Why does it sometimes feel like the moment we begin to experience healing or clarity… life gets harder?

In this episode, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen explore the often-unseen ways evil works to undermine our hearts—not only through obvious suffering, but through shame, distraction, accusation, fear, and despair.

Drawing from Ephesians 6, they unpack the "schemes of evil" that seek to keep us disconnected from God, from ourselves, and from one another.

Rather than inviting fear or fixation on spiritual warfare, you'll hear how to recognize these patterns without giving them more power than they deserve, and what it means to stand firm in the authority and love of Christ.

Whether you're navigating personal struggles, experiencing unexpected opposition, or simply wondering why growth can feel so costly, this episode offers practical wisdom for discerning what you're up against—and a hopeful reminder that evil never has the final word.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit: https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

What happens when trauma doesn't just wound your heart—but your experience of God?

In this deeply thoughtful conversation, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen welcome therapist and author Colleen Ramser to discuss her remarkable new book, The Shattered Soul: Restoring Wholeness and Rebuilding Your Faith After Spiritual Trauma.

Rather than offering another conversation about "church hurt," Colleen invites us to consider something far more profound: spiritual trauma doesn't simply change what we believe. It changes how our bodies experience faith. Through her vision of the "somatic soul," she explores how trauma fragments us, leaving many people feeling disconnected from the God they once knew. Prayer can become frightening. Worship can feel empty. The very practices that once brought life can begin to feel unsafe, not because faith has disappeared, but because trauma has reshaped our relationship to it.

Together, they explore why the question isn't whether you've deconstructed your faith. Trauma has already done that work of fragmentation. The invitation is toward reconstruction: patiently tending to the wounds that separate us from ourselves, from others, and from God. Along the way, they discuss the posture beneath spiritual abuse, the role of lament, and why healing begins by caring for the wound rather than debating whether it was "bad enough" to count.

This is one of the richest conversations we've had on spiritual abuse and religious trauma, offering language, hope, and a deeply embodied vision of healing for anyone seeking to rebuild trust after their faith has been shattered.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

What makes someone a good friend? We often think about showing up well for the people we love. But what if being a good friend also means learning how to receive care—and even extending that same compassion to ourselves?

Dan and Rachael begin this conversation with a simple story about a bus ride that never happened. What unfolds is something bigger: Why is it so hard to ask for help? What keeps us pushing through pain instead of letting others care for us?

Together, they explore what faithful friendship looks like: friends who know our stories, tell us the truth with kindness, and lovingly interrupt the patterns that keep us isolated. They also consider how we can begin to offer ourselves that same honesty, tenderness, and care.

As you listen, consider: What kind of friend have you become—to the people you love, and to yourself?

*This episode contains some explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

Some people seem to enter the world with an unusual sensitivity. They notice what others miss. They feel deeply. They ask questions long before they have words for them. And while that can be a profound gift, it can also be an incredibly lonely way to grow up.

This week, Dan and Rachael are joined by therapist, writer, and Noble Workshops founder Sam Eldredge for a deeply personal conversation about what it means to be an "old soul." Together, they explore the gifts and burdens of deep sensitivity, the loneliness of feeling "too much," and how our earliest stories continue to shape the way we move through the world.

Along the way, Sam shares about his own journey through depression, the healing power of story, and the work that led him to create Noble Workshops—an immersive experience that helps people engage the younger parts of themselves, mind, body, and spirit.

Whether you've always felt older than your years, struggled to find where you belong, or simply long for deeper connection, we hope this conversation offers a gentle invitation to become more at home in your own story.

*Please note: This episode briefly mentions pregnancy loss and suicide and contains explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

Today's episode is dedicated to your questions!

Recently, we invited our email subscribers to submit the questions they'd like Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen to explore on the podcast. Thank you to everyone who responded with such honesty, vulnerability, and courage.

Hosted by Melissa Dowell from the Allender Center, this conversation explores questions about what healing really looks like, how to care for aging parents while honoring healthy boundaries, what to do when you feel stuck in your story, how to engage others' stories wisely, and how to navigate the complexities of family, faith, and trauma.

We're deeply grateful for your questions and for the trust you continue to place in this community. If your question wasn't featured this time, stay tuned—we hope to continue these listener Q&A conversations in future episodes.

Not on our email list yet? Sign up to receive podcast updates, resources, and future opportunities to submit your questions: https://theallendercenter.org/subscribe

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at: theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

What does true maturity actually look like? Is it age? Experience? Having the right answers?

Many of us grew up assuming we would recognize maturity when we saw it. We looked to parents, pastors, leaders, and institutions to show us what it meant to be wise, trustworthy, and faithful. Yet over time, some of those assumptions have been challenged. People we admired have disappointed us. Systems we trusted have fallen short. And if we're honest, we've disappointed ourselves too.

So where does that leave us?

This week, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen wrestle with a different vision of maturity—one shaped less by certainty and control and more by truth-telling, curiosity, humility, and a growing orientation toward the heart of God.

Drawing from Jeremiah's lament, Micah 6:8, and their own stories, they explore why maturity is often forged in the midst of struggle rather than certainty.

They also reflect on the gift of trustworthy companions. These are people who help us ask better questions, tell the truth about our lives, and remind us that growth was never meant to happen alone.

After all, one of the clearest signs of maturity may be knowing when it's time to reach out to others.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

This week, Dan and Rachael sit down with survivor, advocate, and Narrative Focused Trauma Care alumni Kate Ouimette-Wedell for a conversation that is both heartbreaking and deeply hopeful.

After moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in music, Kate was trafficked and spent more than a decade in the commercial sex industry. In this episode, she shares part of her story with remarkable courage, offering insight into the realities of exploitation, the long road of recovery, and the resilience that makes healing possible.

Together, they explore the power of story, the importance of being seen and believed, and why healing often begins when someone is willing to sit with us in our pain rather than rush to fix it.

Through her own healing journey and her work with survivors through Cherished LA, Kate bears witness to a hope rooted in the belief that every person has immeasurable worth and that no story is beyond the reach of compassion, restoration, and delight.

Please note: This episode includes discussions of human trafficking, sexual exploitation, abuse, and trauma. Listener discretion is advised.

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

Faith, power, and politics have become deeply intertwined in our culture, leaving many Christians asking hard questions:

Is this what following Jesus is meant to look like? And how do we stay faithful when the way of Jesus seems so different from the voices claiming to speak for him?

In this episode, Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen welcome Rev. Rob Schenck back to the podcast for an honest conversation about power, discipleship, and the state of American Christianity.

Together, they explore the difference between the way of Jesus and the pursuit of control, the cost of discipleship, and why humility, grief, and love matter more than ever.

If you've felt confused, discouraged, or unsettled by the intersection of faith and politics, we hope this conversation offers both perspective and hope as we consider what it means to follow Jesus in a complicated time.

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

Is there still more to your story?

It's a question that can feel surprising, especially if you've spent years reflecting on your past, pursuing healing, or engaging your story. Yet in this conversation, Dr. Dan Allender, Rachael Clinton Chen, and Wendell Moss explore how story continues to reveal new insights about who we are, how we've been shaped, and how God is meeting us in the present.

You'll get a glimpse into what story work actually looks like in a Story Workshop or Narrative Focused Trauma Care® training, and why returning to meaningful moments from our lives can open the door to greater compassion, deeper understanding, and unexpected freedom.

Whether you're new to story engagement or have been doing this work for years, you're invited to consider what might still be waiting for you in your story.

Listener Resources:

• Download our free guide, How to Engage Your Story: http://theallendercenter.org/story

• Learn more about Narrative Focused Trauma Care® (NFTC) Training: https://theallendercenter.org/trainings

• Engage your story in a Story Workshop with the Allender Center: http://theallendercenter.org/workshops

Work with an individual trained in NFTC: http://theallendercenter.org/directory

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

What happens when shame takes root in a story?

And how does contempt become one of the ways we learn to survive it?

Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen explore the complicated relationship between shame and contempt, and why understanding these dynamics matters so deeply for healing and human connection.

Shame can leave us feeling exposed, powerless, defective, or alone. And contempt often emerges as a strategy of protection: through self-criticism, defensiveness, withdrawal, rage, sarcasm, superiority, or humiliation.

You'll hear reflections on:

• why contempt often forms in response to pain and powerlessness

• what trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn look like in moments of shame

• how to remain grounded in dignity and belovedness when faced with contempt

This conversation invites us into deeper curiosity, compassion, and discernment — especially in a cultural moment increasingly marked by outrage, dehumanization, and contempt.

If you'd like to explore these themes more deeply, we invite you to join Rachael Clinton Chen for the upcoming live training, The Art of Story Engagement, on June 13. Together, you'll explore more deeply how contempt shapes our stories — and how learning to recognize these dynamics in ourselves and others can open the door to greater wisdom, healing, and care. You can learn more at theallendercenter.org/events

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]

*This episode contains some explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Have you ever felt like you were living between worlds?

Maybe you've moved across countries or cultures. Maybe your family story carries immigration, missionary work, military life, trauma, loss, or displacement. Or maybe, even surrounded by familiar people and places, you still carry an ache for belonging — a longing to feel fully known, rooted, and at home.

Today, Dan and Rachael sit down with Esperansita Bejnarowicz, who is a story coach, an NFTC Certified Facilitator with the Allender Center, and the founder of Far From Home.

Together, they explore the hidden grief, loneliness, and longing that can come from living "far from home" — geographically, emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

Esperansita reflects on the experience of living between identities, cultures, languages, expectations, and communities, and the ways these in-between spaces can leave us carrying forms of grief that often go unseen or unnamed.

The conversation also considers the story of Jesus as someone deeply acquainted with displacement: a child forced to flee, a man who "had no place to lay his head," and someone who understood sorrow, exile, and longing for home.

Through her own story and the stories of women she now serves through Far From Home, Esperansita offers language for the ache of leaving home, the complexity of belonging nowhere and everywhere at once, and the loneliness that can exist even when life appears beautiful from the outside.

Whether you've crossed borders or simply know what it feels like to search for belonging, this conversation offers language, comfort, and hope for the parts of us still longing to find home.

You can learn more about Far From Home at: https://www.womenfarfromhome.org/

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

Stream each episode, plus find transcripts, additional resources, and more at:

theallendercenter.org/podcast

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, visit:

https://theallendercenter.org/2025/11/podcast-support/

If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at [email protected]