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Welcome to Episode 111 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama, and in the next few weeks, I'm going to be going through a series of fables from a book called Friedman's Fables.

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This book is probably the most entertaining way to engage family systems. So if you don't have it, you want to get it. You can get it in paperback and I believe you can get it in a digital version, as well. Go to your favorite place to order books and get a copy. I have found that this helps understand family systems theory in the same way that Jesus' parables help people to understand the Kingdom of God.

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This episode, I will go through the first fable in the collection, Friedman's Fables, entitled "The Bridge."

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

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So if you have never read this fable or heard it told before, I'm going to guess that it might have cooked your noodle just a little bit. It certainly did mine the first few times that I read it and heard it.

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What this fable illustrates is the concept of the leverage of the dependent. We are going to unpack that a bit just based on the fable. But before we do that, I want to note that Friedman's Fables comes with a moral for each fable and a set of discussion questions. I'm not going to get into the discussion questions, but the moral for "The Bridge" is, "When things start going really well, watch out."

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Think about the man in the story. He was striving to find his future. He was striving to understand who he was, what he was about, and to connect his passion in some meaningful way. And he finally discovered that opportunity. But he was going to have to journey to a new place and to get there by a certain time to show his commitment. And by doing that, what that caused was a change in his life.

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So one concept that Friedman is illustrating here is this idea of sabotage, that when we start to self-differentiate, when we start to really connect with our own goals and values, and we're able to articulate it to others, when we start changing for the better, people get anxious.

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The ones who get most anxious are the most dependent in the system. They are the ones who will try to use the leverage of dependency to hold you back. This is what happens on the bridge. Now in the fable, the man who is on his journey does not know the dependent one who is coming. But in reality, when we are self-differentiated, we are growing. When we are getting better at who we are, when we are changing for the better, what will happen is the most dependent in the system will actually get anxious and they will hand us their rope, ask us to hold it, and then they will jump over the side of the bridge.

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When we take the rope, when we say, oh yes, I will help you, I will do what you want, and then they jump over the side of the bridge, then they have us because we are in a position where if we stay to enable their dependency, we will not reach our goals.

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And if we leave, then we have to let them fall on their own. And the metaphor going on here is that by giving someone else responsibility for themselves, we have to be willing to tolerate the pain that might be involved. In this case, the pain is extreme, right? It is falling to one's death.

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When I teach these concepts in leadership development workshops, and I use "The Bridge" as the opening tale, by the end of usually the first day or two, people are starting to say, "I'm not going to take the rope."

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This is especially true with pastoral leaders because when you are serving as a leader in the church, you are really susceptible to the dependent ones. Part of being a spiritual leader in a congregation is being the kind of person that people come to for help. And we like that. If we are in ministry, oftentimes we like being the ones who can help others. However, the dependent naturally, unconsciously, intuitively know this. They come to us and they can put us in positions where we continue to enable their dependent behavior because we are not able to tolerate them going through their own pain.

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The best thing we can do is to recognize dependent behavior before we even enable it and don't take the rope. What does that mean? Well, it means when somebody comes up to us and asks us to help us with something, we need to be able to recognize right off the bat, is this something that they could be better off doing themselves? One of the ways to do that is to start by asking questions such as, "So tell me about what you're trying to achieve? How has it been going? What have you tried thus far?"

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If you get to the point where you have determined that they are asking you to overfunction, that they are asking you to take responsibility for them so they can avoid taking responsibility for self, then the idea of not taking the rope is being able to say, "Well, I can see you are in a tough situation and I really care about you and I'm willing to walk with you, but I think this is something you are going to need to handle yourself."

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This is not an easy thing to say. But it's much better to say it on the front end than once they are dangling by a rope over the edge of the bridge. If they get to that point, they may have you because you will be really reluctant to give them the responsibility for self at that point.

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But that is the essence of this fable. The man at the top of the bridge says, "I want you to listen carefully, because I mean what I am about to say. I will not accept the position of choice for your life, only for my own. The position of choice for your own life I hereby give back to you."

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This is something that is worth remembering, owning in your heart. Because if you can live by that principle, if you are able to always take responsibility for yourself and never take responsibility for others, give people the position of choice for their own lives, then you are going to be able to avoid getting leveraged by the dependent. You will also be able to think and act in healthier ways. You'll be able to be more self-differentiated.

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That's it for Episode 111, the first of several storytime sessions from Friedman's Fables. I would encourage you to go out and get that book. It is well worth having in your library. I'd love to hear what you think about this and any other episodes. You can connect with me at www.thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.