Kim Carson’s interview with Sandi Brown, author of
Healing Out Loud
Authors Sandi Brown & Michelle Caulk, PHD, LPC
Today my conversation is with Sandi Brown, who has a Christian radio ministry reaching 500,000+ listeners a week. In her book, Healing Out Loud: How to Embrace God’s Love When You Don’t Like Yourself, she shares some insight from her one-year journey through counseling told from both sides of the couch. Walk with Sandi and her former counselor through her therapy journey, answering the question, “What do I do when I know God loves me, but I don’t like myself?” Kim Carson: Thank you so much for talking with me today.
Sandi Brown: Hi Kim. Thank you. Kim Carson: Sandi, you had me with the first three pages. The bridal shower, who can’t relate to what you’re talking about? Let’s start there.
Sandi: Yes. I couldn’t figure out why I never
really felt good about myself, right? I could go to a bridal shower amongst friends and family and feel like the odd one out. These women are all - they have it all together, and their life is shiny and perfect, and I’d cry all the way home, and it was deeper than that too. There are good things in my life. I have a great marriage great family. I know they love me.
KC: You have a great job! Sandi: Yes. It really
measures of everything I have dreamt of in life, and there’s a lot of good there, but yet when I put my head on the pillow, it just feels like I’m a failure, like no one likes me, like I’m not good at relationships, I’m not good at being a
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mom, a wife, a woman. It got to the point that it was so disruptive. I reached out to a counselor, and then I found out I’m not the only woman who feels this way, so when you said you could relate, that’s what we’re hearing from people literally right off the bat.
KC: Yes, and sometimes it’s harder for Christians to ask for outside help.
Sandi: Yes. It’s harder, I think, to admit we
need help because we know God loves us. We know that that’s a game-changer in our lives, and so then, on top of feeling bad, I feel like a really horrible Christian because why - this isn’t God’s best for my life. This is not how He would talk to me, so why do I talk to myself this way? I was 52 when I went into counseling, and I had never heard anybody, especially a believer, say, “I love God, and I don’t like myself, and I didn’t even know if it was okay to say that.” That’s what this book is about.
Let’s be honest and say God does love us enough to help us unpack and figure out why we might be feeling this way. Hey, if we’re feeling it, it’s the truth, and He honors the truth. He honored people in scripture just calling out to Him, “Where are
you?” He can do anything He wants to do in an instant, but He sometimes takes time, and what if His healing plan for us is one that takes time? Creation took time. Raising Jesus from the dead, He did it over time. So, let’s give some grace to ourselves to go, “Maybe He plans that I see a counselor, that I navigate through and unpack some things.” He’s no less God; it’s no less healing, right?
KC: Right! And you wrote this book with your former counselor; it’s a unique perspective for the reader.
Sandi: Yes, you get her unpacking not only
what we did in a counseling session; it’s like you get a healing journey from both sides of the couch, and you get a healing map that is yours. You get the invitation to start from where you are and journey on. So, it was an incredible experience for me to find healing in this way, but the purpose of the book is really for the reader, “Hey, reach out to the Healer. There might be the healing map; there might be some markers that you discover as you go along. There is a way to better.”
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