Affirm Everything and Everyone You Can

FYI- this is part of a series on how to live out our faith in a positive way. Click here to get caught up.

I facilitated a grief group early in 2021 and one of the things I joked with that group about is that I’m becoming an affirmation evangelist. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person that has said, “Yep, I feel completely and totally affirmed. I’m affirmed everywhere I go, at work, at home, my kids, my wife, everyone heaps affirmation on me.”

Most people struggle to feel affirmed. The reason for this is simple: We don’t offer much explicit affirmation.

And, at the same time, most people really appreciate affirmation. Affirmation is motivating- it helps you feel like your efforts are recognized, and this creates a sense that you belong.

I am, admittedly, terrible at affirming. I’m trying to do it more often- and I think I’m succeeding…but only because I used to affirm not at all. So, something is better than nothing…I guess.

Here are some tips for affirming:

-Make mental notes of things you appreciate about others

-State those mental notes out loud to people who do the things you appreciate. But, here’s the trick, don’t use any “value” language. Don’t say that what the other person did is “good,” or “better,” or even “great.” Simply state it as an observation.

When we use words like, “good,” “better,” or, “best,” we are unintentionally communicating that we’re the ones with the right to judge the qualities of another person- so it sounds condescending even though we don’t mean it to be. It’s sort of the same as saying, “I’m proud of you.” It’s a really nice sentiment- but it’s the same idea- it kind of also says, “I’m higher up than you.”

Here are some examples-

Instead of: You’re a good cook.

Try: Your food is delicious.

Instead of: You showed good perseverance.

Try: You are really diligent.

The trick is to look for qualities that another person displays and to simply notice them. By “qualities” I mean anything you notice and appreciate about another person. Such as: reliability, empathy, timeliness, attentiveness, helpfulness, and so on. Pick a trait that you see in another person and just say, “You are ______.”

You may think that’s too simple and won’t make much of an impact. I assure you- doing this regularly will make far more of an impact than trying to heap praise on a very occasional and irregular basis.

Reawaken Your Life

I've been promising a series of posts about my breakdown and waking up experience, but I want to throw in a couple more pre-remarks. When we are exhausted, lose our compassion and feel hopeless, we acclimate to the climate of this dark and dreary existence. We may not realize that this is not "us." Maybe we think this is the way life works. I want you to hear me: this is NOT true. There may be many reasons we feel "off" or bad, and I'm not suggesting that my "off" is the same as yours. I do not know what your pathway through the tunnel and back into the light might look like or what you need.

I just want you to know that you may need to reawaken to your life and it may take a LOT more time, effort and exploration than feels reasonable to you. Also, I do not want you to look for the magic bullet because I do not think there is one. I suspect that it is more likely a series of small steps forward, backward, to the left, to the right, over and under and around.

When my mother died my body tried to tell me that this was not a normal grief process. My usually sturdy, healthy body got sick. I caught every virus that floated in the environment. My joints felt creaky, my workouts were half-hearted. My sleep was off. I asked my husband, "Do you think I will ever feel happy again?"

I started my road to recovery by finding a primary care physician who believed in wellness. This required spending money on myself, lots of bloodwork, a nutritionist, an exercise guru and more. It was a decent start but did not immediately come with a side order of joy. What it did accomplish was return my body to a baseline of wellness with a regular monitoring system to warn me if something physically was moving in an unhealthy direction. I also found encouragement. My physician, looking at my numbers, asked me if I practiced mindfulness and meditation and I said, "I do." She told me that my cortisol reflected my good work in that area.

I was practicing my self-care routine even though it did not FEEL like it was helpful. Hearing that my body was getting the message even if my emotions were not exactly falling into line was an encouragement. Who knows if I could have sustained the efforts around self-care without my physician's encouragement?

When you consider human giving and human being - obviously, balance is key. How is your balance? Does one need more attention than another right now in your life?

What I Learned From My Breakdown...

First and foremost, I learned I am not alone. In helping professions (these are pre-pandemic stats), 20% to 30% of our nation's teachers have moderately high to high levels of burnout. These rates apply also to humanitarian aid workers and university professors. Among medical professionals (think about this - this is pre-covid) the stats are grim - a whopping 52%.

I did some research and tracked down some experts and asked them about what they thought the percentage of burnout would be for someone who spent their whole life trying to get families riddled with substance use disorder and mental health challenges the resources they needed to heal. One laughed and then suggested I read a book on burnout. So I did. But she also shared a perspective that I clearly had not considered. She said that gender makes a big difference in the study of emotional exhaustion. More on that later, but first, let's break down emotional exhaustion.

The first element of burnout is emotional exhaustion and its negative impact on our health, relationships, and life satisfaction - especially for women. Now, before you say to yourself, "Yeah, women are just so emotional." Don't go there! You'll just embarrass yourself. This is NOT about women being more emotional. Again, more on that in a bit. Emotions at their most basic level require the brain to release neurochemicals in response to a stimulus. This morning, at sunrise, my son Scott and I met at a lovely park in our area so that he could take pictures for a new website he's building for me. He asked Pete, my husband to come along. Pete assumed he would be there to watch our granddaughter Norah. He was quite disappointed to find out he was there to try to make me smile and carry the camera bag. Nevertheless, the experience was indeed more fun with the three of us. And Pete did fulfill his responsibilities with flare. The guy still makes my heart beat faster and my joy blossom - even after decades of marriage. Scott expects that to help with the photos, but we also know it also changed my brain chemistry. That's emotion for you - it's automatic, instantaneous, and happening all the time.

Emotions come and go, on their own. They just stop. When they do NOT go, if we get stuck in an emotion, we will experience exhaustion. This problem could be as simple as too much exposure to a stimulus that keeps eliciting the same emotional response - like a stressful job, or ongoing family conflict. Sometimes we get stuck because the most difficult feelings like rage, grief, despair, helplessness are so terrifying that we cannot move through them alone. Finally, we may get trapped because we are not free to move through them.

Are you exhausted? Could it be that you are stuck in an emotional storm?

Responsibility vs Fault

My mom's death was...complicated and it left me completely bereft. I desperately wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding it. But there was no way that would ever happen because the parties involved all had their own experiences that colored their interpretation of said events...including me. But it was a great lesson in learning that problems can be powerful, and less painful, when we take full responsibility for the issue at hand. Problems can be powerful in that they provide us an opportunity to self-examine, reflect, and notice our failures, blindspots and even innocent-ish mistakes.

One of the issues that slowed my own recovery from this traumatic event was my confusion over responsibility versus fault. My therapist kept telling me, "This is not your fault" and she was right but it was hard for me to agree with her.

Over time, I came to realize that I resisted her determined attempts to draw a distinction between responsibility and fault because if I could find a way I was at fault, I unconsciously believed I could find a way to control and change the outcome. Which, when I think about it, is really silly. But it is true. I also had the opposite problem. There were parts of this family drama that I absolutely did not want to claim any fault for - no way! I did not know how to believe that I could be responsible without being at fault. And, I struggled to think about how to be responsible in areas where I was at fault.

Here is what was helpful for me. Fault is past tense. We find someone at "fault" as a result of the decisions they already made. Responsibility is what we choose to do in the present moment. Responsibility is claimed as we make choices in the here and now.

There are people whose decisions and their outcomes can result in fault being found and named. But no one is responsible for my situation because my situation is always my responsibility. The guy who hit us head on was at fault for speeding, driving on worn out tires and trying to change his radio while smoking a cigarette and navigating a turn on a rainy day. But only I am be responsible for how I follow up after the accident. I had to choose how to treat my medical conditions; our family had to choose the next vehicle. He is not responsible for that even though his faulty driving resulted in us needing to take on some additional responsibilities.

If you were able to separate fault from responsibility, would any of your nagging problems become more clear? Would solutions present themselves? Would life feel a bit more free from the burden of complicated grief?

What Helps?

For a month’s worth of posts, I (Scott) am critiquing my own past blog posts. I’m viewing this as an experiment in being willing to admit when I’m wrong, change my mind, and to do so publicly.

Yesterday I wrote about the different strategies Brittany and I use to avoid coping with grief.  These false strategies have led to a number of perfectly avoidable conflicts this year.  We have fought over an ungodly amount of pointless stuff!

When I walk around in active suppression of my grief then my body carries more tension than it has the capacity to hold.  When we don't confront unpleasant things then we do not (and cannot) release the tension that comes with emotional turmoil.  That tension must come out.  

So I pick a fight over the cleanliness of the house.  Why?  Because it's such an easy target and I know it.  Brittany works from home now and has agreed to take on more of the cleaning burden as a result.  This means that, when I'm living unconsciously, I have a built-in excuse to go after her.  The house is never immaculate because nobody's house is immaculate.  So, I can always find something to be upset about if and when I need a release for all the tension I'm carrying.  

I will tie this back to control tomorrow.  

My perspective on this in 2021:

I don’t really know if all of this subconscious stuff I’m describing was happening or not- what is clear to me, looking back, is I needed to find more ways relieve some of the stress I was carrying- related to grief, work, marriage, school, etc. I needed more things I could look forward to in life. I subsequently found photography- that has been a big outlet for me. Brittany and I found more ways to get me some alone time so I could recharge my batteries- that has been huge.

What things actually help you de-stress? Read that closely- I’m not asking: what things do you think will help you de-stress (but they never actually help). I’m asking what actually helps? These are often different things.