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!

Suffering is not Strength…

During my five years of intense suffering, I ultimately learned to surround myself with people who could focus on what was working, not ONLY what was broken. Maybe you need someone to kick your ass and get you into gear. I did not. The world was already kicking my ass. My father was already breaking my heart into a million pieces. My community, thanks pandemic, was in a state of flux and not everyone handled that well. All of it was TOO MUCH. But even in the midst of a fair amount of bad behaving, little lanterns of light were present.

This is a moment where I want to be brutally honest with you. I honestly have come through this tunnel with the strongly held conviction that no one needs an ass whooping. No one. I do not think it works. So maybe you think you need that, I would ask you to reconsider. I once had this young woman in my life who went off to college and came back....different. She had found a church near her college campus and she was thrilled with it. She reported to me saying, "You know, I realize that I need to go to a church where the pastor makes me feel ashamed each week so that I can be inspired to do better during the week." My heart sank. These were the days before I myself was a pastor, but even in all my ignorance, something about that just felt off to me.

This is a powerful human in her own right. She is assertive and strong and hears the cries of the marginalized and hopeless and DOES SOMETHING to alleviate their suffering. If anyone could take a licking and keep on ticking it's her. But this is not sustainable, in my opinion. One day, she will feel her vulnerability. And when that day comes, she may need something quite different. And if I may be so bold, she needs something quite different even when she feels strong and in control. Because all this shaming and her certainty that she can rise to the challenge actually strengthens her weaknesses. It makes her less vulnerable. It makes her more judgy and critical and I could see my younger self in her intense and sincere features. So I went home from our coffee date and cried.

Fail Often, with Great Joy

This is important. No one has perfect judgment. No one can, should, must, ought, or needs to be responsible all the time. No one can avoid mistakes. No one can live up to their own expectations or the expectations of others. In fact, assuming too much responsibility is more linked to trauma than it is too sainthood. I wish I had learned this earlier in life and I will spend the rest of my life giving other people permission to do what I could not allow myself to do for most of my life - fail often with great joy.

Fail at being 100% available.

Fail at avoiding pitfalls and mistakes.

Fail at trying so darn hard.

And notice, in the midst of all this failing to achieve, that everyone else is also failing.

Normalize failing and practice non-shaming responses. If we can pair those two principles together, then we can create an environment that is less traumatizing. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Armed with what we know - failing is not bad but it is inevitable - share failings aggressively. This serves several important purposes. It de-stigmatizes our shame and it encourages others. When Pete fails, I do not think he is a failure; I sigh with relief that maybe I do not have to be perfect either. It provides me a chance to remind him that we all fall short, so what? It helps to share with safe people, and that may require some additional failing along the way. I'm amazed at how differently humans respond to my own confessions of shortcoming. Sometimes I share and then feel that I made another mistake in sharing; I want to lie and hide from my limitations. But others get curious, ask questions, help me turn my failure into an experience, and remind me that I am not a mistake - I made a mistake.

2. Be the person other people can fail around. This doesn't mean that we never give feedback, we can and do (with permission). We just figure out how to be a safe person in the midst of recovering fromfailure.

3. Notice that the only way to avoid failure is to stop learning, growing, and leaning out over our skies a bit. It leaves one with a very, very small life.

How is fear of failure holding you back?

Is it Good Judgment or Are You Being Judgemental?

Most Thursday nights I have the pleasure and privilege of participating in our Family and Friends Education Program at NSC, in partnership with some other really great organizations, like VCU's Rams in Recovery. This program is designed to support and educate families seeking recovery for a loved one. It is an amazing group; often, someone wants an "after meeting meeting" - in order to get a bit more personal about unpacking a particular crisis or chronic problem related to the topic of the evening.

One evening we talked about the characteristics that foster change: empathy, compassion, unconditional positive regard, etc. These principles are extremely difficult to figure out how to display when confronting a loved one whose addiction leads them to lie, cheat and steal without apparent remorse. (Which, for the record, is rarely true. Most people have deep shame and remorse about the places the disease takes them.)

"Teresa, I hear what you are saying, but I just do not buy it. There is just no way in hell I can withhold judgment after all my son has done. He's a thief. He's broken all the commandments plus a few no one even thought to mention. I am ashamed of my son and I want him to be ashamed too - maybe then he will change."

Yeah, well, it turns out that shame is not a great motivational tool. It encourages hiding and secrets and isolation. It is not helpful. As I listened to this heartsick parent lament, I realized that we need to have a follow up conversation that distinguishes between being judgmental versus having good judgment.

I was NOT advocating for abandoning good judgment. Good judgment in this instance might mean that these parents not give their kid a key to their home and ask him to water the plants and feed the dog when they go on vacation. That's using poor judgment. That's not living in reality. Their son is not capable of that level of responsibility. A parent can know this without being judgmental about this tough truth. There's a difference.

One of the words I over-use on Thursdays is "tone" - our "tone" matters. When our "tone" comes from a place of radical acceptance, even if we mess up the words, our fumbling is less debilitating. When my grandmother told me to "Stay sweet and do not get stout," her "tone" was deaf, but loving. It was wrong, but not toxic. It was poor advice, but not devastating because it was just so obvious that she loved me. Now, she should not have said it and it was a super bad message to give a woman way deep into anorexia. But its effect was blunted because of the tone, the heart of her message. These sorts of problems need correcting - and, eventually I was able to share with her about my personal struggles and she never, ever repeated those words. But judgmental attitudes are hard to address and far more dangerous.

Differentiating between good judgment and being judgmental is challenging. We often need help figuring it out. That's ok, because in no judgment zones, asking for help is easy.

Setting Aside Judgement

One of the first passages of scripture that held me captive for a long, long time was Matthew 7:1-2. It goes like this:

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."

(NIV Translation)

In those days, my early 20's, I lived in a world filled with judgment. I could not imagine that it would be possible, even if I wanted to, to NOT judge and be judged in turn. Judgment was everywhere. I felt judged by Matthew 7, the very scripture that encourages NO JUDGING.

My own beloved grandmother, who I adored and was adored by, once told me in the middle of my own bout with anorexia, "Stay sweet and do not get stout." Wowzer, that was a bit off message. I was busy starving myself and she reminded me, in her own subtle way, that there was no such thing as a woman who was too thin.

Judgment judgment everywhere.

In the decades since, I continue to circle back to Matthew 7. I am so much older and much of the judgment of my youth has diminished. I have lost my will to judge, having seen how destructive it is especially in the hands of the ones we love the most. I have also lost my willingness to feel obligated to endure the judgment of others. Of course, there are days of relapse. I try not to judge myself when I fall back into the habits of childhood.

Here is what I am learning about Matthew 7. It is a pathway to freedom, not a judgment in and of itself. As a young woman, I heard it as a command too impossible to obey. Today I hear it as a voice of reason, inviting me, and all of us, into a different kind of life. A life, on the days I can live it, that is quite joyful.

Once we set aside judgment, or it is taken from us as a gift from our divine Healer, we can listen and marvel at all the manifold ways humanity expresses itself. Like Norah, who absorbs the new sights and sounds of Folly Beach without an ounce of judgment, we have the privilege of experiencing people in all their multitude. Matthew 7 is not asking us to get our act together so much as it is showing us what an abundant life looks like - in case, like me, others have never personally experienced a judgment free zone.

Do not judge - we are free not to! We can quit our comparing and competing. Yay for us!