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Welcome to episode 179 of The Non-anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. Today's episode comes from a discussion that we had in the Family Systems 101 course held this spring. I want to thank Dr. Brian Ivory and Lisa Reardon for leading that course. And in the last session we had a Q and A where the issue of how to create emotional space came up. I felt like the results of that discussion were good enough to either share in a blog post or a podcast episode, which I am doing right now. And Family Systems 101 will likely run again this fall. It's a free course, and it runs in the nonanxious Leader Network, which is also free to join. So stay tuned for details this summer. Now, without further Ado, here is episode 179, Three Ways to Create Emotional Space Emotional space is not a term you run across very often, if at all. In family Systems theory, I use it because I think it is more descriptive than the technical term emotional distance. If there is too much emotional distance in a relationship, that is, if there is a cutoff, then a relationship is impossible. Ironically, if there is too little emotional distance, a healthy relationship is impossible because either two people are fused emotionally or they are constantly in conflict because one of the two is over functioning in the other space.

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So instead of emotional distance, I like the idea of emotional space because although it's not as precise, you typically can recognize healthy emotional space when you experience it. Self-differentiation creates healthy emotional space. There is emotional connection, but not so much that each person is unable to be themselves. The easiest way to destroy healthy emotional space is to engage in a conflict of Wills. This is when one or both parties are trying to convince the other to agree with them. Instead of allowing the other to be a self, you try to convince them that they need to agree with you. If they don't, a reactive response usually occurs. Sometimes people who might actually agree with you will resist because they automatically resist the idea that somebody is telling them what to do or believe. So how do you create healthy emotional space? Well, our discussion and Family Systems 101 came up with three ways. The first is tolerance. When you give others the freedom to have their own beliefs, values, and opinions, even if they differ from yours, it creates emotional space. You enable others to be themselves without creating surrounding togetherness pressure to agree with you.

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What tolerance does is create healthy emotional space on the front end, it anticipates that there may be disagreement and signals that this is okay. Tolerance seems to be in short supply these days. Our culture continues to divide along political, theological, cultural and economic lines, and tolerance of those who disagree is viewed as a sign of weakness. I believe the opposite is true. When you are comfortable with who you are, you don't need others to agree with you, even if you think they're wacky. Tolerance isn't giving in. It's realizing that engaging in a conflict of Wills is a losing proposition. Tolerance facilitates honest conversation, even if agreement is impossible, and that creates healthy emotional space. The second way to create healthy emotional space is through forgiveness. If tolerance creates emotional space on the front end, then forgiveness creates it on the back end. Forgiveness requires a combination of selfregulation and empathy. It's self regulation because you are keeping your own anxiety, your own hurt, your own reactivity from making a difficult situation worse. It's important to remember that when you are forgiving someone else, it doesn't mean that you're not holding them accountable. It doesn't mean that you have to let them get away with something that they've done to hurt you.

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It also doesn't mean that you can't maintain healthy boundaries. What it does mean is you don't allow bitterness or resentment or anger to make a difficult situation worse. Forgiveness is giving the other person the benefit of the doubt regarding their intention. And I should say that even though you may offer forgiveness, you may not actually feel it inside. This is not so much a fake it until you make it. It is more about regulating your own emotions to create emotional space and give the relationship a chance to heal. I actually believe that forgiveness is a gift from God that when God's Grace enables you to release whatever is inside of you, whatever is making you feel angry and resentful, then you truly are free from that. But my experience is that this doesn't always come immediately. Sometimes it takes time, but in the interim, if you can regulate your own anxiety, if you can regulate your own emotions and offer forgiveness, it creates healthy emotional space. The third way to create healthy emotional space is through apology, or you might say, through repentance. And forgiveness creates space when somebody has hurt you, apology creates space when you have hurt another.

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Apology is taking responsibility for self when you have somehow crossed a line, made a mistake, or hurt another person in a way that you didn't intend. More often than not, just like when we are hurt by others, we hurt others because we are unable to self regulate and things come out in ways that we didn't want or intend. When we offer an apology, we are repenting for the fact that we hurt another person. There are three important factors here. First is to acknowledge that you hurt the other person to know that you caused pain. The second is to own your actions, and this is really important because you don't want to say that you didn't intend to do it. You just want to say I'm sorry that I hurt you. The third thing that you want to do is to avoid making excuses. The quickest way to ruin an apology is to start making excuses as to why you did what you did. Excuses are the opposite of taking responsibility for self. And when you make excuses, the apology is not going to be well received. So to summarize the three ways to create healthy emotional space our tolerance, forgiveness and apology.

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And this does not mean we have to give in on who we are and what we believe, but it is what we do as leaders to help other people become their best selves. We are doing what we can to be our best selves but at the same time trying to create space for others to do the same. Lord knows the world needs more of this right now. That's it for episode 179 a really short one this time, but I just wanted to get that out there so you could be thinking about how you can create healthy emotional space for others. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com and you can find the show notes and the transcript at thenonanxiousleader.com/179. And if you have an idea for an upcoming episode, a question you'd like me to answer, you can email me at jack@christian-leaders.com until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

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