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Welcome to episode 196 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm jack shitama. Today's episode is part two of a four part series on leadership through self-differentiation, in which I take you through concept by concept in a way that I formatted more recently that I think you will find helpful. So, without further ado, here is today's episode Leadership through Self-differentiation, Emotional Process, Sabotage, Pain, and Responsibility. If you want to be a non-anxious leader, it's helpful to understand the concept of emotional dependence and how that relates to self-differentiation. Emotional dependence is the opposite of self-differentiation. Emotionally dependent people are unable to define themselves apart from another person or persons. They rely on the reassurance of others for their own sense of wellbeing. The more they do this, the less capable they are of defining themselves and the less they will value themselves. If a family member says, you don't love me unless you do this for me, then they are acting dependently. If you adapt to this demand, that is, if you give in without stating what you believe in a healthy way, then you will perpetuate the dependency. On the other hand, if you self-differentiate with dependent people, they will take it personally.

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Their response can vary from anger at you, to feeling victimized by you, to trying to guilt you into compliance, or even a combination of all three. This is how they maintain their leverage. To better understand the leverage of the dependent, it's important to understand the concept of a conflict of wills. A conflict of wills occurs in any relationship system whenever people try to convert others to their way of thinking. People naturally resist being told what to do, what to think, or how to behave. In fact, the more you try to define others, the more they will resist. If I'm able to say what I believe, then I'm self defining. If I require you to believe the same thing, then I am trying to define you. I'm trying to convince you that I am right and you are wrong. If you disagree with me. The more you try to define others, the more they will resist. This is the essence of a conflict of wills. You will rarely convince the dependent to take responsibility for themselves. Doing this will result in a conflict of wills and you will get stuck. Trying to get dependent people to take responsibility for themselves is futile.

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In fact, it's most likely to result in anger and blaming directed at you. The key to dealing with anxious, dependent people is self-differentiation. In practice, this requires the ability to maintain a nonanxious presence. As I've said before, the key to effective leadership is the ability to remain a nonanxious presence. My first Christmas Eve as the pastor of a church to which I had been newly appointed was an exciting one for me. Instead of doing the traditional service of lessons and carols, we decided we would do a reader's theater presentation of the Christmas Story. We had four young people, and when I say young people, I mean people in their late forty, s and early 50s. These quote unquote young people were to dress in all black, sit on bar stools with their script on a music stand, and would deliver a dramatic interpretation of the Christmas Story. When I entered the church on Christmas Eve, I was verbally accosted by a very unhappy woman. I've never heard of such a thing. This is not a Christmas Eve service. This is going to be a disaster. The tone and volume of her voice communicated great displeasure.

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How does one remain a nonanxious presence in this type of situation? Understanding the difference between the emotional process at hand and the content of the situation is critical. In this case, the emotional process was the woman's anxiety and displeasure. The content was the Christmas Eve service. More often than not, when someone focuses their emotion on something outside themselves, as opposed to taking responsibility for their own feelings, it is a sign that something else is going on. It's a clue that it's more about the emotional process of the situation, not the content, and that it's best to avoid a conflict of wills. When someone else is not taking responsibility for self, especially in an anxious and highly charged way, it has less to do with you as a leader and is more likely something going on in the other person. I guess I intuitively understood that something else was going on with this woman on that Christmas Eve. If I engaged in the content of the situation, I would have defended the new service by saying that it would connect with people who don't often come to church and or who are put off by the stuffiness of a traditional service.

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I would have engaged in a conflict of wills. This would be unlikely to convince her of my position and would likely make the situation worse. Instead, I believe the Holy Spirit enabled me to remain a nonanxious presence and gave me the words to say my response was, I can always count on you to tell me how you feel. She humped and stomped off. After the service, I asked our lay leader if everything was okay with this woman. He told me that two years prior her 23 year old daughter had died around Christmas. The triangle between her, her grief and the Christmas Eve service became clear. The woman was still grieving. She was hurting, but facing that pain was too much. So she focused on the Christmas Eve service as a way to avoid her grief and displace her pain. The following week, I visited the woman, the Christmas Eve service never came up. Instead, we talked about her daughter, how much she missed her and how hard Christmas was for her. It's process, Not Content one thing that helps emphasize this is the idea that all change is loss. It's easy to understand that the death of a loved one, a job loss, or a divorce is a loss.

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And loss involves grief. When there is loss, there is discomfort. Facing that discomfort is part of the grief process and will actually help one go stronger. What's overlooked is that even positive change is a loss. Marriage is a loss of singleness, a promotion is a loss of the old job, and a retirement is a loss of a career. Because all change is lost when change is involved, this often results in sabotage. Sabotage is a family systems term for the resistance that occurs in response to a change in a family of origin, congregation, or work system. When trying to understand sabotage, it's helpful to recognize that all change is lost. I thought a new way to do Christmas Eve was a positive change, but it was still a loss of the traditional service of lessons and carols. When change occurs, the less selfdifferentiated in the system will displace their pain in ways that enable them to avoid taking responsibility for their discomfort and grief. The more people there are like this in a system, the more intense the resistance will be. It's important to understand that the resistance isn't always direct. Understanding the concept of triangles is helpful because sabotage often occurs when dependent people complain about something other than the change.

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For example, if there is a new initiative to add an outreach ministry, which seems like a positive change, people might start complaining about the pastor sermons, office hours kept, or a number of visits made each month. It's process not content. Here's another example. Let's say that you've started exercising regularly. Suddenly, your father starts complaining to you about your sister in law and is on you to talk to your brother about his wife. You say this is unrelated. You say that your father should be happy about you improving yourself. If your father were to ask himself intellectually, he would say that he is happy for you. But perhaps this change is causing him discomfort. He's not even aware of it, but he deals with it. By triangling you, there's a good chance that gone unrecognized. This could cause you to feel stressed out and ultimately might knock you out of your exercise routine. This would be much more likely if you didn't recognize the triangle and felt like you had to talk to your brother. Talk about stress. That's how sabotage works. Another form of triangle is when someone is triangling someone else about you. This is classic passive aggressive behavior.

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They are uncomfortable with the change you are making, so they complain to another or they triangling an issue like substance abuse infidelity or an obsession with a hobby. In the latter case, a hobby can be a good thing. But if it's a way to avoid taking responsibility for oneself, then it's a triangle. Regardless of how sabotage takes place, your main goal is to remain a nonanxious presence. Their discomfort with change is not your problem, it's their problem. Your goal is to not let it be your problem. We'll get into how to do this later, but for now, remember that lasting change will only occur after you have maintained a selfdifferentiated presence in the midst of sabotage. Another concept that is helpful to understand is the relationship between pain and responsibility. To the extent that you are willing to lean into the pain of loss, you will grow in your capacity to endure emotional pain in the future. So just as an athlete builds capacity for physical pain, you can build the capacity for emotional pain. Why is this important? Because it increases resilience. This will help you to better deal with your own anxiety and the anxiety and the systems in which you function.

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It will also increase your ability to deal with the pain of others. This is key. It is actually our inability to withstand the pain of others that causes problems in our family of origin, congregation or organization. Edwin Friedman writes in Generation to Generation, "If one family member can successfully increase his or her threshold for another's pain, the other's own threshold will also increase, thus expanding his or her range of functioning." One common response to the pain of others is to over function. When we have difficulty seeing another person's pain, we often rush in to help them avoid it. This is not always bad, but often it is. Your first question should be is this a situation when I can encourage another to rise to the challenge? When our grandson was 14 months old, he started going to daycare. He experienced separation anxiety. He would cry when he was dropped off, and the daycare provider said that he would only cry for a few minutes and then he was fine. This is normal. The best thing we could do for him when he was going through this was to support him as he dealt with it.

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It really only lasted a few weeks, but it was hard for us. We had to deal with our own pain so that he could deal with his. When you choose to encourage strength in others rather than comforting weakness, you are helping both them and you. Another way we deal with the pain of others is to under function. When they lash out in anger or despair, we accommodate their dysfunction instead of standing up for ourselves. This is called adaptive behavior. It not only avoids challenging the other to deal with their own pain, but it can also result in us feeling resentful. The selfdifferentiated person would respond by saying, I know you are hurting, but I am not your problem. I will walk with you as you try to deal with it, but this is your challenge. I will often offer to pray for them as well. The important point here is to not cave in to the unreasonable demands of one who is avoiding their own pain while at the same time not abandoning them emotionally. Remember, focus on encouraging strength in others, not comforting their weakness. The more you deal with your own pain directly and do it with a healthy attitude, the better you will be able to do this.

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There is a link between pain and responsibility. We can't make another person responsible. In fact, when we try to make someone else responsible, it will actually make them less responsible. Why? Because trying to make them responsible requires us to over function. Because we are unable to deal with our own pain of seeing the others irresponsibility. Trying to make someone else responsible takes away their responsibility. The only thing we can do is increase our own threshold for their pain. This enables us to allow them to experience the consequences of their own actions. This is hard to do, but it is one of the greatest gifts we can give to another. Two of my children are heavy sleepers, just like me. One of the things I've learned about parenting is the things that annoy us most about our children are the things that most resemble us. There was a pattern to my morning interactions with my heavy sleeping children when they were in high school. I would wake them repeatedly and they would fall back to sleep. By the time bus arrival got near, I would feel very anxious and start yelling. This likely made them feel less motivated to actually get up.

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They often would miss the bus and I would drive them to school. Seething? All the way. The irony of this is that the same pattern occurred between my dad and me when I was growing up. Although my dad seemed to keep his anger in check, I realized that I had to learn to deal with my own pain. I was worried about them missing school, and it thus affecting their academic performance. This was my fear, my pain. By allowing them to miss the bus and then taking them to school on time, I took away any consequences for their actions, or in this case, inaction. It was only when I informed them as a nonanxious presence that if they missed the bus, I would take them to school. When I went into the office at 09:00 A.m., that things began to change. This meant that they would miss first period. Once they missed the bus a few times, they figured out how to get up on time and on their own. Helping others to face their own pain will help them to grow in resilience and responsibility. One thing that gets in the way is our own seriousness.

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We'll cover that next time. That's it for Episode 196. I hope that you are finding this series helpful, and if so, please share it with somebody who maybe is not familiar with how to be a nonanxious leader. They're not familiar with family systems theory, and perhaps this will help them to understand more clearly how they can grow as a nonanxious leader. And remember, you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.