chuckdegroat.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

An invitation to reclaim space within as you begin this work week - even as a form of protest. “Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.” Etty Hillesum open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

“How should one live? Live welcoming to all.” — Mechthild of Magdeburg (1207-1282)

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

A prayer to center on dysregulating days: Calm me, O Lord (inhale) as You stilled the storm (exhale) Still me, O Lord (inhale) keep me from harm (exhale) Let all the tumult (inhale) within me cease (exhale) Enfold me, Lord (inhale) in Your peace (exhale) (an ancient Celtic prayer)

submitted 26 days ago • 7 comments

"It takes courage to rest and play in a world where exhaustion is a status symbol." Brené Brown

submitted 31 days ago • 0 comments

It’s the way of the Cross. Not the way of conquest. How do we shift from what St. Paul calls the “brute strength” of a nervous system in fight mode to the kind of real strength that wholeheartedly lives a life of mercy and compassion? open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...

submitted 33 days ago • 0 comments

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. It would help you to have a personal insight into the secrets of the human soul. Otherwise everything remains a clever intellectual trick consisting of empty words leading to empty talk.” — Carl Jung

submitted 34 days ago • 0 comments

Let’s talk TS Elliot, nervous systems, and a journey of transformation for men: open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

Last week, I sat for two days in Chicago with five senior pastors of large churches in a beautiful space of vulnerability, self-exploration, storytelling, and more. Immensely encouraging. I know the stories of pain and harm but this was a space of hope - of character, curiosity and humility. 1/2

submitted 37 days ago • 1 comment

Maybe you, like me, need to be reminded again and again:

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

Grateful to be with pastors hungry and thirsty for health, wholeness, and flourishing in their lives and ministries in chilly Chicago over the next few days. Hoping to create some space for us to process whatever is alive within them! mministry.org

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

“Grace, for the Christian believer, is a transformation that depends in large part on knowing yourself as significant, as wanted.” ~Rowan Williams

submitted 41 days ago • 0 comments

There’s no better time to join with others who are not merely concerned with the epidemic of abuse within Christian spaces, but who offer hopeful pathways forward. Beginning tomorrow, you can join this free 5-day Virtual Summit hosted by Broken to Beloved. www.brokentobeloved.org/summit?ref=h...

submitted 42 days ago • 0 comments

“Regulating your nervous system is a subversive act in a late stage capitalist society whose very existence depends on individual and collective dysregulation.” @ryankuja

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

The tragedy of trauma is that we’re prone even to distrust kindness. We’ll self-protect and even sabotage the goodness offered. Even as God approached Adam and Eve in the garden, they hid.

submitted 49 days ago • 0 comments

A smiling face and a tie for my 1996 seminary photo hid debilitating panic attacks, deep shame, and denial that there was anything wrong. I am regularly grateful my inner work started then, not least because some around me had the courage to say something.

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

Join me and 15+ authors, therapists, pastors, spiritual directors, and more for 5 days of amazing discussion and gain practical tools for healing from spiritual abuse and the lingering trauma it leaves behind: www.brokentobeloved.org/aap?ref=http...

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

When our primal needs for feeling safe, seen, soothed, and secure are not well met, we’ll invariably live out these core questions in adulthood: How will I survive? Who will recognize me? How can I self-soothe? What will assure my security?

submitted 54 days ago • 0 comments

Yes, this is a thing. The danger of a performative humility in ministry. "Pride can even hide under the guise of humility, as when one boasts of their lowliness to gain admiration." -St. Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule, Part III, Chapter 16

submitted 59 days ago • 1 comment

Just be yourself! I hear it a lot, and it gets old. But there is an ancient invitation in it, echoed in a beautiful word which is my word for 2025 – INSCAPE. I’d love to invite you to become yourself in 2025. open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...

submitted 61 days ago • 1 comment

This December journal entry of Thomas Merton makes me wonder what kind of space he was in during Advent heading into Christmas, reflecting on humility. This was, is, and always will be…the way of Jesus.

submitted 70 days ago • 1 comment

Happy Winter Solstice, friends.

submitted 72 days ago • 0 comments

Here’s what I didn’t see in me and what so many of us miss - underneath our everyday ways of living and coping, underneath our regular rhythms, even underneath our spiritual practices, a driving force, what I call a "storm" … 1/2

submitted 80 days ago • 1 comment

“Many of those who are humiliated are not humble. Some react to humiliation with anger, others with patience, and others with freedom. The first are culpable, the next harmless, the last just.” — Bernard of Clairvaux

submitted 83 days ago • 0 comments

O Lord, remove from me this languid spirit this grim demeanor this petty lust for power and all this empty talk. —St Ephraim of Syria 4th c

submitted 83 days ago • 1 comment

Reframing deconstruction: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. And God will do the shattering.” —CS Lewis

submitted 84 days ago • 1 comment

Our ways of coping can be hurtful to ourselves and others, but seen through the lens of compassion, they are merely ways we’ve learned to survive. Ask: How has this way of coping helped me to survive? How can I cultivate the safety and connection I need so that I don’t have to cope in that way?

submitted 84 days ago • 1 comment

One of the ways people deal with not being wanted is being needed. Some of us become social workers, doctors, counselors, even pastors. And we work out in adulthood what was missed in childhood, often as emotional adolescents.

submitted 87 days ago • 2 comments

@chuckdegroat.bsky.social Thank you so much for this book! It was an incredible blessing to me and I have already been using it in my pastoral counseling. I also loved the chapter on addiction. I've never saw it with that perspective. Also appreciated your vulnerability of being a wounded healer.

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

I’ve seen a lot of Christian churches and institutions express interest in the idea of emotional health and trauma awareness. Fewer invest deeply in the relational and emotional work to live it. We want the kudos without the cost. Another face of fauxnerability.

submitted 88 days ago • 1 comment

It’s hard to be curious and compassionate with others when you’ve not extended curiosity and compassion to the wounded and weary parts of yourself.

submitted 88 days ago • 0 comments

Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? —Henri Nouwen #Advent

submitted 89 days ago • 0 comments

“O God, it is hard to take in or understand what those created in your image do to one another in these disjointed days.” -Etty Hillesum, d. 1943 at Auschwitz

submitted 90 days ago • 0 comments

"Many of us don’t know how lost we are. We’ve become habituated to a life of disconnection. We’ve developed a tragic case of amnesia, forgetting our original goodness." — @chuckdegroat.bsky.social (Healing What's Within)

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

HOW WE BEAR SORROW Etty Hillesum, d. 1943 at Auschwitz ”And you must be able to bear your sorrow; even if it seems to crush you, you will be able to stand up again, for human beings are so strong, and your sorrow must become an integral part of yourself; you mustn’t run away from it. 1/4

submitted 96 days ago • 2 comments

"How can I be a reconciler of others if I shut my ears to the unreconciled conflicts within myself?" —Martin Smith

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

To heal the trauma within, you’ve got to turn toward that lingering inner critic whose gaslighting voice won’t relent, and to those weary and wounded ones within who desperately need your care…and the care of the one whose Love sees us not as fundamentally broken but whole. #HealingWhatsWithin

submitted 98 days ago • 1 comment

I was the pastor/therapist, the self-aware one, the guy who knew his family story and Enneagram. But I still landed in a hospital in 2012, my system septic. I claimed self-awareness but couldn’t remain self-regulated. Anxiety lived in my body in ways it’s taken years to see. #HealingWhatsWithin

submitted 101 days ago • 2 comments

I grew up in a tradition which I was defined by my sin. It seemed from everything I heard that this was core to who I was. They called it “disorder.” When I ended up in therapy years later, I was also labeled with a disorder. But what if God sees us in our hidden wholeness?

submitted 103 days ago • 0 comments

Nothing better than connecting with a seminary classmate and a dear old friend to talk secondary trauma in clergy. Lots of love and gratitude for Bishop Justin Holcomb.

submitted 104 days ago • 0 comments

Oh, hey San Diego! Eager to speak to a cohort of clergy on secondary trauma today. Are you familiar with secondary trauma? The unique wounds helpers experience? Engaging self-regulation is the next big step beyond self-awareness for those who want to be wounded healers.

submitted 104 days ago • 2 comments

I know some get angsty when the word “trauma” is used so often, but it’s an old word that means “wound.” And it names our inner disconnection and divisions. Even Augustine said, “I am scattered… storms of incoherent events tear to pieces…the inmost entrails of my soul.”

submitted 105 days ago • 0 comments