157 - What If Our Pain Is Telling Us Something? (feat. Eric Minton)

This week we talk with writer, pastor, and therapist Eric Minton. He talks to us about his new book It's Not You, It's Everything: What Our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life. Why are we all so depressed and anxious? Are those things individual concerns or reflections of larger problems with our society? Eric gives us his thoughts from his years working in helping professions.

Things we mention in this episode/other resources:
- Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age by Bruce Rogers-Vaughn
- Bruce Rogers-Vaughn’s article: “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: Depression as Political Resistance”

Connect with Eric on his website, on Twitter, or on Instagram. Buy It's Not You, It's Everything: What Our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life.

Quotes:
- “What if…we’re constantly given individual responsibility for bearing the symptoms of an out-of-control society, and then blamed for not being better at doing it?” (tweet)
- “I’d like us to connect the pain to the actual experience we’re having as people on earth.” (tweet)
- “If we listen to our pain before turning it into a symptom or a disease or an individual failure, it will tell us something.” (tweet)
- “I think it’s more helpful if we can treat our pain respectfully and empathize with it for a minute, rather than immediately pathologizing it or internalizing it as a form of failure.” (tweet)
- “Sometimes the ways in which teenagers exhibit the symptoms that we hate to see as adults, I think they’re giving us really keen insight into what the problem is.” (tweet)
- “When all of us are parentified by a system that is destructively entitled to us…it’s difficult to survive.” (tweet)
- “When capitalism remains an unchecked feature of our lives, it becomes internalized to the point that we use a business framework for making decisions about everything.” (tweet)
- “What does it look like to practice Christianity, which is a radial form of collectivism and self-sacrifice, in a world that’s only interested in self-interest?” (tweet)

Connect with Robert on his website, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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Intro/Outro music for this episode is ‘Fall Down’ by Rivers & Robots.