What if the reason you never feel good enough is because you’ve confused what you do with who you are?

In this Extended Edition of Winning the War for Your Heart, Laura Duncan introduces something important to listen for in Brian Freise’s story: how shame can cause us to believe our mistakes, failures, and behaviors define who we are.

Brian, author of Above All Else, shares how his identity became tied to his performance, why failure felt so devastating, and how understanding the difference between what he did and who he was began to change his relationship with shame. Drawing from the story of Adam and Eve, he explores why shame and blame often go hand in hand.

Then Laura returns at the end to unpack why trying harder to be good can actually keep us stuck in shame—and how unconditional self-acceptance and compassion can help us stop hiding, proving, and performing so we can reconnect with who we truly are.

📖 Get Above All Else by Brian Freise:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H1K36LC9?maas=maas_adg_04E4176EE8EDC3B33B9BC1C1A72CB82B_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas

📩 Get our free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short videos from Laura each week:
https://www.triggeredandtrue.com/weeklydose

Do you ever close your Bible feeling heavier than when you opened it?

For years, Brian read scripture through a shame lens. The Bible became "one big shame book" — a to-do list for earning God's love — and he walked away weighed down by everything he still had to do. In this episode of Triggered and True, Christian emotional health consultant Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise explore how shame quietly shapes the way we read the Bible, hear a sermon, and relate to God — and how to tell the Spirit's conviction from shame's condemnation.

Laura shares what she heard when she asked God how to read the Bible shame-free, why guilt can be healthy when shame never is, and how the Compassion Method helps you notice what a passage actually makes you feel. What you do matters, but you matter more. The Bible was always meant to be a love letter, not a scorecard.

In this episode:
🔹 Why Brian read the Bible as a to-do list for earning love — and what changed when he saw it as a love letter from God
🔹 Conviction vs. condemnation: both hurt, but one leaves you empowered and not alone, while the other just says "try harder" (and why no hope is Brian's dead giveaway that he's triggered)
🔹 Guilt says "I made a mistake"; shame says "who I am is wrong" — plus what Jesus' words to the Pharisees about heavy burdens reveal about shame
🔹 The day Laura's daughter came to the car skipping, even though the bully was still there — and why a hard sermon doesn't have to become who you are, even when it hurts
🔹 A simple, shame-free Bible reading practice: noticing whether you feel helpless, hopeless, trapped, sad, scared, or lonely, and bringing compassion to what you find

Dive deeper with these two great resources! 👇

📕 Get your copy of Brian's book Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart Click here to get the book!

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion

Two quick notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

What if the part of you that feels broken isn’t who you really are?

In this Extended Edition of Winning the War for Your Heart, Laura Duncan highlights something important to listen for in Brian Freise’s story: how early in life we can begin believing there’s something wrong with us—and how that belief can shape the way we see ourselves years later.

Brian, author of Above All Else, goes deeper into his own experience of feeling broken and what began to change when he learned to understand his emotional pain differently.

Then Laura returns at the end to unpack why we can mistake our triggered self for our true self—and what it can look like to begin separating who we are from the ways we learned to respond to pain.

📕 Get your copy of Brian's book Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart Click here to get the book!

Why do we react in ways we regret when we’re triggered—and why can it feel so impossible to stop in the moment?

In this Extended Edition of Winning the War for Your Heart, Laura Duncan highlights what to listen for as Brian Freise, author of Above All Else, shares the brain science behind our emotional reactions and how understanding the primal brain changed the way he saw his own triggers.

Then Laura returns at the end to unpack the four common trauma responses—fight, flight, freeze, and fawn—and how each can show up when we’re emotionally triggered.

📕 Get your copy of Brian's book Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart Click here to get the book!

What if your anxiety, panic, or depression isn't something you need to get rid of—but something you need to learn to listen to?

In this Extended Edition of Winning the War for Your Heart, Laura Duncan shares what to listen for in Brian story as he recounts the night panic entered his life and the four words— “It’s as bad as it feels” —that became his first experience with real compassion.

Laura returns at the end to go deeper into what it means to process emotional pain instead of pushing it away and how we can begin listening to what our pain is trying to tell us.

📖 Get Above All Else: Winning The War For Your Heart by Brian Freise here

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

What if emotional healing isn’t about fixing your pain — but discovering who you were created to be?

In this episode of Winning the War for Your Heart, Brian Freise — author of Above All Else — sits down with Laura Duncan, creator of the Compassion Method and the person who walked Brian through his own healing journey. Together, they explore what happens when we stop trying to fix, suppress, or shame our pain and instead learn to bring compassion, comfort, and connection to what’s happening inside us.

Brian shares how emotional healing changed his relationship with himself, his family, his faith, and even the way he sees other people's differences. He opens up about the vulnerability of writing Above All Else, why men and leaders often feel pressure to hide their emotions, and how learning to feel his pain helped him become more connected to his true self.

At the heart of the conversation is a powerful question: What if healing isn't the final destination? What if healing is the doorway to becoming fully who you were created to be?

📕 Get your copy of Brian's book Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart Click here to get the book!

Your greatest superpower is learning to be okay when it's not okay all around you.

In Episode 6 of Winning the War for Your Heart, Brian Freise — author of Above All Else — gives you the most practical tool in the Compassion Method arsenal: the Remote Control Exercise. Brian walks through the exact 5-step process he uses every time a trigger fires, the 3 tender emotions hiding underneath every reaction, and the moment he realized his rice-picking-up reflex was the same pattern running his entire life.

If you've ever felt like you can't be okay until your external world is fixed — this is the episode that gives you back your power.

Get the book that started this journey — Above All Else by Brian Freise here

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart by clicking here.

What if even the conditions that feel most hopeless, the ones you've been told no one can help, aren't the end of your story?

In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise open the mailbag for a wide-ranging round of listener questions, from mental health to matters of faith. It's an honest, compassionate conversation that meets people right where they're stuck and offers real hope without ever over-promising.

They begin with a tender one: does the Compassion Method help someone with OCD; the "doubting disease" where hope can feel scarce?

Laura responds with deep empathy and reframes obsessive thinking as a protector, a survival strategy a child built to counter a world that felt too out of control, and explains how bringing in love and unmet needs can help the brain rewire and let those thoughts go.

She extends the same hope to bipolar and other conditions she's encountered across 15 years of clients, always alongside, never in place of, the medical care people need.

Then two faith questions: first, a listener worried that "using God as medicine" meant they shouldn't bring their pain to Him.

Laura clarifies that it's the opposite, that medicating with God meant not actually bringing Him her pain.

The second, whether the method is built on universalism, which Laura answers plainly (it isn't), while sharing her belief in Jesus and her wonder at the free will God preserves in us.

In this episode:

🔹 Can the Compassion Method help with OCD? Reframing obsessive thinking as a protector the brain can rewire

🔹 Why the same hope extends to bipolar and other conditions — always alongside, never replacing, medical care

🔹 "Using God as medicine," clarified: why it means bringing Him your pain, not staying away from Him

🔹 Is the method based on universalism? Laura answers directly — and on free will and the Garden

🔹 Why separation from God can come through unhealed pain, not just obvious sin

📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion

Two quick notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868

🔗 Learn more:

https://triggeredandtrue.com

https://lauraduncan.com

Get your copy of Above All Else: Winning the War for Your Heart here: https://a.co/d/057P9Z3g