Fables for Families: A Nervous Condition

Numbers 22:21-33

Ganglia Pic When little John was about a year old, his parents noticed very thin fibers protruding through his pores. After another few months the fibers has extended themselves and began to form curls. The condition alarmed his parents, so they took little John to the doctor. The physician announced: Little John was unique in medical history – his ganglia or nerves were growing outside his skin.

Since little John was otherwise in excellent health it was decided to do nothing for a while but observe. The doctors told parents that they must be supersensitive to his every move and touch. You see with nerves outside your body you could get hurt very easily. Being very sensitive people anyway, his parents readily agreed to treat him with special care.

As little John grew, so did his nerves until they trailed about him as he walked. While it was not a pretty sight, surprisingly it turned out to have some advantages.

He learned from the very beginning for example first from his over-concerned parents and then from others that he could always count on someone watching out for him. Indeed he learned early in life that any one who came near him would always pay attention to his every move for fear of hurting him. He found that he could plough a path through any group of friends by just walking toward them. People would always retreat at his advance for fear of "stepping on his feelings".

Sometimes he encountered people who had not been forewarned about his condition and then he had to point it out as early in their relationship as possible. Once they understood however they never tried to get in his way. All of this is not to say that individuals never felt resentment toward little John, but they never spoke it aloud. All managed to quiet their resentment with self-recriminations about their own insensitivity.

And so it went. Little John graduated high school and obtained a secure job. One day he met a woman whom he liked. Being extremely shy, she was thrilled at the advance of this very attentive, if somewhat strange creature. She treated him with the utmost care and her pity for him soon became love. Everywhere they went she watched out for him. In time the guiding principle of her life became, "How can I help this man avoid pain?"

But after they had been married a while, she began to tire. Still she tried, for this poor man could not help himself. But it became increasingly difficult for her to be constantly mindful of his needs. She decided to confess her increasing insensitivity to her friends. She mentioned it to her family, to her minister, to her doctor. She sought professional help. All comforted her and sympathized but could offer little advice and so they urged her to be more patient. And she tried but soon her health began to suffer. She got headaches and couldn't sleep. She started to loose weight and she felt anxious most of the time. She dared not tell John of course for fear of hurting him. Why if he knew that all this was due to his condition, he would be inconsolable.

What should Little John’s wife do? She’s in quite a bind, isn’t she? What would you tell her?

In every family or organizational system, one of the primary dysfunctions centers around the insensitivities of the sensitive or, as I heard it put once, “the tyranny of the touchy.” There is a person or persons around whom everyone else tiptoes in an effort to avoid pain and conflict. The result is that, like Little John, the system adapts itself around the sensitive one.

In some families the status quo or “homeostasis” goes something like this: we must avoid making mom or dad mad. We cannot ask Dave to do that job at work because he’ll blow up. We don’t say much at the meeting because we don’t want to risk offending anyone.

Just like the story of the Bridge last week, in which we learned how we give power to the needy persons in a family system, in this case all the power is given over to the touchy one. Why does that happen and what can we do about it?

One thing we have to understand is that in any given system of human relationships there is a lot of anxiety – anxiety that may or may not be dependent on circumstances but always finds it’s way to the surface in the relationships between people. When people are anxious, that anxiety presents itself in many ways.

Anxiety manifests itself often in anger – like Balaam in our Old Testament lesson. Balaam knew that God had told him to go with the princes of Moab, but God knew Balaam’s own motivation was selfish.

Balaam has anxiety around what is happening, so when the donkey veers off the road Balaam beats her – she’s making him look bad – anxiety! So anxious is Balaam that when his donkey speaks to him, he doesn’t say “Wait a minute, my donkey is talking to me!” Instead, he blames the animal for his trouble – “You have made a fool of me! If I had a sword in my hand I’d kill you right now.”

But Balaam’s anxiety isn’t about the donkey – it’s about himself and about the fact that he knows he is in the wrong. The sensitive, the touchy, the anxious among us often seek to beat up others or get their way because they don’t know how to manage their anxiety. Like Little John they expect someone else to manage their anxiety and make everything better. Problem is, things can never be good enough for the terminally touchy.

A friend of mine was telling me about a mother-in-law who would show up with her husband at the home of their son and his wife and from the time she would come to the time she would leave she would insult her daughter-in-law – the sheets on the bed weren’t good enough, the towels were substandard, her cooking was inadequate and so on. The daughter-in-law reacts by being stressed out and teary-eyed. Her husband and his father react they way they always have – by not seeking to further tick mom off. Everybody’s got mom’s anxiety now. Visits are always Maalox moments.

Does this sound familiar to any of you? That’s the other side of Mother’s Day…

Anxiety begets reactivity and more anxiety. When someone attacks you verbally, you naturally react – whether it’s by arguing back or by simply knuckling under. When we react, we take on the pain and anxiety of the other and become anxious ourselves. This happens because we immediately go to the most primitive part of the brain. Brain science says that our brains are really designed in three parts. The primitive or “reptilian” part of the brain, the middle part, where our emotions are housed, and the top part of the brain, or the cortex, where we do our rational thinking.

When we’re confronted with anxiety, we tend to react with what’s called the “reptilian” part of our brain – fight or flight. We want to either eliminate the problem or run away from it. But the reality is that the more we try to deal with the anxiety of someone else, the more miserable we become.

As I’ve talked with other ministers I’ve come to realize that this is a huge issue in families and in churches. When anxiety drives a church system, for example, the most sensitive people always get their way because everyone else is supposed to be “nice”, right? We don’t want anyone to get upset. So, when the touchy person doesn’t like something, they simply apply the three “O’s” –

I’m Outraged, Offended, and Out of here. And everybody caves. Oh, they may mutter under their breath about how maddening the other person is, but they’ll never confront them. In other words, the reptile always wins.

How do we break that cycle? How do we deal with the insensitivities of the sensitive?

First, we must remember that the only person you have control over is you. You are only responsible for your own anxiety and you are responsible for your own reactivity to the anxiety of another. Here’s where our brain helps us by being differentiated from the rest of the body – we don’t have to react instinctively with the lizard part of our brain, with fight or flight. Rather, we need to intentionally move into the thinking part, the top part of our brain and realize that we can and must choose our own reactions to the people around us. We need to push the lizard back down where he belongs.

In other words, you can choose not to take on the anxiety of the other. And in doing so, you can be non-anxious yourself.

A non-anxious, self-differentiated person doesn’t get trapped by the touchy. They realize that when someone is reactive to them, that’s it’s not about them but about the other’s anxiety. If a touchy person bursts into your office to yell at you for some minor infraction or a parent terrorizes everyone in the house with their anger you have to realize that, for the most part, its not about you. It’s about their own anxiety. You can choose to make it your own or you can choose to give it back to them. You can learn to be comfortable with the pain of the other.

Even donkeys do this, or at least the one in our OT story. Notice the donkey’s reaction to Balaam’s fury. This is one self-differentiated donkey. Rather than bucking Balaam off or running for her life, she turns to him (imagine this) and says, “Am I not your own donkey. Have I been in the habit of doing this to you?” Balaam can only answer “no”. The donkey knows it’s not about her and she refuses to be bowed by Balaam’s anxiety. She takes a stand in a non-anxious way.

Which begs the question: who’s the real donkey (ass) in this story?

Go back to the mother-in-law situation I described earlier. What if, for example, the daughter-in-law, knowing what was going to take place, had thought through her own anxiety and instead decided to be non-anxious. When mother-in-law starts in on her she turns and says, “Wow. I see you’re upset. But I don’t believe I’ve done anything wrong. If you don’t like the way my house is run, you’re free to leave. I won’t be offended. The choice is yours. I, however, choose not to be treated in this way.”

OK. Now I know what you’re saying – “That sounds great, but it’s IMPOSSIBLE!” Is it? Actually, this situation happened for a parishioner of mine once, and when she took a non-anxious stand it changed everything. When we get caught up in our own anxiety, we can’t imagine doing that. If we learn to think in a self-differentiated way, we learn that there are alternatives.

Rev. Bill Selby, who is one of my mentors, calls this “moving toward the roar” – we move toward the anxiety and deal with it rather than run away. And when we move toward the touchy in a non-anxious way, we begin to see the system change.

Back to our story…

One day as Little John’s wife was walking home from the therapist she chanced upon a mother cat and her newborn kittens. As they scrambled over one another in their thirst the mother carefully guided each one to its turn stretching out a firm but gentle paw to keep it fair. Then John's wife noticed that one of the kittens had been born lame, its leg was not fully formed. Strangely it was the most aggressive. While the other kittens who had eaten were satisfied and fell asleep this one kept coming back for more trying to push its way into more than its share. Each time however the mother cat pushed it away at first gently and then with successively harder whacks.

Little John's wife watched the poor kitty and the "inhuman" mother. But when she returned home upon finding her husband reading in a room, she planted herself in the doorway and began to stare.

A little while later little John desiring to enter another room marched straight for the doorway that framed his wife. She did not budge. Closer he came closer never thinking to ask her to move (after all he had never has to ask anyone to get out of his way before) Suddenly he stopped confused. What should he do? First he assumed his most wounded look. Then he tried one that was more winsome and boyish but his wife was like a rock. In desperation, he finally spoke. "Move. You know I cannot squeeze by." Nothing. "What is the matter with you?" he yelled. Then she began to move, not aside but rather directly toward him. He retreated. She continued on. He moved back faster, but still on she came. Soon he was cornered.

"Have you lost your mind?" he was incredulous, which means he found it hard to believe what his wife was doing. "Careful there you almost hurt me," he said. That did it. She raised a foot and with a STOMP came down hard on one of his long trailing nerve endings. He screeched more from shock than pain. Again she stomped and again and again. He ran past her but she pursued. She continued chasing him from room to room, up and down stairs, to the cellar, to the attic, through the kitchen and to their bedroom until they both fell asleep exhausted.

When Little John's wife awoke her headache was gone and she felt great. For the first time in a very long time she was without pain and felt relaxed. But more astounding still was what she saw beside her. For when she looked over at John, she found that his ganglia were no longer curled around him. They had disappeared altogether. In fact, they had completely recoiled inside his skin.

Anxiety will always reign until we decide to move toward that roar and choose to be healthy ourselves.

Now, this isn’t easy to do…at least at first. Nobody likes tension and anxiety. But when we realize that we can choose not to take on anxiety, when we learn to allow others to manage their own pain, we begin to see change in ourselves and our relationships.

Nowadays, for example, when I know I’m going to be part of a contentious meeting where there are going to be touchy people present, I’ll even go so far as to put three initials at the top of my note page – N.A.P. – Non-anxious presence.

If somebody sends me a nasty email or leaves an angry message, I don’t have to respond right away. I have to give myself time to think through my anxiety.

It helps me to know where my own hot buttons are, where my own reactivity and anxiety comes from. But if I know that, I can be prepared. I have to believe that I have the ability choose how I’m going to react in any given situation. I have to choose to not be ruled by the touchy. It’s not easy, and I sometimes still get reactive, but it’s important to know that it doesn’t have to be that way.

You and I are responsible for our own feelings. Even God doesn’t take on all of our anxiety (Jesus was a prime example of this). I’ve spent a lot of time in my life praying to God to take away my anxiety – or take away the hostility of the person I’m dealing with. But you know, I believe that God deals with our anxiety by giving it back to us and inviting us to move toward it. God loves us by not bailing us out all the time, but giving us back responsibility for our lives. Rather than praying for God to change someone else, I now have learned to ask, “God, show me what’s going on inside of me that makes me want to react to this in an anxious way. Show me how to manage myself.” That’s a prayer that seems to always get answered, but usually the hard way!

Think about your own relationships – about the anxiety you feel when a certain person walks into the room or the stress that you take on because of unresolved touchiness in your family or workplace.

What would happen if you moved toward it instead of running away? What would happen if you decided today to give that anxiety back? What would happen if you said to that person who’s giving you grief – I see you’re upset. I wonder what you’re going to do with that?

I want to invite you to use your brain a little differently this week as you deal with people, to not be reactive but to be non-anxious. After all, if a donkey can do it, so can you!

Source: Edwin Friedman – Friedman's Fables

 

 

 

 

 

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