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Welcome to episode 163 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama and I am taking four weeks leave from my day job to get renewed. But during that time, I still want to keep the podcast going. And I am taking a suggestion from one of our listeners, Lauren, who asked if I would do more Friedman's Fables. So for the next several weeks I'm going to do a Freedman's Fable and I'm going to break it down. If you don't have the book, it's definitely a must have. Even if you can't get into generation to generation and understand it, Friedman's Fables will help you to understand the concepts in a really entertaining way. So without further Ado, here is episode 163 on Freedman's Fables, "Attachment."

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Please obtain a copy of Friedman's Fables and read "Attachment."

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And the moral of the story is the umbilical cord is infinitely elastic.

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The moral of the story puzzled me for a long time, and I really had to think about it to get some understanding. Now one clue is the 10th question, which is the very last question in the discussion guide for this particular fable and the question is, has anyone ever worked out a relationship with their mother? This is not to blame mothers, but what he is getting at, I believe is the need for emotional connection runs deep. It is the thing we need most when we are infants, toddlers and children, and most often receive connection first and foremost from our mothers. This is not always true. The need for connection can be satisfied by another caregiver, perhaps a grandparent or another relative, or even a caring adult that is brought in and paid for. But in most cases our mother is the one who cares for our dependency needs early on and that establishes this bond that is infinitely elastic. As Friedman says that we have a connection with our mother for as long as we live and no matter where we are. As you've heard me say before, the other side of the coin is self-definition and this is what teenagers go through when they are rebelling because they want to be their own person.

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I can certainly relate to this because I thought my mother was always very loving and supportive, but even so, I decided to graduate early from high school so that I could get out of the house so that I could get some space on my Edwin Friedman makes a distinction between emotional distance and physical distance and in my case, just because I was away from home doesn't mean that I was emotionally cut off, but it did create a little bit of space so that I could be independent and that was helpful to me, even if it wasn't helpful to my mother. As I often say, there is a constant tension between emotional connection and selfdefinition and the man who is deserted on this island highlights this because he loves the emotional connection from the people who inhabit the island. But there are also times when he feels overwhelmed because he still needs some healthy emotional distance so he can be on his own so he can self define. Of course there is a hyperbolic nature to the culture that Friedman describes in this fable, but I think there is a parallel in the world. There are certain cultures that have more surrounding togetherness pressure and that can help them be more stable.

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It is more about the community than the individual in these cultures and they still exist around the world. The one thing that's important to remember is that even though these cultures tend to be more stable, they can also be smothering to those who really want to self define. The point here is that emotional connection in general has a calming presence as it did on the island, but in its extreme it makes selfdefinition impossible. This is illustrated in the story when the man finds somebody that he might want to bond with without attaching, but she bailed at the last minute because of surrounding togetherness pressure from her parents. It was not so much that she had second thoughts about herself being with this man without being fused, but it was the pressure, the anxiety that her parents created that caused her to back out. It's interesting that in the fable Friedman says that this wasn't a failure of nerve. However, in his book A Failure of Nerve, it is more often the case that leaders have a failure of nerve because they are not able to withstand the surrounding togetherness pressure that is created by the sabotage from the most anxious in the system.

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Friedman also uses hyperbole to describe the other side of the tension, which is self definition. When the man leaves the island, everybody cuts the cord. This creates the ability to self define and so called progress happens where so called civilization develops. But along with it comes all of the dysfunction of civilization. Crime and obsessive competition become the order of the day, very much like so called advanced societies today. The lesson here for me is that selfdefinition can lead to progress, but without emotional connection it leads to problems so that tension. Leaders always need to hold that tension between self definition and emotional connection. One final point I want to make here is that the fable demonstrates the concept of loss and replacement. This is the idea that in any system, when the system rushes to replace a loss quickly to provide comfort, it loses the opportunity for growth. I have seen this time and again in my pastoral Ministry when a man who loses his wife remarries within six months. This is a classic case of loss and replacement where by finding another companion, he is fulfilling the need for emotional connection. He is finding comfort, but he loses the ability to grow and resiliency grow an emotional strength because it takes away the opportunity to grieve.

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Freedman demonstrates this to the extreme in the fable because whenever somebody cuts the cord with one person, they immediately reattach it to another. There is immediate replacement of the loss and everybody feels great, but there is no ability to self define. There's no ability to grow emotionally and to be resilient. This brings to mind a mentor of mine who recently passed away. But when he was 70 years old, his wife died suddenly about six months after the death. I asked him how he was doing and he said he was leaning into the pain. He was embracing the grief process. He had also decided that he wouldn't even consider dating until he learned how to Cook, clean and do laundry for himself. He ended up starting to date somewhere about a year and a half to two years after the death and getting remarried three years after his first wife's death. And I thought, how healthy is that that he actually was able to embrace the opportunity for growth that loss created. This is something that we can do as leaders because laws is constant. We are always encountering loss because of changes that happen. And when we embrace that, when we lean into that, we grow stronger emotionally and we grow more resilient.

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So to summarize two points here from this fable, the one I just mentioned about loss and being able to lean into that and grow stronger. And then of course the idea that leadership through selfdifferentiation manages the tension between emotional connection and selfdefinition to the extent that we lean too hard. Either way, we are not going to be helpful to the people we lead. But if we can show integrity, if we can act out what we believe in our values and if we can share that in healthy ways while staying emotionally connected, especially to the most nonanxious, then we have a chance to lead positive change. And if you find that it's hard to do that in one way or the other then look at that proverbial umbilical cord. It may not be your mother but there may be a relationship that you need to work out within your own family of origin. And remember, they don't have to still be living. You are doing work for yourself, not for them. So you can do that work internally. You can think about what causes you anxiety in that relationship and then you can move forward. You can lean into that pain and move forward.

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This is what nonanxious leaders do. That's it for episode 163. I will be doing another fable next week so look forward to that and you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. You can find the show notes at thenonanxiousleader.com/163. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

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