fun icing on the cake to sort of just be aware of. And it’s almost more entertainment. Because you’ll notice, like occasionally you and your husband will be in some tangle and you’ll remember some funny thing together, a nd all of a sudden you’re back on the same team again. Like you’ll, there’ll be some part of it that’s humorous or you’ll, you’ll do, you’ll kind of initiate with vulnerability about like, ah, this is so goofy.

I can’t believe I’m doing this. Then he’ll do this little smile, you know, a little smile. And you’ll both realize this is so ridiculous. And all of a sudden, you’re laughing together, and your circuits are back on, and you’re back on the same team.

Stephanie Gutierrez: It’s so true. The Gottmans talk about that quite a bit in their marriage research and it’s, and I love it. We do that actually quite a bit. And it’s funny, we have all these weird little things we say to each other, and I love it. 

There have been times with Danny, where I’ve been kind of looking for a compliment. I mean, sometimes you kind of do that, and you don’t get it, and you’re like, I put a lot of effort in, now I’m looking right now. So I’ll just like compliment myself, like in a non-sarcastic, not passive-aggressive way. I’ll just be like, Oh my gosh, Stephanie, you look so good right now. What did you do to your hair?

And I mean,  I’ll just do this whole thing, and then he’ll start laughing, and I’ll start laughing. He’ll be like, Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t even paying attention. I’m like, guy, like, awesome. You know, just, I mean, little things like that that you can do to bring levity to a situation.

Karl Lehman: And what’s cool is a couple, yes. And a couple, like Charlotte and I, we even have kind of, as a team, we’ve learned, kind of agreed upon little things where, you know, if someone makes a joke and instead of attuning to you, just like they say, just be happy because your negative emotions are making me uncomfortable.

But if as a couple, you can actually kind of agree on things. Hey, these are acceptable. Like, if we’re in that situation and you can help remember this, you know, we’ve learned little things that we’ve actually agreed on, and it’s like fun little extra resources that occasionally we pull out, and it’s just like, oh, that was sweet.

Scombining deliberate appreciation, receiving attunement, and humor. Actually, the biggest one is receiving attunement. If you comb first, appreciation is easier. The humor is gravy. And there’s a chapter on each of those. If you recognize that your circuits are off. So whatever the deal is, you’re triggered, you’re in some crisis or whatever.

You can dramatically reduce the damage for what happens in the next couple of hours by just recognizing I’m upset, my circuits are off, I’m gonna take a break and use some combination of those tools to get ’em back on again. Whatever mess you would’ve made. And you can do this experiment if you leave your circuits off and try to fix the situation.

If you keep pounding away at it with your partner or your colleague or your sibling or your spouse with your circuits off, f you have enough skill and you’ve read all the books, you can occasionally, eventually succeed. And it’s long and hard and painful and messy. Usually you end up making a worse mess that you both have to apologize for later. I

f you recognize, I’m upset, my circuits are off. Oh my gosh, sure enough. And, oh, I even know I’m triggered. Gimme a time-out. I want to get my circuits back on. And that’s like the thing. Husbands love your love, your wives as Christ loves the church. So it’s for husbands, like, one of the biggest ways you can love your wife is to recognize when your circuits are off. Take responsibility for, oh. I’m upset, my circuits are off. I’m gonna go get ’em back on and come back in again and be a life-giving husband. You take a break and get your circuits back on again, and the mess you would’ve made doesn’t get made. And you’ll be back on the same track, you’ll be amazed at how much better it is. Just, oh my goodness, short-term, huge benefit. My circuits are off. I’ve got tools to get it back on. Time out, go do that. So that’s the first half of the plan. 

The second half of the plan is by the time you’re an adult, most of the time when your circuits go off, triggering is at least a part of it. Some of you, may be arguing with me at the moment. Yeah, no, I don’t think so. So here’s my prediction. If you do this and you keep studying it, and you embrace an Immanuel lifestyle, every year that goes by, you’ll agree with me more. At first, you’ll think, mostly I’m just upset, I’m triggered once in a while. And in a couple years ago, well, actually I’m triggered, more often than I thought.

And every year that goes by, it’ll go 30, 40, 50, and eventually you’ll say, okay, Karl, you were right. When I’m upset enough to have my circuits off, 90% of the time, there’s at least some triggering going on. That would be my prediction. If you don’t believe me at first, if you actually embrace this as a lifestyle, every year that goes by, the number will go up, and eventually you’ll sheepishly come up to me at a conference, and you’ll say, Yep, I’m one of those people and I’m at 90%.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Karl, this has been so fun. You’ve taught us how to recognize when our relational circuits are off, how to get them back on, four things we can do to get them back on. You hinted at the Immanuel approach, which I just really encourage people to head to your website.

We’re gonna put all that in our notes so you can find that. If you’ve wondered what this Immanuel lifestyle is, this Immanuel approach is, you can learn about it.

Karl Lehman: I can summarize it in one minute. There’s one-minute version, a three-minute version. On the getting started page of the website. There are 10 different ways to introduce it. Here’s the one-minute version. So, you apply brain science and biblical principles to be able to actually perceive the presence of Jesus and have an interactive connection. And then you interact directly with Jesus as the therapist. You go into your traumatic memory, you connect with Jesus in that place, and you interact with Jesus as the therapist inside the traumatic memory to walk through it together and heal it.

Stephanie Gutierrez: That’s so powerful. And on your website, you have resources for people who actually do this approach, so people can experience it for themselves. You’ve told me amazing stories of people who’ve been trained in this, who then have used it on the mission field to bring freedom to the people around them. So, if you would like to experience this for yourself, or if you would like to be trained to give this to somebody else, head on over to the Immanuel approach, find out all about it. And I believe you’ll experience some real-life transformation.

So, Karl, I can’t thank you enough for joining us today. This was fascinating. As usual, I could have asked you about a hundred more questions. So yeah. We’ll keep talking and keep learning. And thank you again for being with us.

Karl Lehman: You are so welcome. Thank you for being a part of my desire to help everybody in the world be able to experience a living, tangible, interactive, personal friendship, presence of Jesus.

Stephanie Gutierrez: Wasn’t that so good? This conversation gave me so much insight into how my spiritual life and relational life intersect with my mind, and I hope it did for you, too. So here’s my big takeaway. Relational disconnection doesn’t mean we’re broken or we’re failing.

I think it just means our brain is trying to protect us and we’re living in the results of some things we’ve experienced in the past. But hey, since God made our brains, he can bring us back into that place of abiding where we feel connected to him, where we’re better able to hear his voice and where we can experience real love in our relationships with others. 

So you’re not alone in this. We’ve all been through it. As Dr. Karl was saying, we all go offline in our relationship circles, circuits, probably every week. So I think sometimes the first step is just noticing and naming what’s happening in our nervous system and then inviting Jesus into it.

So, I just want to encourage you to take a deep breath with me for a second. One of my favorite prayers is from John Eldridge, and he says, simply, I give everyone and everything to you, Jesus. I give everyone and everything to you, so let’s just do that together today, this week. And in the months and years ahead, I want to encourage you to explore more of Dr. Karl  Lehman’s work at www.immanuelapproach.com and at https://outsmartingyourself.org/. 

Both are places where you’re going to find all kinds of guides, tools, research, and help to walk out what we talked about today. Also, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with another missionary who you think might need to hear it. We are so glad you’re a part of this community, and we’ll see you soon.