“Survival strategies eventually become morally consequential. What once helped us survive can eventually wound us—and the people around us.”
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
Six years in the making and worth the wait—When Narcissism Comes to Church is now out in Spanish!
We have so much more language for emotional and spiritual health today compared to when I was trained in the mid 1990s, but it’s given us another place to hide, I suspect.
One of the things I explore in my next book on character formation is how so many of us who talk about “self-awareness“ are, paradoxically, so lacking in self-awareness.
Your yearly invitation to consider using this Lenten guide - it’s quite different than anything you’ve seen before!
shorturl.at/B1ARR
25 years later, I’m watching it.
Years ago I taught an adult education class through the Book of Revelation. Going back through my teaching notes, I found this: What would a Christianity look like without the Beatitudes, the fruits of the spirit, the Christ hymn of Philippians 2, and the economic critique of Revelation 18?
What have I learned working with narcissistic men for nearly three decades?
That defenses don’t soften through pressure. They soften through presence.
That we’ve got to create the right conditions for deep change.
Read more:
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
AUTONOMIC BULLYING happens when we presume authority over another person’s internal state and insist they override their embodied reality to meet our expectations.
It treats dysregulation as moral failure rather than embodied reality.
sitwithchuck.substack.com/p/autonomic-...
Gaslighting is telling someone that what they know to be true — what they can see with their own two eyes — is false.
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
She lived in a time where abuse was rampant, where authorities proclaimed, “We have the right reading of reality. Obey or pay!” She refused the game. She’d lead many into a new way of Jesus-following through humor, humility and ingenuity. I’d like to ask her how we might navigate our present times…
There’s lots of space for anger, confusion, even wrestling with he and his wife’s words. But be gentle with yourself. This might touch a deep pain that needs kind tending right now.
Love to all of you who saw the news about Philip Yancey and heard a tender part of you whispering within, “Is there anyone we can trust?”
Character isn’t declared nor is it performed. It grows in the quiet, where safety is present to foster integrity within, where love, joy, peace and more are not mere window-dressing but the fruits of an inner live cultivated in communion and connection, not division.
“We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.”
-General Omar Bradley, Armistice Day, 1948
The new year is not an audition for a better self but an invitation to notice what no longer serves and what quietly wants to grow. 🌱
New Year’s Longings: Leaving Resolutions Behind | Listening from the Heart open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
"The great problem of our time is not to formulate clear answers to neat theoretical questions but to tackle the self-destructive alienation of man in a society dedicated in theory to human values and in practice to the pursuit of power for its own sake."
—Thomas Merton
“The Lord did not come to make a display.
He came to heal and to teach suffering humanity.”
—St. Athanasius, 4th c
“A great deal of injustice survives by self-ignorance. When you are poorly attuned to your own selfhood, it is easy to remain in denial about what fears, pain, and desires lead you to perpetuate suffering in the world, even your own. Reclaim practices of self-encounter.”
— Cole Arthur Riley
People often ask me, “Does a narcissist realize he’s so egocentric?” Actually, from the inside out, everything seems fine.
Psychology calls this an ego-syntonic state—when patterns, defenses, and adaptations feel completely aligned with who someone thinks he is.
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
When the mask becomes the face: on ego-syntonic lives, character formation, and the courage to be real.
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
Remember: You are not loved for being above the human condition. You are loved for being deeply, achingly human within it.
Is there hope in this age of cruelty?
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
“There is no human who has ever lived who is garbage. A ludicrous impossibility, heresy even. And every Christian should unequivocally say so.”
Thank you @winncollier.bsky.social
Excited to land on a title for my next book!
Who You're Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character In a Narcissistic Age
Coming next Fall.
Growing up doesn’t necessarily mean growing mature. With age comes anxiety, shifting your nervous system into self-protection - a state that thwarts growth in character.
open.substack.com/pub/sitwithc...
Follow me here and on Substack at “Sit with Chuck” as I share this deep change process.
#CultivatingCharacter
#NextBook
