Resiliency Limits

Resiliency is not a universally helpful concept.  Perseverance is not always our best move.  Some objectives are not realistic and should be ditched as goals.  Sometimes resiliency means being realistic and giving up.  I do not like saying this, but it is true.

In my lifetime I have had a couple of humongous disappointments.  Both of which are totally predictable based on how I see the world.  I love collaboration and community building in a world that often prefers to compare and compete.  I idealize the notion that if we all work together our outcomes will immediately improve because a bunch of heads thinking, feeling and doing together is better than a solo operator any day of the week.

However.  This has blinded me to the fact that this is not everyone’s reality.  In both of my most life-altering disappointments I can see how my eagerness to collaborate over-rode my instincts about my collaborators.  I hung in too long in the relationships when I should have acknowledged that my goals were completely NOT the goals of others.  This does not make others bad and me good or vice versa; it means we are different.  It is only a problem when one or the other of us (me in this case) expects someone to be someone they are not.

I was wrong.  I unconsciously asked others to play by my rules.  I pushed.  I pulled.  I moved away from my own core value of collaboration and tried to control the situation.  This is all on me.  It cost me and others who love me a lot of time, energy, and angst.  

Today, I am more cautious about this collaboration mindset.  I do not just assume that if you say you want to play nice in the sandbox that I need to go out and get us a bigger box and more sand.  I am learning that resiliency has limits.  These limits are naturally occurring if we pay attention to all 11 skill sets associated with resiliency.  If I had paid more attention to self-care, and less attention to this inclination to build a bigger sandbox, then I would not have experienced the heartbreak I did.  BUT I also would not have learned what I learned either - so you see?  

We end up back at resilience - with limits.  Because learning from our mistakes is what?  Resilient behavior!!

Learning to Be Realistic

My lunch date that I referred to in earlier posts felt like a failure on every level.  Instead of trying to jolly her out of her failure mentality I asked her to go home and list all her failures in a notebook and bring them to me in a few days.  She readily agreed to this exercise in shaming because her brain constantly recounted these failures to her all day and night long.  I understood intuitively that if I had asked her to list her successes she would have acquiesced in the moment but I would have never seen her again.

Instead, she showed up with her notebook ready for me to acknowledge that indeed, she was a complete failure.  But here’s the thing that was so predictable and striking about her list.  Pretty much everything on her list was an item she NEVER IN A MILLION KAZILLION YEARS HAVE EVER SUCCEEDED AT!

Sample failings:
1.  I could not get my brother to stop using drugs.
2. I failed at protecting my siblings from my father’s abuse. (She was the youngest child.)
3. I failed to make my mother love me.
4. I have failed to ever have a normal, happy holiday event where my entire family gathered in peace.
See what she did there?  These are all things that are beyond her control.  But the tricky thing about an unhealthy family is members are often made to feel responsible without any authority or right to actually change anything!

Currently she is working on the following perspective shifts:
1. Change is a process not a crisis reaction.  
2. Process takes time.
3. Mistakes are inevitable.
4. Not all mistakes are mine to own.
5. Goals must be realistic and within the realm of my responsibility.
6. Some things are impossible to achieve without the support of all parties.
7. Resiliency and skills like perseverance are only useful if the objective is realistic.

Any of this sound familiar to you and yours?

Believing God is who He says He is

When I was taught the roles of an addictive family system, I easily spotted my place in the lineup.  Can you say over-achiever?  Master problem solver of other people’s issues?  Guilty on all counts.

Feeling responsible for a lot of people and things that were never mine to feel or think or do anything about was a real joy killer.  I brought all this over-achieving and people pleasing quite naturally and unconsciously into my life with God.  I had all sorts of unconscious inclinations about how much God would expect of me and how little he would offer in return.  Basically, I had the whole God/me thing backwards.  But I also had his word, which I love to read and study and try to apply.  Here’s a verse that gets me every time right in the heart:

Heaven’s my throne, earth is my footstool.
What sort of house could you build me?
What holiday spot reserve for me?
I made all this!
I own all this!

But there IS something I’m looking for:
A person simple and plain, reverently response to what I say.

Isaiah 66:1-2, The Message

So here’s the deal.  God is not asking me to over-achieve so that he can under-deliver.  He just wants to have a conversation with me from a particular way of thinking about the relationship - he wants it to be non-defensive.  He desires relationship with me to be responsive on my part.  Trusting.  No fancy offerings or sacrifices, nothing showy.  Just me showing up for relationship with him.  That’s amazing.  

God is not hungry, angry, lonely, tired, neurotic, needy, or insecure.  He is God.  He is Big.  He is crazy about me and wants to chat.  My job is to show up.  To believe God is who he says he is and to think about that in my daily walking-about life.  This is a foundational truth upon which we can build a resilient life.

The Problem with Crisis Management

When we have not practiced the skills of resiliency (see this article for a refresher on the concept) our perspective may need a major shift if we are going to get unstuck from the self-defeating patterns of fragility.  This is more than just a psychological construct; it is also biblical.  More on this later, but for now, let me say this:  I believe that the faithful foundations of belief lived out on a daily basis look remarkably like resilience!  With that in mind, let’s compare and contrast at-risk lifestyle perspectives that spring from unhealthy family systems versus the way resilient people operate in the world.

In unhealthy family systems, we are made to think we should know more than we do.  “I am surprised you did not know that!”  “How could you be so stupid?”  “Everyone knows…” are examples of too high expectations with too low parental nurture and guidance.

A healthier perspective - which is appropriate for our entire lives - includes the humble reality that no one knows everything!  There is always more to learn.  This does not make us stupid or “less than” - it’s called the human condition.  Out of this perspective we can become curious, inquisitive, have a sense of humor about our limitations, expect to make mistakes, on and on and on.  

In sick family systems making a mistake can have dire consequences.  In reasonably healthy families everyone makes mistakes, even the grown-ups.  No big deal.  This allows us to learn at an early age to take risks, helps us figure out how to assess risks and provides us with a better attitude when failures inevitably pop up.  

In stressed out families, successes are either overly emphasized or ignored.  In a shaming family, good is never good enough.  In a family desperate for a win, maybe the family hero gets TOO much attention for the good they do and TOO much blame for their inevitable and completely appropriate mistakes.  Healthy families celebrate large and small victories but without communicating that these victories are what holds the family together.  

In summary - stressed out families are in such a crisis mode that they are not thoughtful about their responses to one another.  Healthy families are thinking strategically; applying their core values consistently; feeling each event as it comes, not in a manic or depressed reaction to all the situations that surround that event.

Crisis management is not a good daily practice.  Can you see ways that crisis management has not been helpful in your life?  What changes could you make to give yourself wriggle room for a less chaotic life?

Victimization vs. Victimhood

It turns out that people get stuck when they believe that they are the victim in a situation - helpless and hopeless.  This is rarely true.  Victimized?  You bet.  Happens all the time.  The world can be a jungle and we can get badly hurt.  Victimization is when we are (objectively) hurt as a result of someone else's misdeeds.

But if we take on the identify of victim (victimhood) - part of that is our responsibility to stop.

When we act like we are victims, then we make a fatal mistake:  we give up our freedom to act in our own best interest.  Look, if you are one of those people who has been victimized, you have suffered enough.  Do NOT add insult to injury by allowing a past hurt to define you.

Here’s what we can DO:
* Act in our own best interest - this is not selfishness, this is self-care.  This does not preclude us from being kind and generous and giving.  But we are our own best advocates and we must act accordingly.
* Live consistently within our own core values.  This is hard work.  It means we have to decide for ourselves what those values and OWN them.  I have a friend who is working too many hours and drinking too much in order to fit in with the young up and comers at work.  This is not who this guy fundamentally wants to be.  He doesn’t realize it yet, but his wife is getting increasingly unhappy with him.  He is making a fear-based decision that is going to create big problems in the long run.  And it in no way guarantees that his work productivity will improve just because he is mastering the fine art of the bar crawl.  I think he might want to consider looking for a company to work in that fits his core values.  He is stuck, afraid this is his only option.  
* Think about consequences without getting overly concerned with what others think.  (See the example above.)  
* Figure out that it is human to make mistakes but divine to accept responsibility for our problems and without judgment or blaming others learn from them!

If you didn’t grow up learning these things, it is never too late to learn them today!