We trace the link between emotional health and spiritual growth, and how loving your wounded parts turns pain into usable wisdom. Dean and HollyKem share stories, tools, and a simple framework for self-love that strengthens faith and marriage.
• healthy vs unhealthy religion and the cost of hiding pain
• seminary and street journeys that meet in purpose
• addiction recovery, family systems, and patterns
• loving others by learning to love yourself
• the “true self, wounded self, protector” model
• how belief forms under strong emotion and trauma
• making triggers smaller with attention and compassion
• practical steps for self-love and partner support
• trust as the bridge from belief to surrender
• resources: book, course, YouTube, live coaching
To follow HollyKem & Dr. Dean Sunseri head to iHaveAVoice.com to get the book, join Transform You, and watch 300+ free videos on their YouTube channel.
If you want to read host Sylvia Worsham’s free chapter of her bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, head on over to her webpage at www.sylviaworsham.com
To download a free chapter of host Sylvia Worsham’s bestselling book, In Faith, I Thrive: Finding Joy Through God’s Masterplan, visit her website at www.sylviaworsham.com
Transcript:
SPEAKER_00:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt, worry, and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, Sylvia Warsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, Sylvia Warsham.
SPEAKER_03:
Today are our famous couple, Dean and Holly Ken Sensori. And they’re um a couple that helps mold couples kind of does coaching sessions in their own podcast. And hopefully they’ll be on our podcast soon. And without further ado, guys, welcome to the show. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01:
Thank you so much, so yeah. It’s good to be here.
SPEAKER_03:
Yes, we’re excited. It’s incredible to see a new couple come on board and share their expertise with the rest of us that are struggling out there because there’s so many people who get these news nowadays. They don’t even work things out anymore. And and so I when I I got the public um click on me like, hey, here’s a couple that does this for a living and fun. How interesting.
SPEAKER_04:
And I know you had um you had a master link in theology. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_05:
Correct. Yes.
SPEAKER_03:
That is something I want to get. A master is really interested in talking to you today because and making the connection with you because it’s something that’s been in my heart for a while. I call myself a spiritual transformative coach, but for me, it’s it’s more about putting that first and understanding how to guide others towards that. And I remember having fun and saying, if you’re gonna guide others, you really should have the schooling for that. And so I started to get the promptings to hey, go back to school and get your masters in theology and kind of have a combo of psychology and theology because there’s always that intersection and that interconnection. People think, oh, the mind. I said, Well, yeah, the mind is important to understand, but it’s also the soul and the spirit. And because that’s all three of those aspects are what makes us one unique, right? So I’m really interested in getting in into your story of transformation, how you came to do what you do. Can you tell us a little bit more about your story of transformation?
SPEAKER_01:
Sure, sure. Well, you know, talking about theology, um, you know, I always believe that I’ve learned over the years, you can’t have psychological health without having spiritual health. But the opposite is true too, is that you can’t really have spiritual health unless you have psychological and emotional health. And so, uh, you know, way back when, when I was 16 years old, I went to uh Catholic All Boys High School in New Orleans, you know, we’re a real Catholic here. And I had a a pretty radical encounter with the Lord at a retreat. It was a high school retreat, and you know, from that point on, I I I knew that I wanted to serve him. And being Catholic, that’s kind of like pretty limited. Uh, priesthood is the the thing, you know. And so um you know, eventually went to the seminary and then uh you know saw sort of the the the best and the worst of of Catholicism being close in the seminary and and eventually never lost my calling, but but lost the desire for the priesthood. And it was at a time when there was a lot of a lot going on in my family. Uh my parents were really struggling in their marriage. Uh my dad’s drinking had got to a level where it was uh becoming a problem. And really, you know, it was interesting because I was struggling, but I I always had spiritual health as a top priority. But I I went on a journey to where I was really needed, knew I needed to do some psychological and emotional health work and got into a series of processes. My dad went to treatment, made a real brave decision to go to treatment in my early twenties, and you know, he’s been sober ever since, and it’s been you know 40 years ago, really. And so I’m just so thankful for that. But at that time, you know, back in those days, the treatment centers, you would stay for 30 days, and the family members would go the entire week on a third week called Family Week. And that was a real eye-opening experience for me. I mean, I I could see the patterns that I had developed that weren’t healthy, how uh I had been impacted by uh his alcoholism, uh the family system, and was really focused on coming out of that. And as I came out of that was the same time that I began to come out of the seminary. And it’s an interesting thing, you know, there’s two types of spiritual there’s healthy religion and there’s unhealthy religion. And there’s healthy religion, which actually helps you improve your connection with God. Unhealthy religion is using the rituals and the the um the religious system to escape being human. And so I had quite a combination of both of those. And really it was in that process that I was going through in in terms of recovering who I am and coming out of uh a lot of those things and having that purified, that it was during that time that I met Holly Kim. And Holly Kim had been on her same journey, uh coming from a very different place. I mean, she was coming from the streets, I was coming from the seminary, but we were both on the same journey. And what what I discovered was that um really it’s a tribute to her and also the decisions I made that our relationship has really been easy. You know, we’ve had we’ve had issues, but the issues have been from outside the relationship, it hasn’t been within. But I really can see now in hindsight, the reason was is that we both had been committed to doing our emotional, spiritual, and psychological work for a number of years before we met. And because of that, it really gave us a great foundation uh to have a marriage. And so, you know, we we’ve continued to grow, and that’s become our life work was to help others have the same.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. Yeah, yes. Well, that was a God thing. Um I um I come from a highly dysfunctional family. You know, I’m 64, and my parents were divorced when I was separated when I was six, divorced when I was eight. And um I was the only my sister and I were the only children in our school that we come from a Catholic background, obviously, in South Louisiana, that were had divorced parents. And even though it was a public school, it was like a little Catholic school, you know, because everybody was Catholic. So, you know, just and then my mother suffered from mental illness that didn’t really understand then, you know, like I do now. So through that process of um growing up and just trying to survive, I became I think I was born this way, but I was a I’m a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and I’ve been sober for 42 years.
SPEAKER_03:
That’s incredible.
SPEAKER_02:
Congratulations to you, because that is a feat to recognize that. Thank you. Um, yes, and that’s continuous sobriety. So, you know, it’s you know, January 10th, 1983. I’ve been working really hard, and um in that process, as a little girl, I always loved Jesus. You know, I’ve been a Jesus freak since I was a little girl. I didn’t have a lot of role models, and Jesus was just I just learned that he for me, he was a sweet Jesus, and um, that he loved and he forgave, and I felt like he would understand. Scared of God, totally scared of God, but um I thought there might be some mercy there somewhere, you know. And um, even as a drug addict, I would pray to Jesus to help me. Like I knew I had a problem, I chewed dope with Jesus, you know, I was a Jesus freak. And um, which kind of doesn’t go together, people are like, you did what? And I was like, Yeah, but I believe that’s why I got sober at 22 years old. Uh, I was also a convicted felon by the time I got sober and uh was looking at 10 years in the penitentiary, that uh, you know, if I got in any trouble, that I could go to prison for 10 years. So, in that process of making a decision to find a different way to live, and through uh I was sober two years when I left my first husband, and uh, you know, took a little while to get a divorce from there, but ended up divorced and just never looked back, just kept working on myself. And whatever they said to do, I would do, I would do double. Well, of course I’m an addict. Of course I do double, right? So if they said, you know, get on your knees and pray and ask for, you know, everybody that you resent it, ask God to give them everything you want, you know, I’d wake up on my knees. So I would just, you know, anybody I could think of every night, I would just keep saying it. So it’s just anything that, you know, I was in the 12 steps, anything, I would just do it, do it, do it. And um, and what I what I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not a very competitive person. Like I’m I’m very um celebratory, and I think that might be my culture. If you ever come to our culture, you know, in New Orleans, South Louisiana, we celebrate everything. So I’m very celebratory. Whereas like you know, I I see a beautiful woman, it’s like you’re so beautiful. Like, you know, I just really celebrate things. Um, and so I’m not competitive. However, when it came to my sobriety and it came to my life, I became extremely competitive. That the family system I came from was not going to win, that the drug addiction was not going to win, alcoholism was not going to win, that I was going to win. And whatever that took, I would do it. Whatever it was. And there was there was no ands, ifs and buts about it. Using was not an option, and being miserable was not an option. Like I didn’t have the playbook, but I was going to fight and compete, not with other people, but compete with that thing that was trying to kill me. That I that like I bought into all the lies that I wasn’t enough, that I wasn’t pretty, that I wasn’t kind, that I wasn’t smart, that I wasn’t um lovable, that I wasn’t anything. You know, I believed that I was nothing. So it was like that is what I was coming against. And, you know, it’s kind of like Lauren Daigle’s song, you know, What Do You Say I Am versus What Do I Hear I Am? The voices in my head. So it was like, that’s what I was doing. She wrote a song about what I was doing. I we wrote a book about what I was doing. So it’s like in that, just really fighting. So through the process, you know, I met Dean. And I met Dean, and I guess I should tell you, it’s tell a story about what I meant. It was kind of funny if you want a funny story. Um at the time I was in New Orleans, I moved to New Orleans working at a treatment center, uh, you know, one of the count the counselor for the treatment center for drug addiction alcoholism. And I got trained in that, and that’s what I did for 17 years. And so in that process, as friends around here, and we didn’t have cell phones then, right? So we all would meet at a coffee shop. And, you know, if we’re gonna do anything in the city where alcohol is everywhere, you do it as a group, right? So we meet at this coffee shop called PJ’s, and I and my roommate’s there, and he tells Dean, you need to come dancing with us because you’re just so serious. And so I see Dean, you know, and he’s really good looking, you know, and I’m like, Oh wow, I wonder who that guy is. So we all go, we all I ask my roommate, I’m like, who’s that? And he goes, Well, he’s in the seminary. Well, I’m dyslexic and ADD. I didn’t even know what that meant didn’t ask, and you know, whatever. So it’s about 20 of us, and we’re going, and he ha Dean happens to be walking next to me as we’re going to this place to go dance in the quarter. And um, I said, Well, I said, Oh, I said, uh, hi, Molly Cam, and you’re Dean, is that right? He says, Yeah. I said, Well, I heard you’re in the cemetery. How is it there? Because you know I say things wrong, but I didn’t know I said it wrong, okay, because I can’t, you know, my audio’s a little off. And he goes, Well, it’s kind of dead there. I said, Well, that’s that, you know, that’s not a good thing. So, you know, we all go dancing, right? And we’re dancing around. And then someone says to me, I mean, I’m not dancing with him, you know, everybody just kind of danced together and I look and somebody points a finger at him and says, That guy’s gonna be a Catholic priest. And I got so excited. I was like, This is fabulous. Because remember, I’m a Jesus freak, right? So we come back and we’re walking back, and so I run to catch up with him. And I’m like, I’m like, hey, I said, I hear you’re gonna be a Catholic priest. And he goes, Yeah. I said, I love Jesus. Okay, because remember, I’m a drug addict and I’m a Jesus freak, right? And I said, I is there any way that we could have coffee and talk about Jesus? And he’s like, sure. I said, people can’t handle me. Like, I, you know, like I love him. I love God. And so he was like, and at this point, I was probably uh almost five years sober. And so we would meet for coffee and we would talk about God and you know, just kind of our life and everything, and we became best friends. And then he was talking about leaving the seminary. I had a relationship that I had ended, and so we were grieving those things and just really soul searching to be the best we could be with God. And he fell in love with me. I was like not worthy of that because of my history, and I’m four years older than him, and you know, all of this stuff. And he just hung in there until, you know. I got her until until she, you know, just said yes, finally, right? Yes, until I said yes. And I, you know, I was like, I had to find out from God, is this real? Is this true? And in July, on July 26th, we’ll be married 34 years.
SPEAKER_03:
That’s awesome. Journeys are not linear. It doesn’t go from point A to point B. It goes from here to there to like you gotta have like like connect the dots, like when you were kids, and we have to connect the dots to make the to make the picture come alive. That’s kind of where we see our journeys is very different. And when God is in the mix, it’s when that’s world is in the mix, it will happen. I mean, he does use our choices, and sometimes we make a muck of things because we don’t hear him, and we don’t, especially when we don’t act on it. Yeah, that’s a muck of things because then it’s start all over again. He has to convince people all over again that’s problem and problem and you know, he’s constantly doing all that, and and people don’t realize how much he’s working behind the scenes, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:
Because they’re looking for that solution immediately.
SPEAKER_03:
Well, yes, because we we the the instant gratification world nowadays, like our kids are I want it now, and it’s all about me. Yeah, and and we find that that’s what’s been wrong for a long time. Yeah, the whole concept of oneness with God, I think, is missed entirely in our society. And it was the conversation I had prior to to y’all being on the podcast. The three interviews I’ve had, the you’ve been the third one, have all had a theme of being one with God. Yes, everything with different backgrounds, like completely different backgrounds, different language, same thing, same story.
SPEAKER_04:
Of I am God, we are one, and if you love me and you keep me up front and center, and you love others the way I love you, you guys will be okay. That’s right. Yeah, when you get out of that is when you’re not okay.
SPEAKER_03:
Exactly. And I know it sounds so simple, but in reality, that concept is very hard for people to understand. The oneness with God. Like, how do how do I let go of my control? Yeah, how do I need to control?
SPEAKER_01:
The other dimension of that, uh, Sylvia, is is to love God and to love others. But Jesus was real clear, he said, love others as you love yourself.
SPEAKER_05:
Right.
SPEAKER_01:
And, you know, that’s a lot of the work that we do is that we’re incapable of loving someone else if we haven’t loved ourselves in those same places. And what I mean by that, I mean if say that I lost a loved one and was never didn’t really grieve that loss and was carrying the pain of that loss inside of me. Well, that makes it me unable to love Holly Cam when she loses someone close to her. Because her grief reminded me of my grief, and so the way I keep my grief from coming to the surface is by shutting her down. And she feels unloved. But on the opposite of that, if if I’ve been able to be loved and embrace it and others, my community embrace me, and I’ve worked through that grief when Holly can lose someone that she loves, I’m able to walk her through that and to be there with her. And so what we we help individuals realize that that loving others and loving aspects of yourself that you seem to believe are unlovable, whether it’s through your behaviors or experiences or pain that you’ve had. No, we gotta learn to embrace that, not give it power, but embrace it. But as you do embrace that, then you’re able to embrace that in others. So that’s that’s really one of our our foundational ideas that we teach a lot, is that your your greatest uh your greatest pain or your greatest secret can be transformed into your greatest treasure. And so whatever our greatest pains are, when they get transformed by loving the people loving us in it by the love of God, it actually gets transformed into the very thing that we’re able to give to others, and it becomes a great treasure. And that’s what we say, okay, we can’t be ashamed of our lives, our experiences, of the things that we’re carrying. We need to bring it to light, we need to learn to love it, not agree with it, not empower it, learn to love it, and have it transformed so that it can become a great treasure to helping healing others.
SPEAKER_03:
You brought up an an amazing point. And we do want to ask the question, how do you love that part of yourself? Because people don’t they don’t even know where to start. Yeah. The concept of self-love. Can you guide us a little bit on that?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, we wrote a whole book on it, and we have an online course and we do this every day. Um, and it’s a great question. It’s that I remember for myself, you know, when I was sober about two years, I was in a halfway house, about a year and a half, I was in a halfway house, and because I was suicidal. And Jerry, I couldn’t sleep one night, and I got up and the lady that worked there, her name was Jerry, and she was like talking to me, you know, and she’s like, You uh she asked me if I loved myself, and I was like, that’s conceited. Like that was all I ever understood. And um, no, and she’s like, Well, I’ll love you until you can. And that right there changed my life, that statement and that truth. And I just wept and wept and wept because I’d never heard that. I never really heard anybody say they love me, but unless they wanted something from me, like my first husband. And I was still married to him at the time. So I didn’t, I’m not gonna say he didn’t love me, but it was, you know, it was conditional by this point in our life. And so, in that it was just like, you know, this is the journey, this is the real journey. And so for me, what God showed me was that there’s a part of me that who he made me to be, my true self, who I really am. And that got smothered by my wounded part of my life, that everything that I ever been wounded from from birth to today, there’s a part of me that’s like a like has a bucket full of rocks. And every time I’m not able to love that thing that just happened, maybe for myself or another person, I didn’t give it enough love. It’s it’s like a rock that, you know, maybe I gave it 10% love, so it’s still a rock that needs 90% of love. It kind of goes in that bucket, and so through my whole life, I had this bucket full of rocks that deserve and need more love. And then there’s another part of me that my true self doesn’t know how to handle that, right? So there’s another part of me that I create, and it’s called, we call it the protector part, and that part protects me from getting any more rocks. So if I’ve been wounded in a relationship and I’m divorced, that means my protector doesn’t want to get married again, right? So even though I may want to be married, that part says, nope, not doing that. And then, you know, it’s like I get hurt by friends, so it’s like I’m always guarded around friends, right? So it’s hard to get new friends, even though I’m lonely and I want a friend. So it’s like this part of me that wants to protect me from all of that. And so what God showed me was Holly come that okay, all three of those are you. It’s just like you have a liver, you have a kidney, and you have a heart. Okay, they’re all a part of you, but they’re all three different things that do different things. So it was like, how to put the emotional world and the spirit world, the soulful life, how do I put that so I can see it? And as a dyslexic, I see in pictures. So it’s like there’s a I put like there’s a part of me that thinks, sees, and feels like a wounded little girl. And then there’s another part of me that thinks, feels, and sees, like Beth Dutton on protect me from ever getting hurt again, okay? Now everybody has their own Beth. Sometimes it’s a June Cleaver, sometimes it’s a really nice person, sometimes it’s uh it’s uh uh avoidance person, sometimes it’s uh a CEO or Elon Musk, you know, like whatever it is. So it’s like mine looks like Beth Dutton, okay? So in that, it’s like, you know, they’re in front of me. And so I had to learn that I have to love the wounded part of me, the little orphan Shirley Temple, and I had to learn to love the Beth Dutton in me. That no matter how they thought, how they saw the world, and how they felt, that me as their adult person that God has put the word in, that I’ve worked so hard, that these parts of me deserve to be loved. Yes. So no matter how they see it, the goal here is not to give them the power where I’m speaking or I am reacting to the world out of those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. But instead of me being the person that has to fix all of that and make it go away where I never feel those rocks again and I never get triggered, and I never think like Beth Dutton, like that, you know, thing that, you know, like get those people away from me or let me run away. It’s like, no, I learn and teach, and Dean and I do. We teach how to love that wound, listen to it, love it, learn how to love that part of me that wants to flight or you know, um run away or avoid and love that, and then it gets really quiet, and then I can hear myself and I can get connected to God.
SPEAKER_05:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
That’s an awesome explanation.
SPEAKER_03:
Actually, brought me back that was giving me a vision as you were speaking. Back in 2020, I had the same as I was writing my first book, which was A Radical Obedience to God, it’d been prompting me for years, and I’ve been telling him no. And when 2020 did, he’s like, it’s time, trust me, you need to do it now. And then what I did, excuse me, because what happened was he was trying to teach me the concept of self-love. And I couldn’t understand the concept until I reflected back on the wounded parts of me, of my mind, of how my ego was playing a role in it. My ego not being because the ego is the self-image, but it was comprised of belief systems that had been formed long ago by trauma and by experiences, good, bad, ugly experiences, because we have good beliefs like we have bad beliefs about ourselves. And we don’t even realize what they are until you start asking the right questions, until you start reflecting and asking God to show you what are the answers to this. I had gotten to a point where my anxiety was hurting the marriage and it was hurting the parenting. My my children were were feeling my anxiety, and it was just it was bad all the way around. And I decided from one day to the next to end that anxiety, to start meditation, because that’s what God put in my heart to do. He said, You need to start meditating and creating new pathways, Sylvia. You’ve got to you have it within you. And in one of those meditations, it was a really interesting vision. He gave me the three different persons. So he gave me my baby self. I took out a picture of when I was a toddler, of the person it created me to be before all the trauma and all the junk came. And then I had a picture of me after my high school graduation, which is when I had gotten so bullied so extensively in high school that it had impacted my belief systems to a degree that it was now impacting my marriage. And so I had all these pictures and I made peace with them. No, and as you were talking, I was like, oh my goodness. He shared with me the same thing in a different way. Right. As I was meditating, I was coming to terms with loving those parts of me instead of being ashamed of them.
SPEAKER_05:
Yes.
SPEAKER_03:
Because I was ashamed of being weak, so weak that people bullied me. Yeah. And yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, what’s beautiful about that is you know, the original question you had was how do you love yourself? And you know, how do you love another person? If if my son is distressed about something, how do I love him? Is I see him and I pay attention to what he’s saying. I attend to what he’s saying. If Holly Kim’s distressed or upset, how do I love her? I need to see her and see what she’s going through, and I need to hear her with a caring ear and to understand. And as simple as that sounds, I mean that’s a lot of what we do in counseling and in coaching. Is that we’re we’re we’re seeing and we’re we’re hearing, we’re apprehending what’s going on. So it’s the same thing we do for ourselves. Like you were describing, I saw a part of me before it was untouched by the painful things of life. And I saw it and I recognized it, I reconnected. And I saw the uh the teenager who had been bullied and who had developed certain beliefs based on the injuries and the the trauma of the bullying. But I saw her and began to understand her, and just by having a picture, began to develop a relationship with that part of you. And as you do that, that’s that’s loving yourself. You’re seeing and you’re attending to. And when we do that, then it develops a self-compassion, just like it does when we do it with another. And it starts as in a healing process because you know the only thing that heals is love. Yes. And you know, we we learned this. We have a a good friend of ours who’s a pastor in Juarez, Mexico, Pastor Pancho Marguilla. And Pancho is awesome. He’s the most extraordinary man.
SPEAKER_02:
He’s a rock star for Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:
He began a prayer movement in Juarez. Juarez was the murder capital of the world. 5,000 people.
SPEAKER_03:
I come from South Texas. I come from the other border. So I’m very familiar with Clarence. And I both my parents are Mexican.
SPEAKER_01:
So you would love Pancho. You would love Pancho. But Pancho started a movement of praying for the Sicarios, adopting them, praying for the city of Juarez. He stood up in the hill. He said, Juarez, you’re no longer an orphan. You’ve been adopted by God. You’ve been adopted by me. And within in 19 months, the murder rate went down 70%. It was unprecedented. But it was interesting. We were interviewing Poncho and he said, Dean, you know, Dean in Holly County, you can’t change anything you don’t love. If you can’t learn to love it, then you can’t change. You can’t change a scicario until you learn to love them. You can’t change. And he said, We learned to love the city, and it started to change. And so that insight was so revolutionary, but it’s so simple. But I said, Well, that’s the same thing for our internal life. We can’t change anything about ourselves that we can’t learn to love. Doesn’t mean we agree with, just like you don’t agree with the Sicario does, but you learn to love it. And then it’s in that process that things begin to change. And so, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
It’s like loving the the part of you that was so hurt by the b bullies. You know? And by loving her, even though the best she could do was what she did, you know, it’s like not fight ’em or hide or believe something that they said. No, we’re not happy about it, but it’s what she did to survive. I mean, she had to do that.
SPEAKER_05:
I had to do that to survive.
SPEAKER_03:
I had to. And that’s right. When I wrote about it, it was interesting how God was showing me how the beliefs had been formed and how they were impacting my present moment.
SPEAKER_06:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
You know, so I mean that’s it. Like your relationship with God’s so real, I can tell you right now, because for me to get like for me to explain that to people, and in in the Christian world, we call it a strong, unhealthy stronghold, right? Which is an unhealthy belief system, right? So it’s like, but God showed you like this belief of whatever it is, is not who I say you are, and it is not you. And by you separating that and loving that part and like being kind, like this is what she had to do to survive. And I don’t want to live there anymore because I’m not in survival. I live in love, I live in, you know, who cares about me. Right. Right?
SPEAKER_03:
Because we’re identifying in Christ now. You feel we identified with the wound, yes, the wound itself. And once you separate that, it’s it’s now but people see people love because they need to control that. They know how to control that. That’s right. They know how to lose in the wound. That’s all they know.
SPEAKER_02:
And it’s so tough. Yeah, and a lot of us are taught in the church is that is that it the word is going to take it away. Okay. Is God is the word, Jesus is the word, okay? It became life, it became flesh, it’s real. However, if that was if that was solely true, okay, that if I just believe the word, that it’s gonna go away. If that was solely true, you know, I’m just from Louisiana, I’m gonna just pick on uh Pastor, you know, uh Jimmy Swaggard, okay. We know he knew the word, he knows the word, he teaches the word. More people have been saved all over the world, this huge ministry. However, he had a wound that for whatever reason he believed to sweep it under the rug. Okay, not because he’s a bad person, he had a wound, but by sweeping it under the rug and believing that it was just gonna go away, that he would be okay, but it didn’t. And then that wound needed a voice, that wound needed to be loved. I’m not saying by the world, by him and whoever was safe, but he just kept sweeping it away, okay? And through that process, he acted it out.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:
And was that it’s gonna come out, it’s gonna come out because we’re human.
SPEAKER_01:
We either talk it out or act it out.
SPEAKER_02:
We talk it out or act it out, and in a safe place. I’m not just saying, you know, you go to the pulpit and say whatever, whatever. I’m just saying that, you know, and then the devastation for himself and his family and the congregation and the world and people who turn away from God because of this man, and you know, that’s about them. But I’m just saying that yes, the word works. Like I had a creative miracle. I had a I had a liver that was failing or failed, and I needed, you know, God to heal it. And I got a creative miracle. I have a new liver. I got it in uh 412 of 05. Okay, have a perfect liver, no hepatitis, had hepatitis B since I was 17. I’m completely healed. Okay, I know a lot of people that have liver problems and need a new liver, but not everybody gets one. They might believe the word of God more than me. Okay, I only had learned that God healed like in the real world, like a creative miracle for two weeks when I got a liver. Okay. Some people have been believing that for 50, 60 years and they don’t get one. So it’s like I’m not saying it can’t happen. But what I am saying is that we have to love what is there. And if God gives us the creative miracle where he zips it and I never get triggered again and it’s gone, it’s like, and he zips my you know, protective system from that set situation and belief system, fantastic. But I still have to do my work in case I’m the one for 50 or 60 years that maybe, just maybe, I’m going away, working fine, did all my work, and I get triggered. I watch a movie, I get triggered, and then my protector, that belief system comes. Like, how do I love it after all of that time and still go back in and do this? It’s it’s like I always talk about the Vietnam vet, you know, a wife and him come to me and they’re very upset. She’s very, very upset because every night for the last 30 years, I have to get a flashlight with him and go look around the house to make sure there’s no gooks in the house before he can go to sleep. And I’m sick of it. What can you just fix this? I don’t want to do it anymore. And you know what my answer is? Not only are you gonna get a flashlight, you’re gonna get three and four of them, and you’re gonna say, before he says anything, honey, let’s go. Let’s go. It’s just a pattern of his behavior, it’s his mind. It’s his mind. It’s his mind. Guess what? You loving him in this sad situation that he lived in so much fear in the jungle that if you just be the head of it and say, just like we had a three-year-old, let’s go look for the monsters, let mama show you there’s no monsters, you would do it for a three-year-old, you wouldn’t even think twice about it. That one day he they’re gonna say, I don’t need to look anymore.
SPEAKER_01:
Right. You know, that this this is the stronger the beliefs are this the stronger the emotional impact of an experience is directly proportionate to how strong the beliefs will be internally.
SPEAKER_05:
Right.
SPEAKER_01:
So that’s why trauma is such a difficult thing because you have this huge emotional experience, but those belief systems that come with that trauma get impacted so much deeper because of the high emotional experience. That hur that happens both for the good and the bad. In the sense that a real celebratory experience that’s really exciting, the belief systems that get entrenched with that become entrenched deeper. A traumatic experience, it gets entrenched deeper. That’s why it needs to be you need to know what the beliefs are, like you were saying. But we you need to you need to validate and love the experience and and kind of break up the emotional entrenchment of it, because then that starts to break up the belief system.
SPEAKER_03:
What to be true in the writing of the book, and I agree with you, is that the feeling is central. The feeling kind of gives you the biggest clue, the mind. And that feeling is attached to this pattern of behavior that shows up, like your protector that you were talking about, Ali Kim. And it has the trigger is attached to it as well. There is there’s several things attached to it. The belief is attached to the feeling as well. When that feeling shows up, the the belief kicks intogether and it promotes the thoughts, and then the thoughts become the feeling. Once the feeling comes above, then we have this reaction to that feeling. And sometimes we form habits around those reactions. Yeah, and that’s what’s the pattern of behavior. The protector comes out, the controller, you know, the one that has to control their circumstances. I called her the security seeker. This came out and she wanted to control her circumstances after major trauma at the age of seven. And that’s how the book starts. The book starts with the trauma, and I share how the mind kind of the feeling is the big clue. And you can start to identify what those beliefs are when you sit in reflection and you ask God to show you because God will show you, He’ll say you gotta wait.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I had a I had a lady one time that just uh it opened my eyes to the power of healing that’s possible for everybody. And she had a schizophrenic father who tortured her, raped her, you know, just uh just horrendous, horrendous. And she was talking to me. We were waiting in line to go into a conference, and I was like, This this woman should be in and out of psychiatric hospitals on all kinds of psych meds, you know, unable to function given her history. But she’s just as normal as can be. So I said, Can I ask you a question? She said, Yes. I said, How are you doing so well given your history? She said, I can tell you exactly why. She said, I went out there, there was a a revival in Toronto, Canada. I lived in Detroit. She said I would go to that revival on Thursdays, Fridays, I’d stay there till Sunday. And God’s presence was so strong we just lay on the floor and soaked in his presence. So she said, When I was laying in his presence, he started bringing back to memory the experiences I had with my father and started almost pulling him out. And I said, Wow. And she said, But that’s not when I got better. I said, What she said, I continued to soak in those experiences. She said, then God started to show me the things that I said about myself and to herself to herself when those things happened. And when he started to remove those belief systems, then I started getting better. She said, in my twenties, I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, I couldn’t function, I was this and that, this and that. So, but after these experiences of having these the memories, but also the belief systems removed, reminded and removed while I was laying in God’s presence, was when I started getting better, and now I hold a job, I have lots of friendships, I’m no longer on any psych meds, I no longer see a psychiatrist, and was per uh healed at an unbelievable level. And I’ve never forgotten that because it’s not only the experiences, but like we’re identifying, it’s the belief systems connected to those experiences, right? And when they’re handled in a loving context, or spiritually, in her case with God, then that’s when full healing can occur.
SPEAKER_03:
Right. Absolutely. And I do believe that so wholeheartedly. I think that’s like a really good visual that I found during 2020 was of standing in the middle of a tornado and having certain belief systems being pulled out of me and visualizing that because I’m visual that you really can. Yeah, I gotta visualize this, and and it thumbs all the way to the sky where God is with his arms widespread open, receiving that from me. And I would visualize that because you see, what most people right there is beautiful. You saw that thing, yeah. And what I kind of guide people on is you gotta give this to God. You cannot do this alone. This is not alone sucks for starters, and alone takes forever to do. You know, God, the things that are impossible for him are so like impossible for us are so possible for him. He just can quiet the ocean just by saying quiet, and that’s it, and it’s done, you know. But you gotta give it to him. Yes, you gotta give it to him, you gotta give it to him, and you gotta release it because we’re holding on so tightly to those beliefs. Like it’s what does my husband say when they say the comfort zone versus like when you stretch outside of the comfort zone? He goes, I wouldn’t call it comfort zone, I would call it misery zone. It’s a miserable and that’s green, and he’s right, we’re still miserable, we’re still miserable, and we’re holding on because it’s all we know, it’s all it’s all we know, and and God is trying to show us here’s the better way, honey. Let me show you. Let me gotta let go first, you gotta trust. And the the trust part is I think where most people get stuck. They believe in them, but I always remind them, well, great, that’s great that you believe in them. Unit state believes in them too, right? Even exist if you know, and and even like even women exist if we didn’t believe, right? Yes. So we gotta go past the belief, we gotta go into the trust, and for trust, it you gotta let go. Yeah. And and so I I have had such a joyful time with both of you on the show because I think there’s been so much wisdom shared, particularly around the subject matter of self-love and healing our past wounds, because it is important. Uh, is your purpose here to stay, or do you find this as a seasonal purpose in life?
SPEAKER_02:
Oh no, this is this is our life, this is our lifestyle, and our goal is to teach this lifestyle. So, you know, it’s uh it’s been this way since we’ve been together, you know, for 35 years, and we’ve been teaching this this whole time. And uh I’ve been teaching it for 40 years, and he’s been teaching it, you know, as long as we’ve been together. So it’s you know, it’s our book, it’s our course, you know. We have wrote a book called The Roadmap to the Soul, which shows how to do this. It’s like a workbook, and that’s what we use in everything we do, and then and but we live this. And then now with the internet, like you know, we have an online course where we take you through, we do the videos, the online demand, and then we give you assignments to do, um, and then application, you know, and then we have online course, we have online coaching twice a week. So they come on and they ask questions and we teach and we coach them uh how to get this into them, where they’re in a they’re in a constant mindset of how to love themselves. And then it what happens by them doing that, they’re able to see it in others and go, okay, that’s not my husband’s true self that’s talking to me. You know, that’s not my child’s true self, that’s not my mother’s true self. And then they’re like, okay, I don’t need to react to this, yeah. And how to be kind internally to themselves, and then how to receive and how to live out of their true self, but always knowing that at any moment it could come up, you know, how to work out, and how not to feel like a failure, like, oh God, I didn’t do my work, but how to go in and love it, and so they could get back to what their renewed mind with the word of God says, and living that, but not be controlled by the other parts. So, yeah, this is this is a forever thing.
SPEAKER_03:
So, how how do we buy your book and and get on your online course? Where do we reach you at?
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, the easiest thing to do is to go to our website, i have a voice.com. And that’ll have our YouTube channel. You can purchase the book through that.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, I love it.
SPEAKER_01:
Uh we have uh transform you is our online coaching program. So I have a voice.com is the best way to connect with us.
SPEAKER_03:
That’s awesome. And I I’ll definitely be on your webpage purchasing your book because I do I love to support the people I have on the podcast because I’m supporting your light and sharing your light with the world, with my audience. And the more we do that with each other, the more we will spread as much love as we can. But like you said, love is really the solution, it’s it’s the only way, it’s the only thing that can um get rid of all the evil and the out there in the world. And I’ve thoroughly enjoyed having you guys on the show. Any last words before we sign off?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, I was gonna say we also have a YouTube channel called I Have a Voice. And if you put our last name in, Sarah, you get to it really quick. But it has over 300 videos from uh 30 seconds to an hour on all subjects, and it’s all free. So for somebody that, you know, maybe looking up about addiction or marriage or affairs or anything, we, you know, Dean always posts things that we do or teach, the grief process, anything so people can get that for free. Because not everybody can afford a course or go to counseling because when I was getting better, you know, it was like I didn’t even understand that I was worthy of that, right? I would go get my hair done and buy new shoes, but I didn’t understand that, okay, I can let that go and go spend your money here. But if you don’t know, you don’t know. So we wanted to make, you know, there’s some things that you pay for, but there are other things that are free. And then the podcast is also where we do the coaching live. And that’s called Transform You Live Coaching, but we do that so people could see you don’t have to be afraid of going to counseling or going to coaching, that it’s a great thing, and you get to learn how to love yourself. So, you know, and that I guess the last thing for me is that you’re worth it no matter what you’ve gone through, what’s happened to you, you are worth finding out and recovering your true self.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, and I and I would add to that, Sylvia. We you know, we bless you and your work. Uh we can tell just by talking with you that you have you’re committed to your spiritual growth, sharing it with others, wanting to help as many people as possible. So we ask the Lord’s blessing upon you and your ministry, and may it expand and reach all the people that he needs to reach through you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:
I appreciate that so much. It actually filled me with emotion as you were saying that. So I know the Holy Spirit is in the room. And I appreciate that very much. Because I actually asked him for a sign this morning. It was interesting. And he said, What do you want me to do with this podcast? Do you want me to continue this or not? Or what do I how do I continue to express my love for you? And so when he just said that, I kind of felt the confirmation from him like I’m on the right path. So I appreciate it very, very much. Dean and Holly Kim, thank you so much for joining us on Released Out Reveal Purpose. And for the listeners, remember Matthew 5.14. Be the light. Have a wonderful week.
SPEAKER_04:
Stay safe. Love y’all. Bye now.
SPEAKER_05:
Love you. Bye-bye.
SPEAKER_00:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Released Out Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes. We’ll win a chance to grand prize drawing to win a twenty-five thousand dollar private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.