Emotional Healing & Relationships Dr Dean & HollyKem

Dr. Dean & HollyKem Sunseri
[00:00:00] HollyKem Sunseri: That, okay, in, in this world, who’s showing up to work, right? So if I’m showing up to work as this wounded person, you know, and that, you know, I feel like I’m a victim, I start attracting people that treat me like a victim. So all of a sudden this pattern keeps happening. But if I stop,
[00:00:54] Ed Watters: Today, we are speaking with Dr. Dean and HollyKem Sunseri. [00:01:00] They are the authors of A Roadmap to the Soul, a practical guide to love, compassion, and inner peace. They are also the creators of Transform You, it’s an online coaching program. Could you please introduce yourselves? And let people know just a little more about you before we get started, please.
[00:01:25] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah, hi. Well, we are married. We’ve been married since July of 91, so we’re at thirty-three years right now. And we’re both life coaches and therapists and, um, we wrote a book and we been helping people for a long time. But today with online you can, you know, you can reach across and, uh, do a lot of good stuff in coaching. So we’re excited to be here. Yeah.
[00:01:55] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:01:56] HollyKem Sunseri: Did I miss anything?
[00:01:57] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Well, there’s a lot more to be said, but I think [00:02:00] that’s a great introduction.
[00:02:03] Ed Watters: Alright. Well, uh, the thing I like the most about you is you guys are out here doing this work to bring people awareness of how to be better people. Be better couples. Uh, being a couple is not easy. My wife and I, we’ve been together since 1985. We were married in 85, but we’ve been together since 83. So this is our fortieth year being married in September. Uh, thank you and congratulations to you guys also. It’s hard. As well you know, you, you have to control so much to have a positive relationship. Uh, the thing that I really wanna speak most about is having that higher power in our [00:03:00] relationship. You are Christian counselors and you have that faith. I, I believe that we have to have higher powers guiding us. Could you speak to us first about, what do you think about having higher powers guide us in our relationship and listen to the small voices speaking to us?
[00:03:27] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah, I think that’s, uh, that’s real key to a relationship. You know, if you look at the, uh, Judeo-Christian tradition, the first story in the Bible was a man and woman who were together and they were walking in harmony with God. And so there’s something about that image, I think, that’s very important because really successful marriages are not twosomes, they’re actually threesomes in a sense. And that the first marital fight on record was after their [00:04:00] disconnection with God occurred. And so after, after they fell or they sinned, they were hiding out together and God was looking for them and started to question them. And then basically they got into a he did it, she did it kind of thing. And that was the first fight.
But I think that, you know, it’s not only a story, but I think it has a practical application to the fact that we are meant to walk in fellowship with the higher power, with God, with Jesus, Holy Spirit. And that when that’s in harmony and intact, then it makes the relationship a lot easier. Another way of looking at it, it is that we all are built inside with a conscience. And I believe the more connected we are spiritually, the more aware of, we are of our conscience. And that, that conscience will, will guide us. You know, if, if I’m disrespectful to my [00:05:00] wife, earlier in my immature days, my wife would have to correct me and I would say, Oh, well I didn’t mean that, this and that. But, but as I’ve grown and grown more in our connection with the Lord, that if I say something disrespectful to her, I actually have a check in my spirit.
There’s something inside of me that says, no, you’ve gone a little too far. You’re going a little too far. You need to take responsibility for that, cut that down. And all of a sudden it’s like I have this internal teacher that’s teaching me how to, uh, treat, how to speak to. Now I can’t say I always do it well, but it’s there. And the greater spiritual awareness that we have, the greater that voice is and it actually helps create a governor and creates a teacher in our relationship with our spouse and really in all our relationships.
[00:05:52] HollyKem Sunseri: Well, I think too is that for myself, is that, you know, I love Jesus and God more than I love [00:06:00] my husband and I can,
[00:06:02] Ed Watters: Amen. I like that.
[00:06:03] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah, and I can say that he does too. So what that does is, that main relationship, it keeps me, you know, grounded in the sense of what is it that I really want on earth? You know, what, what’s really important to me here? And, you know, to win that particular argument or to win that particular, whatever, negotiation, is like, in a negotiation, I don’t want my spouse to be a loser. Why would I wanna be married to a loser? You know what I’m saying? So it’s like in the negotiations, I want us both to win, right? Because I wanna be married to a winner and I hope he doesn’t wanna be married to a loser either. So if we look at it like that, then it’s like it becomes a negotiation for us both to win whatever it is we need to negotiate on.
So, you know, when it becomes that we’re partners and it’s not like, you know, I’m the Saints and he’s the Falcons, [00:07:00] right? That we’re fighting each other and trying to win this game versus that we’re both on the Saints team, you know? He happens to be the offense leader and I’m the defense leader, I’m the offense leader and he’s the defense leader, that we’re on the same team to negotiate on how we can win whatever it is that we need to negotiate on. So it becomes a whole different way of seeing it versus he’s my competitor and he’s my, you know, equal, or he’s my person that I have to fight, or my enemy, you know? He’s my friend, he’s my, he’s my lover, he’s my partner, you know?
[00:07:38] Ed Watters: I like that a lot, I really think that that’s key. If, if we understand that we’re going to have disagreements and we don’t have to argue about every disagreement. And that falls into the emotional intelligence that we gain by accepting our [00:08:00] failures, our weaknesses, and even our divisions. Uh, what do you have to say about that?
[00:08:06] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And, you know, um, I love talking about emotional intelligence. That’s what, that was probably the thing that I’d have to say, I can say that I’ve learned the most in sixty-four years is how to navigate my emotions, how to know my emotions, how to connect with them, how to speak for myself, or them, how to understand where they’re coming from. If they’re coming from something that’s happened in front of me or something in front of me is connecting to some old pain that is left in me and then, you know, how do I handle that versus the old ways that I used to handle it? Or even if I hear it in my head, the old way that I used to handle it, learning to hear that, but not empower that.
[00:08:50] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:08:51] HollyKem Sunseri: You know, so really what we’ve learned on, how to, you know, and what we teach is how to really look at [00:09:00] that emotional life, love ourselves through that, and then speak for ourselves. And not just become it, you know? And how, you know, how do you not become it is you gotta be emotionally intelligent, right?
[00:09:13] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:09:13] HollyKem Sunseri: You wanna go there?
[00:09:14] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. We’ve been doing marriage counseling, coaching for over three decades. What I find, Ed, that’s really interesting is that oftentimes the people are divorcing the wrong person. In a sense that they’re trying to divorce their own painful history that keeps coming up from them, that’s triggered by their partner, but that’s who they’re trying to divorce. And if they’re not able to successfully, in a sense, divorce outta common peace in terms with that, then those very things will be played out with their partner. And so sometimes it’s like, to myself, I mean, sometimes I’ll say like, You, you might be divorcing the wrong person here. You know, you [00:10:00] divorce the situation. Now obviously I’m not talking about an abusive situation and something really tragic is happening and they need to get out, but I’m just saying in general.
[00:10:09] HollyKem Sunseri: Another thing too, to add, that it’s not about divorcing your parents
[00:10:13] Dr.Dean Sunseri: No.
[00:10:13] HollyKem Sunseri: or the people that hurt you, it’s about divorcing the emotion that’s attached to all of that.
[00:10:20] Dr.Dean Sunseri: The painful memory.
[00:10:21] HollyKem Sunseri: Right. The painful memories of what happened, the way we felt and saw it. May it be that way or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s the way I, it felt when I was a little kid, or you know, a little boy and something happened to us, and so now we’re, you know, it gets triggered in this relationship
[00:10:39] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:10:39] HollyKem Sunseri: and we start playing it out on each other. And I just want you to stop doing that. And if you just stop doing that, then I’ll be okay, right? But that’s not true. And, go ahead.
[00:10:50] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Well, we know, we know that is, we talk about emotional intelligence. That our wounds, any wounds that we’ve experienced, have two characteristics that are so important to [00:11:00] understand. Our wounds have no sense of time, which means any wound that we’re carrying from our history doesn’t know the difference between five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, yesterday and today. And that part of us thinks in symbols.
[00:11:16] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:11:17] Dr.Dean Sunseri: So symbols can trigger it off. The symbol can be an anniversary date, the symbol could be a person, it could be a female, it could be a male, it could be an authority figure, it could be a number of different things. Like a real simple, I had a guy that was driving from New Orleans and Baton Rouge one time in college. Uh, it was raining real hard, flipped the car and, uh, walked out of it unscathed, but really could have been killed. And, you know, fifteen, twenty years later, was driving from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and it started to rain and had an absolute panic attack.
[00:11:53] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:11:54] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Now the panic attack wasn’t because it was raining and he didn’t know how to drive, he’s an [00:12:00] experienced driver. It was because the symbol of, its raining and I’m driving between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. And all the pain that he had from the original accident that hadn’t really successfully been dealt with came up for him and he was having a panic attack and he didn’t understand it. But I mean, it makes easy sense as I’m talking about it, but we’re talking about a twenty year difference between the first experience and the second one. And so we all can have sensitive triggers that can occur if, If, uh, they get, the symbol gets activated.
[00:12:37] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:12:37] Dr.Dean Sunseri: And that’s what happens in relationship with, uh, emotional intelligence, is that we often get activated about things that are happening. But the intensity that we’re feeling maybe is about a symbol in the past.

[00:12:51] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:12:52] Dr.Dean Sunseri: And so, you know, if my wife said something that’s upsetting to me, or say she’s being controlling and I have this issue about being controlled. [00:13:00] Now she may deserve out of one to ten scale, uh, ten being high, a reaction that deserves a three. But because it’s a sensitive symbol that I’ve had over and over again, and she’s being controlling, all of a sudden I’m feeling an eight or nine. And so instead of a three, she’s experienced an eight or nine, and she’s saying, Wow, that’s quite an overreaction. I, I just told you to wear that shirt, you know? And, and I’m an eight or a nine. And okay, well, where’s the extra five or six come from, right? It comes from my unique history and it’s not about her, it’s only partially about her. But if I can’t calibrate and understand the difference,
[00:13:43] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:13:43] Dr.Dean Sunseri: it’s gonna cause fireworks.
[00:13:46] HollyKem Sunseri: That’s good.
[00:13:49] Ed Watters: Yeah. I like that a lot because I, I experienced that the other day, you know, my wife and I, we had a disagreement. And how we handle that, [00:14:00] I, I recognized how we changed that, you know, interaction throughout the years. It used to be very volatile and, you know, just erupt into something it shouldn’t have really quick. And now it’s more I say, No, you’re not allowed to do that to me. And until you accept what you’ve done and how you approached me, we can’t carry on any further with this argument or discussion. Let’s do it in a way that we can actually sit down, talk, and, and it’s getting easier and easier to go through these past traumas. Because that’s what sparks a lot of these things is past traumas and I, I really think it’s [00:15:00] very key that we identify those trigger points that make us upset. So now as we go through these things, I find myself saying, Hey, let’s stop there, and what caused that? Let’s identify what just caused that. And I think it’s easier if we can start doing that, we can get over it much quicker.
[00:15:31] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah. And one of the things that I always say is the trigger is an opportunity to love myself in an area that didn’t get enough love.
[00:15:41] Ed Watters: Oh, I like that.
[00:15:44] HollyKem Sunseri: Isn’t that good? Because it’s like there’s a wound that has been there, right? It’s, it, it, you know, something happened to us and it’s there. It’s not that we don’t know it, it’s not that we haven’t talked about it, not that we haven’t brought it to the table, not that it hasn’t jumped out of the closet, all of these things, [00:16:00] right? But when it comes up again, it just means, what I see is, it means that that thing needed, let’s say you need a thousand, you know, you need a hundred, you need a hundred pounds of love for that particular thing to really be healed,
okay? So over your lifetime, it’s maybe gotten 50%, okay? And now it comes up again. It’s an opportunity to go in, for my, for my true self, to love the wound itself. And for me to take this opportunity to love that part of me. And you know what? After this incident, I may, that, that wound may only need 40% Now. I’ve loved it, I’ve loved it 60% so far. And you can’t love something that hasn’t jumped out, Right? Or that hasn’t gotten like, you know,
[00:16:49] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Brought to the surface.
[00:16:50] HollyKem Sunseri: yeah, brought to the surface. So it’s like it’s an opportunity versus me going, Stop, stop doing that to me, you always do that to me. It’s because, [00:17:00] versus saying, Okay, just like you said, like, okay, let’s look at this and see where this is coming from. And it’s like I have an opportunity to love myself in this. And then of course, my partner that loves me, and I’m taking ownership of this thing, he may say, Wow, I can really see how that hurt you and how that triggered that and I never meant to do that. And then so he’s loving me too in this. So maybe now it’s gone down to 38%,
you know what I’m saying? But what if it takes till I die for this thing to get a hundred percent of love? It’s just, I get to love myself. It’s not like this is this horrible thing that we all get so afraid of and that we don’t want it to come up. But it’s like all of us deserve the hundred percent of love that each wound needs to heal. It’s just, you know, me taking those opportunities to do it. And for my true self to love my wounded self instead of the protective part of me saying, [00:18:00] You need to stop, stop doing that or, you know, I’m gonna drink over this, or I’m gonna smoke dope, or I’m gonna run away, or I’m gonna get a divorce, or whatever
that part says. I’m gonna leave my whole life behind so I cannot have to feel this feeling anymore or this wound anymore. And it’s like, it’s not gonna happen. I mean, unless you’re gonna like, just like live in your room and be in contact with no human beings, you know, it’s not gonna happen, right? I mean, you’re going to get triggered, go to the grocery. I mean, it’s gonna happen.
[00:18:33] Ed Watters: Yeah. Uh, you know, and, and I think it’s important for the males to understand, especially the young males that might be going through these things, that we’ve got to learn to listen to our wife and, you know, sometimes that hurts our ego. But when we have those hurts, our egos being hurt, isn’t that [00:19:00] something that we as males need to look deeper into?
[00:19:05] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah, definitely. I definitely think so. It’s that, you know, a relationship’s gonna challenge us both to grow. And when a couple comes in, you know, I always say that, that if you can take responsibility to your contribution to any argument, we can work through it. Because the tendency is to be overly focused on what your partner’s doing. And the things can shift when I can say, What is my reaction, my response, and how did I contribute to it? I’m not talking about placing blame and who has blame in this. Look, it takes two to tango. And so I think sometimes it’s the biggest challenge for, for, for men, women also, is to say, okay, like for example, if, if my wife figuratively, which [00:20:00] she’s never done, slap me three times and then I slap her back once and she slaps me three more, in my own mind, she’s got six in, I got one. She deserves at least two or three. But if we were gonna really work on this,
[00:20:16] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:20:16] Dr.Dean Sunseri: I need to take responsibility for my one slap. Say, Honey, that was wrong. I’m sorry I, I slapped you. It’s her job to work on her six. But the, the interesting thing is, if I did that, it would actually increase the chances of her taking responsibility for her part. What, what most people don’t understand is that the attitude of, of true repentance actually creates conviction for the other person. So, to give you another example. If you, and Ed, and I, you, you and I were business partners and we had an agreement nobody takes money outta the company [00:21:00] without the others’ permission. And say you take $10,000 out and I’m all mad. I say, I can’t believe Ed took it without telling me this and that. And then I take out $2,000 and then you’re mad at me for that. And we having our own justification. If I have a meeting with you and I said, Ed, you as a business partner mean so much to me and I made an agreement with you to not take any money outta the company without your permission. And I took $2,000 out of this company and I’m putting it back because it was wrong, and I’m sorry. And I asked for your forgiveness. Now most people would say, that’s stupid to do that. No, no, no, no. I do that and I walk away, that’s going to increase the chances of you
[00:21:47] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:21:48] Dr.Dean Sunseri: having your own conviction. Wow. He took only 2000, I took 10. He’s sorrowful, he’s authentic. He’s expressing how important I am to the business relationship. [00:22:00] He’s taken responsibility for that. That’s actually going to increase the chances of you taking responsibility. You may not, but I just made it harder for you not to. And I’m gonna get a lot more leverage out of that than to cuss you out and call you a low down dog, and you’re a robber, and you’re a crook, and this and that. It, that, that’s not gonna get us anywhere, it’s not gonna get us anywhere. So, so I, I do say, and I challenge the young men out there is, take responsibility for your part.
Have the humility to acknowledge that, and you actually get closer to the result that you want. And I always say that the other thing that’s key in, especially in, in dealing with disputes is, I’ve, I’ve come to understand over the years that I really need to trust my partner’s intention. It’s, it’s very uncanny how, here’s the woman that I’ve been married to thirty-three years, she’s my [00:23:00] lover, she knows everything about me, she has access to all my bank accounts, she has access to everything that’s important to me. And in 3.2 seconds, she can go from my friend to my enemy. You know, just something could be said, and all of a sudden I’m seeing her as an enemy.
Now here’s this person and it’s, it’s crazy how that can happen to us, but I think it’s really important to, to say, No, I’m gonna trust her intention. And her intention wasn’t to hurt me, she loves me. And I’m not gonna see her as my enemy, I’m just gonna see her as a friend that did something that was hurtful to me. And we’re not going to square off in enemy battle lines. And if I do that, I can stay, I can keep the lines of communication open in a way that potentially can create resolution.
[00:23:58] Ed Watters: Yeah, I think that’s [00:24:00] so big. Uh, you know, Dean, because we, we often want to protect ourselves and we do that to the person closest to us for some reason. And you know, just the other day when we had our disagreement, there was this sense that I was an enemy and we, we stepped through that because we recognized, Hey, no, you’re, you’re the person here helping, being with me, and that you got together for that reason. I’m sure of it. And we have to remember those precious moments and why we love each other, because there’s no one closer to you than your partner. And, and even, I, I like that you took that into a business [00:25:00] sense and yes, I, I think every bit of being able to own up and step up, even though somebody else may not be willing to, is key to showing people that there’s a better way. Then when, when we do that, people do, they recognize, Wow. And it makes them pause, take pause at that. So I really enjoy hearing that. Another thing that I, as I researched you, limiting patterns, you guys talk about limiting patterns in our behaviors. Could you talk to us about that? Because I think that’s pretty important.
[00:25:55] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah. In patterns, it’s, you know, one of the things is we wanna understand [00:26:00] ourselves, right? And we wanna see, uh, for me it’s always doing the work, you know, doing the work. And the, and people are like, What is the work? Well, the work is the things, first, you start out with the things that you don’t like about yourself. Which means, I’m not talking about, you know, if you need a facelift, like I feel like I do, not that. I’m not talking about that, I’m not talking about the physical stuff. I’m talking about the part of us that, you know, uh, snaps, or the part of us that’s rude, or the part of us that, you know, says, when we look in the mirrors, says ugly things to us or calls us stupid. That part of us that we don’t like about ourselves is really starting to understand that part. How does that part see me?
How does that part see the world? You know, where, you know, in all my life, how has this part of me not been nice to others? And maybe it’s just inside my head, okay? Or has been a yes person, said yes to everybody. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then I’m aggravated because I don’t have no time for myself ’cause [00:27:00] it’s always a yes. And then really looking at the part of me that is wounded and the way I’m afraid of things and the things that, you know, that did not go well for me. People that, people, places, and things that have hurt me, okay? So like, really separating that out, all right? And when we do that, we can start to see the patterns of our life, right?
Is that, why do I keep picking people that aren’t nice to me? Why do I keep having friends that never call me? Why do I have, um, you know, I have a job where my boss doesn’t even see me, okay? Like those types of things. So it’s like you start to see that, okay? In, in this world who’s showing up to work, right? So if I’m showing up to work as this wounded person, you know, and that, you know, I feel like I’m a victim, I start attracting people that treat me like a victim. So all of a sudden this pattern [00:28:00] keeps happening. But if I stop and I start to look at my own world, and I start to look at the things that I don’t like about myself, and I start to look at the things of people, places, the things that hurt me, and I start to dissect that and start to really give it a voice and see it for myself, and you know, me knowing me, then all of a sudden as I give myself a voice, then I have a choice
on how I want to present myself to the world, to my job, to my husband, to my children, to my friends. And then I start to have a voice that says, I’m somebody. I, I’m gonna speak up at that next meeting, I’m going to make sure that I tell my friend I need her to call me, you know, once a week I’ll call her, she calls me, or we set up a text where we, we’re giving each other some good things. Where I start to have better expectations for myself for things that are not working, and I start to have a voice about that. So I come out of that and I quit living in those patterns because I start to take the [00:29:00] power back on what’s important to me.
[00:29:02] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah, that’s good. I think the awareness, this, first, you need to have awareness of your, the patterns.
[00:29:08] HollyKem Sunseri: Yes.
[00:29:08] Dr.Dean Sunseri: The limiting patterns. How do you do that? Well, you know, I ask a simple question when I see, uh, either couples, individuals, first time, I say, What are three behaviors that you do when you’re stressed out that you would consider unhealthy behaviors? And so what I’m trying to get is, what are the survival behaviors? We all have survival behaviors. Mine might be to run another person, might be to be real aggressive. Another person might be to numb out, another, you know, this, we all have our different coping behaviors, survival behaviors, and those survival behaviors work for us when we develop them. But over time, they begin to work against us
and they become limiting to us. The, the second thing that need, we need to have awareness about is [00:30:00] actually the, the wounds that we’re carrying that haven’t been resolved. We all carry things from our life and our history that become internalized. And when we’re not aware of them, then they take a life of their own, as HollyKem was talking. So we have these two parts, we have our survival behaviors, and we have our internalized wounds that haven’t been resolved. And those two things create the unhealthy patterns, the reciprocal patterns that seem to get us in trouble. So what we do is we actually help you first develop awareness about those, and we ask questions like I just did.

[00:30:39] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Or we’ll ask questions about experiences that you’ve had anytime in your life that have been challenging or difficult for you. And they start to give you certain patterns that you begin to identify. And once you know that and you begin learning to love those aspects of ourselves, then we can break out of the [00:31:00] patterns. You know, there was a powerful statement one of our close friends told us, uh, his name’s Pastor Poncho Murguia, he’s an extraordinary guy who’s done, he lives in Juarez, Mexico, and has really done some extraordinary things to bring peace to that city. Like he, he did some initiatives in a nineteen month period.
The, uh, murder rate went down 70% in that city, it was extraordinary. But we were asking him like, What was the key to the success, you know? And his success, he prayed and he was getting, getting nudges from heaven about what to do and so forth. But he, he said something that was very profound, he said, he said, Dean, you can’t change anything that you can’t love.
[00:31:48] HollyKem Sunseri: That’s right.
[00:31:49] Dr.Dean Sunseri: If you can’t love it, you won’t be able to change it. And he said, What we started to do was that we started to love the people that were creating so [00:32:00] much havoc in our city. Not that we agreed with them,
[00:32:02] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:32:03] Dr.Dean Sunseri: but we started to love and pray for the Sicarios. We started to adopt them as our own. We started to ex, do, you know, just do things like that and things started happening, which were extraordinary. And I was saying, Well, that applied to a person trying to help a city, but it’s the same thing with ourselves. The things that we can’t learn to love and embrace in ourselves, not agree with,
[00:32:31] HollyKem Sunseri: Right. Not empower.
[00:32:32] Dr.Dean Sunseri: not empower, but if we can love those aspects of ourselves that we deem unlovable, it can actually create a change and a shift.
[00:32:45] Ed Watters: Yeah. Love, love the sinner and hate the sin, I like that a lot.
[00:32:52] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:32:53] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:32:53] Ed Watters: I like that a lot.
[00:32:54] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah. And that’s for in, in our own self.
[00:32:57] Ed Watters: Yes, exactly. And, [00:33:00] and that emulates out as we do that because those people that are encountering us as we do that mission work, you know, it, it’s important because they feel it. They know if you’re there under false pretenses, they live it every day so they know when they’re being truly loved. And I, I think it’s important. Uh, I wanna go back on, you know, I have this muddy shoe theory and it’s, you know, life is like a muddy shoe going down a muddy path and people, places, and things, that’s the mud. Well, if you’ve ever walked on a muddy trail, you know how heavy that mud gets. And sometimes we have to find a rock and just wipe that off [00:34:00] so we can carry down the trail and not tire ourselves out. And hopefully, we pick up some mud later down that we’ve already encountered and we’ve seen that that mud’s made it down the trail a little further.
The good mud’s gonna be in the crevice of your shoes, it’s gonna be there with you. You can’t get it out of the shoe. So if we remember that people, places, and things can weigh us down and we have the power to wipe that mud off and separate it from us, I think it’s powerful. And I like that, you know, symbol of the muddy shoe carrying good mud and wiping off the bad mud.
[00:34:52] Dr.Dean Sunseri: I love that.
[00:34:52] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah, that’s good. That’s very good.
[00:34:57] Ed Watters: Yes, thank you. And, and I, I like to [00:35:00] share that out because it’s, it’s important and it’s a way that people can actually understand how devastating, heavy, people, places, and things can be in our life. Because that’s what makes us tire out and wanna do those drugs, or be bad people and do bad things. It’s easier that way because we’re so tired of dealing with it all.
[00:35:27] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah. And, Ed, that’s something that we talk about a lot is, um, is how do you get the bad mud off your shoe?
[00:35:34] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:35:35] Dr.Dean Sunseri: And I think there’s two principles that Jesus actually taught that were spiritual principles, but have deep psychological implications, and it’s how to get the mud off your shoe. The bad mud is through the two principles of repentance and forgiveness. And repentance is often seen as repenting before God for my behavior, which [00:36:00] is a dimension of it, but repentance also is to have a heartfelt sorrow for the things that I have done to you or to others. To take full responsibility for that and to, to make a commitment to learn to do it differently. And so we, we talked some about that earlier. The second principle is forgiveness. Which is to recognize that I have been hurt by things that other people have done, the mud, the bad mud, and I’m willing to lay that hurt down on the altar and ask it to be removed. Now everything has to do with the condition of our heart. And, and when I, when in a relationship, we’ll use that for an example,
uh, if I don’t take responsibility for my behavior and then I never forgive, I’m gonna have a [00:37:00] very hard heart towards my, towards my spouse, towards other people. If I learn to take responsibility for my part and I learn to forgive, that’s what softens or gets the mud off of my heart. Now Jesus said, Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. He also said, Forgive. And He said it over and over again. What He meant, I believe, is that, um, that when we don’t repent, well, when we repent, it ushers in the presence of heaven into a situation. It’s all around us, it’s, it’s, it’s at hand. But how do you activate it? You practice these two principles. The, the opposite is true too. Is
if you want hell in a situation, never repent and never forgive and I promise you’ll have lots of hell. So [00:38:00] in the parable to the sowers, Jesus said, talking about the Pharisees, Though they have eyes, they do not see, they don’t see spiritually. Though they have ears, they do not hear. Why? Because their heart has grown hardened. That my ability to connect spiritually, seeing and hearing has nothing to do with my eyes and ears, but has everything to do with the condition of my heart. If I practice these two simple principles of repentance and forgiveness, then it opens up my spiritual eyes and opens up my spiritual ears, and it softens my heart and it makes me in a position to love. So I, so when we have couples come in, that’s who we say, Look, if you adopt these two principles of repentance and forgiveness, we can reconcile anything in your relationship. And if you choose not to adopt [00:39:00] these principles, we can guarantee continued hell in your relationship.
[00:39:05] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:39:06] Dr.Dean Sunseri: And so it’s really,
[00:39:08] Ed Watters: I believe that.
[00:39:09] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:39:09] Dr.Dean Sunseri: It’s really choices, right? And you were describing, you were describing, well, like the mud on the shoes, that accumulates and it just hardens our heart and we become bitter, and we become, uh, angry, and we play out this bitterness on everybody that we interact with, and it just becomes a horrible place for us and for other people. And so there’s a formula, you know, uh, Jesus talked about it like that. You know, the, the twelve step program talks about it through the steps. And the steps are all about, about repentance, which is step one, taking responsibility for my behavior. Step four, practicing forgiveness and sharing that with another person. Step five, and Bill Wilson, who founded AA, understood deeply that at [00:40:00] the root of every unhealthy habit is unforgiveness and unrepentance and fears. But those are all connected in a, in a, in a trilogy that destroys the heart and needs to be acted out in unhealthy ways.
[00:40:21] Ed Watters: That, that’s very powerful. You know, and if, if we learn to accept what we cannot change, that, that’s big too. And, and a lot of stressors in our life comes from those things that we really don’t have control over. And this was one of my wife’s major things, she, she had a hard time letting go of things that, well, you can’t do anything about that. Let’s work on something that we can do something about. And, and once we figure that out, I’ve been [00:41:00] working five years to try to get Theresa on a podcast and, you know, just the other week I finally got her to come on a podcast and start explaining some of these things. And I think it’s, it’s important that we empower our partner to share their experience. Because their experience should be our experience, is that not true?
[00:41:33] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah, definitely is true. Is that, you know, as we love one another, I mean, we want to help them become all that they’ve intended to be, all that God wants them to be, their destiny. We don’t want them to miss anything ’cause we love them. Just like with our children, we want them to get, you know, your child does something and you’re like, you know they could do more, right? So you just keep empowering them and building them up, you know? And then they do it and it’s like, Yes, I knew it, you [00:42:00] know? It was in you, you know, so yes, most definitely. I know, like I’ve been sober for forty-two years, uh, January 10th of 83 I got sober. And, uh, you know, I’ve had to work really hard. I mean, you know, I would, wouldn’t even hold my head up when I was, got sober, I had so much shame. And today, you know, telling my story and being, you know, doing, you know, whatever, uh, having no shame, you know, about where I’ve been, have, you know, pain about where I’ve been and done, but in the sense of forgiving myself that if this could help another person, then I’m going to share it if it’s appropriate. And that’s growth.
[00:42:41] Ed Watters: Yeah, I, I like that. Yep, that’s growth. Exactly. Let, let’s, uh, segue into some of what you offer people, because I’ll go on for hours about these things [00:43:00] and not get some of the important things in. So let’s talk about, uh, Transform You, and also your book, and what you offer people for services. Because you’ve got quite a few, uh, things that people can tap into there.
[00:43:20] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah. Well, our, our book is called A Roadmap to the Soul, and it’s all about what we’re talking about today is, how to remove the blocks that keep you from being who you’re destined to become. And those things are our wounds and those are our coping behaviors. And so the Roadmap is actually a journey to identify and learn to contain our coping behaviors, to do some healing work with our wounds, and to really teach our true self or who we really are, how to manage those two parts in a way that it becomes life giving and not life taking. And so we do [00:44:00] that through a variety of ways. Our book, A Roadmap to the Soul, is actually a journey. It has questions, it’s exercises, it’s uh, it’ll take a person through a journey. But sometimes people read that and say, Look, we want to go much deeper
than that. And so that’s really where our Transform You, our online coaching course, it’s a four month course, and it’s a combination of, of really some teaching activation exercises, experiential exercises. We do two coaching calls a week, HollyKem and I do those together. And it’s really a comprehensive experience from A to Z where a person goes through a journey and goes from, uh, one place to a dramatically different place, um, by the end. And it’s also for couples. We’ve had a number of couples that have done this process together and I’ve had their relationships transformed.
[00:44:57] HollyKem Sunseri: Right.
[00:44:58] Dr.Dean Sunseri: So it’s very, very [00:45:00] much of a transformational experience for the brave. Those that want, wanna do a deep dive and say, I want more, I want more, and I want to become who I’m really destined to be.
[00:45:12] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah. And I always like to say it’s kind of like, you know, Shaq being a, he’s a professional basketball player, right? And, but his free throws sucked, right? And nobody thought anything bad about him because he got a coach to help him be better at his free throws. It’s kind of like LeBron James, he wanted to continue to play basketball past his thirties and he got a coach to help him slim down, you know, control his food, his exercise, and get lean so he can stay, you know, at the height of his health. And everybody like cheers him on. And it’s like, that’s what we do. We take people that want more out of their relationships, wants more outta life,
they wanna know how to really, really love the parts of them, and why they’re [00:46:00] doing the things they’re doing and, you know, why they’re thinking the things they think. And, you know, really take that and get a coach. And we, you know, have this whole, you know, lessons on how to do that and really become free of who they really are with love, you know, with true internal love. And, um, you know, that’s, it’s the process that I used to become sober still forty-two years, you know, married thirty-three years. You know, I was a convicted felon, I was, you know, a nightmare, right? Uh, divorced before and not knowing how to communicate, not knowing how to receive love, not knowing really how to give love, you know, and it’s allowed me to, you know,
be on this other side. And then be doing this for thirty years and then putting it in a process where we can really, uh, be a part of the celebration of their life. And they become, you know, so happy with [00:47:00] themselves, you know, and, and see the results of connections and love. So it’s like awesome.
[00:47:07] Ed Watters: So to go further with you, do, do you plan on doing like a retreat for couples and working with couples in a retreat type thing? I, I see that a lot from some good couples and you guys have that, you know, pizazz. You guys work well together and I, I think that would really accommodate well with people working with you together like this.
[00:47:37] Dr.Dean Sunseri: We ought to, we ought to do, we used to do, uh, weekend retreats
[00:47:41] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:47:42] Dr.Dean Sunseri: for years

[00:47:43] HollyKem Sunseri: Twenty years.
[00:47:43] Dr.Dean Sunseri: and then we transitioned to online. But uh, we ought to do a couple a year,
[00:47:49] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:47:49] Dr.Dean Sunseri: you know?
[00:47:49] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:47:50] Dr.Dean Sunseri: We, we’re negotiating right now to possibly go do one out at, uh, in Los Angeles is a, a place that wants to bring us out to do one. So,
[00:47:59] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:47:59] Dr.Dean Sunseri: I [00:48:00] think, uh, I think you’re nudging us to,
[00:48:02] HollyKem Sunseri: Yes.
[00:48:02] Dr.Dean Sunseri: to continue to pursue that. But, uh,
[00:48:04] Ed Watters: There you go.
[00:48:05] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Yeah. But our website is, ihaveavoice.com and that’s the best place to, to really stay up with us and to see all of those services is,
[00:48:14] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah.
[00:48:14] Dr.Dean Sunseri: ihaveavoice.com.
[00:48:16] HollyKem Sunseri: Yeah. We have a YouTube channel that has over 200 videos from thirty seconds to an hour on all subjects and Dean’s always putting more on there. And then we have a, a podcast, a Transform You, where we do live coaching, um, on our podcast. People come on and we coach them for, you know, anxiety, whatever, you know? They bring up something and we coach them live so people can see what that looks like. And then our, our book, you can get our book there that connects to Amazon. And so, yeah. And then, you know, we do, we do speaking, we do all kinds of stuff. So, but we haven’t, we don’t have a retreat set up at this point, but obviously God’s saying, Hey. [00:49:00]
[00:49:00] Ed Watters: That’s the subtle nudge right there, I like it a lot. Yeah.
[00:49:06] HollyKem Sunseri: That’s the subtle nudge. We, we, we, we’re always listening for them, Ed.
[00:49:11] Ed Watters: That’s right. You, you have to, and that’s part of, you know, being in tune with what’s happening, not against you, but for you. And, and really that’s what I’m learning how to tune into a little better each and every day. Is there anything that we’ve missed that you want to cover?
[00:49:33] HollyKem Sunseri: Well, I would just say that for all the listeners that you are worth doing your work. Because what you find at the end of the work, which is never ending, but what you find is that you are good and that you are lovable, and that you are loving, and you have so much still in there that needs to be tapped. So, you know, you are worth doing the work, [00:50:00] whatever it takes.
[00:50:01] Ed Watters: Alright. Well, Dr. Dean and HollyKem, you’re a very powerful entity out there doing great things for the world. I commend you. And I wanna say thank you for sharing with us here today.
[00:50:15] HollyKem Sunseri: Well, thank you.
[00:50:16] Dr.Dean Sunseri: You’re welcome.
[00:50:16] HollyKem Sunseri: Ed, thanks for what you’re doing.
[00:50:17] Dr.Dean Sunseri: Thank you for having us.
[00:50:18] HollyKem Sunseri: Yes.
[00:50:19] Ed Watters: Thank you.
Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of the Dead America Podcast. I’m Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you might be.