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Welcome to episode 300 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. It's hard to believe it's been 300 episodes, and I hope over this time, if you've been listening for a while, that you have found this content helpful. You can contact me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter, if you have not already done so, at thenonanxiousleader.com or at a link that you can find in the show notes. I want to thank fellow podcaster Lauren Richmond Jr, who has the Future Christian podcast, who emailed me this past week and ask me about doing an episode that dug deeper into the idea of letting others experience the consequences of their actions. So without further ado, here is episode 300, Pain and Responsibility. In my book, If You Met My Family, You'd Understand, I share about my experience with my children making the bus in high school. I have four children, and I repeated the same pattern with two of them who happened to be heavy sleepers just like me. As teenagers, they were hard to wake in time to make the bus. Here was the pattern. I would go into their room and wake them about 45 minutes before the bus was to arrive.

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They in inevitably fell back to sleep. I would wake them every 10 minutes or so, and at some point, I would start yelling at them to get up and get to the bus stop. They would eventually get up and either make the bus or miss it. If they missed it, I would take them to school so they would be at school on time, but I wasn't happy about it. I was anything but a non-anxious presence. The funny thing is my dad used to have to do the same thing with me. I don't recall him getting angry. Maybe I just ignored it. I don't recall missing the bus often. I do know that I was hard to wake, and it took him multiple attempts from generation to generation. 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 actually will 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 other's irrespons. Trying to make someone else responsible takes away their responsibility.

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The best thing we can do to help the situation is to increase our 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. When I was upset with my for not making the bus in high school, I had to learn to deal with my own pain. I was worried about them missing school and 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 non-anxious presence, that if they missed the bus, I would take them to school when I went into the office at 9:00 AM that things began to change. This meant they would miss first period. Once they missed the bus a few times, they figured out how to get up on time on their own. This is key. It is actually our inability to tolerate the pain of others that causes problems in our family of origin, congregation, or organization.

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Edwin Friedmann 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. In fact, Friedmann said that he had a bias for encouraging challenge, not comfort in others. That is, rather than try to take away someone's pain by comforting them, the healthier response is to encourage the other to lean into the challenge and build their own capacity, strength, and pain tolerance. To do this, it helps to understand the difference between a challenge and a problem. Friedmann said, Nobody gets the problem they can handle. If they could handle it, then it wouldn't be a problem. That's the difference between a challenge and a problem. A challenge is something difficult, an obstacle, a disruption, a situation that needs to be addressed or things could get worse. A problem is a challenge that causes so much anxiety that it becomes too difficult to handle. It is this anxious response to a challenge that turns it into a problem. We make it even more difficult to address because of our own anxiety. Like many children, our grandson experienced separation anxiety when he started going to daycare.

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So did we. He was our first grandchild. He was about 14 months old, and this is the age when separation anxiety peaks. The phenomenon is the result of children developing what is called object permanence. This is the idea that you know something exists even if you can't see it. For example, if you place a toy under a blanket, a child with object permanence will know it's there and will try to find it. Prior to developing object permanence, children are fine with just about anyone caring for them. But once they have this concept, they realize when their parent or primary caregiver is not with them, and this creates anxiety. When he started going to daycare, he would cry when he was dropped off. The daycare provider said he would only cry for a few minutes and then he was fine. But that doesn't really help the parent or grandparent who worries about whether he is really fine. The question was, would this be a problem or a challenge? More often than not, it's how we address a challenge or don't address it that turns it into a problem. My daughter and son-in-law had developed a routine with our grandson.

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This included time spent with each parent, and then they would say, Let's talk about our day. Then they would tell him that they were going to work and that he was going to daycare. This is counterintuitive. It might seem easier to avoid upsetting him by just taking him to daycare without telling him, but that approach can actually make things worse by avoiding the challenge, not leaning into it. The first few weeks, their mornings were a mess. Our grandson didn't to daycare every day, so perhaps he was anxious about what was happening. Telling him if he was going to daycare not only helped him face reality, but it also removed the uncertainty that can create unnecessary anxiety. You can't avoid a challenge or help others avoid it. The best thing you can do is face it as a non-anxious presence. The best thing we could do for our grandson when he was going through separation anxiety was to support him as he dealt with it. It 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. Allowing his parents to deal with it and by just being present was the best thing that we could do for everyone involved.

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When you choose to encourage strength in others rather than comforting weakness, you are helping both them and you. Ironically, when our grandson's younger brother started going to daycare, he would scream and cry uncontrollably. He was 10 times worse than his brother. I guess I had increased my tolerance for that pain because it hardly phased me. Which raises another point. Just because we have a high tolerance for one pain in others and can let them experience the consequences of their actions doesn't mean we have a high tolerance for other kinds of pain. I may be able to let my kid fail academically, but not athlet, or vice versa. Nobody gets the problem they can handle. The most common response to the pain of others is to over function. This is what I was doing when my kids missed the bus. When we have difficulty seeing another person's pain, we often rush in to help them avoid it. Instead of allowing the other to experience the consequences of their actions, our own low tolerance for their pain wants to fix things. This is not always bad, but often it encourages weakness, not strength. Your first question should be, is this a situation when I can encourage another to rise to the challenge?

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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 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 self-differentiated 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'll often offer to pray for them as well. The important thing here is to not cave in to the unreason reasonable demands of one who is avoiding their own pain while at the same time not abandoning them emotionally. When I first entered pastoral ministry, I was a student pastor. I was attending seminary, but I was also the of a small church. I was married with three young children and a fourth on the way. Needless to say, life was busy. About midway through my first year, the person who had been doing the monthly church newsletter for years decided to resign. Nobody stepped up immediately to do it.

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We asked around and put announcements in the church bulletin, but nobody volunteered. People started saying to me, Boy, we sure missed the newsletter, or, worse yet, they wouldn't take responsibility for self, and they would say, People are saying they sure missed the newsletter. When you hear people are saying, Run. Talk about surrounding togetherness pressure. In terms of emotional process, the congregation was trying to triangle me into taking responsibility for the newsletter. But I was having trouble keeping up with my own life, so it never entered my mind to try to do it. Sometimes it's good to be dense. The other unhealthy response besides actually doing the newsletter myself, that is, over functioning, would have been to get defensive. You aren't asking me to do the newsletter, are you? I just can't do it. I don't have time. That's really unreasonable of you. In this case, I would be blaming others, that is, trying to define them instead of defining myself. Remember, it's process, not content. Anyway, I saw the newsletter as their responsibility, so my answer to their comments was, I missed the newsletter too. I stayed connected emotionally and I self-defined. Like I said, I was dense, so it was not a conscious attempt to self-differentiate.

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It's better to be lucky than good. But after about six months of this, two people in the congregation decided they would work together to do the newsletter. One would collect the content, the other would do the layout. These two worked together to do the newsletter long after I had moved on to another church. I believe by allowing the congregation to experience the pain and the consequences of the situation, they actually increased in their capacity to respond to challenge. To the extent that you are willing to allow others to deal with their own pain, their own consequences, they will grow in their capacity to face challenge in the future. Focus on encouraging strength in others, not comforting their weakness. This will increase their resilience. The key to this is increasing your own tolerance for their pain. The more you deal with your own pain directly, healthy and in healthy ways, the better you will be able to do this. That's it for episode 300. Don't forget, you can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com or at jack@christian-leaders.com. If you have found this episode helpful, please share it with someone else who might benefit, as well as leaving a review on your podcast platform of choice.I would very much appreciate Until next time. Thanks and goodbye. Thank you for listening.

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If you found this episode helpful, there are two things you can do to help others find this podcast. First, tap the subscribe button on your podcast app, and second, leave a review.

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I appreciate your help.

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Finally, you can find more resources as well as subscribe to my blog at thenonanxiousleader.

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Com.

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Now, go be yourself.