Books
BOOKS ARE GREAT. YOU CAN READ THEM OR USE THEM TO PROP OPEN DOORS. IF YOU BUY A LOT OF THEM, PEOPLE WILL THINK YOU’RE SMART, ERUDITE, AND PROBABLY FUN AT PARTIES.
One of the greatest truths I've discovered from decades as a therapist hearing hundreds of painful and beautiful individual stories is that healing and transformation happen through vulnerability and relationship. I write from my own healing journey and continuing growth.
“Michael Cusick is the person you want to have in the room with you as your counselor, your mentor or your coach. I know, because he is the one I want to have in the room with me as my colleague and friend. On the journey of leadership, you can find no one better to be your guide.”
~ Curt Thompson, author of The Deepest Place, Anatomy of the Soul, and The Heart of Desire
“Praesent commodo cursus magna, vel scelerisque nisl consectetur et. Morbi leo risus, porta ac consectetur ac, vestibulum at eros. Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus.”
~ Makoto Fujimura, Artist, author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making
SACRED ATTACHMENT
You’re not losing your faith; you’re shedding baggage. Your struggle to believe is not a barrier it’s the bridge to a restorative, embodied spirituality.
The gap between what you believe and the reality of daily life can often feel insurmountable. I call out the questions and contradictions at the core of living out an authentic faith. My goal was to speak honestly and vulnerably about my own story. My path to God looks less like a paved road and much more like the tangled zig-zag of switchbacks weaving through the Colorado front range outside my window.
One thing I know with greater certainty than ever is that brokenness and pain are precious gifts and can be God’s greatest bridge to experiencing joyful divine attachment.
- They provide an escape to experience God’s warm embrace.
- They map the gap between believing and knowing.
- They hold the key to being held and beheld by the Father.
- They help us to connect to our bodies and intimately connect to God.
- They provide a lens through which we learn that we’re simply broken, not bad.
- They help us become whole and lead us to becoming holy.
- They help us face our deepest desires and greatest fears.
- They give us new eyes to see with our heart, not our fears.
- They offer a path to an embodied connection with God.
- And they open our hearts to the vulnerability the people we love most long for.
My hope is that this book earns a place in your library’s story section. It’s not a how-to manual or another to-do list to fix your life. Sacred Attachment is the story of how I finally came to see the truth that Love does indeed have us.
Preorder Sacred Attachment
“This is a dangerous and beautiful book, filled with courage and hope. This book will set you free. The process Michael describes here works—I’ve seen it happen with many men. That’s why you should read this book. Then give it to every man you know.”
~ John Eldredge, Author of Wild at Heart and Beautiful Outlaw
“Praesent commodo cursus magna, vel scelerisque nisl consectetur et. Morbi leo risus, porta ac consectetur ac, vestibulum at eros. Donec id elit non mi porta gravida at eget metus.”
~ Makoto Fujimura, Artist, author of Art+Faith: A Theology of Making
Surfing
For God
Sometimes a great strategy isn’t enough. I’ve been there, and wrote Surfing for God for everyone who has tried everything and found themselves out of options.
I wrote Surfing For God from my own process of repairing the collateral damage I left in the wake of my choices and actions. The damage I caused stemmed from unhealed childhood trauma. That’s not an excuse, it’s simply the truth.
Over the last few decades, I’ve seen similar stories played out in the lives of leaders and high performers in almost every industry, from every social strata, and every ethnicity. Brokenness is not limited to your income, success, or genetic heritage—it is part of the human condition—and can include issues like any of the following.
- Professional, personal, or ministry burnout
- Broken relationships
- Past abuse or trauma and their effects on life today
- Anger or rage issues
- Addictive behaviors
- Feeling lost or stuck in life
- Lust and compulsive sexual behaviors such as pornography
- Serial affairs, strip clubs, or other forms of habitual sexual behavior
If any of the above issues sound familiar, Surfing For God offers hope and practical ways to re-frame the ways you respond to the world. You can repair the damage and find the healing and restoration your heart and soul long for.
Purchase Surfing For God
The 4s & 5w Relationship
The Four Ss and Five Ws intertwine through each life. Harm you received or love you didn’t combine to shape your unique relationships and attachment style through the messages each communicated. Once seen, the Four Ss and Five Ws can illuminate the path to healing.
Shifting our understanding of brokenness requires us to honor our embodiment, the fact that our wiring impacts what we think, what we feel, and how we relate to God and others. We must realize the intricacy and beauty of how our brains function. If we are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made as the psalmist observes, the we need help untangling connections in our brains that no longer protect or serve us.
The Four Ss
Being seen, soothed, safe, and secure creates the inner foundation necessary to foster secure attachment.
We all come into the world longing to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure. My understanding of these four basic human needs has been greatly impacted by the work of Dr. Curt Thompson, a psychiatrist and author who focuses on the intersection of Christian spirituality and interpersonal neurobiology (IPNF), who credits Dan Siegel, a child psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry at the UCLA school of Medicine.
Over the past twenty years, I have developed a model I call the Four Ss as a way of understanding who we are, how we move through the world, and the ways we relate to others.
Being seen lays a foundation to experience soothing. |
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| 2 | SOOTHED - Parent or caregiver communicates “I’ve got you.” |
Being soothed promotes healthy self-soothing and experiencing safety. |
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| 3 | SAFE - Parent or caregiver communicates “I’ve got this.” |
Being seen, soothed, and safe lays the foundation for being secure. |
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| 4 | SECURE - Parent or caregiver communicates “I’ve got you.” |
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The Five Ws
You’re not bad—you’re broken. And that’s a good thing. Our brokenness creates space for love to do its work.
As we begin to shift our understanding of brokenness it ceases to be a sign of failure or incompetence and opens the door to embracing the embodiment of our story. The way our brains become wired, rooted in every experience since infancy, impacts the ways we think and how we experience and respond to life.
Understanding the Five Ws provides the keys to interpreting and untangling the brain wiring that drives the reactions that once protected us, but no longer serve us.
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1 Wretchedness |
Impoverished, homeless, exiled, poor in spirit | Distrusting God and others to meet needs | Hurts and harm at the hands of others | Reinforces doubt that love and security are possible |
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2 Woundedness |
Hurts and harm at the hands of others | Reinforces the belief that needs will never be met | Trauma goes unaddressed and unprocessed | Pulls you toward divine love for healing and the care of others |
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3 Weakness |
Human limitations and vulnerability, powerlessness | Facilitates a victim mindset or need for control | Tilts toward extremes of hopelessness or complete self reliance | Invites you to surrender to the strength and power of love |
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4 Warfare |
Accusations and deception leading to lies we believe | Leaves you vulnerable to believing the enemy’s lies | Prone to distrust God and rely on yourself | Requires focusing on what is true and relying on the power of love |
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5 Wiring |
The physical self; specifically, our central nervous system and its countless neural networks | Creates default neural pathways based on early conditioning | Prevents secure attachment because of those neural networks | Focusing on truth and practicing embodied spirituality rewires neural pathways |