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Church Psychology
Mental Health Professionals looking at the intersections of social & behavioral science and the formed Christian life. Visit us for free resources and more at www.ChurchPsychology.org
Church Psychology
Balancing Independence and Dependence: A Journey of Personal Growth, Parenting, and Spiritual Maturation
Struggling to balance personal independence and dependence? You're not alone. Matt and Dr. David Hall are exploring the tensions that exist between these two extremes, their impact on our spiritual connection, and how our culture and the church often swing between them. This dynamic tension isn't just a linear journey, but rather a constant negotiation and reshaping of our lives. We'll take a leaves out of the work of the psychiartist, Milton Erickson, and reflect on the moment when you realize that you can no longer become an Olympic swimmer (even if you were not trying to in the first place) We can see how the tensions of dependence and independence manifest in different stages of life.
Parenting is a tightrope act, walking the fine line between rebellious teenage independence and parental anxiety. We discuss how allowing a teenage brain - which is still developing until the mid-to-late 20s - to make certain decisions can have far-reaching implications. This struggle between dependence and independence within families can sometimes lead to individuals being valued for what they can do, rather than who they truly are. We'll also shed light on the concept of fidelity and its influence on identity and role confusion.
Join us as we delve into these complex issues and offer practical guidance for personal growth and spiritual maturation. Together, let's navigate the intricate path of dependence and independence in our personal lives and church experience.
Show Notes:
Anthony Bradley Episode - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-churches-should-respond-to-the-boy-crisis/id1560890129?i=1000599515383
Hey there, friends, this is Dr David Hall. Today, on Church Psychology, matt and I are going to get into a conversation talking about the tension and process between thinking about personal independence and dependence which is a huge topic, particularly as it relates to youth development our own sense of what we can accomplish, trying to find that line between our self-sufficiency as humans as well as our dependence on God, and how that fits into a psychological space. That's what Matt and I are going to get into today. So happy you're going to be joining us. Let's drop into that music.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Nagev Institute. We are mental health professionals looking at the intersections of social and behavioral science in the Christian life. Please connect with our free resources in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg. We would be grateful if you would follow, like or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you are finding us, and also leave us a review as we start. If we are to love the Lord, our God, with all of our mind, it makes sense to work on our head space. Let's get to work Well. Welcome everybody to the Church Psychology podcast. My name is Matt Schooniman. I'm here with Dr David Hall.
Speaker 1:David good to see you, hi, matt. Hey, yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not been a while for you and I.
Speaker 1:We work together, but maybe for our people that have seen us. We're on different floors, yeah, we're on different floors, and so Matt and I will do these recordings and we're recording our offices right now, but we'll kind of run back and forth in between.
Speaker 2:Welcome to our space. Yeah, they see my space more than your space.
Speaker 1:They see your diploma. I do get the wall. Yeah, you got a lot in your office. We do have a feral cat that lives in our neighborhood and I do think sometimes, for those who are watching this on YouTube, you can see Matt's window and he's on a second story, yeah, but every once in a while I have this fanciful thought of the cat just kind of peering its feral head over the ledge.
Speaker 2:Oh, sweet kitty, he does that in some of the bottom floor ones he does.
Speaker 1:He does, who knows?
Speaker 2:what goes on behind me in that window? That would be its own podcast. What goes on behind in the window, in the window?
Speaker 1:So, matt, this is what we're going to talk about today. It's something that I know is a passion topic for you. It's something you talk about.
Speaker 2:And it relates a lot to feral cats.
Speaker 1:You know, and in a certain way it does. It is a certain way it does. So that is all, for what's our topic?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're carrying on the theme that we've had for the past few episodes, and we don't know if we'll continue on this theme after today. But this in a sense brings at least this section of this theme to a close. But we're talking about the tension between two things that in some ways both sides have its validity. But how do we hold the balance between them? Because we've already talked about this, but so many aspects of the culture and even in the church, the pendulum swings, and when that swing happens it doesn't necessarily produce the most health or the most ability to live in step with the spirit. And so today's topic is one of the tension between independence and dependence. And even as I say that, I wonder if some of you squirm to even think of the word dependence.
Speaker 2:I know I do to some level. There's a little bit of our American cultural flair that I think, even as a man that says I can do all things on my own. It's that passage I can do all things to Christ who strengthens me, but it's really just power to do it on my own. And so that's in a way been a lot of how I've viewed my life as I've grown up, and so lately I've wrestled with the concept of dependence. And what does that mean? Because, as a counselor and psychologist for you, david, there's the term co-dependence that gets thrown around and it kind of makes people shudder. It's like I don't want to be co-dependent and so, anyways, I think it's important that we talk about this tension. How do we live out life? Do we live out life independent or dependent on others? And what's the tension between those? Because, as if you've listened to any of the past three, or actually all of them now, there's a sense to which you're going to know. The answer is that it's somewhere in the middle, it depends. That's the joke.
Speaker 1:That's a joke if you talk to a therapist of you ask the question.
Speaker 2:We never give you a direct answer.
Speaker 1:The answer is always it depends, and because I know for myself, and I think this is true for a lot of people, that we think about maturation and our sense of growth in life, whether spiritually or emotionally, physically, is we're aiming to this point of arrival and my goal is to kind of get there and we see it as kind of this linear progress and there are aspects of growth that are linear, but not it's not just linear, and Matt and I have talked so much about this idea of some of the conversations we get into and so many of the topics that are important to us is how to identify things in intention and we were talking about in our last episode of this concept of agency. Is this this place between control and complete victimization, yeah, victimization on what's and then, and that the best we can understand it from a mental health perspective, from a scriptural perspective, from both. This is kind of this place in between and dependence, dependence, dependence and independence is kind of in that you know, like you said, we, for those in kind of the Western, definitely American mindset, that dependence can feel very approachable. You shouldn't be dependent, yeah, and there's a lot in the specific psychology in American, the American like social and national story. That reinforces that, that sense, and I don't think all that's bad.
Speaker 1:But like all things, it has its limits Because ultimately we live as finite creatures.
Speaker 1:We inhabit certain physical space, certain physical time. We have certain physical abilities that grow and then eventually diminish, yeah, and that creates a lot of psychological questions and stress. And the other thing, I think, where this is relevant, the sense of living in Christian community, living as the church, and, as we are in an era where abuse of power has been something that's been talked about quite a bit and something Matt and I have already touched on, the issues of dependence and independence kind of come to fore there. So it just all those things kind of come in and end. We see the tension in our work and families of people that have a hard time, whether it's parents or spouses or people that try to hold on to things too tightly to try to control situations, people that sometimes feel if they're children. I think of a lot of instances I've worked with and working with families with teenagers, as teenagers are grappling with progressively more independence or desire for independence, how that can be difficult for the family and the parents may feel rejection in that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's kind of this, yeah, and a sense, even in the family structure where they're like you cannot be independent on your own, I pay for your house, I pay for your car, all these things that are fair and true.
Speaker 2:I just think that they find that that's a lot of tension when you talk about the adolescent stages of growth and we can maybe get into this in a minute. But there's some legitimate developmental things to where someone becomes more independent or more longs for independence as they get older. The flip side of that is you get to older ages in life and you talked about I don't know if you use this word, but the word came to mind was capacity and limitations, because I think, as a reflective on my own life journey and I don't think anybody would probably have said to me he's prideful or narcissistic that kind of independence it was more very quiet, hidden, like I don't want to ask for help because I don't want to burden somebody kind of independence that I've learned through age and through just life circumstances that I have major limitations in capacity constraints. I think that we live in our 20s and 30s in the sense of kind of unrealistic imagination land where I can literally do anything I want and some of that we promoted to our children.
Speaker 2:That says you can be whatever you want to be. Well, there are still limitations in this life, so some of that is just, I think, kind of real. You mentioned why this is personal. I think it's because I'm walking through it right now, this struggle of where my independence is falling short because I don't have the capacity to do more. I have to lean on other people now, and that's a hard pill to swallow sometimes.
Speaker 1:Well, and you also walk the journey, met as a parent and seeing this kind of progressed with your children, and so it's a lot of different angles and there's so many. I mean we could give so many examples of where this will manifest. And the famous psychiatrist Milton Erickson, who has also influenced a lot of early family therapy, approaches, and one of the things that he would talk about is that in the context of family therapies that families would present to therapy when they are having difficulty navigating a transition from one phase to another. And so if it's in the context of life phase, of children going from toddler to, you know, school age, child to that, to preteen, to preteen to teen to, and it would be families would get stuck in their roles and it would often be covertly or sometimes overtly. A teenager is trying to push into a new role and the parents are trying to equalize with that, and so that's this, that's this difficulty and in that but you know, as you talk about the sense of limitations, I joke with people. I feel pretty decent at this phase of my career as a therapist. I'm a pretty good therapist. You do not want to hire me as your accountant. I'm not a good landscaper? I am not. No, I've tried that and this that works, yeah Well, and it's a phase in life that he reaches. I mean, I remember one of the things that struck me in this was in 2012, which, at the time of recordings, over 10 years ago, I was watching the Olympics in London.
Speaker 1:I wasn't in London, I was, but I was watching it and the Olympics were happening in London and there was a swimmer that was competing who was from Matt and Miles Community in Oxford, tennessee. He swimmer named Davis Tarwater and they were talking about at the time how old he was and the time he was 28. I remember the commentaries that now Michael Phelps the next Olympics. Michael Phelps competed at 31. But that was quiet. But this is 2012. They were talking about like. I remember the commentator saying like yeah, tarwater is really long in the tooth to be here, and I at the time was 31. And I remember thinking like the thought struck me is I'm too old to be a competitive Olympic swimmer. Now, I've never swam competitively, I had not been working towards that goal, but you were so hopeful.
Speaker 2:It was just more. It was the first time it had.
Speaker 1:It had been spoken in a way that, like I had my age had limited me in something, yeah, where I had registered it, like I'm, like I am now getting to ages where, physically just, whereas when you're 1314, you're like who knows the world's wide open, right, maybe I'll be this, maybe I'll be that, and there's a sense of diminishing possibilities and that becomes a means of dependence. So, anyway, we're what we said so far. We kind of just want to lay the gravel of the initial foundation of this tension point between dependence and independence and the good and bad. As Christians that teaches us important deep humility when we recognize our dependence.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But we also, similar to what we talked about before, we want to encourage people in their sense of agency because ultimately we believe that, as being created in the image of God, given the kind of the command to kind of go out and take action in this world that we inhabit, that there is a sense of at least delegated independence we're given. Yeah, and how do we live in that tension from a psychological standpoint?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, so you know we do this comparison often and feel free to move the conversation away from this if you don't feel like talking about David, but we talk about this of the past couple of times is there's a difference or there's been some shifting as it relates to how the culture kind of speaks into this and then how the church does, like church culture versus culture culture. And I'll say this first and just kind of see what your thoughts are. But I've seen actually, I think, kind of a flip-flop at times between kind of the world, so to speak, and it's what's way would they lean. And I think that like the world has some kind of interesting way that you know, through movies and culture and media and all this stuff that press for a while, that independent mind frame especially. Well, and I'll speak for men For a second. It's just you know the John Waning effect. Like you, just you ride alone off into the sunset and you've just taken care of all the bad guys, but you know you're just on your own, you know.
Speaker 2:But I feel like even to that end there's a little bit of like maybe over the past 10 years or so, kind of a sense of dependence that is formed to where you know it, the culture is more. In a sense, I don't have longings, the word, or even kind of pushing or forcing people to be. Like you have to support me, like you have to lift me up. We talked about victimization and victimhood mentality in our last episode and it feels like that victimhood mentality kind of calls out for dependence, but it's almost like a forced dependence, like over the years.
Speaker 2:On the flip side, I see the church be probably the best form of community and kind of this interdependent when it first formed, but over the years, especially in the American church I won't call it specific denominations, but some that I grew up in there's a real sense of like you share all of your good stuff with me. Like you know, god did this for me and did this, but you know, pray for this. But it's an unspoken prayer request, right. Like it's that kind of sense of I'm going to just give you a little bit of my need of you to step into my life, but I'm not really going to bring you in because I want to be able to do this on my own and present you this great picture.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's the flip of where, and I think that the church has tried to rectify that lately. I've seen it in other churches and you know where I'm at now. But, man, there's a real problem of independence as it relates to if we call that a bad thing in the sense of this conversation, but in the church being a struggle to find the right balance of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what you're you talking about. That makes me think about, you know, another way of talking about that angle of dependence is also vulnerability and how we try to really protect ourselves from feeling too vulnerable and exposed. Yeah, and there's so many directions to talk about this, but I want to think about it specifically as you bring it up, in the sense of like church culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And how both of these things desire for independence and dependence come into play in how it. I think from an outsider and I mean that's just as much as a question too, because I've not worked in vocational ministry, where you have Right, and I think that is I think on one end, people are very hesitant to commit to life in a community at times. Oftentimes people can be these, these kind of permanent shoppers of church, churches and church community, and it's often very driven, I think, by a consumeristic mindset of how is this, you know, whether is this pastor, preacher really engaging, or what is the worship service feel like and does this meet my taste? Yeah?
Speaker 2:there's a common like Christian vernacular of like did it feed me like that yeah in my being fed.
Speaker 1:And as soon as it's as soon as I'm not. Then this idea of moving on and even I've talked with a lot of clergy that are friends of Line, of the hurt they feel with congregants, kind of ghosting them, just disappearing without comment and out like and oftentimes these could be people that weren't just peripheral but pretty like visible and invested in that person's life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then answers like yeah and so, and oftentimes there's a sense of like the there's a lot written about right now and the developmental journey of things, of where people struggle with commitment and how commitment represents a sense of, of I'm giving up my independence.
Speaker 1:There was a great podcast episode Matt and you and I were talking about and make a note to put this in our show notes but for Anthony Bradley's episode on the boy crisis, which is amazing resource but one of the Anthony B Bradley's professor in Manhattan talks, is an ethicist and talks on sociology as it relates to church culture, among other topics, brilliant mind highly recommend his work. But he is very concerned and is speaking and writing a lot about right now about the effects of kind of the cultural incubation for young men, and one of the things he highlighted in this episode that Matt and I that I'm referencing the man I recently went through is the sphere of commitment, because I think this commitment it's it's I'm eliminating my options, I'm in, I'm ending some of my independence. I want to keep my independence, so I stay from committing and I keep myself from intimacy.
Speaker 2:Well, here's here's a caveat that I would give to that, because I had a recent conversation, even today, with another group of people and there was this concept of this that is not inaccurate, but I think that there's a deeper layer that shows what the true fear is, and it may even play into the aspects of why we lean independent versus deep in it. There's a sense to which the fear of commitment is actually driven by more of a fear of failure. If I commit to this and then don't follow through, what does that make me? And so I wonder if, when we talk about especially as we're talking about his, his, his research related more towards boys and why men are struggling, in a sense, if that fear is more of the pressing core, that heat under the surface that's bubbling it up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that's on one side, I think, of the struggle for towards independence and where that can be problematic in church life. And here's the talk about the over dependence, and this relates to what you were referencing of the sense of related to the victimhood sort of thing. But like I'm kind of calling out external support to just me, not to question me, not to you know, we talk about this idea, I want you to support me, but we want the support to come without any sort of accountability of what am I supporting, like would you support me or not. That it is looking in. It's a similar view of, I think people look at particularly the staff or leadership in different churches. It's a similar thing to the consumeristic mindset that really comes into a lot of church life. Am I being fed? And that's the. That's the idea of it, but it's the expectation, particularly for the people up front that, like I, it's the role of you as the pastor to do this. We need to be doing more on filling the blank on the topic and I've been part of the church community.
Speaker 1:I've been in now for 15 years and it's for I've been in the same church community for as long as I've lived in. I live in my hometown but I spent a season away for college and things like that. But since I moved back in my late twenties I've been in the same community and I've talked with people in it. I remember one conversation I had years ago with a friend who they were saying they wanted to see the church do more of X, and it was specifically talking about supporting this particular ministry in the community, that the church was doing some involvement in that. But this person told me I feel like they need to be doing more. And I looked to him and I said, well, you make it happen.
Speaker 1:And it was this idea of that he didn't see himself, at least in that conversation. He wasn't the church. The church was the paid staff or the identified people up front and that's where it's dependent. Like I'm dependent on you, the pastor or the children's ministry director or the youth leader, something like that, to do this, and I'm kind of passive in this process, whereas that's not what we're called to be. And so again, this is a lot of callback to our conversation on the previous episode about that agency. But I think there's a passivity that even happens how people participate in church life. That represents some of that dependence of in that. So that's what I got to say about that.
Speaker 2:I appreciate what you say about that as we talk through this and attempt to find the balance between the two, because, on one hand, just keeping with the church, there's a sense to which I want to come back to something as it relates to our relationship to God, even in a little bit. But I read somewhere that God has made us dependent on three things and I would put it in the show notes, but I cannot tell you Remember this one but on God himself, on God's word and God's people, and on the first two. I read that and I was like oh yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And the third one was like there's still that kind of burn in you of that. And so to find the balance is to recognize that to some level, as in our belief, David and I, how we believe God made us, I think he made us with the need of these three things in our life, but it has to be in a way of balance. And so I guess let's jump into the concept of this balance and holding the tension, David and I think you're going to bring in some psychological concepts and maybe models of that, even developmental models. Yeah, let's just talk through that balance. And how do we offer to the people listening, what are ways they can walk in this?
Speaker 1:Well, what we're going to talk about too, and these are some established psychological models of talking about development and as it relates to things like dependence and independence, and that there is this developmental arc or journey that people are on, and if you are in a church community setting, you're ideally seeing people in different ages, but there's different chronological ages and there's different emotional ages, and I think what can be interesting is that you can have somebody who may be older as far as their years, but where they are in their physical years, developmental years.
Speaker 1:And so that could be some of the things that kind of. But yeah, this is something I teach out a lot and I personally find interesting. But you have, a major person in developmental psychology in the 20th century was a Danish psychologist named Eric Ericsson, and he's most famous in the psychotherapy world for his stages of psychological development and there were multiple phases, but all of them is met and I've kind of talked about these things in dichotomy and tension. He identifies each of his stages as something versus something, a point of tension, and the one that we feel is most interesting is talking about like in adolescence, because this is where the striving towards independence from dependence and a developmental arc happens the most, though you can have very old adolescence sometimes, but Erickson talked about this stage. It's one of his middling stages. But talking about the concept is fidelity in it. Fidelity, the sense of commitment or loyalty to something. But in that it relates to, he calls identity on one side versus role confusion who am I and how do I shift into that? And the main question for somebody in this phase who's walking through this is who am I and what can I be? If I'm talking about teenagers in this phase, they're very concerned. This is often my work.
Speaker 1:I'm walking with parents as they're trying to see their teenagers is. They're very concerned of how they appear to others, whether it's peers or even adults. They're trying to figure out how to establish an independent cell that has value and meaning within the world they inhabit socially, in that that world can be in their peer realm it could be different peer realms peers at school or in a sports setting their life within the church and how to have a distinct role that has kind of grown more independent from where they were before. There's the desire to be on your own. There's the desire to make your own decisions. Oftentimes that represents a point of tension with the parents of how much, how much do I give them what's appropriate? That's probably one of the most common conversations I have with parents is them trying to understand what level of independence should I give them, because to establish a role involves a certain level of independence and kind of struggling towards that. But that often represents and the problem is, if you have teenagers struggling towards something but they don't often know what they're struggling to there's the desire to like, grow and be different, but the world is oftentimes giving them these different labels or different ways to kind of talk about an identity that may or may not be ultimately true or ultimately fruitful. And then parents struggle with you know how do I recognize the limitation? Because ultimately a teenager may desire this but they may not have the emotional or intellectual capacity to.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, I find, like I love that I was able to start driving at 16. And I was a pretty good driver, I was pretty responsible. I will say as a psychologist in my 40s it's hard for me to look back and think like it's, I get it. I'm not recommending we change the driving age necessarily, but man, I was in a lot. I was in a lot of cars where a lot of stupid things were done automatically as a young person.
Speaker 2:But for me, what I love, just interesting, all of what could have been like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it was just and I'm not even talking about like immoral in the ways of just like just poor automotive decisions, and I may have gotten up on two wheels more than once in I had a very top heavy car that was prone to flipping. I never flipped it, but the make was prone to flip and I never did that. But I got on two wheels but I wanted independent and that's the thing. That's what I loved about being able to be a driver as a young man. Is that what represents so much independence? Church Psychology is a production of the Nagev Institute, a research resource and teaching initiative that aims to provide Christian communities with practical education and consulting to faithfully speak to our needs in mental health, relational science and human habit and behavior. A great way to support Nagev is to start a free membership in our open community library at churchpsychologyorg and then stay connected with our email newsletter to hear about new classes, publications, live forums and in-person events. Again, you can find all that at churchpsychologyorg.
Speaker 2:It's so interesting, though, again to the culture shift. I don't know how many teenagers whether I see them in practice or just have heard stories outside of here but that are not as eager to drive as maybe you and I were. Now I feel like two old men talking about back in the day. Back in my day there was nothing out here.
Speaker 2:There is this sense of I was similar to you. It's like the day I got my license I like boom out the door, went to my friend's house, thought it was the coolest thing ever that I could do that. Now guys, or kids in general, are waiting until they're 18, later just getting driven around everywhere. It's a sense of that drive isn't as present, even for teenagers.
Speaker 1:Now I have two points on that, because I've looked at this Shift of dependence?
Speaker 1:yeah, I've looked at that. I haven't been able to do controlled research on this, but I've looked at the literature and I have hypotheses for these that I feel pretty strong about. One is anxiety that we know that anxiety is much higher for adolescents now than it has been in previous decades. I think the idea of driving and being vulnerable in that way can as I've talked with teenagers that are resistant to getting their driver's licenses, that's all that comes up is anxiety.
Speaker 1:Here's the other bit, and it's the nature of smartphone technology, because there is the drive to when do I get my first phone and what does that mean? I think what it is is that represents independence, because what's happening when they get their phone is they are getting, for the most part, this fairly unmonitored social world that they can inhabit. Yeah, unlimited access, basically, even for families that I think exercise wisdom and setting boundaries and things like that. But basically that becomes my autonomy for me, because that was the same thing for me when I got my driver's license. The first thing I did was, whenever my friends asked me, he only lived like a few miles away, but the fact that I could go over and see him without having to try and getting like. I had the like yes, I'm just going to go over there. I had the independence to initiate my own social world differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And smart technology allows that, because you're on, because it's the classic thing of the parent driving teenagers around there in the backseat and they're all. They're not talking to each other, they're texting and maybe each other, or maybe they're on the same thread on the social media for things like that, but I think it's because they are exerting there a tough, because the way I see teenagers make the case for their need for a smartphone, it's similar to I remember making the making like the the case to my dad of why I needed a car.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's similar.
Speaker 1:It's like, well, it's just chain, it's shifted to the smartphone. And because I do think of smart, because I came of age without smartphones, and I think if, if you, if smartphones didn't exist right now or that wasn't a thing for teenagers, I think we would see it differently possibly. So yeah, that's my hypothesis. I think it would hold up to research, but no, I can see that for sure.
Speaker 2:I think that technology is really impacted, that. I would say this just to kind of jump back to the developmental models, I wanted to share for a minute a way that was given to me that helped me kind of put it into language that was a little bit less psychological kind of lingo. One of my mentors, a man named Dr Kevin Huggins, he was, he's used, he, you know, he's researched Ericsson stuff and it's been really good. But he kind of broke it down into stages of, or decades of, life and that the first 10 years of life the child is seeking the top question in their world, or what they're seeking from others, is the question of am I good? And so you'll see that through how they interact with their parents, their coaches, their friends, you know, trying to get that validation that they're good in some way and good can be very kind of stretched is that even as a bad child, like or negative behavior child, they're looking for something that kind of acknowledges okay, it's almost identity to some level. The second 10 years of life so 10 to 20, so to speak is they're looking for the or the. The central question that they try to answer is am I free? The problem is, if a child cannot answer the first question, well then both questions are at battle with each other throughout adolescence.
Speaker 2:The reason I think a lot of parents of teenagers are frustrated is because they're seeing their child pull away from them, which in a sense is a natural developmental stage of autonomy, as we use that word. But basically, freedom. I want to be able to make choices on my own. I want to figure out life on my own In some level. I think it's healthy to grow those muscles. But if they don't have a central question of am I good? Answered correctly, they struggle a lot within teenage years because their freedom behaviors become more risky, because they're looking for more identity formation, if you will. If you're a parent listening or work with teenagers, I think asking those questions what are these behaviors seeking out Might be a way to help them figure out better ways to help answer some of those questions. Because parents let me just say this and I'm going to struggle with this when my kids become teenagers but there has to be some level of freedom that is given. They have to stretch the boundaries to some level to have healthy development through their years. But you have freedom to set boundaries on that, Even with the smartphone. We're talking about that.
Speaker 2:One person I was talking to. I love how you frame this, but it's like kids driving Mario Kart. Unless it's like Rainbow Road, they fall off. If you have this path and wherever you are in the path between these two boundaries, you have freedom to drive as fast, slow, go left or right, but you can't go across the boundary to some level. To give them. That sense of that I think even comes back to the concept of this podcast is there's a little bit to which they have independence, they have freedom to make choice, they have agency, but they are dependent on you to set the boundaries for them to make good choices or as best choices as they can and just have success moving forward. So, anyway, I thought that was helpful framework, to kind of maybe use simpler languages the right way to put it, but just ways that helped me understand this concept a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1:No, I love kind of what Kevin Huggins I'm Paxton, that and Dr Kevin Huggins, author of Parenting Adolescents, which was a very important book but it came out early 90s. We met and I recently discovered videos of that and that was. We will put those in the show notes. We will put those in the show notes too, because, no, he would kill me.
Speaker 2:I mean he would take me outside. I think it would be. But I will put a link to his book. I think that. Yeah, I think I don't know if it's still in print, but you can at least look up some of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just you know what stuff look like in the early 90s is just a little different, like what we chose to wear and our style and things like that, but anyway, to want we talk about, kind of there's a normalization from a mental health professional standpoint. There's a normalization of teenage rebellion that we often want to give families. I do think, though, it's also important to do justice to the aspects of safety and even kind of parrot anxiety that it kind of comes in, because I have colleagues I know that oftentimes lean a little too much into well, they need to have these freedom to make these decisions. I disagree with that as a wholesale thing. There's a reason that we don't like 16 year olds make any number of legal decisions on.
Speaker 1:I'm a firm believer, I believe 18. I don't believe an 18 year old I'm going to get on a soapbox for a second. I don't believe an 18 year old should be able to commit to debt. I don't think an 18 year old should be able to get a credit card independently. I don't think an 18 year old should sign off on student loans independently. I don't think, because here's the deal developmentally, our real is we have to pick some age for certain things and 18 is a fairly universal across a lot of societies in the world of kind of this is the point of adulthood and there's some reason for that. But developmentally, in a brain sense, the human brain does not develop, doesn't finish its developmental journey until like the mid 20s mid to late 20s for males it's getting longer than that.
Speaker 2:I think they even said like early 30s and more recent research.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's Interesting aspect of what social things kind of affected. But the last part to develop is the part of the brain that handles a lot of decision making and impulse control and as we're dealing with things like student debt crisis and like there's a lot to it and I look at, I could not make wise decisions about taking on debt when I was 18. Part of it you're even since a future when you're 18, because, like I'm never going to turn 30. 30 is this distant thing in the future, and so I will burn in 30 year old me with any number of things, because he'll figure it out, he'll be a grown up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 30 year old me shaded.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he didn't eat the old me and the decisions that could be made. So I bring that up because when I am in as a therapist, sitting with a family, and I'm talking with a 14, 15 year old who's saying they shouldn't tell me what to do in this, it's my life, I should be able to kind of get this end. They can't make this decision for me. And I'm an advocate of both sides. I'm often in my family therapy work. I'm an advocate for the teenager, for the parents, but I'm also an advocate for the parents to the teenager.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like I should make this decision on my own and I'm like, legally you can't and I can tell you from a psychological basis I wouldn't put You're not a very safe bet, because what you do and this isn't just about your parents winning and you losing this is about future you.
Speaker 1:This is about present you who wants to make a decision, but future you's going to have to live with some of these decisions. And how does that? And particularly when you're talking, there's certain decisions that you want to make now that may have more or less impact on future you. And then there's a reason that societies, all societies to different degrees, are built on this concept of there's a certain level of agency, that is, that agency is doled out over time, because there are issues that we see. I can't tell you how many individuals I've seen as a counselor Matt and you probably have your own stories who lived in family structures that were pretty restricted and then all of a sudden they cross this hard threshold into adulthood whether that was them going away to college or maybe even later for some of them but they went from having very little independence and the concept of what you were talking about, the concept of what defined good for their family, was continued dependence on parents or things like that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's equilibrium within the family structure is good. The individual person doesn't really, and I've talked to some people about this is they weren't. The downside of that is that with all these rules and regulations, this rigid system, so to speak, is that they weren't ever fully seen for who they were. It was just what could they do to make the system look good. And that's extreme examples.
Speaker 2:I don't want to villainize parents, necessarily, but there's a sense to which you have, on that side, this over dependence that then creates struggle to find independence within the structure. Then, on the other side, you have disengaged families who don't have any rhythm or rules or structure, and it creates quick independence of an adolescent, but they have no ability to relate well to their peers or future family once they move down the line of age, and so there's no ability to have close, deep, meaningful relation, not no ability, but limited ability to have deep, meaningful relationships with other people. And so I think that even family systems mindsets of how can we find the balance of in between creating structures in our home that promote high dependence versus high independence, but is there an in between that holds the tension that allows them to know that, hey, your structure, you can't go past these boundaries, but you can. Why don't you tell me what you want to do in that situation? Let's see what like in creating environments to where there's that balance between the two.
Speaker 2:So these are family systems that we're talking about. It's not even about the individual that we first talked about as a release to this, but I like where this part is gone in the conversation, because I wonder if the parents out there that are listening they're like how do I structure this? It's not even just like my own journey of independence versus dependence. It's now I've got to think about my kids. So yeah, it's a lot, but yeah well as we.
Speaker 1:You know, one of the things is met and I are getting in the rhythm of recording these episodes. That I'd like to kind of have, as we kind of reach the end of different episodes is like kind of practical takeaways, Like what are the, what are the implementables in this, what are the tools? And I'll give you one of mine, because we just warn you now, if you're kind of new to us at this point, you're going to probably hear a certain broken record in this which is there's going to. We're going to talk a lot about like tension and balance, and it depends because there's. So it's one of the reasons why Matt and I get paid as much as we do per hour to do therapy, Because these answers are hard. If it was just an all or nothing answer, you know you could go to Google and you wouldn't have to pay.
Speaker 2:That's true, yeah, or if I had the answer, I could make a lot of money Like I could just.
Speaker 1:Sure, but it's just, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's because we're walking these balancing acts constantly and I don't know an escape from that, and I believe that this is a tension that we're called to live in. But I'll give you one of my metaphors I give to talk about families in this developmental sort of thing and some practical things in that is. I say that being the parent of an adolescent, you're constantly, whether you choose to or not, you're constantly losing control to a certain degree. But my expression is is being the parent of an adolescent is like becoming the queen of England. Your power over time becomes much less actual than it is symbolic. You become, you become a constitutional monarch in the process and your powers become progressively more limited, sometimes just practicality. I give the example that when you have a five year old you're going to be a five year old and your five year old is resistant to your will, you have the ability to pick up that five year old and strap them in as car seat. Now it's amazing how much children can make themselves heavier in your arms when they choose to be.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, that's some.
Speaker 2:It's like 70 pounds more than they really are it really are, it's just.
Speaker 1:But they're their desire to not cooperate in the situation can make them heavier, but you still have the ability to pick them up and it doesn't matter if they're screaming or failing and put them in their car seat and buckle them in and things like that. You can do that, yeah, when they're 10, that gets a lot harder when they're 15, sometimes you may lose that one in that Like, and so there's this. Well, that and law enforcement is close. In law enforcement, it becomes like the amount of physical force you have to put on that situation becomes different, and so there's. And so, regardless of how you do physical discipline, regardless of how you kind of do it like, there is a limit. It's progressively more limited. Your child, as they move through adolescence, has more intellectual capacity to fort your will if they so desire. You know, one of the things about watching little kids is most little kids are not very good at like hiding their misdeeds.
Speaker 2:They think they are.
Speaker 1:They think they are, but it's not, it's so funny, but over the get the more, and so you lose that. Whether you want to or not, you lose that and so you are constantly in negotiation, constantly and I started this episode talking about we look for arrival, we look for it's like when am I gonna get to this place where this is done? And the truth is I don't know that, like, I'm a man in my 40s and I still feel I'm being parented by my parents in different ways Not in a dependent sort of way, but I still look to my parents, as I have a close relationship with them, for counsel and for advice and things like that. They have a very different role in my life, but it's constantly being renegotiated. What it is in this phase of my life was different than it was 10 years ago. It was different than it was 10 years before that and there are parts of it that things will get easier at certain moments.
Speaker 1:I talked to parents when they move out of the young kid phase and they talk about, all of a sudden, the kid has the ability to feed themselves and what the game changer that is, that like I can eat at the same time as my child. Like that's amazing and like you, different things gain. So having the mindset that like it's a constant negotiation and you will mess it up at times, good parenting is not perfect parenting. In fact, perfect parenting in a lot of ways is bad parenting. Your kids need to see you make mistakes and apologize and make corrections and things like that. That's healthy, that's good they need that example.
Speaker 2:It was a concept of with couples work that talks about rupture and repair, and I think I work with a lot of couples. This is relating to parenting, but where there's this I don't know if it's spoken but an expectation that our relationship can be perfect because we don't face conflict ever. In reality, conflict is needed within the relationship to develop depth within your relationship, and so conflict will produce rupture because we're imperfect beings. But when there's quick repair after rupture, that's even a deepening layer of our intimacy with one another, and so it's almost to say that rupture and repair is needed in a relationship to deepen the relationship, absolutely. Yeah Well, I didn't mean to cut you off from your little points.
Speaker 1:Well, but yeah, yeah. But just to summarize this idea that you're constantly gonna be negotiating, constantly restructuring it. You will mess up, but it's the willingness to engage in the process and realizing that we are constantly going to be reminded of our dependence on people, on God, on community, on family, on friends, coworkers, and some of us will really seek to cut ourselves off from that. But it leads to a whole other life. And at the same point, I think God desires are increased, not independence as against our ultimate dependence on him. But I think God desires our desire for adventure to kind of to bound out in different ways into the spaces that he gives us, Because I think there's a desire for God for us to be coworkers with him in his plans. I think that's the archer scripture all throughout, with the participation of God's people in God's plan. That doesn't mean ultimately, we're steering the boat, but he desires us to be part of the crew.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as I mentioned earlier, there's a passage that I reflect on as it relates to this, and it's John 15, where Jesus is talking about being the true vine. I'll just read it for a second. But in verse four he says abiding me, and I and you, as the branch, cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. And then further he talks about in verse nine and into 10, he says abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. So two things I wanna point out, as it relates to our own individual dependence versus in independence, is that we are naturally dependent, and I said this earlier, but I think we were even created to be dependent on him and what he provides for us, and so it's not a passive dependence, because there is an active sense of two ways, if you are a branch in two ways that you have to lean in on one end is how do I abide in Christ?
Speaker 2:And I think there are practices that we can do to like. No one can make you this is getting into spiritual disciplines, necessarily but no one can make you read your scripture. No one can make you pray, no one can make you take the Lord's supper, no one can make you seek solitude. Even those are. You have to choose.
Speaker 2:This is the agency piece, where you choose to do things that abide in his love. On the other end, you don't have to produce fruit, but that's the outward expression of what God is doing. Within you is the sense of I can do this fruit to the spirit which are, you know, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and show these things to the world around me and treat others in a certain way. So I think that that scripture, for me, has always been a good alignment of independence versus dependence of what I've been asked to do, but where my power comes from, and so maybe that could just be something that you, after you've listened to this, just reflect on as you read the scripture of how do I abide in his love and then can respond from that Cause I think that's the balance of dependence and independence as a believer.
Speaker 1:That's good, so I want to end on that. Cause that was great.
Speaker 2:Preach the message. Yeah, preach Well. David, thank you for your words, as always, and for all of you out there that have listened or watched online, we're grateful for you coming alongside us in this journey and we look forward to bringing more to you soon. So until then, we'll see you soon. See you. Thank you again for being a part of our latest episode of Church Psychology. If you have enjoyed it, we hope that you will share this episode with others in your life, and please do remember to follow, like and or subscribe to Church Psychology wherever you're finding us and leave us a review. We look forward to connecting with you again soon.