This week I made for this podcast we are talking about being receptive rather than reactive.

Oh, this is something our culture needs. Let's go.

This is Jenny Allen. I'm glad you're here. Thanks to Hello Fresh for supporting Made for This.

Go to Hello Fresh for supporting Made for This.

Go to Hello Fresh.com slash Made for This 14 and use code Made for This 14 for up to 14 free meals and three free gifts. We're talking this season about being a healthy person. We're talking this season about

what it means to live as a whole full human that is healthy and life-giving and able to move in and out of relationships and circumstances that can handle them. And you know, one of the things that I've learned in counseling is

there's a window of tolerance and Kurt Thompson talks about this honestly I

learned it even before Kurt it is a healthy person that can stay on the in the banks of

the river. That on one side of the river is checking out and numbing out and coping out and

coping and on the other side of the river is chaos and anxiety and

anger and reaction and the goal of life is to live you know in the window of tolerance where we're going down the river smoothly

and happily and steadily and calmly. But as we grow in health that river

widens and our ability to handle certain circumstances

and difficulties grows and expands.

But for those of us that have maybe recently been through a traumatic event which is right now about all of us

the banks of the river close in and it gets really narrow and it's really easy to bump up

against anger or chaos or reacting or bump up on the other side of checking out and numbing out and

Withdrawing and so what the season has been about is this river and finding our path on it in our relationships and in our mood and our feelings in our thought lives.

And so today we're going to talk about being receptive versus being reactive, but I wanted to begin with that river because that is always in my mind.

I actually learned it for the first time when we were working with an adoption therapist when my son came home from Rwanda and because of having to live in a third world

orphanage for the first three to four years of his life, his river was very narrow.

He would bump up against coping or usually reacting very

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