For the second podcast in this series, Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Doug Shirley invited Dr. Monique Gadson, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, to share her perspective on the Ghosts & Shadows conversation. Dr. Gadson joined The Seattle School in 2022 as Assistant Professor of Counseling Psychology. Listen to her engage Dr. Hoard and Dr. Shirley as an “asker of questions” in this bold adventure of exploration. [Podcast has been edited for length.]
Ghost & Shadows Conversation Series
In this season as The Seattle School has been looking back at the first 25 years, we, Dr. Paul Hoard and Dr. Doug Shirley, have been exploring what it means to live with the legacies and histories in our community, as well as how to engage with these proverbial ghosts and shadows, these systemic inheritances. Together in this series titled “Ghosts and Shadows,” we’ve examined the past and looked towards the future through three essays, and we also invited colleagues to join in the conversation and share their reflections in a series of podcasts starting with Dr. Curt Thompson.
Our Guest for this Conversation
Dr. Monique Gadson is a licensed professional counselor, consulting therapist, educator, and podcast host. She received her B.S. in Business Management from The University of Alabama, her M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Troy State University, her M.S. in Spirituality and Counseling from Richmont Graduate University, and her Ph.D. in Marriage and Family Therapy from Amridge University. Dr. Gadson hosts the podcast, “And The Church Said,” which discusses church and culture from a Christian counseling perspective, focusing on mental and emotional health and the church. She provides counseling and consulting services through her practice, Transforming Visions, LLC., concerning issues such as grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, marriage and family care, relationship challenges, questions of faith, and spiritual abuse. Her areas of professional and ministerial interest include premarital and pre-engagement education/counseling, individual development, effects of trauma on development, family-of-origin influences, relationships, marriage and family therapy and education, the intersection of theology and psychology, and the Church and mental health ministry.
Dr. Gadson served on the staff of a church for 16 years as the clinical mental health counselor. She also has served as an expert contributor to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs for a video-based training series for chaplain services, and as a consulting therapist for several churches and organizations. She has taught several courses in psychology, counseling, leadership development, legal and ethical professional development in marriage and family therapy, systematic evaluation and case management, and human development. Presentations at professional conferences include the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and the American Association of Christian Counselors. Passionate about individual development and relationship education, considering these as means of discipleship, she believes the cornerstone for a healthy society is the love for one’s self and others fueled by a love of God.
Transcript
Dr. Paul Hoard:
I am Dr. Paul Hoard, an Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School. Dr. Shirley and I have been working on this project we call Ghosts and Shadows in this season where the school has been looking back at the first 25 years and looking ahead to the next 25 years. And as we are preparing to move from this building to a new location, we’ve been exploring what are the proverbial ghosts that haunt us, the ghosts and shadows with us in our community, as well as how to engage with those ghosts and shadows, what we think about systemic inheritances. We’ve written a few essays and we’ve also continued the conversation in a series of podcasts with a few colleagues to help us reflect together. We are grateful for our colleague Dr. Monique Gadson, accepting our invitation. Dr. Gadson joined The Seattle School in 2022. We are looking forward to engaging with the perspective she brings as our newest faculty member.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
Well, I am smiling because a long awaited conversation with Dr. Monique Gadson is upon us, Monique and Paul and I have been talking about this kind of conversation for a while. We’ve been having a bunch of these kinds of conversations off screen. But here we are on screen to, Monique, ask you about our project to invite you into this project that we’re working on, that we’ve called Ghosts and Shadows, and that we believe means something. Maybe it’s helping us to keep our own sanity and mind and what’s about us in the midst of a season where we’re looking back at 25 years and looking ahead at 25 years and saying, who are we and what is this? And even as we now know we’re moving buildings like the proverbial ghost in the closet, what are the ghosts in the shadows, whether it’s the red brick building or the community of learners that we are, what are the ghosts in shadows that are with us?
And how do we think about things like systemic inheritances being a part of an ancestral line, being a part of intergenerational flow and where stuff gets hung up and where it flows freely and what helps things to flow freely. So like with Curt, with Dr. Thompson, one of the things that we worked on was in his framework, a track two type of way of engaging both narrowly and otherwise where, help me, Paul, if I misspeak it here, but where with intention and purpose we choose to hover, not unlike the spirit hovered in the Genesis account, creating order, seeking beauty and goodness, not just sort of giving into limbic craziness, but in some ways knowing that that track one in the trenches, disordered, chaotic way is in all of us and we have to engage it in some way to bring about order to seek goodness. He left us with this notion of durable beauty that both Paul and I went, what is that?
But we want whatever it is, we want it. So anyway, it’s that conversation that we want to invite you into. So thank you for being here today. We’re recording this so we have it. So this is to as much stimulate our minds and what we’ll write next. So welcome. Thank you for being here.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Very excited.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
I love, again, my sense is that you’re going to warm up here in just a moment and we’re going to hear some good stuff. So even what you just heard me say, are you already thinking or feeling something in terms of what I just said?
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Oh yeah, thoughts are abounding for sure.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
I figured. Would you share whatever you’re inclined.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
So I guess just to start off with, thank you guys for engaging me in the conversation and inviting me to be a part of it, especially as the newborn, if you will, the newbie. So there are probably advantages to that. There are probably a lot of disadvantages to that, but we go forward anyway. But I guess my first initial thought, well my first initial thought that I’ll start with, is how courageous of you all to take on this project? Because I think it can be just so easy to know that there’s an elephant in the room, but not will wanting to be the one to say, do you think that there’s an elephant in the room or do you see the elephant in the room? So I think that it is really courageous and really bold. And when I say bold, I’m thinking more of a boldness with a spirit of adventure if you will. Not so much like this, I kind of hold this superior positioning and I’m bold enough to tell you this. I don’t feel it’s that way. I think it’s more of a boldness with a sense of adventure where it can be, again, so easy to tuck your head in the sand and just kind of, but to say, Nope, we don’t want to do this. We want to confront it, we want to look at it, we want to call it by whatever its name is. And to then decide how do we want to deal accordingly.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
I love your boldness. We just, were talking with Andrew who’s off screen, who’s going wing-walking. I hear echoes of wing-walking even in that sense of we’re trying to adventure here. I like that. I like that. One of our prime intents, I’ll speak for you Paul, and you tell me if it’s wrong. I know it’s not wrong, but tell me if you would add, is to do something generative. We’re not here to bash, we’re not here to crash the plane. We’re here to find a different sort of wind beneath our wings, so to speak, that could carry us a long way in the days ahead. So thank you for calling that bold. I feel that I feel the difficulty of moving into this, but I do also feel the excitement of like, oh, I could actually think better. I could actually find my mind if we were to stay on with this project.
Dr. Paul Hoard:
And just to add, I think what’s drawn me to this personally has been this. There’s something that I don’t know and I feel very tuned to not knowing there’s something that I don’t know what it is. And I think Doug, our little blog posts are sort of you and I’s attempts at trying to name it, but they feel really insufficient. We don’t know what it is because hopefully even engaging you can feel the like, oh, there’s something we don’t know happening here. And I think inviting Curt and Monique and Chelle and others to kind of dialogue with us is trying to help invite your words to help us get closer as we move into this not knowing into that openness of track two that Curt talked about of like, okay, yeah, we all sense it. We’re using the word elephant, the way we talk about the elephant in the room, but I have no idea what it is, but here’s some words for the felt experience of it for me. Yeah. And with that, maybe just curious, Monique, what’s happened for you, especially as the newbie, I’m thinking of as the newest member of the faculty, you’re the one joining and there’s an element of that perspective of you haven’t been around long enough for it to become normal yet. You can feel this isn’t normal at times. And so as much as you feel open to maybe what are some of those moments been like for you?
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah, so it’s really interesting. It’s been, I guess I would say kind of an awkward place to be because part of me would wonder, is it because I’m new and everyone else kind of knows the language and it’s like, oh yeah, this is when we, this is what we call, or this is where mother keeps the blah blah, blah. You kind of like, oh, okay, Paul, I know you and I have so often described it as that in-law thing. So when you’re coming into a new family, it’s like, okay, well where do you keep the towels? So you almost feel awkward to ask the question because everybody else knows. But also what has been interesting to ask the question is when it is not known. So there is very much this sense of like you’re saying there is a thing, but we can’t really put a finger on it.
We can’t really say what it is. I do believe the experiences that I’ve had, the naming of what we think it is is probably not what it really is. It’s usually kind of what gets or who gets scapegoated if you will. So it is been, in the beginning, it’s kind of sorry about my very naive questions, but with you, a curious person by nature, I am an asker of the question, if you will, as my father would always say. And so by asking those questions, I believe, as Doug is saying, I think it generates something if we have the courage to ask the question. So that’s kind of been the best way. I guess I can try to explain it where being new it is this, well, I just don’t know, but now it’s not, I don’t know because I’m new. It’s like I don’t know because it is that skeleton or that elephant.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
Yeah. Well I love what you said there, Monique, whatever we think it is is probably not. Right. What actually, if a myth holds a people together, part of what helps to preserve the myth is we can’t really actually get to what it is and its truth or veracity or whatever. We just like, the myth actually falls apart when it gets named and articulated. And so there’s something about that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m really drawn, your father calls you the asker of the question.
Is that right? Yeah. You said of Paul and I that we are bold, but you we’re here in part because of you, because you’ve come in and stirred up. You’ve come in and been the asker of the question in places like faculty meeting where you’ve said, what are you people talking about and what are you doing to the elephant? [MG speaking] No, I’m paraphrasing, just kidding. I’m paraphrasing. But what you have, even the elephant, you are the one who in a faculty meeting said it’s like there’s an elephant in the room that we’re not talking about. And so you said to us, I don’t know if I can trust you people, if you’re not going to actually actually want to try to articulate, we may get there, we may not get there, but if we’re going to dance around this thing, instead of trying to look at it, I don’t know if I want to be a part of you people. Which led at least in my memory, to something like a 90 minute unprecedented faculty conversation around all of the elephants that exist in our system. We developed a list. Am I remembering that? Does that sound right to you all? So you being an asker of the question, it seems to me even as you enter the system, our system, you have been asking questions that we needed to have asked.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah.
Dr. Paul Hoard:
Well the kid who points out that the emperor is naked, no really willing to say, I don’t see the clothes. And I think being new enough in your own boldness or history or being willing to be the one that acknowledges the not knowing as opposed to sort of, I’m going to play the part and I think, and I would put my own joining in this. I’ll play the part I learned to adapt to whatever system I’m in, which both works for me on a survival method, but also doesn’t help, helps me then adapt to become part of a system. Doesn’t question the system very well. And so your willingness to come in and say, no, no, that emperor is naked, I don’t see any clothes, forces, is that I think in some ways the healthy shame of like, yeah, no, no, we’ve been playing something. We’ve been playing something. There’s a shame that I think is a deserved and a healthy like no, because this isn’t who we want to be. We can be better than that calling us.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
I hope it’s okay for me to say here. I’ve heard you say you’ve had the word shame on you given to you in a loving charging way in your past. And so maybe even that’s what I hear Paul saying of this is a project about shame and it’s not a project about mean, those ghosts and shadows may point towards what Resma [Menakem] calls dirty pain or something that isn’t so healthy, but also maybe a healthy shame where we got to say, oh yeah, I have been playing that game and maybe that’s not a good game for me to play.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
I think that when there is either an unconscious or maybe semi-conscious survival mechanism that is in operation, then what we are gearing toward is how do we survive? So I guess maybe some of that that Curt has been talking to you guys about on that level. And I think that when we are stuck in that mode, I think our imaginations are gridlocked. And that’s some of what Friedman will talk about. The imagination will have this gridlock. We can’t think beyond just what do we need to do to survive. And so I thought it was really interesting and part of your blog where you guys talked about how does this institution stay relevant in the midst of all of the other kind of changes that are taking place, but it feels as though there is this sense of to stay relevant means to survive, and then that means I’m stuck in my survival loop.
You know what I’m saying? And I think that maybe unbeknownst to us, we find ourselves swept up in all those changes, even though we’re trying to figure out how to stay relevant. I think that we inadvertently get swept up because when I hear the language or when I read the language, how do we stay relevant when all other things are being tossed to and fro? That’s like the words I like to use. So staying relevant, how is it that we can be the tree that may bend but won’t break, right? So yes, we are going to feel the rusting of all of the things that are happening externally and how is it that institutionally we have that non-anxious presence to be able to say, yeah, everything can swirl around us. I mean because it will, every generation of students, every two to three years, four to five years, whatever the case may be, something’s going to come in and something’s going to blow in that is happening societally, culturally, nationally, wherever else. It’s just all of these things are going to be happening. But if an institution I feel is going to survive, it has to say yes, we can address what is happening and also how is it that we remain a non-anxious presence? And I think that in order to be able to do that well, you have to get out of survival mode. You have to get out of that cycle that feeds, this is what we do to stay relevant, which you may exist, but I don’t know that you’re staying relevant
Dr. Doug Shirley:
In our text threads, even just staying connected with each other. And in the conversation leading up to today, Paul, you said, I think it was you that said, or one of you two said, so then it’s sort of like we create these dramas to show that we exist and that we’re needed, but it’s not actually a move. If I listen to what you’re saying, it’s not a move out of survival. It’s actually that same looping, but we create dramas to keep the loop going so that we know that we exist.
Dr. Paul Hoard:
I mean, when you thrive in chaos, you’re going to create chaos to thrive. And so then I think there’s a confusion of is this the chaos that like you’re saying, is being blown on us or is this also us making sure that it’s always there? Because maybe part of our inheritance is we thrive in chaos. We were born out of chaos. And so there’s a tendency that almost a growth out of it that we don’t know how to make. And so we’re sort of stuck in a loop. And I hear that even in, I think something that was thrown out earlier today that’s been a recurring theme that you’ve said, Monique, in our faculty meetings, which is like we perform as faculty as a school, we perform and we perform fairly well. We know how to put on a show, we know how to do things.
So our external, what we present to the students, to the world, to the rest is one thing. But I think that it doesn’t lead to that non-anxious presence you’re talking about Monique, because we don’t know how to talk to each other, the roots of the tree that the invisible part of us that isn’t seen outside isn’t sturdy. And so I think there’s this desire for us to, what I hear you trying to cultivate mess, Monique, is can we talk to each other so that conversations that nobody else ever needs to hear about so that when we go out there, it’s not a performance, it’s a living out of conversations we’ve already had. And I think even this conversation, the meta point here is maybe very Seattle School of me that we’re having a conversations being recorded for other people, but the three of us have been having a conversation for a year. This is not the first time we’ve talked with you about some of these things, Monique. Not that we were rehearsing this, but that I think this conversation being recorded would’ve been inappropriate if it hadn’t come out of a year of us sitting on it wrestling with each other.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve agreed had there not been prior conversation with you all to really have a firm understanding of what do you want to do with this? Where are you going with this? So yeah, to your point, I don’t think that this conversation, well, it could have taken place, but I do believe as you say, it would have been along lines of being very performative. And I just believe that I think as the clinician in me that may be, cannot sense and discern whatever that is that’s going unnamed without saying we need to name this at some point. We need to name it at some point. I’ve seen it too many times over the decades that I’ve been doing the work that the thing that we’re trying not to name is usually the obstacle to the thing that we keep saying we’re trying to get to. So yeah, I can remember working with couples and as you mentioned that dancing around and okay, there’s some tension here and everything is good and some tension there and everything is good. And I keep going, what’s the tension about? What are y’all not telling me? I said, I really feel like there is something you’re not telling me. And boy, when they told me Kapo, but it was on the other side of that beauty emerged and not only beauty, there was a stability.
I’m thinking of a couple who has spent over 20 years together and never married, never married. And I’m kind of going, whoa, this is a long time to be together and have the desire but never fulfill it. What do you guys afraid of? What are you not telling me? What’s keeping you from doing this thing? And when they finally named it, and of course all of the chaos ensued behind the naming, but when the calm came, so did the stability, the marriage took place. And as far as I know, marriage has been going good. Every now and again, they’ll pop up and just say, Hey, we’re doing well. And I’m like, great.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
What my mind did with what you just said that I think was wrong was my own couple’s mind when, oh, she’s saying that they had a piece of paper that said that they were legally tied, but they weren’t actually acting like they’re married, but you are saying no, they literally didn’t even do the deed to have the piece of paper that said that they were married. Which I think even that back and forth fits some of what I experience in our ranks as faculty. Are we married? Are we in, do we have contracts? What do the contracts authorize us to do and not authorize us to do? Can we have a contract but not actually be in? If we’re married are we actually married? Are there parts of us that we’ve kept from getting married the whole time out of fear and trepidation and survival needs? If we don’t talk to each other as intimate partners and that can just be as good friends and colleagues–what’s keeping us from that?
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that question has to be asked. I think that that question has to be answered at some point because if not, if we are talking about this, these inheritances, then you’re going to continue to pass that on, generation to generation. They’re going to continue to get that until there is someone who is going well. So questions can be asked, but again, and there can be attempts to answer, and apparently the answers are not sufficient because still in this place. Yeah.
Dr. Paul Hoard:
Well that makes me go back to the, I think a word you threw out earlier, Monique, which is trust that there’s, what do we not trust in? What is it we don’t? Do we not trust each other? Is there a system? Where is this because the lack of trust I think is there, and you’re saying, Doug, this lack of commitment of a marriage or if we want to use that metaphor, whatever, but there’s not a trust. And I think that’s what I hear us trying to name, that there’s this appearance of connection. There’s this appearance of community and there’s this lack of trust when you get into maybe the inner workings of us as faculty where there’s sort of, we’re made sense of it that all of us in the psychology side, we’re clinicians. So we’re sort of also have our private practice and we’re professors. And so there’s a way that I think that’s also an excuse of, are we actually in on this thing? Are we actually there? We actually committed to what this is, and do we trust each other? Do we trust the institution? Do we trust? I don’t know what, but there’s that, I think a lack of trust that comes out where we’ll perform for the kids,
But behind closed doors, what else happens that I think we’re trying to figure out?
Dr. Monique Gadson:
And I think that’s exactly what it is. It is a trying to figure it out that in and of itself is going to require a degree of emotional investment and energy for that matter, that some may not have, some entity, some parts of the system may not have not want to have for various reasons. And I really don’t even, I’m hopeful that when I say that, I don’t say that in a way that sounds like it’s trying to villainize someone. Not that, I mean, I just think that these things are legitimate and I think that they are real. And as I so often say in classes, especially when we do consider systemic thinking, we are reflecting something from somewhere, some grander, macro, eco, whatever else, old system, right? We’re reflecting that. And so often, like I say to the students, if we are supposed to be agents of change and training individuals to be agents of change, if we cannot enact it, then there’s a problem. There’s a problem.
We are stuck somewhere. We’re colluding with some self-deception perhaps or something that is not happening. And I do believe that part of it is the, I know you guys use the language of the fantasy, where I think that there is this fantasy that the outcome is a kumbaya-ish feel. And I say to the students sometimes that I don’t know that that’s necessarily where we are trying to get for the next step. That’s a lot to try to accomplish when we live in times that are so extremely polarizing. That’s a lot to try to get your arms around and contain and try to accomplish. And I am saying, what do you do just in the next moment, like your next step? What do you do with that dynamic between you and that person or your client that you’re sitting in front of?
I think that there is, I think that we’re just paralyzed in place. We’re stuck in place, and I do believe that part of that is that societal, emotional process. I think we keep transmitting stuff and I think that that is going to continue to be transmitted because majority of humans want the quick fix. And usually these types of issues are not quick fixes. You have to be in it for the long haul. That’s why in part is important for an institution, an individual, a leader, to have a non-anxious presence. Somebody has got to be steady when all of the cultural and emotional and educational and all the other things are going to be up in arms and changing as many times as we can blink in a day, something, someone has to be that beacon to say, I stand and I shine and I don’t change from that. Something has got to continue to call to say, here’s the way, this is the way, come on, this is the way. Yes, the water is choppy. Yes. That’s a scary conversation to have. Yes, that is a hard thing to name. Yes. That’s a hard thing to face. Yeah, that’s a hard thing to even confess, whatever it is. But if you have, and we know this, y’all know we know this when we talk about that, co-regulation, so if we have that steady presence, that non-anxious presence, perhaps that can
Be securing enough where people will be willing to say, okay, there’s a journey ahead, but it’s going to start with one step. Right.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
Monique, thank you. There’s a stillness in me that I did not have when I came, so thank you.
Dr. Monique Gadson:
Thank you all. I appreciate you.
Dr. Doug Shirley:
Alright.