Therapist and author Caroline Vogel explores the power of communal unbinding, the challenge of embracing grace, and practical paths to self-compassion.
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Caroline Vogel talks with us on Compass about what it means to experience grace, be “unbound” from expectations, and foster genuine connection in a distracted age. Through stories, psychology, and spirituality, Caroline explores the challenges of self-compassion, the healing power of community, and the vulnerability found in embracing God’s love.
Caroline Vogel is a trauma-informed therapist and writer of "As Yourself: The Sacred Work of Embodying Grace." She has over two decades of experience integrating mindfulness, faith, and psychology. She is passionate about helping people cultivate self-compassion, heal through community, and live more fully in God’s grace. Learn more at carolinevogel.com.
Episode Notes:
In this episode:
(00:00) Hustling for love?
(01:52) Grounding in the present
(05:06) What does it look like to live unbound?
(07:07) How does community help us unbind?
(10:11) What being forgiven looks like
(14:25) Vulnerable to God's love
(19:54) Signs of God's graceful presence
(23:24) Living as someone already loved
(26:59) Embodying grace in yourself
(32:08) Othering the inner critic
(35:41) Turning towards suffering
(40:58) How do you find community?
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This episode posted on April 15, 2026
Episode Transcript:
Ryan Dunn (00:00)
Do ever feel like you're hustling for love or a sense of belonging? On this episode of Compass, we're breaking down what it means to be truly unbound, free to experience grace, presence, and authentic connection.
Welcome back to Compass, Finding Spirituality in the Everyday. In this episode, we meet Caroline Vogel, therapist, author, longtime mindfulness practitioner, and author of As Yourself, The Sacred Work of Embodying Grace. Our conversation with Caroline touches the intersection of spirituality, psychology, and vulnerability, hitting on topics like the communal nature of healing or the challenges of accepting grace.
and wrestling with our inner critics and the ongoing invitation to turn towards suffering with compassion. So whether you're seeking tools for self-kindness or you're wondering how to break free from that hustle for love or you're simply longing for connection and the world is becoming increasingly lonely, this episode might just offer wisdom and encouragement for the journey. If conversations like this are helpful for your spiritual journey, we'd be incredibly grateful.
if you could take a break to leave us a rating and review. Your feedback not only helps us improve the show, but it also makes a huge difference in helping others like you find what they're looking for in Compass. All right, let's get on bound with Caroline Vogel on Compass.
Ryan Dunn (01:38)
Caroline, thanks for taking the time to join us here on the Compass podcast. How goes it with your soul today?
Caroline Vogel (01:45)
My soul is good as long as I'm staying in the present moment close to home.
Ryan Dunn (01:51)
Mmm. All right. So an invitation here then, because a lot of us have a hard time not being distracted out of the present moment. How do you kind of keep yourself grounded in the present moment in the day to day?
Caroline Vogel (02:08)
So I have been a long time practitioner of mindfulness and because I have historically had a very wandering mind. And I think that I think it's true to the saying is, know, if you're too far, if your mind wanders too far into the future, you're pretty anxious. If it wonders too far into the past, you're pretty depressed. And so I, I, at some point I really, it's actually when my kids were little.
Ryan Dunn (02:30)
Hmm. Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (02:36)
⁓ I was like, I really want to learn to stay in the present moment. Otherwise I feel like it's just going to all pass me by. and, so yeah, about 20 years ago, I started practicing mindfulness intentionally because I wanted to stay in the present moment. So I do little things throughout my day to try to bring me into, ⁓ the present moment, whether it's slowing my breathing down or just asking myself like,
Where am I right now? know, am I here or? Because I can be pretty spacey, ⁓ which my children would tell you to. ⁓ But I also am lucky in that I do work that I really love and my day job is not as a writer, it's a therapist. And ⁓ I really enjoy my work and it's actually quite easy for me to stay in the present moment if I'm listening to someone else.
Ryan Dunn (03:08)
Mmm.
⁓ Okay.
Yeah.
Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (03:32)
Left with
my own brain, I can go anywhere and everywhere. But yeah, but just a bit small practices like checking in with myself and slowing my breathing down ⁓ helped me to stay more connected to being right here.
Ryan Dunn (03:36)
Yeah.
Well, in our present moment, we've just entered into the Easter season. Easter Sunday was this previous weekend as we're recording this. And resurrection is one of the key ideas that you address in your writings, or at least in your most recent book as yourself. I'm sorry to kind of jump to the end of the book for the beginning of our conversation, but at the end, you offer this powerful image in Lazarus.
Caroline Vogel (04:14)
No, it's great. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (04:20)
being called out of the tomb and being unbound, not just by Jesus, but by being unbound by kind of this community. And that idea of being unbound is, is intriguing because it's not just about like the removal of the physical bindings, so to speak. There's something else happening there. And a lot of us can feel locked into like the expectations.
or the implied demands, and that's maybe what distracts our minds and takes us off into the future, or back into that nostalgic past. We can be bound by societal oppression. So I'd love for you to maybe expound the idea of unbound for us a little bit more. Like, what does it look like for a person today to be unbound?
Caroline Vogel (05:05)
Yeah.
I love this question, Ryan. Because I think that there's so many different ways that we are both bound and therefore can become unbound. And as a therapist by day, I work a lot with people and what binds them, ⁓ whether it be their cognition, whether it be a stress response that rolls around in their body, ⁓ whether it be thought patterns. ⁓
our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs about God, our beliefs about other people, the narratives that we write, regardless of how much fact is involved in the narrative that we're telling ourselves. ⁓ And so, you know, any number of these things alone or collectively have a way of binding us, right? Like just think about the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. ⁓
whether it's our history or our present moment, ⁓ can really play a profound effect about whether we know ourselves to be bound or whether we have a felt sense of being bound. ⁓ And so, yeah, and like you said, there's so many different ways in which society binds people with expectations, with laws.
⁓ with policy. ⁓ was really, when I was thinking about your questions last night, I really found myself thinking about that the most, right? Like there are things we have agency over and with, and there are things in which it takes far more than one human being to be able to unbind, ⁓ whether it's an individual or a group of people and just
Ryan Dunn (06:47)
Hmm.
Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (07:04)
you know, that can be a tricky place in terms of agency.
Ryan Dunn (07:08)
Can you tell us a little bit about the communal unbinding and what that looks like? Especially, I think we've heard about the epidemic of loneliness in this age. so, how do we see or how do you see the communal aspect of unbinding in action now?
Caroline Vogel (07:19)
Yeah.
Well, and again, I'm gonna, you know, as a trauma therapist, I'm gonna answer a lot of my questions, your questions coming from this perspective, because I think it speaks a lot to the world in which we live in right now. ⁓ And so when we do clinical work around trauma, we do it with the transparency, the recognition that trauma happens in relationship and we heal in relationship, right?
Ryan Dunn (07:38)
Sure. ⁓
Hmm. Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (07:59)
Because trauma is both
what happens to you, but it's also what does not happen for you. And so there's, social creatures, we really need each other in the healing process. And so, you know, being unbound is, I think we like in this very individualistic world and community, certainly here in the West.
that we really put this emphasis on, we're gonna pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and we're gonna, you know, do this and that and the other. And it's not to undermine anyone's agency, because we need that. And as social creatures, we have to respect the fact that we also need each other. And so I think there really is something to be said about, you know, Jesus could have ⁓ unbound
Ryan Dunn (08:35)
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Vogel (08:59)
Lazarus, the Holy Spirit could have unbound, you know, those wrappings. But there's something powerful, and I've been thinking about it for years, that Jesus said, no, he says to the community, unbind him and let him go, right? And that's really stuck with me. I'm an oldest child, you know, my spouse is like, you know, you're a lone wolf. He's kind of a lone wolf, too. We're like two lone wolves in the world.
Ryan Dunn (09:13)
Yeah.
Okay.
Caroline Vogel (09:28)
We just were having a conversation about that actually this weekend. Anyway, it can be a powerful myth to live into this, like, I got this, right? And so much of my own personal healing and the healing that I engage and have the privilege of journeying alongside other people is that we do it in connection with other people, right? It's like, I always say that our thinking brain can only take us so far into safety.
We really need our emotional brain to help with that. And I think there's only so much we can heal in isolation, in our individualism.
Ryan Dunn (10:09)
Hmm. It does, it gets me thinking about, maybe this was my mind wandering a bit, but our relationship to sin. ⁓ you were talking about Jesus calling in the community together to ⁓ unbind somebody. ⁓ One of the ways that we tend to interpret sin is that it's something that either tears us away from God or it's something that tears us away from each other, right?
Caroline Vogel (10:11)
I don't know that answers your question.
Hmm.
Yes.
Ryan Dunn (10:39)
And Jesus, especially in certain gospels like, say, the gospel of Luke, he's all about the forgiveness of sins. And in some ways you can say like, ⁓ well, he's giving this proclamation, he's saying that your sins are forgiven. But in other ways, he's making an observation, I think. Specifically, I think about the story where the friends lower the paraplegic through the ceiling.
Caroline Vogel (11:00)
Hmmmm
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Ryan Dunn (11:09)
And
Jesus says, your sins are forgiven. And he gets in trouble for that. But part of what I believe in is happening in that story is that he's observed this person's friends, like coming together in community to provide this for him. Like there's nothing separating them from each other. He's offering this observation like, your, sins are forgiven. so it begins to speak and yeah, in one of the ways in which we
Caroline Vogel (11:33)
I love that interpretation.
Ryan Dunn (11:39)
begin to ⁓ process through healing then is in ⁓ that communal restoration, that sense of ⁓ maybe being unbound from the things that we've been torn away from and rebound into one another's ⁓ relationship.
Caroline Vogel (12:02)
Yeah, yeah. And I think that what gets a little tricky there ⁓ is choosing wisely and being mindful of who is safe to rebound to, right? ⁓ Because not every situation allows for is safe in trying to provide that reconnection.
or connection. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (12:34)
Yeah, sometimes forgiveness has to be practiced at a distance, correct?
Caroline Vogel (12:39)
Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. I think there has to be real wise discernment there. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (12:48)
You've talked about this claiming of agency and in relating that to grace, I remember I was a youth minister for a long time and I remember trying to describe grace to students once and I came up with what I thought was this brilliant analogy of that, that God loves you, there's nothing you can do about that. And you know, the smart aleck in the back of the room goes, oh, but trying to describe grace is sort of this sense that God's love is
Caroline Vogel (12:55)
Hmm.
Ryan Dunn (13:17)
is without agency and that it's just there. It's coming after us. However, however, we have the agency, right? We, right? Yeah, this sort of creepy. No, it's a non-threatening love. want to, but however, we have the agency then to, to choose whether we respond to that love or not. ⁓ and, and you know that
Caroline Vogel (13:23)
God's love is without agency. Sounds kind of scary.
Yeah
Right.
Ryan Dunn (13:45)
choosing to respond to that love offers a sense of vulnerability or calls us into a place of vulnerability because it's being so deeply loved. Well, I'm sorry to quote back what you've written here, but I just love this quote that we're going to have to open ourselves to the vulnerability of being so deeply loved by God that it changes everything about us. And that sounds lovely. It also sounds ⁓ challenging.
Caroline Vogel (14:11)
It does.
Ryan Dunn (14:14)
maybe even intimidating to a lot of us because, well, that change part of it. why, I don't know, can you speak to a little bit about like, why is that so difficult for us? What is the vulnerability that's involved in allowing ourselves to be changed by God's love?
Caroline Vogel (14:34)
Well, I think it goes back to a piece of what we've already started talking about, which is sin, right? And we oftentimes think of sin as what separates us from the love of God, right? And maybe from the love of each other and humanity, the love of ourselves. ⁓ And I think that there's this really close relationship for most of us around sin and shame.
Ryan Dunn (14:41)
Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (15:02)
Right? So sin might be the behavior, the action, the words themselves, but then shame is like the emotional response that we have to the shame or to the sin. mean, both emotional, but also mental too, right? The cognition around like Brene Brown talks about shame as is the feeling that we're unworthy of love and belong.
Ryan Dunn (15:17)
Mm.
Caroline Vogel (15:31)
And I think, you know, historically, Christianity, have viewed sin as that which, you know, marks us as unworthy of love and belonging. so then to put ourselves into a different form of theology of, okay, well, wait a minute. Am I going to actually allow myself to think that no matter what I've done, no matter what I've said, no matter what, what
Romans, nothing can separate me from the love of God. Okay, whoa. Well, there's a gap, right, between, well, but we say sin is what separates me. And now I'm trying to sit with, well, maybe it doesn't separate me. And how do I deal with that disconnect, right? ⁓ And for so many of us, shame can feel so strong.
Ryan Dunn (16:21)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (16:32)
that it tends to take us into like a fight flight freeze. ⁓ Fawn response, right? Like in that overwhelm of, my gosh, I'm not worthy of love and belonging. I'm not worthy of connection. And so to challenge that, I think is incredibly vulnerable for humanity to go, well, okay, first of all, I'm having to challenge that belief if someone grew up with that belief that it's it has separated me.
Ryan Dunn (16:38)
Mmm.
Mm.
Caroline Vogel (17:02)
But even as no one did have that, I think there's something inherent about being human and questioning and feeling as if we're not worthy of connection and having a loving God, you know, a theology that says, no, no, no, no, even in that, even in that. And it's like, I think that's something like works against how we're wired, right?
Ryan Dunn (17:31)
Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (17:32)
⁓ And I think that that challenge is meant to be a challenge. don't think it's happenstance. I don't think it's a coincidence.
Ryan Dunn (17:40)
Can you say why it's meant to be a challenge? Have you observed maybe the...
Caroline Vogel (17:46)
Oh, I've always,
yeah, I've always wondered like, it's part of what it's part of the beauty of the tether with God, right? Like it's, it's part of our humanity to, to allow ourselves to wrestle with this. I mean, I think of Jacob and the angel, I'm always going back to Jacob and the angel. But, you know, all he wants is that blessing. And you know, there's a part of me that's like, it's already inside you, but he
Ryan Dunn (17:55)
Hmm.
Mm.
Caroline Vogel (18:16)
but he needs that physical wrestling with, whether it's the angel or whatever that form represents. And, you know, finally the angel's like, okay, fine, I'll bless you. And he like knocks his hip out of a socket and he walks, you know, he walks away blessed limping, right? And I was just thinking this morning, cause of a conversation I was having, I was just thinking like, I think the limp was because
Ryan Dunn (18:38)
Mmm, hmm.
Caroline Vogel (18:47)
Jacob needed constant reminder of the blessing, of the grace, right? Like his hip was constantly reminding him, wait, grace is here. I can live out of that grace. And then, you know, I get curious about, cause I have a funny hip and I'm like, do I need to walk? You know what I mean? Yes. Is this my reminder of grace? You know? ⁓
Ryan Dunn (18:51)
Okay.
Hmm.
Is that is that your my well that shoots down my next question
Caroline Vogel (19:14)
But I do, think it's inherently vulnerable. And I think of it not as a curse that it's hard for us. I think of it as part of the blessing because like if grace was easy for us, why would we need God? Right? Like what effort would we make in keeping that alignment, that connection, that relationship? Like what would keep us showing up? And I think God wants us to keep showing up.
Ryan Dunn (19:28)
Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (19:44)
I don't think it's a curse that it's a heart.
Ryan Dunn (19:47)
Because bum joints aside, where do you see some of the reminders of grace or that blessing of God's presence?
Caroline Vogel (19:56)
this part always makes me tearful.
Ryan Dunn (19:56)
Or maybe,
yeah, maybe that's diving too deep into you, but maybe within your practice, like how do you help other people recognize ⁓ where that is?
Caroline Vogel (20:01)
No!
So, so I'll start with my I'll start with myself of, you know, I'm not sure actually, I'm thinking of your question correctly, but I'm going to dive in and you let me know if I need to scoot a little bit somewhere, one way or another. ⁓ But so much of grace, I'm reminded of grace in my life in connection with other people, right, like my my community.
Ryan Dunn (20:10)
Okay, cool.
Sure.
Caroline Vogel (20:36)
⁓ I have a dear friend. ⁓ Just the other day we were talking about this kind of over the Easter weekend. I experienced so much grace in her friendship. ⁓ And ⁓ I certainly experienced so much grace with my kids. ⁓ And for my significant other, ⁓ there's just, there's a lot of reminders of the embodiment of grace ⁓ in things they say to me or.
the love of God that I experienced through them. ⁓ And some people are like, well, that's just love. That's just, you know, your spouse loving you. And I'm like, I know, but you know how like sometimes you have a dream and you feel like it's a God dream, right? Like it's not just what you ate for dinner the night before. And something's being communicated. Yeah, exactly. There's some epiphany there and something like a message that God's trying to share with you.
Ryan Dunn (21:19)
Yeah, mm-hmm. Right, yeah. Yeah, that something is being communicated. Yeah, there's some sense of revelation. Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (21:34)
And I sometimes experience that in my connections with my loved ones. Or sometimes I'll meet someone, a total stranger, and I'll feel a connection with them and feel like God's love moving through them towards me or through me towards them. And I just, think that that's grace. ⁓ I think a lot of people experience and are reminded of grace in nature.
And again, you know, living in East Tennessee and living so close to the Smoky Mountains or right now when everything's a bloom, yes, our allergies are wild or most of us. ⁓ But there's also such beauty in in the flowers and the smell of the grass. And ⁓ I think a lot of people connect with a sense of there's a benevolence here that doesn't necessarily that's beyond our stretch and imagination that we're
mere recipients of, not because we've done anything all that great, but just because God is so abundant ⁓ in the offering of love.
Ryan Dunn (22:41)
this runs counter to another notion that you brought up that some of us get caught in the hustle for love. I feel in my moment of self revelation, like I think I'm prone to fall into that habit of feeling like I need to earn it. ⁓ In that moment where Jacob was like, yeah, I'm going to wrestle with this. ⁓ We're going to fight hard at it. I feel like I need to walk away with that limp.
Caroline Vogel (22:47)
Yeah, yeah.
yeah, yeah.
Ryan Dunn (23:08)
in a sense, like I gotta fight for it to get it. ⁓ So, and that resonates with me. So maybe asking partially on behalf of myself, but also in recognizing that ⁓ there are a whole lot of other people who feel like, yeah, I'm caught in the hustle for love as well. Can you talk about some first steps towards like really living as someone who is already loved?
Caroline Vogel (23:09)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, so two powerful things, I think, are tremendous starting parts. One I think is easier than the other. One is, and the one I think is a little bit easier, is allowing yourself to notice. Like to even like stop yourself long enough to go, why am I doing this? You know, or why am I doing this? You know, just that little tiny pause where you ask yourself the question, right? And then the second part,
Ryan Dunn (23:39)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Yeah, okay.
Caroline Vogel (24:00)
which I think is more difficult, which I'm sure shows says a lot about me, but for also all the people that I wrote this book for is to offer compassion to yourself. Like, ⁓ so not to beat yourself up for the hustle because I think that's our tendency, right? Like, ⁓ I'm hustling again, you know, or there I go again, right? But could we bring like a playful curiosity, some even
Ryan Dunn (24:18)
Mmm, yeah, okay. Yeah, there I go again. You get caught in that rumination. Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (24:29)
twinged with compassion of, my gosh, there I go again, right? ⁓ Because my experience is we learned the hustle for really good reasons, right? And at some point, the hustle even probably has worked for us. Most of us can look back in our life and go, ooh, the hustle really paid off here. The hustle really paid off there. ⁓ That's real.
Ryan Dunn (24:46)
Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (24:59)
And that's a lot to let go of. And so I think most of us have to have compassion first for, know, it really did, it served a purpose and we can even feel gratitude for how it worked for us. But so many of us get to a point, I think it's actually part of the grace of aging ⁓ is to go, I don't want to have to hustle anymore. Right? Like that doesn't.
Ryan Dunn (25:11)
Okay.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (25:27)
Even if it worked for me in the past, it's not worth the cost now. Like it's, it's actually starting to get away, get me away from or get in the way of how I'm trying to do relationship, how I'm trying to do my vocational life, how I'm trying to show up in my faith, right? ⁓ To rely on my hustle means to some degree I've got to own.
Ryan Dunn (25:49)
Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (25:54)
that I'm not relying on my community. I'm not relying on a loving God. Yeah. I mean, some of us get to the point where, I mean, I think this has probably been part of my journey too, and just in aging and going, I can't hustle like I used to, right? Like, and to some degree, thank God I can't because it's pushed my theology in really good ways. I mean, one of my little mantras for the longest time is like, oh, I'm not 26 anymore.
Ryan Dunn (25:58)
Mm.
Right. ⁓
Right.
Caroline Vogel (26:24)
You know, with like, and now I'm trying to be like, thank God I'm not 26 anymore. You know, right? There's, there's something about, it can be really hard to push up against that edge where I, I, my being, whether it's physically, emotionally, mentally, I can't hustle like I used to. So I'm going to have to figure out something else, which then also pushes me to go, whoa.
Ryan Dunn (26:28)
Right. Yeah. ⁓
Caroline Vogel (26:52)
Was that hustle good theology or was that me getting by?
Ryan Dunn (26:55)
Hmm.
Yeah. Well, that's giving yourself grace, certainly, ⁓ which you've noted as part of living a life that embodies grace. I think when we tend to hear words like that, embodying grace, when we're talking about other people, we think about, well, they're just so kind, right? They treat other people well. But you're calling us back to embodying grace, not just in treating other people well, but also treating ourselves well.
Caroline Vogel (27:15)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ryan Dunn (27:24)
in the ways that we extend a ⁓ loving presence, loving acknowledgement towards ourselves. ⁓ Can you offer some ⁓ advice for those who are challenged by that idea of extending grace to themselves? Particularly those of us who are ⁓ highly self-critical or hard on ourselves.
Caroline Vogel (27:47)
Yeah,
yeah, absolutely. you know, I think the idea, I'm going to speak at this first real fast, because I think it's a good, it's an important lead in to the fullness of what you're asking about is embodiment. The reason why that became such an important aspect for me in talking about grace is because I got tired of words only. I got tired of, you know,
I believe in grace in my head, right? Or I can extend grace through the thoughts I'm having about somebody, or I can extend grace in the prayers that I have for someone, or I can hold a certain situation for myself mentally, right, with grace. ⁓ And I think based on the theology of Maundy Thursday,
we are called to something so much more radically deep and meaningful than our minds, right? But I think in Western culture, we have prized the mind so much that we find it even superior to the wisdom of the body or the wisdom of our hearts or the wisdom ⁓ of our spirit, our soul, right? And so embodiment
Ryan Dunn (28:55)
Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (29:16)
is goes back to staying connected to our bodies. Right. So many of us fly off into our heads without even knowing it. And sometimes for really good reason. Right. But like, there is a felt sense, like when you talked about someone being so kind, right, like you actually, I don't know if you even knew this, but like there was an embodiment. I could see it in your eyes. Right. There's a different kind of way in which that is conveyed.
Ryan Dunn (29:28)
Hmm.
Caroline Vogel (29:45)
Right? And the thing is we believe people's actions and we oftentimes and should struggle with just what people say. Right? Actions speak. You know, our bodies speak. Our bodies carry the love of God that we're called to, as Jesus said on Monday, Thursday, love one another as I have loved you.
Ryan Dunn (30:14)
Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (30:14)
It's not
just this idea of love. It's this felt sense of I have loved you and it's from that place of touching and washing your feet and being with you in the hard times. It's out of that lived place that I want you loving each other. And so I think that for people who struggle with, you know, a strong inner critic, ⁓
Ryan Dunn (30:27)
Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (30:43)
I think there's a variety of ways to get in it. One is having compassion. It's going to sound counterintuitive at first, but in the beginning, like really starting to have some compassion for that inner critic, all it's trying to do is to keep you safe. Right. All it's trying to do is loving on you in a real, a real difficult way. Right. It's creating pain, but at the heart of it, all it's trying to do is love you.
Ryan Dunn (30:56)
Wow, all right.
Yeah, okay.
Caroline Vogel (31:12)
It's just trying to be a good friend to you and trying to keep you safe and trying to make good on a promise of keeping you secure. But it gets supersized, right? And so it's then that becomes that both and, okay, well, can I have compassion for this inner critic? And can I also start to entertain like a felt sense of being loved?
Ryan Dunn (31:12)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (31:41)
Our brain will play tricks on us all day long. Our body does not lie to us. So the more we can stay grounded and connected with our bodies and the wisdom that's there, that God gave us, that the spirit breathes through, the more capable we are of offering grace to ourselves.
Ryan Dunn (31:44)
Mm.
Caroline Vogel (32:05)
Does that answer your question? It's maybe a little bit more complicated that, but.
Ryan Dunn (32:07)
It does. Yeah.
What, one thing I'm wondering about to follow up on that is it, you talked about, the inner critic almost in a sense of the other, like othering the inner critic. had a, I have a friend who named his inner critic and does it help to, ⁓ does it help to extend grace? Like if we, if we kind of other the inner critic in a way, like we're not talking to ourselves now, we're talking to,
Caroline Vogel (32:19)
Yeah. Yeah.
Love it!
I think so.
Ryan Dunn (32:36)
to somebody else.
Caroline Vogel (32:37)
The part of us, right.
Well, it creates, I think, enough ⁓ emotional psychic distance, right, between our true self and this part of us that likes to rear its ugly head, right? Because the inner critic can be quite painful, even though I genuinely believe at the root of it, it's trying to do good. It just gets really, really busy and intense at times.
So right, by owning that it's a part of us, that it's not our whole being, does allow us to create, oftentimes, just enough distance to be able to engage it in a different kind of way. When it goes back to love your neighbor as yourself, and I talk about this in the book, I was like, my gosh, I am way kinder to my neighbor.
than I am to myself, at least throughout my life, right? I'm like, I hope I am so much kinder to my neighbor. And so for lots of people, I think the challenge is in the self-love, is in the extending grace inward. And I think we can learn something from how we already are kind to other people.
Ryan Dunn (33:34)
Right, yeah.
Caroline Vogel (34:02)
It's like, you know, even allowing yourself to think of a time when grace came really naturally for you, extending it to someone else. And then you notice like, okay, well, how did I feel emotionally when that was happening? ⁓ How, what were the thoughts that were going on in my mind? What, what, were the words that I shared with the other person? And you even maybe, you know, writing that out a little bit and then kind of turning it and going, okay, well, what would it be like to feel those emotions towards myself?
and to share those words with myself. Because you have the repertoire, so many people have the repertoire within them, right? Because they've practiced it, whether with, you know, a life partner or a best friend or a child ⁓ that we have experience to draw on, we just don't think about turning it towards ourself. Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (35:01)
Is it helpful then to think of that inner critic maybe as a child?
Caroline Vogel (35:07)
Well, oftentimes it was developed in childhood. And so for so many of us and it's so our emotional brain pulls for a very young part. And so, yes, it would be wise to think of it as an unruly child, right? It's almost like a bully, ⁓ a young bully that's inside of us that's just trying so hard to keep us out of trouble, to keep us safe. But it's so mean in the process.
Ryan Dunn (35:10)
Okay.
Caroline Vogel (35:36)
Yeah.
Ryan Dunn (35:37)
You noted that in your writing that Jesus turned towards suffering and that we are also invited to do that as well. And that extends not just for turning towards the suffering of others, but as we've just been talking about, kind of turning towards the suffering within ourselves. ⁓ And that maybe can be some of the most difficult suffering to face. I'm sure that is somebody who is
I guess a trauma informed ⁓ therapist that, yeah, that's a difficult place to invite people into. ⁓ Is there, are there ways that we can maybe begin to turn towards our own suffering ⁓ with, I don't know, with Jesus?
Caroline Vogel (36:18)
It is.
Yeah, I think with Jesus,
yeah, for sure. One thing is I find that helps myself and helps other people with this, Ryan, is that owning that it's hard and that it's not natural, right? Like we are hardwired to turn away from pain, to turn away from our own pain, to turn away from other people's pain, right? Like, it's biological. So in some ways it's like,
Ryan Dunn (36:43)
Mm. Okay.
Caroline Vogel (36:59)
What a setup, right? But therein is the invitation as well, right? So Jesus turned towards so many people that society had not only turned away from, but justified turning away from for whatever reason, whether their illness was contagious or ⁓ they were seen as unclean or all the different things.
Ryan Dunn (37:02)
You're right.
Caroline Vogel (37:30)
But, and this is very much in keeping with a Buddhist mindset as well as turning towards the suffering and essentially building a window of tolerance to be with that which we find uncomfortable. So again, I think a first step is just to acknowledge like, we're asking ourselves to do something that we're hardwired to not do, right? Like to own, this is hard.
Ryan Dunn (37:55)
Hmm. Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (37:58)
Right. And we don't come with a lot of built in capability for this. This is, this is part of a spiritual discipline, a spiritual practice. And I think it connects to something you named earlier in our conversation, Ryan, which is this, kind pandemic of loneliness. And I think so much of loneliness happens because we don't know how to turn towards each other's pain. We don't know how to turn towards.
and be with our own pain. ⁓ I also think there's, you know, as Kristin Neff, she does a lot of research around, you know, self-compassion, and she names the common humanity of suffering. And I think oftentimes as Christians, we think if we're experiencing something hard, that we're unfaithful or something's wrong with us. And I think that there's a lot to learn through scripture.
Ryan Dunn (38:29)
Mm.
Caroline Vogel (38:56)
⁓ that life is hard. Life is hard. doesn't have to always be hard, but to think that we're never going to experience pain or we're never going to experience suffering is not meeting life on life's terms. ⁓ And so I think that there can be some stigma around, we can tell ourselves narratives around, well, I don't want to turn towards that pain because
It means something's wrong with me. Well, it may just be that life has you by the by the neck right now. And that doesn't mean anything's wrong with you. That just means life's got a hold of you. Welcome to life. You know, life can be life can be and turns out is a four letter word.
Ryan Dunn (39:32)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Mmm. Mmm.
Caroline Vogel (39:47)
You know, so to allow ourselves to go the common humanity, that recognition of, all right, it doesn't mean that I'm bad or wrong because I'm experiencing life is hard right now, or my mind is hard, or my emotions are hard, or this situation or relationship is hard, but can I allow myself to be with it, trusting that Jesus is here with me?
that the Spirit is breathing through me and to whoever else is involved, right? To show up in this moment. It's one of the most amazing things about being a Krishna is we don't have to face any aspect of life alone.
Ryan Dunn (40:31)
Mmm. Mmm.
⁓
have one final question for you. I'm discerning what that question is going to be. I wanted to follow up on just the the aspect of ⁓ community and finding community. since it is ⁓ so important as you've named, I'm guessing that you're also ⁓ pretty involved in community. What are some ways that that you have found?
Caroline Vogel (40:38)
Okay. Okay.
Ryan Dunn (41:02)
Your people. Like, how do you find people?
Caroline Vogel (41:05)
How do find people for sure? So that's a great question. I think it's something we're struggling with, like, especially in our culture, but maybe the world over to some degree. And ⁓ how I did community for most of my life is different than how I'm doing community currently in my life. ⁓ As an introvert, I'm really allowing myself the, like honoring that community can be small for me and in the smallness.
Ryan Dunn (41:23)
Yeah.
Caroline Vogel (41:35)
It is more than enough. it feels, my community feels really big, even though it's very small. And I am enjoying the joy and wonder of how God shows up in the midst of that. ⁓ How do I find my people? I think to some degree, I got really clear on who I am and what I find fulfilling in relationship.
think I also got really clear on what I'm not okay with, which creates maybe some uncomfortable boundaries for others. ⁓
I think oftentimes we think that community should be ought to be everyone. And to some degree it is because we live, we're social creatures and then we live in a world with other humans. And for me, community in terms of like how I get my emotional, mental, spiritual, soulful needs met in connection is really small and I've built it slowly over time.
⁓ I didn't, I mean, I think everybody, I mean, they grew up and, know, I turned 50 this year. Like we expect there to be like friends, right? Like we're waiting for the series of friends to happen to us and, ⁓ and feel really bad if it's not. And, ⁓ for me, genuine community has been built over time. Very slowly.
Ryan Dunn (42:57)
Right.
Right, yeah.
Caroline Vogel (43:16)
Yeah. And recognizing that even the power of one friendship over a meal, over coffee, walking together, ⁓ sitting in a living room and talking, that can be community.
It doesn't, it doesn't look the same for everybody. It can't look the same for everybody. We have different histories and dispositions and personalities and needs and triggers, right? And so, ⁓ but I do want to encourage people to be mindful of what community is for them and, and what works for them and what doesn't. And it's okay that not every community works for you.
Ryan Dunn (43:58)
Thank you for sharing all that with us and ⁓ for sharing the real. It's good.
Caroline Vogel (44:02)
it's been a delight, a delight, Ryan. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so
much for having me. This has been really, I've really enjoyed this. Thank you.
Ryan Dunn (44:11)
Good and carolinevogel.com is a great place to look up for more information. Great. Well again, thank you so much for sharing your time and for sharing the good news of grace with us.
Caroline Vogel (44:17)
Yes.
Ryan Dunn (44:24)
Thanks so much for joining us on this episode of Compass Finding Spirituality in the everyday. If you'd like to dive deeper, you can head on over to our website, umc.org slash compass. There you're gonna find episode notes and plenty of other episodes to explore. We also want to extend a special thank you to the team at United Methodist Communications for making this whole podcast possible. If you haven't already, again, take a moment to subscribe.
rate and review compass on your favorite podcast platform. That of course helps others find us and join the conversation. Again, thanks for listening. Look forward to connecting with you again in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, peace.
