Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation
Sep 30, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
Does security come from the outside? Or is security something we can cultivate from within as we become more and more anchored in God’s unshakable love? Geoff Holsclaw talks with therapist and…
Allison CookGuest
Geoff HolsclawHost
Well, for those of you who don't know, you do work with attachment and internal family systems.
Could you just kind of briefly explain what that is and, like, how you got into that and w- and why you're so excited about that kind of work as a therapist?
My first book, Boundaries for Your Soul, is really a Christian adaptation of internal family systems therapy, and that model really just changed everything for me.
For your listeners who aren't familiar with the model, the best depiction of it is the Pixar movies Inside Out, just this idea that we have these inner parts of us, and we're complex.
this inner family, just like we have an outer family and we've got different kids and we're trying to help create some sort of harmony in our household, we're also doing the same thing within our soul.
We've got these different parts of us that we're trying to kind of wrangle into some sort of harmony.
You know, to the book, you know, part of me, it was so healing to, to write these stories, and another part of me is like, "You can't do that." You know [laughs] "You can't let people read that," right? So we have these inner tensions, and the model is just, was just so helpful to me, um, coming out of an era in psychology in particular, but also in, in Christian circles where a lot of focus was on belief, right? So Christian circles, a lot of focus was on what you believe.
And then psychology in this time, during this time when I was coming up and getting trained, was all about CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.
And so internal family systems kind of helped me find those different parts of my inner life and connect to them, uh, in partnership with God.
So that was just really a, a, a real kind of transformational experience to learn about that myself, get trained in it, and then kind of learn how to integrate it with Christian faith and spiritual formation.
I see it as really a spiritual formation practice as much as it is a therapeutic modality.
Well, for those of you who don't know, you do work with attachment and internal family systems.
Could you just kind of briefly explain what that is and, like, how you got into that and w- and why you're so excited about that kind of work as a therapist?
My first book, Boundaries for Your Soul, is really a Christian adaptation of internal family systems therapy, and that model really just changed everything for me.
For your listeners who aren't familiar with the model, the best depiction of it is the Pixar movies Inside Out, just this idea that we have these inner parts of us, and we're complex.
this inner family, just like we have an outer family and we've got different kids and we're trying to help create some sort of harmony in our household, we're also doing the same thing within our soul.
We've got these different parts of us that we're trying to kind of wrangle into some sort of harmony.
You know, to the book, you know, part of me, it was so healing to, to write these stories, and another part of me is like, "You can't do that." You know [laughs] "You can't let people read that," right? So we have these inner tensions, and the model is just, was just so helpful to me, um, coming out of an era in psychology in particular, but also in, in Christian circles where a lot of focus was on belief, right? So Christian circles, a lot of focus was on what you believe.
And then psychology in this time, during this time when I was coming up and getting trained, was all about CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy.
And so internal family systems kind of helped me find those different parts of my inner life and connect to them, uh, in partnership with God.
So that was just really a, a, a real kind of transformational experience to learn about that myself, get trained in it, and then kind of learn how to integrate it with Christian faith and spiritual formation.
I see it as really a spiritual formation practice as much as it is a therapeutic modality.
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