The Brain's Divine Design: Navigating Forgiveness with Angela Deulen

Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Angela Deulen, professor of psychology at California Baptist University, and Mary Nauha, certified neuro coach, as they explore the fascinating intersection of neuroscience and Christian faith.

 Discover how your brain is designed to connect with God, the neurobiology of forgiveness, and why spiritual practices like prayer and meditation literally reshape your brain for healing and wholeness.

 Learn about the "God spot" in your brain, how trauma affects our nervous systems, and practical insights for emotional regulation rooted in both science and Scripture. 

Whether you're struggling with forgiveness, seeking deeper faith, or curious about how science confirms biblical truth, this episode offers hope, healing, and a fresh perspective on God's incredible design.

This dialogue blends scientific insights with theological perspectives, emphasizing the healing power of forgiveness and divine design.

Angela's YouTube short on forgiveness

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6LeixOTwf8U

https://www.angeladeulen.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@DrAngelaDeulen

Mary Nauha's Instagram: Retraining_your_brain

The Bipolar Bear Family

Come On, Come On film

https://youtu.be/RlhENlpi4cE

jan-johnson.com

janjohnson.author.substack.com

The Joy of Waltzing

Music from #Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/roger-gabalda/the-joy-of-waltzing

License code: NAHKUTIEXGRPLQVY

Consider subscribing to this podcast, YouTube and Substack- all with the same name: Just Talkin' About Jesus!

https://www.youtube.com/@JustTalkinAboutJesus

https://jan-johnson.com/

https://justtalkingaboutjesus.com/

https://janjohnsonauthor.substack.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@JustTalkinAboutJesus

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Jan: Hello and welcome guests for just talking about Jesus. So glad that you are joining us today. And do we have a delightful interview with you today?

I have Angela Deulan, who is a professor of psychology at California Baptist University and behavioral neuroscience and counseling. She maps brain activity related to interpersonal behavior, but the important thing is she matches all of this up with our faith and our belief.

And to my right, I have Mary Nauha, who is also a certified neuro coach. So we're in for a delightful conversation.

Mary: I think.

Jan: To begin with, let's talk about what is even neuroscience. Some of us are not real familiar with that, so let's dig into that.

Mary: A little bit first.

Angela: Simply stated, neuroscience is the scientific study of the brain and the nervous system. My expertise is interpersonal neurobiology.

So that is the way in which my brain and nervous system,

you know, shapes my behavior. And that impacts you. And the way that your brain and your nervous system shaping your behavior, it impacts me. And then how that affects our communities, our churches,

our families,

et cetera, the whole ripple effect.

Yes, absolutely.

Jan: Well, talk to us a little bit. How describe our brain? We got different parts of our brain that do different parts of things. Whatever. Describe that for us.

Angela: Okay. All right. Usually, I use what's called the hand brain model. It's something that Dan Siegel made popular. He's a very prominent neuroscientist and publishes a lot in terms of interpersonal neurobiology.

The way he teaches the brain and I use this to teach my students because it's super easy. I use it for my clients also is,

you know, if you make a fist, you put your thumb inside your hand.

This is now your brain.

And the frontal part of your brain, the frontal lobe, which is actually from about the ears forward,

that is where we have altruism and empathy. But it's also where we have executive functioning. So planning,

being able to focus, being able to process right and wrong, being able to think before we act, all of that's there in the frontal lobe.

If we go a little deeper into the brain, into what we call the midbrain, where that top of the thumb is,

that would be our limbic system.

And the limbic system holds several structures, but one of the structures in there is the amygdala. Now, the amygdala is really the emotional processing center of the brain.

It's where we experience anger or sadness or anxiety.

And it relays with other parts of the nervous system to register fight and flight responses or other what we would call sympathetic nervous system responses, like freeze and surrender or fawning,

all of that happens. The interesting thing, thing about the limbic system and the prefrontal cortex is that it cannot be equally on at the same time.

So we can be in this frontal part of our brain where empathy and altruism are, where higher order reasoning are, or we can be in the emotional and reactive part of our brain.

Now, what I love about God's design is there's a little structure, it's at the back of the prefrontal cortex where it attaches to the limbic system called the anterior cingulate gyrus, or the anterior cingulate cortex.

And this structure acts as a fulcrum, telling us whether we need to be in fight or flight, you know, whether we need to get angry and hit somebody or run away, or whether we need to be in our frontal lobe with empathy and altruism and thinking before we act and reasoning and all of those things.

What's fascinating to me, this little structure, this fulcrum that's between the two,

scientists believe, secular and theistic scientists believe that that's the part of the brain where we attach to God.

That's the part of the brain that lights up when people are praying or meditating on scripture.

And so I find it fascinating that that God spot, so to speak, is right in the place in between and helps us actually then create emotional regulation.

And I'll just say one more thing.

It when we engage in the spiritual practices,

prayer,

meditation,

gratitude,

what happens is we quiet the limbic system and we get a tremendous amount of blood flow to that frontal lobe where empathy and altruism and higher order reasoning are. And that blood flow brings with it oxygenation and nutrition.

And that nourishment then allows us to develop more gray matter in the part of the brain where we have logic and reasoning and all of the good things that come with executive function.

Jan: Isn't our Creator amazing?

Angela: He is amazing. He is so amazing.

Jan: Yeah.

Mary: Wow.

You're speaking of an FMRI study that was done on, interestingly, a Pentecostal pastor who was in the chamber and asked to pray in tongues of all things. Of course, they did the same study with monks and other people of other faiths too.

They entered a meditative state and in our case, with this pastor, which is what grabbed my attention exactly what you're saying. It's the salience.

So I study brain network theory. It's a little different, but we're talking about the same parts of the brain.

And it's the salience mode is what it's referenced as in. In my language.

Angela: Yes.

Mary: Singular and anterior. These are the things I need to go back to. But the anterior cingular cortex is that part that lights up in the FMRI study.

Angela: In those FMRI studies, yeah. And there's several now with.

A lot of them have done. Been done with Buddhist monks and Carmelite nuns both.

But, yes, when people are specifically attenuating to God,

that more specifically than just in general, you know, meditating or chanting.

Attenuating to God, that is the part that lights up.

Mary: I can also speak to the researcher that I studied under,

Mark Waldman,

and was on a team of researchers on that FMRI study that eventually went on to found the Neuro Leadership Program at lmu,

Loyola Marymount University.

So that's the program that I. It's very secular, and there's nothing of God in it, so I was a little out of my depth,

frankly.

It's very refreshing to hear your podcast for me, and I'm learning so much. So thank you for what you're doing.

Angela: Absolutely. Yeah. So neurotheology means two different things to people, whether they're a believer or they're a secularist. So in. In secular science, when they say neurotheology,

they mean we're gonna study the neuroscience of why these superstitious people believe and act the way they do. Yeah. For theists,

particularly those of us of a Christian background,

we're really looking at the intersection of behavioral neuroscience and what we know,

what has been revealed to us in the word of God, and how those line up.

Mary: That's right.

Jan: So let's talk about that a little bit, how things can line up like that. What about something like forgiveness, which is difficult to do in any level,

especially if it's a really,

really hard thing that was wrong.

Mary: So relevant.

Angela: Yeah. So I. There are three things that pop to my mind kind of immediately. Forgiveness,

the hardening of the heart.

There's a neurobiology to how the heart becomes hardened.

And I mean, as you know, I'm writing a book on romantic love. There are a lot of things that God tells us to do, like wait till marriage. And now we have a neuroscience that tells us why we should wait till marriage.

So with forgiveness,

we're commanded to forgive,

but what we often miss is that command is for our own good.

Neuro forgiveness is difficult because it really requires doing the hard thing. By the way, when we do hard things,

it strengthens the neurofibrillary bundles around that anterior cingulate, which makes it more easy for us in the future. To regulate our emotions and to practice empathy and altruism and higher order reasoning.

Jan: So that just brings me like quickly is I've just recently had a series of things just focusing on how the bad things and the hard things, how much that brings us closer to God.

I'm coming to a conclusion that our hard things are by design.

Angela: Yeah.

Jan: Because they bring us closer. But that totally matches up with what you're saying.

Mary: It does.

Angela: Right. And Scripture tells us that. Right.

James says, count it to all joy when you fall into all the various kinds of troubles you're going to have.

Because those trials produce patience. And that patience will have its perfect maturing work in you endurance. And, and so yes, we're, we're blessed by that. But when we forgive,

not only does it reduce our risk of dementia,

it reduces our risk of other neurocognitive disorders like depression or anxiety,

but it also helps regulate the endocrine system. So now our, our blood sugar levels are going to be a little more stable and that's going to help us not have so much high cholesterol or other forms of hyperlipidemia.

And it's also going to help regulate our cardiovascular system so it reduces our risk for heart attack and stroke. There are so many things we get sick less, it actually reduces our risk of cancer.

So when we forgive,

we have done this thing for our brain and our body that is just neuroprotective.

And I don't think God tells us to forgive just so we can let bygones by be bygones. It's because he designed us and he knows what's good for us.

Jan: That's right. So if you actually did it seven times 70, think how healthy we'd be.

Mary: That's why he says, by my stripes you've been healed. Because we do have the capacity for wholeness and wellness, don't we?

Angela: Yeah. And an example in his sacrifice for forgiveness, we have an example.

Mary: Yeah. Yeah. So interesting.

Jan: What have you seen that that helps people to forgive, to work through things, to getting to a comfortable stage of acceptance of that.

Angela: I think part of that is looking to Christ as an example.

And he invites us to be partakers in the fellowship of his suffering, is how Paul words it.

And when you recognize that whatever has happened to us, he's gone through it much worse.

And by his example, you know, like you just said, by his stripes, we are healed. When you think about those things and you meditate on those things,

that helps you move towards forgiveness. But I think that we have to remember that there's two parts of forgiveness. There's the. The part where we choose to forgive,

and then there's the process of getting there.

You know, like, I'm going to choose to go to New York, but that doesn't put me in New York. I've actually got to do the hard work to, you know, get there.

And forgiveness is the same way.

And the reason I say that is because sometimes, like with. With adultery, when I'm working with couples and somebody's had an affair,

they'll be like, well, why can't you just forgive me and get over it? Well, no, they've chosen to forgive you, but there's a process involved.

Or sometimes a person will be like, I want to forgive, I just can't.

And it's like, no, you've chosen to. You just now have to do the hard work of getting there.

But.

But also just realizing that the bigger that pain, the more traumatic the injury,

the more time it takes. And you need to be gracious with yourself and patient, and you need to stay in his presence.

If you block it out, it doesn't get better. We know that if you push it down, it seems to intensify it. Science tells us that you have to stay in his presence and keep processing that and allow him to heal you with time.

And what we know from brain studies, it's just really that being able to process it,

that begins to quiet the amygdala and heal our nervous system so that eventually that memory doesn't have the emotional charge attached to it that keeps us from experiencing the feelings of forgiveness.

Mary: So rich, isn't it? And, wow,

beautiful. I think what you're doing is beautiful.

The process that you're talking about is the repattering of neuro patterns. And so the more trauma that you've been exposed to and from what age is relevant to that? Yes,

because it's habits,

it's creating. The habit of relaxed awareness is what supports the salience mode.

And the salience mode integrates all of the other networks of the brain. And that is backed by neuroscientific studies, isn't it?

Angela: Absolutely. And you bring up this really incredible point about the power of neural habit because so much of our thought patterns, you know, we're told to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ.

So much of our thinking patterns,

I mean, even just going back to forgiveness, you know, we sometimes choose to ruminate on that injury over and over and over again, which is not the same thing as processing it before the Lord.

But those neural habits you know, I'm sure you're familiar with the expression neurons that fire together, wire together. It's the Hebbian principle. And the more you drive a certain route in your mental,

on your mental highways, the faster and faster those patterns get. And so it takes time to change thoughts.

But when we can start to change the way that we think and we're gracious, we, we live in the grace God's already given us to do that rather than trying to be perfectionistic and perform at some unrealistic nervous system level, that's just not gonna happen.

When we do that and we become very aware of our thoughts and bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ and allowing the Spirit to help us walk through the changing of those thought patterns,

we will experience more freedom in Christ as a result.

Mary: Right.

And speaking of awareness,

I remember when I first tripped upon this kind of teaching,

I approached a friend of mine who's a very strong Christian and psychologist,

and I said, what about all this mindfulness that I am interested in? Is it not, Is it Christian? Is it not Christian?

And she said, well, Jesus was the most mindful person that ever was.

And so I ventured on my studies and I learned that relaxed awareness is the neurohabit that we are pattering patterning our amygdala, which is affected by the salience mode network.

We're repattering those kind of things. It requires a stepping back and a slowing down. And so Mark Waldman and Chris Manning,

director of that neuro leadership program I referenced early on,

have developed strategies to calm the nervous system.

And you have spoken at length about that in your podcasts, which is fascinating to me. That's where I would like to pick up with my studies again, is to learn more about that.

Angela: Yeah, learning to regulate the nervous system. But one of the most powerful ways that we regulate, we become.

Learn to become mindful, especially if we have a lot of trauma in our backstory, especially developmentally, is through CO regulation.

And for CO regulation, that's, you know, if, if I'm calm and my nervous system is calm, I can help your. You calm your nervous system. While so much of that CO regulation requires community and for us as believers,

good,

healthy Christian community to help us learn to, to co regulate.

Jan: That was just when something I was just thinking about while you're talking though, is that,

that if you're around someone who feeds that, oh, you don't need to forgive them. That was really horrible what they did to you. And the, you know, but keeps on.

I mean,

initially, yes,

go through and say, yes, it was horrible and you.

Mary: Know, acknowledge, acknowledge and get to that point.

Jan: Yeah, but if somebody keeps at you, especially someone you're close to, you know, keeps at you and that idea and you're hearing those words and that whole thing,

it's going to be way harder.

Mary: To get past that retraumatizing, isn't it?

Angela: It is. It's why we have to be so careful with our associations because they affect so much. I think they affect us so much more deeply than we sometimes realize.

You know, just doing trauma work, you know, if you're, if you're working with a traumatized client,

they're not meaning to tax your limbic system and your mirror neuron network and you know, you get compassion fatigue. They're not meaning to do that. But we have to be just so aware and in the body of believers, you've got a lot of people with a lot of opinions and at the end of the day,

we're all fallen people running into other fallen people.

Mary: Yes. And one of the things that I was so grateful to my program that I studied in for was the principle of autonomy.

So we cannot tell somebody how to feel or what to do.

We can encourage them and support them in that environment of like you're saying, Christian fellowship,

or we can hammer on them and shame them and create a lot of unrest and dysregulation in the environment of the Christian community, can't we?

I think educating the Christian community is essential.

Angela: Yeah, I would agree with you. And to me that always just points me back to Jesus because when he interacted with broken, wounded people,

he didn't shame them.

You know, he was, he was loving and kind and gentle.

His harshest words were for religious psalm eaters.

Mary: Exactly.

Jan: Yeah.

Mary: Isn't that interesting?

Jan: Yeah, yeah.

And that's the, it's the idea that God is that other horrible, you know,

judging God that keep people away because you think, well, I'm too far gone, I'm too bad and I've done whatever and I can't step in front of somebody that is holy.

Mary: And when we have a traumatized brain and we're already in the pattern of shame and blame,

it doesn't take much to be triggered by that and just pull away from the church entirely.

So inner environment and outer environment is something that Chris Manning parks on for some time during his neuro leadership program. And I found that very,

very, very helpful. We have to be aware. So the first step in our program is to develop self aware or not. Well, self compassion for sure.

That's probably the very first step.

If we've had any trauma at all, it becomes increasingly important. But this relaxed state of awareness and developing a strengthening and supporting the salience mode is what is what Chris Manning talks about with developing a strong inner environment.

God's word speaking truth. When, when our thoughts are patterned toward things that are not true and creating new neural patterns toward an inner healing and then being very aware of our ex.

Our surrounding environment and the people that we interact with.

It's all aligned. I just love it.

I'm so encouraged by your work.

The Holy Spirit is so good. He.

Angela: He is so faithful.

Mary: My mother in law from Finland, she says he leader me her broken English. It's so cute.

Jan: Yeah. Tell us about your children's book.

Angela: Oh, goodness. So I, it's. I wrote it more than 20 years ago.

It cracks me up because I forget it exists,

but other people don't. I love that.

I. Yes. So it was, it was originally written for therapists to be able to use with kids in their office. So the book is called the Bipolar Bear Family. When a parent has bipolar disorder.

And the idea it follows a bipolar. It follows a polar bear family where the mother gets diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And, and all of the kids question. The young bears question that he has related to, you know, his mom's diagnosis.

Is it contagious? And you know, is this going to happen to me and is it my fault? All of those kinds of questions.

And so I published the book.

I think it was 2006. I wrote it around 2004.

It was published, I believe in 2006. Five or six.

And did you know, fine in terms of sales to both the public and to therapists. And then in 2019,

because it was right before COVID I got a call from somebody representing A2 Studios saying so and so wants to use this in a movie starring Joaquin Phoenix. And would you give them permission?

And because of COVID it wasn't. The film. Come on, Come on, starring Joaquin Phoenix was not released until 2021.

And it's, it's a, it's a very emotional film. If you're gonna watch it, bring your tissue box.

Mary: Wow.

Angela: But it was, it was quite a privilege. And of course then that just created a higher profile for the book. So revived book sales and those kinds of things.

Jan: So it's still available if so you.

Angela: Can find it on Amazon.

Jan: Yeah. And so you're writing a new book about romance.

Angela: And it is. It's on the neurotheology of romantic love.

Mary: Wow.

Angela: So hoping for a 2027 release. We'll see.

Jan: Yeah. Oh, that sounds so fascinating. Yeah. Tell us where people could reach you or, you know, find out what you're doing and.

Angela: Absolutely, absolutely. You can find me on my website, which is just www.angeladulin.com,

but you can also find me on YouTube if you want more content.

If you like our conversation today,

I'd encourage anybody who's interested in. In this,

particularly interpersonal neurobiology from a Christian perspective to head over to my YouTube channel, which is.

Go on YouTube and just put in Dr. Angela Doolan and you'll find me.

Jan: That's great.

Yeah. I can reach out to the different counselors in the area and whatever as well, because I'm sure that's something they want to know about and would be of value.

Mary: I think it's important that you reference Christian counselors in most of your videos. I think that's important.

Angela: I do. When I tell people, you know,

the. At this point, it's time to talk to a counselor, I say find a good godly counselor because the worldview makes a difference. Yeah.

Mary: Yes, it does. They're difficult to find.

Jan: And what would you like to leave our audience with?

Angela: I. I think what strikes me this morning just kind of in light of our conversation is,

is the goodness of God. And for anybody who's listening,

sometimes he doesn't feel close.

Sometimes he feels far away, especially if you've had trauma or deep grief and loss,

and that's just noise in your nervous system. I think what I would tell people listening is if you don't feel like praying, if you don't feel like being in the word,

go anyway, listen to worship music and sit before him. Just being still is sacred. You don't have to have the warm, fuzzy feelings. You don't have to,

you know, have this profound, like, I feel God here.

Stick with it. And he'll. You'll find that he's there with you in that process because he is so faithful and so good and he loves you.

Jan: That is so good.

Mary: Beautiful.

Jan: So good. Thank you, Angela.

Angela: Thank you for having me. It's been a privilege.