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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
The Anti-Fragile Approach: Discussing Distress and Mental Health
We delve into the transformative concept of anti-fragility, inspired by Nassim Taleb’s insightful book "Anti-Fragile". From the role of hardship in fostering resilience to the paradoxical impact of societal norms on parenting, this episode is a deep exploration into understanding how distress can be a catalyst for growth. Drawing upon other enlightening works like "Coddling of the American Mind" by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, we dissect the dynamics of mental health, individual growth, and resilience.
Picture a world where challenges are no longer daunting but stepping stones for growth. This compelling discussion takes us through how our societal norms have conditioned us to protect our children from hardships. We examine the influence of technology in parenting, highlighting the shift from the simpler times of dumbphones to the present era of smartphones. This thought-provoking conversation might prompt you to reconsider your parenting method, relationship with technology, and perception of distress.
As we navigate this enlightening journey, we intertwine the elements of faith and spirituality, underscoring the power of struggles as a source of strength. We contemplate harnessing our experiences to instigate positive alterations in our lives and relationships. Whether it's about overcoming obsessive anxiety or rebuilding a relationship after an offense, anti-fragility offers a fresh perspective. So brace yourself for an intriguing discussion that could revolutionize your understanding of distress, growth, and mental health.
Show Notes:
- https://www.amazon.com/Solution-Focused-Brief-Therapy-Diamond/dp/1401970494
- https://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Disorder-Incerto/dp/0812979680?source=ps-sl-shoppingads-lpcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER
- https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Generation/dp/0735224919/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3VNZOQ1FVM99H&keywords=the+coddling+of+the+american+mind+paperback&qid=1694190055&s=books&sprefix=coddling%2Cstripbooks%2C105&sr=1-1
- James 1:2-4: "Consider it a great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing."
- Romans 5:3-4: "And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope."
- Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; think about Him in all your ways, and He will guide you on the right paths."
- Isaiah 55:8-9 "'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.' This is the LORD’s declaration. 'For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'"
Hi everyone, dr David Hall here Today we're going to talk about the idea of anti-fragility. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. We are called in Scripture to grow in the context of challenges. There's some really interesting science behind that in the world's of behavioral health, of not just of how we can be resilient but how friction and even difficulty causes us to grow and to thrive. That's what we're going to get into today. Let's slide into that intro music.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Church Psychology, a podcast of the Negev 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 Schuderman. I'm here with Dr David Hall. Hey, David, hey Matt, Good to see you, Good to see you. We're back with another episode and I'm looking forward to this one more for your thoughts than mine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as opposed to the other episodes where I was just dreading. We just got to get it done.
Speaker 2:I didn't like them, I just had to. You know we do that at work sometimes, where we don't want to do certain things, but we do them because we've got to get paid. That's true I love every conversation that we have had up until this point. I'll try to, but I am really looking forward to this one, so, david.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You and I both enjoy a book that is super heady. It's on your shelf, isn't it? It is, I actually have it right here. Put it up. I hope it's not backwards, but this is the book.
Speaker 2:It's called Anti-Fragile by say his name for me Nassim Taleb, nassim Taleb Taleb, thank you, it's an interesting concept. I was first introduced to this book years ago, before you and I met David, and I think it was something that a friend of mine really valued, as it relates to the general concept being a third option between fragility and resiliency and what he calls anti-fragility, and obviously we'll get into all of that. But just as a precursor to that conversation, I felt like it was such a good discussion at least, and he lays out a lot of scientific knowledge, a lot of things, as it relates to even business world and stocks and all that kind of thing. But for you and I, david, I think we talk about it in realm of our podcast and our integration of faith and mental health. Yeah, kick us off, I guess, in regards to why this book and the concept of anti-fragility is an important one that we talk about today.
Speaker 1:Sure. So some context on the author, nassim Taleb. His background is as a mathematician and works in economic spaces. He had a book that came out called Black Swan in the late 2000s. That was about his basically anticipating the financial crisis that happened in the late 2000s and of how pressure and chaos and the unpredictable and he recognizes that in economics and mathematics and we would say the same in mental health. But people are always trying to control things and oftentimes control to the end of the ends they're trying to get to is to avoid distress.
Speaker 1:And he wrote this book Anti-Fragile, to talk about this concept as it applies more generally in life. Yeah, so Met alluded to this idea of there are three spaces, three concepts. One, the first concept is the idea of something being fragile, in that is, something that is easily broken and hard to repair. And another concept that has traditionally been talked about quite a bit in mental health has been resilience, this idea that something that is more resistant to damage. So, whereas you may think of something fragile, it's this porcelain figurine, it's easy to chip, easy to break, shatter all that Whereas something resilient may be a well-worn in baseball club it can you know, you could be rough with it, or it's a pickup truck, or it's any number of things that don't get easily damaged, and in mental health, there's often been a discussion of how do we make kids resilient, how we make marriages resilient, and resiliency is a good thing in so many concepts and in so many contexts, and the concept of it is good.
Speaker 1:Anti-fragile, though, is not even just super resiliency. It's the realm of things, whether physical, relational, what have you. It's the realm of things that require distress to thrive. It's not just that they withstand distress, they need distress to thrive, and some examples of this in the physical world, if you are bedbound for some reason, one of the things that healthcare professionals are concerned about is atrophy of your muscles, of your breathing functioning, because if you do not work your muscles, they atrophy, they shrink, they become less strong. Muscles need distress to thrive. When you are exercising, what's actually happening on a biological level is you are tearing your muscles. When you're lifting weights or you're doing, you're actively damaging your muscles and they knit back together, and in the process of that, they develop greater strength. This concept, I believe, and Matt also thinks, is a hugely important one in regards to mental health, because and there's a lot of people that have written about this, specifically the social psychologist, jonathan Haidt, who's written quite a bit on. I may have that book too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a book of his that references the work of Taleb quite a bit is a book that he wrote with a free speech advocate, greg Lukanov, called Coddling of the American Mind.
Speaker 2:Here's this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukanov and Jonathan Haidt, and it is that book is about how we have weakened socially this rising generation of young adults and teens, and there are lots of concepts that Haidt and Lukanov delve into in their book and Haidt and other work that he's written.
Speaker 1:But specifically it's this idea that things have been treated as fragile when they were actually anti-fragile, and that's a big deal, because if you treat something in the wrong category, it will be highly detrimental to it. If you have something that is actually anti-fragile and treated as fragile where you don't expose it to distress, it withers. And there is in a lot of the social psychology space. There's been a lot of analysis of how, with rising rates of anxiety and depression, might one of the explanations of this be that we have taken something in the sense of the emotional development, particularly of young people but you can apply this a lot of places but that the emotional development of young people. We have treated them as fragile beings, relationally, physically and so on, and because of that it has made them more fragile, when in truth we need to be treating these things as anti-fragile things that need distress to thrive.
Speaker 2:So a common name that you may have heard for parenting two actually common names for parenting that you may have heard is the helicopter parent or the lawnmower parent, or there may be another one for that one.
Speaker 2:So on one hand you have the parent that circles around their kid, not allowing any obstacle to come and touch them, no pain they want to consistently protect. And then the lawnmower parent is the one that actually goes out in front of their kid and blows up any obstacles that could potentially harm them. And as a parent, I must admit that there is a strong natural pool to protect my kids from harm or try to make life, in a sense, as easy as possible for them. The problem with that is that, as anti-fragility this whole concept is talking about, is that if there are no obstacles to grow strength from, then, as you've said, the children grow more weak as it relates to anything that does come in the future. So maybe under the environment of the system that has been created in the home they thrive, but usually when they exit the home at 18 or at some point thereof, they hit a ton of obstacles and they don't know how to handle them.
Speaker 2:I was going to say is that I think that there's a level to why there's more of a failure to launch for many young people as of late.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. What I was starting to say is I would even challenge the idea that even in the protected environment of the home are they thriving? And it depends, I guess, what we're looking at at that their life may be sustained, but is it being sustained by parents or other caregivers that are keeping it going artificially in some ways, versus can it really stand well on its own To? Lab really highlights this idea of you need variability and volatility and stress and even a certain amount of disorder for so many things to go well. He comes from an economic standpoint, but that, economically, for a lot of things to thrive, it needs to in some ways, be hard, and this is an interesting thing.
Speaker 1:When you study economies, there are a lot of economies that material wealth. They have a way to access material wealth that's pretty easy. A classic example of this is things like Gulf States. In the Persian Gulf, they have oil and natural gas reserves, relatively small citizen populations, and so they're able to. It's a commodity that has a high value and so because of that they're able to quote make things easy economically, at least for citizens of these countries, whereas you have some other countries. Singapore is an interesting example Very small, doesn't have natural resources, but in that distress they have created thriving economies that are dynamic and adaptable.
Speaker 1:But it doesn't happen in spite of difficulty. According to the anti-fragile mindset, it happens because of difficulty. When something is made too easy, it pairs the thriving of the thing. So it's very counterintuitive to a lot of how we've been culturally shaped. We've been shaped in ways to reinforce the belief that distress is bad, always bad, and the ideal and I'm speaking to parents, as you've brought that up, matt that a lot of parents have taken on is it's my job to make things as easy for my children as possible, because that is what will let them thrive in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, have we always thought that way? I feel like this is a newer concept and maybe again, sometimes we talk social science, but there's a level to which I feel this wasn't maybe common before the 1950s, even later than that it's.
Speaker 1:The 1980s is when a lot of stuff began coming in, and I think some of it. There's so many different things in generational dynamics. One level of it you can look at is that in a less materially advanced society parents often don't have the margin to try to manage their kids' lives in these ways because there is an economic capacity for a parent to have that much attention on it. But I think some of it is that we deal with an excess of information. There are lots of reasons why we could say we embrace this fragile mindset, but height in his work, jonathan height highlights that in the 1980s there was a lot of moral panic about kids being abducted and it did happen. And so because of that, whereas before kids were a lot more free range, there was this sense of need for parents to keep much closer tabs on their kids.
Speaker 1:And around the same time that began happening in the late 80s and into the 90s, with the advent of cell phone technology. Right being able to keep tabs on your kids, being able to keep track of the different family members, was a lot easier. And a classic example I give of this is because I'm old enough where I kind of have lived in the transition period of this, but I remember a time in my life very clearly where no one had cell phones. The only person I knew that had a cell phone on was a young kid with Zach Morris and Saved by the Bell. He had the big brick cell phone. But I would call a friend's house, I would call my friend.
Speaker 2:Aaron.
Speaker 1:Do you remember them?
Speaker 2:I mean, do you remember their phone numbers? Some of them, there's some I still remember At least I remember the pattern of how you dial it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and because I had to remember even my first cell phone, which my first cell phones were in high school for me, but you didn't save numbers yet, and so I still had to know people's phone numbers. And yeah, I could probably. I don't know whose numbers are still the same, so I'm not going to put them on the talk guy?
Speaker 1:No, it's not the same anymore, but anyway I would dial a friend's home and almost no one I knew had an answering machine, and so the phone would ring and neither someone would pick up or not. And or Aaron's mom would pick up and I was there and there, no David. He's out. I'll tell him. You called and he may or may not call me, and I didn't necessarily stress that much about it because that was just the rhythm of the lives we lived in. But now I'll do this thing where I'll call my wife, expecting that she'll be able to respond to me, or I'll text her and how long do I wait before I get a response? Where I start panicking.
Speaker 2:Panicking exactly.
Speaker 1:And technology, and so this is really technology driven. There are lots of things to it, but we're constantly being given tools to manage, and I guess that's the thing of parents can observe and in some ways intervene in their kids' lives through technology in ways that was not possible before. So we don't necessarily try to run a system that's impossible to run.
Speaker 2:Right, and I want us to be careful, too, not to go down the path that says, like all this technology is bad. There are systems that have been put in place that keep us overly observant of our children, but some levels of observation, especially in the aspect of phone technology in young people to some level, parents should have some access to what they are looking at or what they are doing, to have some tabs of. I know that one popular app is Life360, of to know where our child is or to know where my spouse is At all times. I can pull it up on my phone and I can see where she's at whatever. I have some benefits to it, but at the same time, it is this almost over knowledge that doesn't allow us to sit within the question marks at times.
Speaker 1:I mean I would agree absolutely with what you're saying, that they're most technological innovations that I've seen, at least in my lifetime, feel double edged. But there's certainly benefit because I have a smart phone and every once in a while I will think of, like, do I want to go dumb phone? Do I want to just go back to a flip phone, to a simpler time? And I don't know if I might. I know people that have, and for good reason, and I could see they're being benefit. But there's big convenience I really appreciate, like online food orders. I really appreciate the. There are lots of benefits I find in my life and you talked about relationally too, like absolutely that.
Speaker 1:I am a absolute proponent that if you have a child that, or a young adult that is in your home that you have responsibility for and they have smart devices that you absolutely should be in, that you absolutely should have access to that. And it's even less about monitoring what kids are doing and things like that, but it's the everything from managing conflict. How a lot of kids are trained to manage conflict is to invoke an adult or some authority figure, whether that's a parent or a teacher, and the research shows that conflict resolution skills are greatly declining and we even see it in things like cancel culture or public shaming. It becomes you do something I disagree with or I take issue with, and so how I manage that is I try to pull other people or other forces onto my side, if you will, and that's how I manage it, versus how do I speak to somebody directly and I don't want to get too much in the weeds, because it's one thing if this is somebody that isn't in your lived inhabited life. You're having conflict with somebody online that you don't actually know in the physical world. But this is everything from conflict in school to.
Speaker 1:I was talking with somebody fairly recently who, where Matt and I live, is where the University of Tennessee main campuses in Knoxville, tennessee, and in our counseling practice there are a lot of college students and come through, so I get glimpses into the lives of college students and the amount of social management that the parents are, I find doing in their kids lives is because they can, because parents are in Facebook groups with other parents of freshmen at UT and so they can do that and it's what their friends are doing, so there's a sense of it being peer normalizing.
Speaker 1:I want to be very clear that in what we're talking about now and in anything we talk about, the goal is not to kind of parent shame or anybody shame and like what you're doing it wrong. But in the context of our conversation, day of anti fragility is what's led us there and I think the simplest form is we have far more knowledge than we used to in the sense of information, and we have a lot more avenues to take action with this knowledge and we have not been cultivated in or discipled to believe that we shouldn't interfere. In fact, we've been told quite the opposite that if you're a good parent, you're stepping in to block these blows coming in on your kid, because that is what a good parent does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I'll admit, my own struggle is to be as present as possible and to be as involved as possible, but in the context of what we're talking about, even my children at young ages need to handle situations in ways to learn through the quote, unquote crucible of that conflict. If I do this, this is the result. Or if I do this, this is the result, like there's a level to which, as we talk about this, that any type of what were the phrases? Pressure, rass, disorder?
Speaker 1:Rass disorder, altility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that they can be things that grow us or strengthen us. I think about you probably mentioned this or you did mention this earlier but the concept of exercise or weight training. There is a level that that sucks Like you are hurting after you do it, but the more you do it, the stronger you get, and then you put on more pressure, you put on more volatility, you put on more and so you grow in strength through the difficulty of the exercise, and so I use that often. Sometimes well, not often, but I sometimes use that in conversations with clients or other people that are wrestling with this difficulty and not seeing it as a potential growth opportunity, such as what anti fragility I think is alluding to.
Speaker 1: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 We've talked about culturally. In the wider cultural space.
Speaker 1:We have equated all distress with trauma and that is inaccurate. That is not what trauma is. Trauma is an experience that creates in us an inability to move forward. Traumatic event happens to us and what defines it as traumatic is not the level of how distressing it is. It's how well we are able to process and move through it. Traumatic events are events that we get stuck in in some ways and we are not able to healthily progress past them. That is not how trauma is talked about. Trauma is talked about as anything that feels really difficult, but we can go through deeply difficult experiences and it doesn't register trauma, the same way that you can go through an experience that isn't necessarily very distressing compared to other experiences, but it could register trauma because of your ability to process it.
Speaker 1:You talked about exercise, matt. Another great example that I think is easy for a lot of people to grasp is a young child learning how to walk. They've got to. Parents have to give them the space to struggle and sometimes fall a little bit, because if you don't, that child does not develop the coordination or the muscle strength to be able to walk. If the end result is I want my child to be able to walk, I have to be willing to tolerate a certain distress in them and even myself by watching them. This is hard. I had my cat in the vet this week and I hate doing that because she hates going to the vet. I nab her and get her in her cat carrier and she's crying at me and I feel so guilty, even though I know that she needs to get a checkup, that she doesn't understand that I just feel bad. I acknowledge in that that the greater good, the higher good is doing this, even though it's uncomfortable in the moment.
Speaker 1:Let's look at some scriptural examples. For this You've got this, and for you to read the first one, matt, an example of how we, as Christians, should frame and consider distress. This is James 1, 2, through 4.
Speaker 2:This says consider it great joy, my brothers, whenever you experience various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. But endurance must do its complete work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
Speaker 1:And to add to this, I'll read this this is Romans 5, 3 through 4. Not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character and proven character produces hope. Now let's contextualize this some. In both of these instances it is talking about kind of the testing of our faith. Even.
Speaker 1:It is not to say that everything difficult that anyone goes through is in itself a good thing, but there's this frame that we're given that it is not in spite of trials or difficulty or distressing things, but is because of trials and difficulties and distressing things that we grow In our faith, in our emotional capacity. I say this a lot in couples' work that when something comes easily to somebody that may serve benefit to the relationship but it doesn't show character and it's usually not as rich of a reward as something that requires work, then you have a spouse that is deeply that struggles a lot, with explosive anger. As they're able to struggle towards implementing practical patience and practical self-control, that ends up being a much more fruitful thing than the person that finds being patient comes easily to them.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, would you see that in your own work with couples? Yeah, I would. I would see that. Yes, it's hard, because I think there's a level as we talk about couples' work, depending on the issue at hand and what the person is struggling through. The spouse offended by the acts of the other may not have a ton of patience for them to struggle through. There needs to be, in a sense, some changes that happen more immediately, safety structures put in place to allow healing to occur. Even in that, I would say that let's say, you have an affair recovery case Well done Not all, because there's a lot of factors here.
Speaker 2:So I want to be careful on how I say this, but it's so tempting for couples or the person offended to just leave and to some level again, I don't want to go down crazy rabbit holes, but to some level there are exemptions to the laws of divorce as it relates to what Scripture says, what Christ says about divorce and sexual immorality and all that rings true. But I have found that couples, or at least spouses that are willing to try to pursue reconciliation, to step into the very difficult places of rebuilding safety and trust with their spouse that offended them. If they come through that, on the other side, there's such depth and strength within that relationship. Again, not all cases can do that because there's a lot of factors of safety and trust that have to be put in place. But to use the anti-fragility mindset, is the sense of someone choosing to step into the really, really difficult scenario for the hope of growth. And that's essentially what I've seen within the couple's sphere.
Speaker 2:I see it even in the sense of the men I work with who struggle through maybe impulse control you mentioned anger but if there's any type of addictive behaviors they long for, especially in this culture this day and time, there's awareness I have felt of the longing for the simple fixes and maybe not simple is the right word but where I can just do this, this and this and it protects me from ever looking at that again or moving to that substance again. And sometimes they need to put boundaries in place to protect themselves. But the real hard work is that internal look to look at the heart that says why am I choosing to go down these paths, why do I need this action or the substance to do this stuff? And when they choose to do that kind of work, as difficult as it is, because it will expose a lot of stuff. That's where the true growth actually happens. That's where, actually, I've seen freedom happen for people that are stuck in addictive patterns. So, as it plays out, and do these relational things, yes, yeah, when we step into difficulty.
Speaker 1:You're touching on the next point we're going to talk about, which is embracing uncertainty as part of as a form of distress, because, as you're talking about men struggling with addiction in your example of wanting to know what's the thing that I can do with certainty in life.
Speaker 2:They're looking for the silver bullet that, like, they can feel certain in themselves that they're never going to do this action, or they can give to their spouse that says, look, I'm fixed, I'm done.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the and I appreciate the nuance you try to bring to things and for people listening to us, whether new or your few episodes in with us, it may feel like we hedge a lot where it's like, well, it's this, but it's kind of and it's. And if you're wondering that, we are because we believe there's nuance and we don't, and we we want to be able to express things as accurately as we feel we know them, but realizing that there are dynamics and exceptions you know I talk about. I want to circle back to what I was saying about explosive anger. Yeah, because I want to be clear in that I don't mean physical violence, because if in a, in couples work, if there's physical violence going on, that is a very how we handle. That is a very different scenario and I wouldn't be presenting that to the other spouse of you like hey, this is a great opportunity for you to grow, grow into stress, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And because there does need to be this baseline of we are mutually agreeing to walk together in a way that is just with each other and to the relationship, whether that's in friendship, marriage. All that, and oftentimes there needs to be willingness to be patient, there needs to be time for healing, for forgiveness that this doesn't embracing an antifragile mindset doesn't even mean that things will happen quick. I want to give another example of kind of this and then kind of move on to what you were starting to talk about, matt, which is the dynamics of uncertainty in dealing with that. For me, my childhood in the context of that, I had a lot of positive things I experienced where I grew up with both my parents who were very supportive of me and loved me and expressed that in very practical ways. I did not grow up in material want all the kind of main positive childhood things that you would ask for. Yeah, my childhood was in the context of school. That once I kindergarten was easy. Now I'll give some context.
Speaker 1:I went to kindergarten in the mid-80s and I think they expected a little less. I learned my letters. They were like I could handle kindergarten. As soon as I moved into first grade it just fell on me. I had a lot of what we would call neuroatypical things about me. You didn't have to know me very well as a little boy to know that I was a very different sort of kid than I thought very differently. I know now that I have words for things I experienced. Now I have a certain amount of ADHD, but much later in life discovered my dyslexia and how that really affected my learning processes. I did not know how to learn in a typical sort of way. I struggled through first grade, still really about 10th, 11th grade. What happened then, finally, my later adolescence, was I developed enough compensatory skills in how my mind worked. I didn't learn how to learn like other people did. I still don't know how to do that. I was able at that point to have built enough workarounds that I could function.
Speaker 1:But school through those years caused me a lot of emotional distress, a lot a sense of shame in the sense of not being able to succeed in it, feeling of hopelessness. There was so many things in it. Even to this day there are lots of things I have to be really ingenuitive with in figuring out how I'm going to figure it out, because I'll be presented with things and I realize that other people can do it this way, but I'm probably going to have to figure out another way around because my brain doesn't allow me to do that. So it still represents difficulty. But I look at this experience of childhood and I would not exchange it because what it formed in me as a creative person, as an empathetic person, I don't think I would have been led into this field if I had had a more typical experience that was less distressing, and so I can look at that and still acknowledge the distress as distressing. I don't look back in that and think, oh, that was really awesome. No, that was really difficult to go through, but I have the sense on the other side. It is worth it.
Speaker 1:When our to quote the solution-focused therapist and writer Elliot Cloney, who's somebody whose work I really like the solution-focused therapy diamonds, one of his more recent books. But one of the things he talks about is that when our pain has a purpose, it ceases to be as painful Not that it ceases to be painful altogether, but it ceases to be as pain. So man.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I appreciate you sharing that too, because I just think it shows that there are things with all of our life no matter if it is learning difficulties or loss of a parent or challenges of the socioeconomic place that you've come from Any time that we embrace and again, I think it's similar to what you had said, it's not embrace these challenges as like these are great, like I love that they're here, but embrace them in the sense of I am hopeful for what this produces in me, and even in the sense of I don't know if this is where we go in a certainty piece, but so much of scripture, I think, talks about you know, back to the. We may have said this one in a recent podcast, but in this world you all have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. And it says to us, no matter our status or sin or whatever, that trouble still is present. But it's also an opportunity, I think, is for us to lean into Christ's comfort and compassion and wisdom to see us through whatever the difficulty is. Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, moving to the concept of what we've alluded to already, of seeing uncertainty in this, the distress can look like a lot of things, but in the age that we live in, oftentimes it's uncertainty. I don't know where this person is, I don't know what's going to happen in this, and by living in uncertainty, as Christians we are forced to rely on God's sovereignty in different ways, because we can believe it in a more abstract sort of way when we feel that we are managing the levers of our own lives, but when we are forced, in big and small ways, to not be able to see the end of the road we're walking down.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or to lose control, yeah, and or to feel like we're out of control. So two scriptures I want to highlight, matt, if you do the first one, which is Proverbs 3, 5 through 6.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it says trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding. Think about him and all your ways, and he will guide you on the right paths.
Speaker 1:What I will read is Isaiah 55, 8 through 9. From my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways. This is the Lord's declaration, for as heaven is higher than earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Uncertainty being tied to surrender, and from a completely secular psychotherapeutic approach. This is how things work when you are working with somebody as a therapist who deals with obsessive anxiety. How you help them get over that is, you create deliberate exposures to the anxiety.
Speaker 1:It is not because oftentimes what they're doing to try to alleviate their distress and discomfort is they avoid the things that make them anxious, but that because their emotions are anti-fragile, they're not fragile, they're anti-fragile. They need distress to thrive. Because they're treating something that is really anti-fragile as fragile. It makes it more fragile, and somebody who experiences social anxiety in different situations where they feel anxious sometimes even develop a panic attack of being in certain situations. Oftentimes what that leads them to do is avoid those situations, but that has the effect of shrinking their capacity to engage in the world. And where that can eventually lead it doesn't for everybody, but where it can eventually lead is what is called agoraphobia, which is somebody who has panic just to be out in the world in any sort of way and they become basically homebound and even then they're experiencing anxiety in their home.
Speaker 1:But the idea of leaving their home and the uncertainty of that and that often doesn't happen all at once, often it comes from they start avoiding certain things but then that leads them to avoid more things and again we can acknowledge a lot of things as distressing. There are any numbers of social situations or interactions that I do not enjoy and I don't actively seek out, but I think it's important that I have a capacity, within certain boundaries, to interact with them, because if I give that fear a head shift, then that makes it sovereign in my life. Yeah, versus, and my goal is not to make me sovereign, because if I recognize myself as finite one of our early episodes, matt, I talked about the idea of God centered versus person centered or us centered and when we are trying to manage our own lives by knowing and intervening and stopping any discomforting variables, we will be overwhelmed and lost and ultimately, unsuccessful Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is really good. I think it's challenging for us to consider ways that maybe we've been called into the difficult. I know for myself I'm wrestling with times that I've avoided difficult things because they felt like too much. But maybe, as we have a few more minutes left, what would be some practical ways we can encourage others to kind of engage this moving forward from the theoretical maybe to the practical.
Speaker 1:Always want to put legs to it when we can.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think, for any person doing an inventory of where you feel the fear in your life and where you feel you're trying to control, either to avoid distress or to create certainty. And it happens to all of us, and that's not something just in this age. I think all of us, throughout the age of humanity, have struggled with managing uncertainty and the lack of our own ability to make our lives exactly as we want it want our lives to be. But we live in an age where we've been given so many levers and so many tools to inquire, new knowledge, to manage the things in our lives. I am sitting in a temperature control room. It is set to be a specific range of degrees Fahrenheit and that just feels normal to me. Most of my life is inhabited in places that I can do that with, and that's weird in the context of human history, and that's yeah. And so, thinking about where am I embracing uncertainty and distress in my life in ways that can lead to goodness For the parents out there, my encouragement is to be thinking about what am I trying to keep protect my kids from, and is what I am doing leading to my ultimate goal? If your goal is a parent, is I want my children to be able to grow and to thrive independently. Are you creating the context for that? And that does involve thinking through. Am I rescuing them? What are the ways I'm trying to rescue them and what?
Speaker 1:And acknowledging that if I withhold this, if I don't intervene, I might feel bad. I might feel bad because I feel I'm failing as a parent. I might feel bad empathetically because I see how upsetting this is to my kids and I want to save them from it. But loving something or somebody greatly involves being able to see past a specific moment. As I said earlier, I was not pleased at all that my cat was upset with me and with the idea of being dragged off to the vet. I chose to care for my cat more, not to do that. If your kid is getting an injection at the doctor and they're crying and hysterical and all that, you can feel upset. You're allowed to feel upset as a parent about that, but you can still accept that this is a needed thing that they're doing.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a helpful example too, because it shows even for parents, maybe listening that there are ways that I have chosen or chosen what's the grammatical correctness there it passes.
Speaker 1:I have chosen.
Speaker 2:I have chosen thank you, that's not my degree, by the way so I have chosen to take him or her to the doctor to get their updated shots, to get a checkup, to even I don't know if anyone listening has had a child go through surgery. But that is a very difficult reality to sit in when they take him away and you can't do anything. But you know it's the right move. It's going to cause pain and it's going to cause fear and it's going to cause confusion, but it's the right thing for the health of the child. So we do those things and I don't think we realize that's what we're doing, and so we need to remember, one, that we already somewhat do it.
Speaker 2:And then, two, to look at other ways, maybe especially socially, relationally, even kind of motivationally I don't know how to maybe say that. I think we need to look at ways as parents to see, okay, how am I stepping in too quickly when they really need me to maybe be on the other end, to sit with them in, whatever the pain that has caused? I just had a conversation with a parent about that. I'm trying to assess the way to be a parent, not a coach, kind of like to be there with their child rather than kind of clear out all obstacles before the pain occurs. And so I just echo those things about the parenting aspect. I think that's where it's going to hit most home for a lot of people listening.
Speaker 1:As we wrap up.
Speaker 1:Also, the last thing I want to do is, if you're interested in this and want more practical sorts of things, like, matt and I've just sort of unpacked the concept and we want to touch a little bit on some ways to implement it, but you're probably, if you've been intrigued by the concept, you're probably interested in more, and this is some of the things that we have more training on in our free community library that we highlight in every episode, and so if you can find access to that on our website, churchpsychologyorg it's housed within the Gev Institute, which is what Matt and I are part of which puts on this podcast, and because we truly we don't desire to just shame people for doing it wrong, we really want to give people avenues and tools and things like that to consider how to do it differently.
Speaker 1:If you accept this, if this idea resonates and as you learn more about it, and it resonates more with that, huh, distress and difficulty can have fruitful things in the lives of myself and the people I care about. How do I begin to put form to that? I want you to have those resources and so certainly check community library free churchpsychologyorg. That's really good.
Speaker 2:Well, as we wrap up, I want to share this is so we were talking about. I think I knew we were talking about this today, but I read the scripture this morning, kind of in a quiet time. So this is Proverbs 17.3. It says the crucible is for silver and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts and that mindset. As I read that was these precious metals that God is refining have to be put through such challenging spaces to grow and to become that which they're supposed to be, and so I think that that was such a reminder for me that when I hit these hard points in life, I am being refined to be more of who I'm supposed to be. So I'll leave people with that, and we are so grateful that you would listen and to be a part of this conversation with us. Again. Let us know your thoughts, ask us some questions, and we look forward to bringing more to you soon.
Speaker 1:So, david, always a pleasure.
Speaker 2:Always. We will talk to you next time. 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.