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?

What If?

People who are always gentle with themselves probably do not need to think about all the ways that rumination, regret and remorse mess us up. So you guys can go have a nice day and stop reading right here! For the rest of us, the insecure, the sensitive, the perpetually anxious and often plagued with guilt peeps, who are alway berating ourselves with the WHAT IF’s? - I have a phrase for you, here goes: When we know better we do better.

I'm not suggesting that this little phrase serves as some kind of magical solution to all our feelings of guilt and shame. But what I am suggesting is this: we often get in a habit loop of thinking, feeling and doing. When it becomes just circular suffering without anything changing, we need to break up the band and find a new way to live.

So here's what we do. We notice ourselves falling into the trap of feeling perpetual guilt, we realize that this is more habit than factual reality (because if we are legitimately guilty then our work is to ask forgiveness and make amends), and we need to discipline ourselves to break the habit loop.

Here's my example: As my mother died, my daughter was giving birth. I rushed from my mom's bedside to be present for my grandson's birth - a ten hour drive. My father found this reprehensible; who ever wants to disappoint their daddy? But my mind knew that I had done all I could for my mom, and now I needed to be there for my daughter. I spent years dealing with a whole range of emotions. But healing began on the day that I made my two lists, and I was supported by people who loved me in saying, when we know better we do better. Anytime I found myself ruminating and rummaging around looking for alternative choices for a past I could not change, I said to myself: "This is not productive; this is not helpful. When I know better, I do better. I am doing better by refusing to ruminate, second guess and feel guilty about something I can not change...and would not change if I had to make the same choice right now." Let me be clear. What I had to accept, what I had to get better at doing, was this: not allowing other people to decide what I should or should not do, how I should or should not feel. I believe I made the choice my mother would have approved of - go home once all has been done, and do the next right thing. Celebrate a new baby even as you mourn the loss of the woman who loved babies more than ice cream. But if this sounds easy, then I am a poor communicator. It was not and it is not easy. But this is what a commitment to growing up requires - doing. hard things.

Listening to Your Thinking Center

May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.

Nelson Mandela

Early on during the pandemic we devoured all the news we could find on the subject. We had decisions to make as a family and as a faith community. The pressure to do the safest thing was tempered by our belief that isolation is bad for people - especially people who are struggling. The more we studied, the more confusing the process.

One morning Pete had a panic attack; I had not slept in days. We stopped and THOUGHT about our situation. Too much information was causing more harm than good. So we stopped the obsessive watching and chose to limit our exposure. This has worked for us.

This is an example of the three centers of intelligence working at various times together and in competition. Our feelings were teaching us that we were overloaded, but our research and compulsion news consumption was “doing” out of control. We were not thinking, we were ruminating. FINALLY, our thinking center came online and called a moratorium on our doing so that our feelings could calm down a bit.

This is the value of our thinking center. It helps us establish guidelines that govern our lives. It contains new ideas (hey, stop watching all the news and watch just enough to stay informed), original thinking (what about zoom?), vision (this is not our future, it is our present), awareness (what good are we doing like this?), and understanding of the true meaning of reality (this is a historic moment, no one knows for sure what is right). The best gift our thinking offers is the capacity for consciousness.

Lots of time we believe we are thinking when we are really imagining, or ruminating, or obsessing. So, as the scriptures encouraged so many years ago - we have to take captive every thought and give it a good vetting to make sure we are really doing productive work at establishing guidelines that govern our lives.

Some of us are too heady, others could use a bit more thinking. Which are you?

We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:5

Better Days...

I dwell in possibility.

Emily Dickinson

I had a mentor who was in the habit, when asked how he was doing, of ALWAYS saying, “Better!” He said it with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips. He intended, I think, to communicate that every day with Jesus was better than the day before. This is not my experience. Full transparency - he was an amazing man of God and this may have been true for him. It is not true for me.

If you have the temperament and faith for it - I wish for you a better day every day than the day before; I celebrate you! But if this is not your experience, can I share a different perspective?

We do not have to feel “BETTER!” to be faithful. In fact, our brain has this amazing capacity to produce all sorts of feelings that do not have a thing to do with our faith.

We have three centers of intelligence: our thoughts, our feelings, and our doing. Our complicated, ambivalent feelings are not an issue so long as we recognize each of these three ways of “knowing” and use each center appropriately. Stay tuned as we go over these during the next few days so that we can evaluate our use of each of them.

For today, we need to recognize that we do NOT use all three equally. We tend to over-use one and repress another, with the third acting as a side-kick to our tired over-relied-upon favorite intelligence center.

My mentor was able to say “Better!” with sincerity because he was a heady guy and did not put much stock in his feelings. That means that one third of his big brain, body and heart was off-line much of the time. Today I serve as a mentor on occasion and I have chosen a different path for myself and it shows up in my mentoring too. Let us dwell in the possibility that all parts of us are valuable. Let’s learn how to be strong and courageous because we trust in God - even when we feel freaked out, think we have better ideas than he does, or prefer to make decisions that suit our preferences.

Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. He will not leave your or forsake you.

Deuteronomy 31:6