The Practice and Power of Naming
Like sunlight through the leaves…
Naming your inner world brings clarity and revelation
What is Naming?
Naming is a unique step in the process of inner work and healing. It is the process of giving language to our inner world and organizing our feelings, thoughts and experiences. It is calling something “as it is” so that we can stop living attached to whatever is not true. We speak in alignment with truth and come out of alignment with falsehood.
It is a descriptive, left-brained and prefrontal brain process. It is very logical and linguistic. Describing things helps activate the wisdom center of our brain and turn down some of the chatter of our deep emotional brain.
Brene Brown states “language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness” (Brown, 2021). When we name, we are using our words to increase our access to the “why” of our experiences and stories. Naming forms the lines the helps to connect the dots of what is happening in and around us.
Author Dr. Alison Cook, one of my inspirations in the skill of naming, defines naming as “a profound act of noticing, acknowledging, and validating the truth of what you’re thinking and feeling at any given moment” (Cook, 2024). Naming helps us to step into truth. Healing cannot not be fully realized when we are in a place of unawareness, denial or falsehood. It is through the truth that we become free—and naming is the skill needed to help us to speak the truth.
Risks & Benefits of Naming
Naming is essential to healing, but it does not come without risks. We may have to name something that has been too painful to admit. When we speak about our inner world, it can activate material that we suppressed and buried. Unearthing and uprooting things in the subconscious can feel very dysregulating and upsetting. We may have to say something that culture or even the Church says is inappropriate for us to feel or think. We must wrestle with self-secrecy and self-silencing. We may have to call some past treatment of us “abuse” or “neglect” and name someone in our story as the abuser. Something that I work with many clients on as it relates to naming, is sorting out intentional vs unintentional harm. It can be deeply painful to say that someone hurt us on purpose.
We may have to utter something that we feel God will disapprove of, such as our anger at God. But we still must speak the truth anyway. We must invite God into the messiness so that He can heal us from the inside-out. When you visit the doctor, you must name the truth about your condition so that the physician can have an accurate understanding of the need! It makes very little sense to mute yourself, minimize or dismiss your condition as you sit on the exam table. And Jesus is the most capable Physician we know—why would we not want to be accurate with Him?
When we refuse to name, we allow confusion and fog to dominate our souls. We are more disoriented and dissociated. When we don’t make space for naming, we also run the risk of allowing pain and trauma to remain underground and push out unpleasant symptoms to the surface–like irritability, anger, shame, aggression, addictions, fear and pride. When we surrender to strategies of avoidance, we are lead by fear instead of courage. However, when we courageously name, we clear out the inner space of our heart and mind and live as our true selves.
Other benefits of naming:
Opens space for clarity/clear-mindedness
Establishes inner calm—Dr. Daniel Siegel teaches that when we name things, “it calms down the emotional circuitry in the right hemisphere of the brain” (Siegel).
Brings order to chaos
Offers relief from tension
Brings new perspectives
Increased intimacy and understanding in relationships
Improves decision-making and sound judgement
Deepens conscious awareness (brings things in the dark into the light)
Widens the window of tolerance
Expands your self-compassion and compassion for others
Helps to confront, challenge and bring change to places of conflict
These are certainly not all of the benefits of naming—but they should pique your interest just enough and invite you to become a namer.
Now let’s look at how to help you to become a namer—of course safety is always first. Below are some steps to make sure that naming is a safe and effective process.
Start with God and Grounding
Always start a naming practice by inviting God into the space
Draw your attention away from distractions and focus on God’s presence with you.
Take a few deep breaths, in and out (no special breathing technique is required).
Plant your feet firmly on the floor, like a tree planted by the waters, feel yourself sitting, let your hands rest naturally on your lap.
Go through the grounding steps a few more times until you feel yourself “present”.
Prayer Prompt:“Lord, search me and know me! Help me to name what is true about me and what is true about my story in Your Holy presence.”
I affirm: God is with me in the naming!
Move into the body
Next, find a gentle way to partner with your body as you name. God made our bodies as vessels of His Spirit. He often speaks to us through our temples and your body has valuable information regarding what must be named. This makes the naming process a body-mind-spirit effort, versus solely delegating naming to the mind.
Imagine your body as a messenger.
Scan your body head-to-toe and allow all muscles to stop their striving.
Notice any places in your body that are not ready to “name”. Notice places that are ready.
What sensations do you notice? Wait and notice any constriction, stirring, quickening, movement, or places of tension. [These may be tied to something that needs to be named].
What would you call them? What do those sensations want to tell you?
Prayer Prompt: “Lord, show me through my body what needs to be named right now.”
I affirm: My body is wise!
Name Inner Experience
Your inner experience is composed of thoughts, feelings, urges, perspectives, and longings. It is important to name each piece.
Without editing, what are you thinking, believing and perceiving right now?
What do you long for? What is repulsive to you? What do you want to move toward, away from or against?
What are you feeling? What are you feeling too much of or too little of?
Prayer Prompt: “Lord, show me my inner world. Help me not to fear or be flooded by what is revealed. Help me to neither be maladaptively attached or avoidant of what I discover.”
I affirm: You desire truth in the innermost parts!
Name the Story
After we name the what, we need to parse out the why. Our feelings, thoughts and beliefs fit into a larger context and are internal reactions to external realities (or perceptions).
Why am I feeling this way?
What happened?
What from the past might be influencing what I am feeling right now?
What does this remind me of?
When have I felt or thought this before?
Prayer Prompt: “Lord, show me the root of this feeling. Holy Spirit, what is really driving the feeling or thought I am having? Please bring to mind the truth about this memory. Show me where You were then and where you are now.”
Deeper story prompt: “Lord, show me what about my story I have not been willing to name and it is driving my current behavior and attitude.”
I affirm: I am feeling these feelings for a reason!
Name the Agreement & the Lie
This next phase of naming is bit more confrontational, because we cannot simply name “what is” and move on. The enemy of our souls operates in our stories in a very deceptive way. When we have negative life experiences (or even positive ones), the enemy introduces us to something else to latch on to other than God’s instructions and truth. He uses our own thoughts and feelings to try to plant a lie or snatch truth away from us. He wants us to come into agreement with falsehood at our most vulnerable moments.
We need to name what we agreed to in our moments of pain and what lie we latched on to. When you were hurt, disappointed, wounded, let down, ignored, rejected, betrayed, laid off, hungry, lacking…
Did you agree to never trust again? Did you agree to hoard whatever you had? Did you agree to retaliate and seek revenge? Did you agree to silence yourself? Did you agree to stay small and shrink yourself or make yourself big and bully your way to success? Did you agree to never date again or marry again? Did you agree to hustle and grind your way to financial security so you never have to be in need again, even bypassing the Sabbath on your way? Did you agree to never ask for help again? Did you agree to “match energy”? (The new generation’s sneaky twist on revenge and repaying evil with more evil) Did you agree to never feeling again?
What lies have your been believing about emotions, about people, about yourself and about God?
These lies won’t reveal themselves to you voluntarily—you must find where they are hiding and shine the light on them! Once you find the lies and agreements you have made, you need to break them.
Prayer Prompt: “Lord, what did I start believing about myself, others or You because of this experience and how has this shaped my views? What agreements have I made that I need to now break?”
I affirm: I come out of agreement with __________(name the lies and agreements one by one)!
Reframe & Integrate
Now that you have named all the pieces and fleshed out the details of your story, you can now begin integrating it into the bigger, wider picture with sacred truth as the glue that holds it all together. We need to reframe some things so that our inner world is in alignment with healing, wholeness and wellbeing. We need to be able to move forward, be transformed and renewed and go to the next level of growth and development.
What is better way to look at the situation? What lessons did you learn? What has been formed in you now that you have lived through that? What beauty came out of the ashes of your trauma? What resurrected in you that once died? What adaptive choice were you able to make because of that emotion you felt? How have your emotions led you down righteous paths? What impact and change have you made in your family, community and the world because you learned to name well?
These are just a few questions to help you reframe and integrate pain pieces with grace pieces!
Prayer Prompt: “Lord, I once was blind, but now I see. Give me a picture or a scripture of how to see things in ways I could not see them before.”
I affirm: I now see!
Naming First Aid Practice
This abbreviated Naming tool is great to use when you have limited time and need to name in the midst of burdens and stress:
Prayer prompt: “Lord, there is some chaos going on around me and I need to name what is happening right now before an inner chaos develops”
The body sensation I am aware of and need to name is…
I name my emotions…
I name what I have the urge to do or feel like avoiding doing…
I name the who, what, when and where
“What truth do you want me to receive right now?”
Example Naming Statement: “Lord, I notice tension in my chest. I name the emotion as rejection that is causing me to want to run and hide. I want to avoid my friend. I need to admit that my friend was critical of me at lunch yesterday. I receive your truth that __________.”
Now complete your own!
For therapy clients:
If you are in therapy (at Thresholds or elsewhere), what has been hard for you to name in therapy? And if you did name it fully, it would take your journey to the next level? What have you been wanting to name but continue to feel blocked in session? What have you been phobically avoidant of acknowledging, even when your therapist is giving you space for naming and has created ample safety for naming?
What is one small step you can take to become a namer?
Where is one place where you can speak more truthfully, especially when you are given the non-judgmental space to do so?
Happy Naming—and may this blog article help at least one person, to become a namer!
References:
Brown, B. (2021). Atlas of the heart: Mapping meaningful connection and the language of human experience. Random House.
Cook, A. (2024). I shouldn’t feel this way: Name what’s hard, tame your emotions, and transform your life. Thomas Nelson.
Siegle, D.J., & Bryson, T.P. (2011). The whole-brain child: 12 revolutionary strategies to nurture your child’s developing mind. Delacorte Press.
