A Person Who Pays Attention…

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Maya Angelou

Who remembers how you like your coffee? Who reminds you of the best parts of yourself? Maybe someone whose super power includes the amazing capacity to notice what we need and the willingness to meet it! These folks bring warmth into a room; they prioritize relationships. At their best, these folks improve every party and ALWAYS bring dessert.

Influencers in my life with these qualities have helped me see the value of paying attention to people - not just what they say, but what they do not say.

Could this be you? Can you think of others in your life who have this capacity and inspire you?

It’s Your Journey

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.

How do we stop trying to regain control in such destructive ways?

The past few days we've talked about attentiveness and the ways in which this helps us trace our reactions to their source.  This is the beginning of the process of learning to respond to triggers as opposed to reacting to them.  

A similar-sounding, though quite distinct, skill involves remaining alert.  What do I mean by this?  

What I've been describing this month, so far, is a "deep track" of recovery work.  It's not an area we address early on.  It's something that comes later in the process as we gain some stability.  Stability, for all its merits, creates problems.  It affords us the opportunity to relax, to settle in, and to breathe.  We need this.  But if we stretch this too far we become disengaged and complacent.  

Remaining alert means refusing to believe that, "we have arrived," that "we have gotten somewhere," or that "we have progressed."  At the very least, we refuse to believe that we have progressed to the point where we no longer need to actively pursue our recovery.  

Over time, we actively pursue new areas and skill sets, but we don't stop the pursuit.  Remaining alert means that we can acknowledge progress as long as we acknowledge that we must continue the work.  

Future Scott on Past Scott:

We will likely, over the course of time, have periods of high stress and periods of lower stress. And I do agree that it’s important to take advantage of the times in life when our stress is lower. This is a good time to do some brainstorming about the life we want to live because we are not backed into a corner and we feel we have more options and more opportunities for being creative in terms of how we continue to create our lives. 

I think I like thinking of life in this way: It’s always something we’re creating. We’re never done creating it. We’re always moving, always journeying, always heading somewhere, and rarely in the same direction. 

What direction do you want to travel in, today, right now?

Attend to Yourself!

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.

Read the past few days before reading today.

If the son is not attentive to himself, and has done very little work, then a question from his partner about cleanliness will likely lead to an explosive reaction.  Overtime he's learned to associate his mother's standard of cleanliness (which he later attaches to any conversation about cleanliness) with a deep internal sense that he has no value, that he's a burden on others, that he is a failure, that he's inherently damaged, that he's completely misunderstood, or some other core message.  In this case, an innocuous question (from the partner's perspective) can lead very quickly to a conversation about whether or not this relationship is even worth continuing.  

Triggers don't mean that a person is weak or stupid or overly sensitive.  Triggers are merely things that remind us of our baggage.  If we've dealt with our baggage, triggers are not necessarily overly disruptive.  If we haven't deal with our baggage, they wreak havoc.  

We require attentiveness in order to discern what kinds of conversations or events create unnecessarily large reactions within us.  If we're able to recognize these reactions when they happen, then we can begin to parse out the root of these reactions.  

This is the beginning of learning to choose new and different responses. 

2021 Scott enters the ring to destroy the writing of 2017 Scott, and here’s his response:

I don’t have a tremendous amount of new things to say in response to these few days that I haven’t already said. I will continue to say that it’s a complex web of factors that leads to our healing. Some of it is attentiveness to ourselves and our patterns. Some of it is healing relationships. It might take counseling or support groups. It might take new hobbies. It might mean slowing down. It might mean a career path. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth asking ourselves: Am I living a life that I am excited about? If not, what is in my power to change that I believe might help?

Faux Intimacy vs. True Connection

“When someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often - because I am paying attention.’”

Glennon Doyle

Fixation is different from attentiveness. Fixation is getting stuck; attentiveness opens us up to new ways of thinking, seeing, doing and feeling. Fixation leads to compulsivity, certainty, restlessness, agitation and discontent. Fixation isolates us from others because our fixations never align perfectly with the world or the way others experience life. Fixation creates barriers.

If fixation has so many downsides, why lean into it? It also has benefits. It gives us a feeling of certainty. It allows us to find people who share our fixations and instantly we feel connected. And this is the biggest problem for me with fixation. It’s a shortcut to relational intimacy and it’s a losing proposition.

Brené Brown speaks, and I have quoted her a million times, about this faux intimacy created when we share a common enemy or a common fan crush. I smile at strangers who have on a University of Virginia sweatshirt - I feel connected. But they do not know me and I do not know them. There is no shared experience of true “knowing”. How do I even know that this sweatshirt clad human is a Virginia fan? I do not. My Virginia Tech educated son has often worn Virginia gear. (It’s easy to find at our house and he prefers to get it sweaty over his good Tech swag.)

Intimacy and attentiveness are required for real life connection. When our Virginia Cavaliers won the NCAA title Pete and I took time off work (gasp!) and drove up to Charlottesville to welcome them home. We waited outside the JPJ arena with hundreds of strangers for the buses bringing the team home from the airport. It was convivial. It was fun. We felt the zing of faux intimacy.

Then we saw a couple we actually knew and decided to share a burger and bask in the glory of the coveted championship title before returning home. We talked about our jobs and kids and memories. THIS is true connection.

True connection takes time. It’s inefficient and requires more than a shared passion for a team. We discover points of agreement and disagreement, experiences we share and others we do not. These differences are enriching AND can reduce our certainty and fixations. It’s as simple as trying a new burger place (for Pete and I) that is an old standby for our friends. True connection requires that we pay attention and it will require us to let go of certainty in deference to curiosity. It will require us to open up to new ways of seeing as we share the lens of another human by listening to their worldview.

What good is fake connection? It’s all a mirage.

Day 25: The Power of Soul Friends

It seems like it should be easy to show up for the people we love. I’m just not that great at it. It helps me to learn new ways of being, so that I can do better. One thing I have learned over the years is the importance of having the capacity to see the person as they really are, not who we wish them to be. This requires the wherewithal to hold their potential and their problem areas in tension – accepting both the possibilities for their life and the present day realities in a loving, if sometimes uneasy tension.

In his book, Sacred Companions, David Benner writes:

“Spiritual friends are soul friends. This means that they care for each other as whole people, not simply as spiritual beings. Soul friends become spiritual friends when they seek to help each other attend and respond to God.”

I love Benner’s word choices. What more beautiful way can we assist (or receive aid ourselves) when we are overcome than to have a friend who will help us attend and respond to God? Now, the truth is, hurting people do not always know or even want to attend and respond to God. No problem. They’re hurting. They do not need to wrestle with that just now. But a soul friend can know that and show up as a God representative. A soul friend shows up and bears witness to the unseen but clearly known stickers plastered to their friend’s heart that read: FRAGILE - HANDLE WITH CARE. And, THIS SIDE UP.

Attending and responding to God may involve asking more questions than it does giving instruction. It may require more encouragement than exhortation (certainly both are appropriate but soul friends have the discernment to know when to use what as a way of helping others). Notice the emphasis – it is providing a space in the life of a hurting person that enables them to listen to God more than focus on how to fix the problem at hand. They do not have to be acutely aware that it is God they are focusing on; it’s ok for them to think that it was their friend that made them a cup of hot tea and served them three gingerbread men with extra frosting. It feels like a cool breeze is blowing through my heart when I think of the delicious possibilities that soul friendship presents each of us.

Lord, teach us how to be this kind of friend to those who welcome it.