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Welcome to Episode 309 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. And before we get into today's episode, I want to remind you that If you want to connect with me, you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. You can send me your feedback, your questions, and ideas for new episodes. You can also find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. You find out about my coaching, my speaking, the books that I've written, and you can sign up for my Two for Tuesday email newsletter. I'll also put a link to the signup form in the show notes. Now, without further ado, here is episode 309, Five Ways You Can Grow as a Non-Anxious Presence, Part 1 of 2. The challenge in living as a non-anxious presence is that we not only to manage our own anxiety, we have to be able to function in the midst of the anxiety of others. Without self-awareness and intentionality, those two sources of anxiety feed on each other to make self-differentiation extremely difficult. In this two-part episode, I will cover five things to monitor that can help you show up more often as a non-anxious presence. Remember, you can only control your own functioning.

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Rather than trying to define or blame others, a family systems approach is all about regulating, even interrupting, your own automatic responses so you can respond in line with your goals and values. What I want to do is I want to cover five things that you want to watch, that you want to monitor so that you can better differentiate and do it more often. The first thing you can do to grow as a non-anxious presence is to watch your distance. In this case, I'm talking about emotional distance. It's It's important to point out that physical distance is not emotional distance. Two people can live far away from each other and still be emotionally close. Likewise, they can live very close to each other and be distant. Emotional distance is tricky. If you are too close to someone, it reduces the healthy functioning of one or both. This often plays out with one person over functioning and the other adapting or resisting. In the extreme, emotional fusion occurs when two people are so close that their sense of self becomes blurred or lost. Their emotions and identities are so interconnected that it becomes nearly impossible for either to function as a self apart from the other.

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Ironically, this doesn't always mean false harmony, though this is one way fusion occurs. The other is a constant conflict of wills. Two people can be so close that they can't define self without being in conflict with the other. The other end of the extreme is emotional cutoff. There is so much emotional distance that there is no emotional connection at all. As you can imagine, this is not healthy for anyone or for the relationship system. Healthy emotional distance occurs when two people are connected and there is enough emotional space for each to be a self. This is easy to do when both people are differentiated. It's much harder when one or both are less mature. A non-anxious presence is someone who can self-define in healthy ways while remaining emotionally connected, especially with the most anxious in the relationship system. Edwin Friedmann says, This is one of the hardest things to do. Our tendency is to want to distance from the most anxious and resistant, especially when we are trying to change for the better or lead positive change. But distancing will only increase anxiety in the system and will make it harder to affect lasting change.

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Watching your distance in these situations means you are able to stay emotionally connected with anxious others without engaging in a conflict of wills. You are able to define yourself without defining or blaming others. You focus on showing you care for the other even as you give them space to make their decisions. The less mature won't like this. They'll want to define you or define themselves in relation to you. If you can remain a non-anxious presence through this, they will eventually get to the point where they will either take responsibility for self, or they will find someone or some place else toward which they will direct their anxiety. Either is progress. The second Second thing you can do to grow as a non-anxious presence is to watch your residue. Residue is the presence of unworked-out relationships. Whether we like it or not, these unresolved situations will affect our current functioning and thus our current relationships. One way residue shows up is through unhealthy emotional distance. Either we are too close, even fused, or too distant, even cut off. So go Back to number one, to work on getting to healthy emotional distance. A key principle here is the concept of loss and replacement.

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A loss typically occurs through death, marriage, divorce, relocation, or cutoff. To the extent that a system rushes in to replace the loss, it will reduce their pain, but it will also reduce the potential for healthy change made possible by the loss. When there is a loss, there is an opportunity to process the grief and to grow emotionally stronger. The problem is that relationship systems tend to rush to fill the void of the loss to minimize pain rather than go through the longer and more painful process of grief and growth. It's also important to note that there is a symmetric nature to this. It is often the case that the loss is never replaced, which is the other side of the same coin. This is a sign that there is still residue because the unworked-out issues were never addressed. For example, when a spouse dies, the surviving spouse remarries within six months. That's a quick loss or replacement. Or at the other end of the spectrum, they never remarry. Each extreme is an indication of residue, that is, unworked-out relationships. The same time frames could be applied to divorce and remarriage. People can remarry very quickly or never remarry at all.

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I once worked with a woman who was having marital problems very early in her marriage. It turns out that she was emotionally fused with her mother. They were very close, but the daughter was highly adaptive, always complying with mother's wishes. Mother had forbidden her to marry the love of her life, and shortly after that breakup, she started dating someone her parents loved and quickly got engaged and married, a quick loss and replacement. When we did her Genogram, we discovered that her mother was extremely close to her own father, the woman's grandfather. The woman I was working with was not only born just a few months after her grandfather's death, but she became the intense focus of her mother's attention. We were able to identify that this woman was a quick loss and replacement for her grandfather that had helped her own mother avoid her grief after his death. This helped to not blame her mother, but to see her with compassion. She was then able to differentiate herself, taking a stand that she wanted a divorce and that she would date who she wanted while remaining connected to her mom. I want to say here, I am not one to advocate for divorce, but I also saw how this marriage should have never happened and that ending it quickly was probably best for all involved.

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She ultimately married the love of her life, the man that she was made to break up with, and as it turned out, her mom was thrilled. I'm not sure if mom ever worked out the residue in terms of the grief with her own father, but I know that the daughter was able to rework the relationship with her mother so that she was no longer the object of that residue. This concept of loss and replacement and unworked-out relationships or residue often shows up in congregational dynamics. In my own denomination, denomination, the United Methodist Church, we have automatic loss and replacement. There is usually, at most, six months between the announcement that a pastor is leaving and the time that they leave. Then another pastor comes in and everybody is supposed to be fine. This is hasty loss and replacement, and it makes it difficult for people to grieve the loss of the previous pastor, especially when they were beloved. Even in denominations where an interim comes in, I've seen that there is not enough intentional grieving to help congregations work out their loss, and it results in residue when the interim period ends. Finally, you can still work through your residue even when someone is no longer living or is not present.

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I took a family systems class where we had to write a letter to someone with whom we had unworked out issues. One woman wrote a letter to her deceased father, with whom she had carried significant anger issues over the years. She bravely sat in class and tearfully read her letter to another student who sat across from her. It wasn't that the other student was trying to play the role of her father. It simply gave her a place to project what she was saying. The major point here is that the effect of writing and reading the letter out loud was on the woman. Her father wasn't there and didn't need to be there for her to work through her residue. We all have unworked-out relationships. Doing this work is painful, but it is important if you want to grow as a non-anxious leader. That's it for episode 309. I'll be back next week with the rest of this two-part series. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com and find more resources at thenonanxiousleader. com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody who might benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice.

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Thanks for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.