Beware of Your Bias!

We all have cognitive biases. Here's an important one. It is impossible to understand that there are people who are patently disadvantaged over others. People in a dominant group find it impossible to believe that the afflicted group is not somehow to blame for their affliction. Here is why. People notice their adversities but deny their advantages. You know this is true.

When my husband watches his beloved Dallas Cowboys play, the refs are always unfair to the Cowboys. They NEVER miss a call that would go against the opposing team. It's a thing - folks believe that their preferred teams have more disadvantages and they do NOT consider possible advantages that might help their team in ways that are unfair to the "enemy."

Sometimes our stress is self-inflicted - and this is an opportunity for just that scenario. There will be times when we inaccurately assess that we are being treated unfairly. In other situations, we will fail to notice the subtle and not-so-subtle advantages that we may have as a result of privileges we do not realize we are receiving.

What should we do? Pay attention! Notice your bias! Try to do a little better.

DO Something!

I learned helplessness with regards to gender discrimination in a big way in college. I did not deal with it. It fueled and fed my eating disorder. The worst part of the problem was that when I shared my experiences, other females who had not experienced my issue often gave me poor advice. They suggested I survived, or that it was 'boys being boys' or other nonsense, which is called gaslighting - by the way.

The truth is, we learn helplessness from actually being helpless. And there are so many opportunities to learn. Here are a few examples: when a family is devastated by a death by suicide, when someone loves a person with a substance use disorder, gender inequality, racial inequality, learning disabilities, physical disabilities, abuse, neglect, economic deprivation, and more more more.

I began to unlearn some of my helplessness when I read an article written by a woman who was a classmate at UVA with me. Her experiences mirrored my own. I had begun to believe the "others," those who did not understand this particular brand of helplessness, and had doubted my own memories. (An indicator that perhaps I have ignored other experiences that were traumatic or dehumanizing.)

The answer? DO something. Here is what I am doing. I am launching a new program that helps participants re-remember. The details are unimportant, but the DOING is the thing. I am DOING my part to help all humans find their virtue and fight for its reality. I cannot change the world. But I can get to know people and give them information that might support their own recovery. I'm pumped. And a lot happier than I was last year this time.

What do you need to DO? It can be anything that gets you moving. It is the first step to getting out of that cage you are stuck in.

UnLearn Helplessness!

I felt immediately better once I realized that, as a female pastor, the game is rigged. It just is. But this was not the first rigged game I played. My list is long and boring, I don't need to rehash it - but it is true. What I really need to focus on, and maybe you do as well, is teaching my body that the game may be rigged but I am not helpless.

How do we do this? We DO something.

Remember those animals they taught to be helpless? They untaught them. They forced them to escape by dragging them to safety. Eventually the dogs (in this experiment) eventually learned to escape without human coercion. We can learn the same!

When we feel trapped, freeing ourselves from ANYTHING can teach our body that we are not helpless.

I have a friend who is struggling with past disappointments and abandonment. These past issues are done. She feels helpless over the effects they have had on her relationship with men. What can she DO? Well, she cannot undo her childhood trauma.

But what she did do was join a gym and get fit as a fiddle. She found a therapist who gets her. She is DOING. This helps reduce the stress that helplessness causes.

Today I was feeling helpless over those dang grant applications. I cannot change the outcome. But I did phone a friend and check in with them every hour all day. I did not call them to lament my grant status. I called them to see how they were doing - friendly connection. The goal in unlearning helplessness is to stabilize ourselves.

You can DO something. What are you doing to get out of the trap you feel helpless in?

Pay Attention!

This past summer a team of hardworking folks helped write grant proposals for Northstar Community. None panned out. When I hear the word "grant proposal" I start twitching. Grant proposals are a lot of work and the more challenging the proposal, the more invested the applicant becomes in the outcome. If we as a team are not careful, we will conclude that there is nothing that we can do to create funding streams to grow a community that loves to serve those who often have no financial resources to meet their desperate need for recovery. This, in psychological terms, is called learned helplessness.

There are hundreds of studies about experiments that teach animals to be helpless, even when a way of escape is made available. Heartbreaking, right?

Here is what we all need to remember: the game is rigged. The enemy is not the conditions of the experiment, the enemy is the mad scientist who thinks up these games and studies the participants with cool detachment. Researchers say that the kinds of pervasive problems that lead rats to feel helpless create "chronic, mild stress." I can only assume that every time someone mentions the word "grant proposal," my body has a stress response. I also assume that those who did the heavy lifting with the grant proposals (not me) might actually twitch when those words are spoken in their presence.

To manage our stress, we need to recognize that we exist in an environment where there is often "chronic, low-level stress." Women understand this when they work in corporate America. People who study these things say that women are granted only 30% of the air time that men are given in meetings. Boys speak up more than eight times than girls as early as elementary school. People who do not fit the social norms of "skinny" are judged and treated with blatant disrespect. This is. IN SPITE of the fact that evidence teaches us that for the older set, people above the healthy BMI range live longer than those who are at the lower BMI range. Don't even get me started on the difference in racial equality.

What's my point? Pay attention. There is one other issue that needs acknowledgment. People who do NOT share the same experience have a very difficult time accepting that differences are real and they are stressful. This is even true for people who are experiencing the inequality. For many, acknowledging these differences is more painful than addressing them. This is a double whammy for the folks who notice.

Second point: Do NOT fall into the trap of learned helplessness. The game is rigged. Account for the stress, but unlearn the helpless myth. Tomorrow, we'll unpack that!

Rise Up!

If stress is mitigated by finding a life of meaning, where do we discover it? Look inside.

Years ago I had some exposure to a wonderful tool called the Enneagram. Something inside me sang when I studied it. I thought it was comprehensive, complicated and intriguing. I wanted to learn more. I had this hunch that this might make a difference for people in recovery. My friend Jean and I even took a summer road trip to study with some folks who are well-respected in the field. We pursued more education, made some great friends and kept talking and learning and studying.

I got some emails about this suggesting that this was a tool of the devil and I was a bad pastor for talking about it. Some people complained about me talking about it too much - guilty as charged. They were right. The negative feedback stirred my insecurity about what I was learning and why I thought it was valuable. It reminded me of those conversations decades ago when some people through the 12-Steps were terrible and others through the 12-Steps were great but I was not equipped to understand them. This feedback did not bother me twenty years ago, but because I was already flirting with a nervous breakdown, the feedback on the Enneagram stung.

I began asking myself a question every evening as a spiritual discipline: So what? So what if I talk about it more than I should? So what if someone confuses a drawing of the Enneagram with the symbol of a Pentagram? So what?

This was a good growth question for me and it has changed my life.

The answer is this: I am a human being. I have the right to be a goofball. I have the right to get super enthusiastic about a subject that interests me. It is ok if someone does not agree or misunderstands. If they are curious, I have an opportunity to explain, if they are not, I really do not need the hassle of trying to explain to a person whose objective is to criticize. And the biggest "so what" of all...So what if no one else sees its potential, I see it and it is calling to me for further exploration.

Here's the most beautiful thing I discovered. While I lay on the floor in a puddle of defeat, I asked myself - what are you willing to sit up for? (Walking was too hard.) I am willing to sit up to hug my grandchildren and love my children and husband. What are you still interested in? I am still interested in loving others. How will you find the strength to do that if you can barely sit up? I do not know.

But one thing I did know: I could no longer get my cues from outside myself. I needed to dig in and dig deep. Who do I want to be when I grow up? This question was one I was willing, even eager, to explore. One of the topics that I was willing to explore was the Enneagram.

If you are smacked down, what is something you are willing to rise up for? Stay tuned.