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Welcome to episode 197 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. We are going to get right into today's episode where I focus on the problem with seriousness and how reactivity perpetuates chronic conditions. Seriousness is a funny thing in life. You have to be serious or you will be irresponsible.

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You have to show up to work on time, pay your bills and take out the garbage. If you don't pay attention, your life will become a mess. Life is hard enough without being irresponsible. However, if you are too serious, you get anxious. This is the problem.

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Nobody gets the problem they can handle. If we could handle it, then it wouldn't be a problem. The difference between a challenge and a problem is our response to it. It is often our super serious efforts to deal with a challenge that makes it a problem. How can you be responsible without being too serious?

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One way is to remember that you can only be responsible for yourself. When we take responsibility for self, we can address challenges in a healthy way. Another thing is to remember that it's often our serious, anxiety laden efforts that turn a challenge into a problem and a simple problem into a chronic one. Paradox and playfulness can help. Paradox is counterintuitive.

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It's doing the opposite of what comes naturally. I was running one morning when a woman came out into her yard with a German shepherd. The dog immediately barked and moved toward me. She yelled, don't worry, he's friendly. I've been running for nearly a decade.

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I've seen a lot of dogs, so I wasn't worried. However, this one came out of the yard barking at me the whole time and followed me at a distance of about 20ft. A little background here. My experience with German shepherds is not great. My family had a German Shepherd named Fritz when I was very young.

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I don't actually remember him, but the family story is that he bit so many people they had to give him up to be a police dog. He was good at that. We also had a German Shepherd in our neighborhood named Roddy. We thought he was very fierce. One day my friend and I were running down the street.

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My friend strayed ever so slightly into Roddy's yard. It was enough for Roddy to fire out from the house at lightning speed and attack. Roddy bit my friend on the shoulder, and although he didn't break the skin, it was still a very scary scene. These thoughts flashed in my mind as this German Shepherd followed me. But I also knew that the only way he might stop following me was if I turned around and ran back toward his house.

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That's what I did. Immediately, the dog backpedaled and kept his distance. As I ran toward him, he ran toward his yard. I ran far enough that his owner could grab him by the collar. She said, thank you, and I turned and went on my way.

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This is how dealing with our own anxieties works. It's counterintuitive, and oftentimes the anxieties are buried in previous experiences. Paradox is doing the opposite of what we think we should do. Edwin Friedman said in a lecture that the hardest thing to do is to push your loved ones in the direction you fear most. But remember, if you tug on them, if you try to get them to do what you want, they're almost likely to pull away and do the other thing.

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So pushing them in the direction you fear most is paradoxical, because it creates emotional space for someone to make their own choice. Paradox can reduce the anxiety of a situation. Think of a tug of war. The tension in the rope is the amount of anxiety in the system. The more anxious you get, the harder you tug and the greater the tension in the rope.

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When both sides are pulling with all their might, the tension is at its max. But what if you were to walk toward the other? There would be no tension, and if you time it right, the other would fall in their butt. I'm told that when my clergy supervisor, the district superintendent, was introducing me to the personnel team of the church that I was to serve, she said, Your new pastor has an earring. Apparently, one person on the personnel team was not on board with this and threatened to leave the church if she had to tolerate a pastor with an earring.

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The woman sitting next to her turned, looked at her and said, well, we'll miss you. This is paradox. Instead of begging the woman not to leave, the nonanxious paradoxical reply gave her the responsibility to choose to stay or go. It also communicated to help the emotional connection by essentially saying, we care about you. We'll miss you if you go, but that's your choice.

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It was also a bit playful. Playfulness is a form of paradox that can bring down the anxiety level in the room. It requires the ability to recognize emotional process so you can avoid getting into the content. It's another way to avoid a conflict of wills. The primary effect of playfulness is to free us from the seriousness of the situation.

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The secondary effect is to do the same for others. One Sunday, our family gathered for lunch after church. It was a sunny day as we sat on a restaurant deck overlooking a river. It was great to be together. At one point, my wife exclaimed, we have the best family in the world.

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We all agreed, but the moment was fleeting. A few minutes later, our two sons, both adults, started arguing about mortgages. One had worked in the mortgage industry, the other was working in it. Now, like most children, our boys fought quite a bit while growing up. But as adults, they've been reasonably well behaved.

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Not this day. One of them finally said, you're not listening to what I'm saying. There was silence. The anxiety was palpable. I found a way to be playful and said, well, we used to have the best family in the world.

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We all laughed and moved on. Despite how it appears, playfulness is not about oneliners and quick comebacks. In fact, if it comes across as sarcastic, it will make the situation worse. It's about keeping your own anxiety in check, as well as avoiding the content of the situation. In the case of our sons, there was nothing any of us could do about their bickering.

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If I had tried to get them to agree or to patch things up, I would have been ignoring the principle of triangles that says I can't change the relationship of two others. Their relationship is their responsibility, and the best thing I can do is to stay out of it while loving each of them for who they are. What the playfulness did was help me to remain nonaxious. It helped others in our family do the same. Paradox and playfulness are important ways to avoid being serious so you can remain a nonanxious presence.

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But before you can do this, it's helpful to understand reactivity and chronic conditions.

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Reactivity is defined as, "The tendency of the organism to respond to perceived threat or the anxiety of others. It is more pronounced at lower levels of self-differentiation." There are several components at work here, so let's work backwards. First is the anxiety of others. This is the easiest to understand, especially when the anxiety is directed toward us as anger or blaming.

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It's hard to regulate our own anxiety in these situations. Second is a perceived threat. While the anxiety of others is external. Perceived threats are entirely internal. The perceived threat may or may not be real.

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If what we perceive raises anxiety in us, it is possibly connected to an unresolved issue in our own family of origin. Why? Because not all threats raise our anxiety. The level to which this will occur is entirely inside of us. Nobody gets the problem they can handle.

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For example, let's say your boss says you need to get this project finished on time or there's going to be trouble. An objective observer might ask what kind of trouble? If you are self-differentiated, you might ask the same question. But let's say your boss's tone of voice reminds you of your mother, with whom you have been in constant conflict. You feel the anxiety rising in you because you are feeling threatened.

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Your boss didn't actually threaten you. Perhaps she is worried about her own job and is commiserating with you. The point is, the perceived threat is in the eye of the beholder. The third part of this definition is the response. One response is to unleash our anxiety.

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This is what most people imagine when they think of reactivity. It's the fight part of the fight or flight mechanism. Sometimes this is literally fighting back. Other times it's getting defensive. In either case, if this is your response, you are not self-regulating.

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You are allowing your own anxiety to make a difficult situation worse. Another form of reactivity is giving in. The family systems term is adaptivity, but it's considered a form of reactivity that's confusing because it looks like the opposite of reactivity. The thing to remember is that giving in that adaptivity is still a response. When you give in, you are adapting to the anxiety or perceived threat of the other by stuffing your own feelings and not taking a nonanxious self-defined stand.

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Bill Selby, founder of the center for Pastoral Effectiveness in the Rockies has coined the term adaptive reactivity to describe this form of response or lack thereof. This highlights the giving in nature while noting that in family systems theory this is still considered a reactive response. Whether a response is reactive or adaptive, it's still not a healthy way to function. Being reactive allows your own anxiety to come out in healthy ways. Being adaptive does not allow your feelings to be expressed in a healthy way.

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Let's recap. Reactivity is defined as, "The tendency of the organism to respond to perceived threat or the anxiety of others. It is more pronounced at lower levels of self-differentiation." There is either anxiety or perceived threat from the other.

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We either adapt or react. Instead of taking a nonanxious well-defined stand, the kicker is that reactivity will increase at lower levels of self-differentiation. self-differentiation isn't static. Rather than saying you are self-differentiated, it's more accurate to say you are functioning in self-differentiated ways. When you are functioning at lower levels of self-differentiation you are more likely to react or adapt to the anxiety or perceived threats from others.

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One time I got in a fight with my wife. It doesn't happen very often, but the pattern is familiar. She'll make a remark that strikes me the wrong way. Instead of being intentional and thinking about my response, I just react. In this case, I got defensive.

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This starts a pattern of her saying something to which I respond with greater anger. This can go on for several hours until one of us erupts. We have it out and then we eventually come to our senses. The interesting thing about this fight was how we unpacked it. That evening.

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She admitted she had been in a bad mood. But then she said, you're the self-differentiation guy. You're supposed to recognize that and not react. The truth hurts. The point about reactivity is that sometimes we are better able to self regulate than others.

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self-differentiation is fluid and can be influenced by the amount of stress you are facing as well as whether you are sleepdeprived or hungry. So by definition, self-regulation is keeping your reactivity in check. Before we get to how to do this, I want to unpack the nature of chronic conditions in family systems theory, a chronic condition is a pattern of reactivity that occurs repeatedly. It can be either ongoing or recurring. But like the fight with my wife, there is a pattern to it.

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If you have an ongoing interaction with a family member that is filled with anxiety, then it is likely a chronic condition. The key point to understand is that a chronic condition is sustained by feedback, and that feedback is reactivity. Without a reactive or adaptive response, a chronic condition will disappear. An illustration will help. Marshall Goldsmith is a world renowned business educator and coach.

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In his book Triggers, Goldsmith shares a story about Amy, a 51 year old senior executive at a media company. Amy described a close motherdaughter relationship, perhaps too close. Her mother was in her late seventies, and they spoke daily. But the conversation was governed by sniping and petty arguments. Parent and child were each engaged in a zero sum game of proving herself right and the other wrong.

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Love by a thousand cuts, Amy called it. One day, triggered by her mother's mortality and the realization that neither of them was getting younger, amy decided on a truce. She didn't tell her mother about it. She simply refused to engage in the verbal skirmishing. When her mother made a judgmental remark, amy let it hang in the air like a nonanxious cloud, waiting for it to vaporize from neglect.

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With her daughter unwilling to counterpunch, mom soon stopped punching, and vice versa"

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This was a chronic condition. The pattern of interaction was the mother making a comment and the daughter reacting. It was only when the daughter decided to regulate her reactivity that the pattern changed. I love Goldsmith's metaphor of the noxious cloud. Anxiety is like that, and without reactivity, it will dissipate.

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It's important to note that a chronic condition can also be sustained by an adaptive response. Using Amy as an example, let's say she never argued with her mother, but just took it. If she never reacted anxiously, let alone never took a non anxious, well defined stand and she was responding adaptively, it's likely that Amy would then triangling someone else, taking out her frustration and pain elsewhere because she was unable to stand up to her mother in a healthy way. So now that you understand how reactivity, adaptivity, and seriousness can increase system anxiety and keep you stuck, and now that you understand that paradox and playfulness are ways to reduce that anxiety, it's important to understand that self-regulation is the key to keeping things in check so we can respond intentionally. I'll cover that in the next episode.

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That's it for episode 197. 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.