Trauma, Shame, and Contempt

Faith, Power, and the Cost of Discipleship with Rev. Rob Schenck

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

Is There Still More To Your Story?

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 [http://theallendercenter.org/story] * Learn more about Narrative Focused Trauma Care® (NFTC) Training: https://theallendercenter.org/trainings [https://theallendercenter.org/trainings] * Engage your story in a Story Workshop with the Allender Center: http://theallendercenter.org/workshops [http://theallendercenter.org/workshops] Work with an individual trained in NFTC: http://theallendercenter.org/directory [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/ [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 cclayton@theallendercenter.org [cclayton@theallendercenter.org]

Trauma, Shame, and Contempt

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 [http://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/ [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 cclayton@theallendercenter.org [cclayton@theallendercenter.org] *This episode contains some explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Feeling Far From Home with Esperansita Bejnarowicz

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/ [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/ [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 cclayton@theallendercenter.org [cclayton@theallendercenter.org]

Story Wars and the Search for Truth with Pastor James A. White

How do we live faithfully in a world where stories no longer seem to anchor us to a shared reality? Returning to the Allender Center Podcast, Pastor James A. White joins Dan and Rachael to wrestle with the confusion, distortion that shape our cultural moments, both past and present. Together, they explore the idea of "story wars"—the deeply human tendency to create narratives that help us survive, but can also estrange us from truth, one another, and the heart of God. At the center of the conversation is the resurrection story itself: a story so disruptive and improbable that even Jesus' closest companions struggled to believe it. And yet, the resurrection is precisely what recalibrates reality. Not because it erases suffering or uncertainty, but because it offers a new way of seeing: that even in places marked by grief, confusion, fear, or loss, hope and transformation are still possible. This conversation invites us to examine the stories shaping us personally and collectively, and to ask difficult but necessary questions about truth, power, fear, belonging, and hope. 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/ [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 cclayton@theallendercenter.org [cclayton@theallendercenter.org]