Strong Like Water

1. True Strength is Expansive and Flexible

What if the truest strength is as expansive as the tide; the fierce & gentle elements dancing together as one?

Redefining strength. The book challenges the conventional idea of strength as solely toughness or "white-knuckling" through hardship. Instead, it proposes a more fluid, dynamic strength, like water, that can be both fierce and gentle. This strength is not about denying pain or vulnerability but embracing the full spectrum of human experience.

Beyond survival mode. Many people, especially trauma survivors, develop a rigid, situational strength necessary for survival. While honoring this protective capacity, the book invites readers to move towards a more integrated strength rooted in love, not fear. This allows for adaptability and resilience in navigating life's challenges.

Both/and approach. True strength isn't an either/or proposition between being tough or being soft. It's a both/and, a dance of tenacity and tenderness. This expansive view recognizes that vulnerability, receiving support, feeling emotions, and resting are not signs of weakness but integral components of genuine, sustainable strength.

2. Your Nervous System is a Sacred Map

Our bodies are inherently magnificent & embedded with natural, God-given strength & resilience.

Listen to your body. The nervous system is presented as a vital guide, a "sacred road map" revealing our moment-to-moment experience. Understanding its signals (sensations, intuitive movement, emotions) is crucial for healing and growth, especially for those who have learned to disconnect from their bodies due to past pain.

Window of Tolerance (WOT). Every person has a range of arousal where they can process experiences tolerably, known as the WOT.

• Inside WOT: Calm, connected, curious, creative.
• Outside WOT (Hyperarousal): Fight, flight, fawn (anxious, overwhelmed, angry).
• Outside WOT (Hypoarousal): Freeze, collapse, shutdown (numb, disconnected, exhausted).
  Learning to recognize these states helps us understand our reactions and work towards regulation.

Show over tell. The nervous system learns through lived experience, not just cognitive understanding. Healing involves creating new, positive embodied experiences that can overwrite old patterns of threat detection. This is why practices focusing on physical sensations and mindful awareness are emphasized.

3. Safety is the Essential Ingredient for Healing

Feeling safe is the treatment, and creating safety is the work.

Prerequisite for healing. Safety, particularly "felt safety" (a perceived sense of security), is non-negotiable for moving beyond survival mode. It's not just the absence of threat but the presence of connection and internal regulation. Without safety, the body remains in protective states, making rational thought, emotional regulation, and connection difficult.

Neuroception at work. Our body's neuroception system constantly scans for cues of safety or threat in the environment, ourselves, and others. For trauma survivors, this system can be hyper-tuned to danger, reacting to perceived threats even when none exist in the present.

Strengthening the vagal brake. The vagal brake, part of the vagus nerve, helps temper our stress response and keep us in our WOT. It's strengthened through experiences of attunement, regulation, and repair, both in childhood and adulthood. When underdeveloped due to chronic unsafety, the body struggles to regulate, leading to constant vigilance or collapse.

4. Situational Strength Comes at a High Cost

Though we can honor our need for situational strength, when we get stuck in this rigid thinking, we may miss the possibilities of wholeness.

Necessary for survival. Situational strength involves tapping into stress/trauma responses (fight, flight, freeze, fawn) to navigate immediate danger or overwhelming difficulty. It is a powerful, adaptive capacity that deserves honor for helping people survive impossible circumstances.

The long-term burden. However, relying solely on situational strength long-term, even when the external threat has passed, is unsustainable and costly. It keeps the body in a state of chronic activation or shutdown, leading to exhaustion, disconnection, and an inability to fully experience goodness or process past pain.

Missing out on life. Living from situational strength means seeing the world through a survival lens, often bypassing or ignoring positive experiences because the body is prioritizing threat detection. This prevents the integration of resilience and keeps individuals stuck in patterns of hypervigilance, overfunctioning, or emotional numbing.

5. Compassionate Resourcing Fuels Your Journey

Resourcing isn’t dessert; it’s the meal.

Nourishment for healing. Resourcing involves intentionally connecting to internal or external forms of support that communicate safety and nourishment to the body. These are not luxuries but essential components for building capacity and moving along the flow of strength.

Glimmers of goodness. Resources can be "glimmers" – small moments, sensations, or experiences that cue safety, calm, or regulation.

• Nature (sun on skin, smell of rain)
• Connection (a kind text, a supportive presence)
• Activities (walking, listening to music, a warm shower)
• Spiritual practices (prayer, Scripture, feeling God's presence)
  Intentionally noticing and savoring these glimmers helps build new neural pathways for safety.

Building capacity. Consistent resourcing, like training for a marathon, builds the body's capacity to tolerate discomfort and process difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed. It creates a "soft landing place" within, allowing for greater resilience and the ability to engage in deeper healing work.

6. Building Inner Trust Through Reparenting

Creating safety in your own body will help you see yourself as what you truly are: A MASTERPIECE.

Internalized safety. A key step in moving towards integrated strength is developing a sense of internalized safety – a "soft landing place" within oneself. This is particularly important for those with insecure attachment styles who may not have received consistent emotional attunement in childhood.

Reparenting yourself. This involves compassionately turning towards younger, wounded parts of the self and providing the care, validation, and attunement they needed but didn't receive. It's about listening to internal signals and responding to one's own needs with kindness.

ART framework. The book introduces the ART tool for building self-trust:

• Attune: Nonjudgmentally notice and validate your internal experience (sensations, emotions, felt sense).
• Respond: Mobilize energy to act on your own behalf based on what you've attuned to (e.g., take a break, set a boundary).
• Tend: Continue to keep an eye on your needs while also being available to others, building self-trust through consistent care.

7. Emotional Flexibility Allows You to Dance with Life

Our emotions are designed to peak & pass.

Emotions as information. Emotions are not inherently good or bad but provide vital information about our internal state and external circumstances. Learning to view them as energy ("e-motion") that needs to move through the body is key to emotional flexibility.

Riding the waves. Emotional flexibility is the ability to experience the full spectrum of emotions without getting stuck or overwhelmed. It's like learning to surf the waves of feeling, allowing them to peak and pass rather than being toppled by them or suppressing them.

Strategies for flexibility. Practices like titration (easing into difficult feelings in small doses) and pendulation (moving between a resource and a difficult feeling) help expand the window of tolerance. This allows for greater "emodiversity" – experiencing a balance of pleasant and uncomfortable emotions, which correlates with greater well-being.

8. Attachment Styles Shape How You Seek Safety

People have two needs: attachment and authenticity. When authenticity threatens attachment, attachment trumps authenticity.

Early templates. Attachment styles (secure, anxious, avoidant, disorganized) are formed based on early relationships with caregivers and create templates for how we relate to ourselves, others, and God. Insecure styles often develop as adaptive strategies when authenticity had to be sacrificed for connection or survival.

Impact on strength. Each style has different patterns of seeking safety and using situational strength:

• Avoidant: May suppress emotions, isolate, rely on logic to avoid feeling overwhelmed.
• Anxious: May use big emotions, fawning, or self-abandonment to prevent perceived abandonment.
• Disorganized: May feel terrifying double bind of wanting connection but fearing harm, leading to dysregulation or dissociation.

Moving towards secure. Understanding your attachment style is an invitation to compassionately address the underlying fears and needs. By experiencing consistent, attuned relationships (with others and oneself), it's possible to earn secure attachment, building a more flexible, integrated strength rooted in interdependence.

9. Moving Through Stress Cycles Completes Healing

When we have the support we need, our body intuitively knows what to do to heal.

Body's natural process. Our bodies are designed to metabolize stress and threat by completing a "stress cycle" (e.g., fighting, fleeing, or other discharge of energy). When this cycle is interrupted or incomplete, the energy gets stuck, potentially leading to trauma or chronic dysregulation.

Stuck energy. Unprocessed stress or trauma can manifest as physical symptoms (anxiety, irritation, chronic pain) or behavioral patterns (hypervigilance, emotional numbing). It's like a wound-up toy that can't unwind, keeping the body in a state of alert or collapse.

Completing the cycle. Healing involves intentionally helping the body move through these stuck cycles. This can be done through:

• Movement (shaking, walking, dancing)
• Sound (singing, humming)
• Mindful awareness of sensations
• Repatterning (consciously choosing a different physical response than the old survival pattern)
• Connecting to resources and safety cues during the process.

10. Integration Welcomes All Parts of You Home

My truest, most profound strength will never be found in denying the reality of my personhood or my story. Instead, the deepest strength has always, always been about welcoming them home.

Wholeness, not perfection. Integration is the process of bringing all parts of oneself – including past wounds, situational strengths, and vulnerabilities – into a cohesive, whole self. It's not about erasing the past but allowing it to be held within a framework of safety and love.

Returning to self. Even after significant healing, moments of fragmentation or falling back into old patterns can occur. Integration involves recognizing these moments and compassionately "returning" to one's core self, grounded in the WOT and connected to resources. This "return" is a vital part of the healing journey.

Living fully alive. Integrated strength is rooted in authenticity and presence. It allows individuals to live from their true, God-given self, embracing both fierceness and tenderness. This state is characterized by clarity, capability, openness, and a deep sense of being safely embodied and connected to others and God.

11. Connection is the Remedy for Aloneness

Suffering with someone while attuned to them is powerful; it conveys a sacred solidarity.

Wired for relationship. Humans are inherently designed for connection. A lack of attuned, supportive relationships, especially in childhood, is deeply traumatic and contributes to feelings of aloneness and the development of insecure attachment styles.

Compassionate with-ness. Healing often occurs in the context of safe relationships where others offer "compassionate with-ness" – being present, attuned, and resonating with another's suffering. This is distinct from merely witnessing pain; it implies a shared solidarity that communicates safety and belonging.

God's presence. The ultimate source of connection and safety is God, who is Emmanuel, "God with us." God's constant presence, love, and attunement offer a framework for secure attachment and provide the foundational resource needed to move through pain and towards wholeness.

12. Rest is Foundational for Deep Work

Deep work requires deep rest.

Essential for processing. Rest is not a luxury but a necessity for healing and integration. It allows the body and mind to process experiences, metabolize stress, and consolidate learning. Just as creation has rhythms of activity and rest (like the Sabbath), so too do humans need cycles of effort and recovery.

Setting down burdens. For those who have carried the heavy weight of trauma and survival for years, rest is an invitation to set down that burden. It's a conscious choice to move away from the constant labor of hypervigilance or disconnection and allow the body to recover.

Beyond productivity. In a culture that often values constant productivity, embracing rest as a vital part of strength can be countercultural. However, true resilience comes not from pushing until we break, but from honoring our limits, seeking replenishment, and trusting that rest enables deeper, more sustainable growth.

Last updated: May 4, 2025