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Welcome to episode 405 of The Non-Anxious Leader podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. If you're new to this podcast, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions for future episodes. And you can get more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com where you can find out about my coaching practice, books that I've written, speaking engagements and courses that I offer. You can also subscribe to my Two for Tuesday email newsletter and get your free AI Family Systems Coach at the website or at the links in the show notes.

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Finally, if you would like to support my work for as little as $5 a month, you can get more information and sign up at the link in the show notes. Thanks in advance for your consideration. And now, without further ado, here is episode 405, a rebroadcast of Overfunctioning, underfunctioning, and healthy emotional space.

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I served as the director of a Christian camp and conference center for 23 years. During that time, I noticed a shift in parents towards greater overfunctioning. At first, we had to deal with the helicopter parents, those who hovered over their kids to make sure they were doing the right things, making the right choices, and staying out of trouble Or danger. I ran into numerous parents who would not send their kids to camp because we did not allow cell phones and they couldn't stand to be disconnected for 5 and a half days. The shift then moved to snowplow parents.

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These parents weren't satisfied with being close to their kids to help them navigate life. They wanted to make sure they could run ahead of them and wipe out any obstacles that might be in the way. Of course, we know that this type of over-functioning isn't helpful. In fact, it makes children less resilient and Less capable of responding to challenge. I don't know how many times I heard a child say that when they came to camp, it was the only place they felt like they could be themselves.

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And for a long time, I thought this was because of bullying or peer pressure that they felt at school. But it turns out it was more because they were getting away from their parents who were collapsing emotional space by over-functioning. The important thing to understand about over-functioning is it doesn't come from the other's inability to function, although that can contribute to our own anxiety. It comes from our own inability to manage our anxiety over the well-being of others. This can even extend to grandparents.

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Our camp experiences numerous pop-up thunderstorms over the course of the summer, and we constantly watch the weather to make sure that campers are not exposed to the dangers of lightning. One late afternoon, I was walking into the dining hall for dinner and my cell phone rang. It was a grandmother who lived 2 hours away and wanted to make sure I knew that there was a line of thunderstorms coming into the area. Of course, she was concerned about her grandchild's well-being, but the main thing was she had to call to manage her own anxiety. This is how over-functioning occurs.

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It happens when we are unable to manage our own anxiety Or to respond in healthy ways to the anxiety of others. I share a story in my book, Anxious Church, Anxious People: How to Lead Change in an Age of Anxiety, about how when I had only been a pastor for 6 months, the person who did the newsletter decided they could no longer do it after 16 years. No hard feelings, just a choice they were making. Nobody volunteered to take this person's place, even after repeated announcements from the pulpit and announcements in the Sunday bulletin. The anxiety in the system increased, and people started coming to me and saying, we sure do miss the newsletter.

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What I read between the lines was them saying, how come you're not doing anything about the newsletter? Or even, you should take over the newsletter so we don't have to go without one. I don't think I was real differentiated then, but I was overwhelmed and was smart enough not to take on the newsletter. That would have been over-functioning. Doing the newsletter was the congregation's responsibility.

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After 6 months of this anxiety, 2 people finally stepped up. One said they would gather the content and the other said they would lay out the newsletter. If I had over-functioned and started doing the newsletter, they would never have developed this capability and resilience. Under-functioning is the opposite. It's a refusal to take responsibility for self and in the process, either implicitly or explicitly, asking others to function for us.

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In the case of the newsletter, there was never an explicit ask for me to overfunction, but it was certainly implied.

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Another important thing to note is that there is a symbiosis between overfunctioning and underfunctioning. They reinforce each other. I worked with a church that had a pastor who did everything and loved it— clearly overfunctioning— and the congregation adored the pastor because they didn't have to take responsibility for things that they normally did. There was a symbiosis. However, when the pastor left and a new pastor came in and started asking them to do things that were their responsibility, the congregation was not only incredulous, they were angry.

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They said to the new pastor, this is what we pay you to do. And that's the danger of over-functioning. It collapses healthy emotional space and it leads to systems that are not highly capable or resilient. Over-functioning and under-functioning are not just about doing things. They're also about emotional functioning.

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I believe I have mentioned before that part of my maturing process was learning to take emotional responsibility for the wellbeing of our children. It was easy for me to not take responsibility because I would just disconnect from the anxiety in the system. However, this under-functioning increased my wife's anxiety and required her to over-function emotionally. As I matured, I learned that if I would worry more, she would worry less. And this wasn't about anxious worrying.

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It was about showing healthy concern for what was going on in the lives of our children. The question is, how do you avoid over-functioning or under-functioning so you can create healthy emotional space?

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Self-differentiation is knowing where you begin and another ends. It's holding a healthy tension between taking responsibility for self while also letting others be responsible for themselves. The first thing you can do to create healthy emotional space is to not rescue others. This means increasing your own tolerance to the pain of others, as well as being able to manage the anxiety that you experience when others undergo struggles. Conversely, it means not depending on others to solve your problems when you are anxious.

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When others are struggling, the sweet spot is to show that you care for them while remaining supportive without over-functioning. When you are struggling, the sweet spot is taking responsibility for self, but realizing that you are interdependent because it might even mean that you ask for help From others without demanding. Holding a balance between over-functioning and under-functioning also means not taking responsibility for other people's feelings. You can still show that you care, but if your anxiety results in you being reactive or adaptive, healthy emotional space disappears. This also means taking responsibility for your own feelings without blaming others.

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It's healthy to share how you're feeling about things, but if you make demands of others or if you blame them, you are under-functioning. Finally, the sweet spot between over-functioning and under-functioning is not telling others what to do or dominating decision-making, while conversely, it also means not giving in to the demands of the group. The sweet spot is being able to self-define, to know what you believe and express in healthy ways while staying emotionally connected, and allowing others to express their own Goals and values. What I have seen is that when a leader is able to keep this healthy emotional space, when a leader is able to avoid over-functioning and under-functioning, that this actually creates the kind of space where others can do the same, and the entire system starts to mature. More people learn to differentiate.

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More people learn to take healthy stands. More people learn to ask for help. More people learn to show support for others, even as they don't take responsibility. For them. This is what you can do as a non-anxious presence, and this enables you to encourage a system where people are resilient and capable.

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That's it for episode 405. Remember, you can connect with me at jack@christian-leaders.com, and you can find more resources at thenonanxiousleader.com. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone who would benefit, and please leave a review on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks in advance for your help. Until next time, go be yourself.

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