I'm finding that as I go along, just the right resource comes just as I need it. I feel like God is giving me answers as I'm ready for them. I have to say that as I read this book, the thought kept coming to me, "I wouldn't have been ready for this a year ago". I was still in a pretty deep muddle at this time last year, not really ready to do anything new or even have many new ideas thrown at me. Now I am. I also have a new counselor who is really challenging me, in a good way. Wouldn't have been ready for her last year either.
Just like our appliances or computers get old and outdated, sometimes our thought patterns do too, and need an update. So, here I am...ready to see what's next for changes on some days. Other days I just want everything "safe" (which is only a perception, never a reality!) and comfortable and like it used to be, but it can't be. Time changes things, relationships change, and we all change and grow. And we can't go back, we must move forward.
So, this book is all about that. Dr John Delony starts with "when things fall apart". Most of us come to a point (which is where this all started for me too!) where it felt like the wheels all fell off in life. How everything you thought was true really wasn't, death or loss took away someone you loved and there's no going back, or your health took a nosedive, or you lost your job or whatever. A time when life spiraled out of 'perceived' control and you didn't know what end was up. How the cracks in our armor, were actually a place to let the light shine in to our own darkness (even though we thought we were falling apart...and we were). How it was time to make some changes, whether we wanted to or not. It's all about our stories. The stories we live each day matter. They can either weigh us down, or we can choose to heal and undo the burden that gets so heavy.
He starts by saying that we have to be honest about our stories about our lives. There are several types, and they all matter and we have to sort them out. I feel like I've done some of this work already, but am not finished yet, for sure. Our stories are a tangled web of what could have been, what was in the past, what is now, and what might be yet to come. We meet at the intersection of the pain up until now, and the rest of our lives. Our stories become our identity, and it filters how we see, feel, hear and act to the world around us. They tell us the good from the bad. They can lift us up or bury us down. It's the stories that drag pain from the past into the present, and keep us trapped in toxic patterns and behaviors. We have thoughts in our heads and we believe they are true. We are told our worth by others and we believe it. We have to first own our stories before we can move forward. As a society we tend to spend much of our energy on blaming, casting judgement and hoping everyone else will change. "If only they would stop..." "If they would repent..." "If they would just..." The hardest thing is to look in the mirror and ask ourself, "what do I need to do to heal?"
So there are 4 types of stories we need to pay attention to~
- The stories we were born into- cultural, political, church/faith history, family identities and traditions
- The stories others tell us- our worth, value, and ability. Told to us by our parents, teachers, friends and enemies, institutions
- The stories that actually happen- we got fired, she said yes, someone died, someone else got the job, etc
- The stories we tell ourselves- the ones about identity and who we are. The judgements we cast on ourselves
In stories about the world we live in, he goes into a few lies we've been told in our generation.
- Technology and innovation will save us (we have a relentless stream of negative news of everywhere in the world on radio, TV, internet; yet we aren't even getting out in our own communities, we can watch a funeral online yet try to grieve totally alone (this is disconnect at it's deepest level, and has never been done before in the history of the world).
- Debt will save us (this also is a new idea from the past 100 years; before WW2, debt was a rarity, almost unheard of. Now debt is normal, and the weight is crushing everyone).
- I can save myself (we don't need others, we can take care of ourselves)
Yet, we're the loneliest people due to the lack of connections. He says how everyone he runs into is lonely. The rich and the poor, the old and the young, the learned and the unlearned, the extroverts and the introverts, the married people and the singles, the busy people who love their work and the retired people with not enough to keep busy. They are all lonely. We think artificial connections are enough (text, phone, computer), yet we are starving for real connection. For people to hug us, look into our eyes, to laugh so hard together that your drink comes out your nose, for someone to rely on to help you move, or to sit with you in the hospital and be silent with you in your pain. When was the last time you fully relied on someone? Or they relied on you? Or were fully vulnerable with someone, or them with you? That's the kind of loneliness he's talking about. He further explains how communication is not connection. Communication is a transfer of information. Connection is mutual weight-bearing of one another's burdens, and celebrating of one another's joys. We are starving for connection anymore, with hordes of communication, thinking they are one and the same.
He goes into the parts of the problem, which I won't here, but one thing was about how the view of children has changed over time. How now many parents' view of success is how well their children turn out. Parents show their worth to the world with how much we have it together in the parenting game. Our children became our trophies. Instead of children being our means of survival since time immortal, our children have now become our identity. How they do (as a reflection of our parenting) becomes more important than who they are. He explains how children should not have to carry the weight of our hopes and dreams, and they certainly are not strong enough to carry our self-esteem, frustrations and failures. It's also common now to want our children to be our closest peer relationships, and this is unfair too. We have thus given our kids permission to hurt our feelings, break our hearts, and we want so badly for our children to like us because we can't handle rejection. What a sorry state of affairs.
In the chapter on stories we tell ourselves, he goes into how most of us think we are smarter than average. And more honest than average (even prisoners in jail when interviewed each see themselves not quite as bad as the next guy!) So, when we tell ourselves stories, we hear a voice that we trust and that is our own. We sound pretty powerful and compelling. We have our own thoughts and feelings and we assume we are right. We feel like we are telling ourselves the truth. When we don't believe ourselves good at something, we believe those thoughts too. We craft tales about ourselves and our surroundings that helps us keep up the illusion of stability, even when we're not safe and not doing what we should be doing. We attach blame, casuality and power to these stories, and then we repeat them to ourselves over and over. We become the star and the villain in our own show. The key point here is that the stories we tell ourselves are often our way of making sense of someone else's issues by inserting ourselves as the main character. Things we might say are:
- I'm not good at tests
- I shouldn't have opened myself up to ....
- I have [anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, some other diagnosis]
- I'm from a long line of non-sleepers
- I'm too fat
- I don't have a drinking problem
- Etc, ad nauseum
After we've told ourselves these things long enough, we start to believe them and they become facts in our heads instead of just random thoughts. We go about our days silently repeating either how great or horrible we are, what we should or shouldn't be doing and then responding as such. We constantly look for proof in the world and when we find it, we start the cycle all over again. And then we wonder why we're exhausted and overwhelmed. We tend to overexaggerate who we are in ability (I can't do that), belonging (we point out differences as an excuse for not seeking belonging in a group) and time (I'm too old (or too young) to pursue...)), or we underestimate our value in regards to these things. He says how our tendency is always to pull out the negative stories, and downplay the positive ones. We spend much of our time scanning the world for threats, bad news, hurtfulness, failure and this all chains us down with heavy burdens. Negative stories always focus on the worst of the worst. They tell us lies about ourselves, and we believe them. They have power. The power to drag us down, or the power to heal. He encourages us to write these all down. What stories come to our minds each day, and how we know they are true (would this be verified by a witness that was present?), and how they affect our outlook on the world.
The next chapter is how our stories are also the solution. Each of us is responsible for healing our own "bag of bricks". The things that weigh us down. The traumas (big and small), the hard things that happened to you, the cultural things you faced (church, school, community), the grief from it...all the stories. They add up like bricks in a backpack that we carry around each and every day. This process is humbling and heartbreaking, but it's also brave and loving towards yourself. Dealing with your "bricks" is a gift to your children, your church, your community and it spreads from there. Trauma is the big one that most of us don't want to deal with. It's the events that at the time overwhelmed our nervous system. It can be one big event, or many small ones. It's not the event itself, but how we grow to perceive the event(s) that matters. Trauma undealt with is cumulative. It's the main weight of bricks. It explains why stories about the past explains why people are frightened, angry and out of control. Trauma is reexperienced in the present, not as the original story, but as bodily reactions, like pounding heart, nausea, gut-wrenching sensations and body movements such as collapse, rigidity and rage. They change our genes, are in our blood, in our hormones and in our neurochemistry. He goes into more of the science of it, but the basics are the flight (run away), fight (attack), freeze (shut down) or fawn (learn to please to keep the "threat" happy) responses to stress. It's how we automatically respond to what our bodies sense as threat that keeps us vigilant and alert all the time. There's also secondary trauma, which is what EMS workers, military, police, social workers, etc deal with. The aftermath of stress. Debt or financial insecurity actually causes these same kinds of stress also. All of them overwhelm the circuits, and are in the deepest parts of our bodies. These are the bricks we carry. This is what causes us to startle easily, react irritably to small provocations and sleep poorly. Trauma disconnects us from other people and poisons relationships. How can we freely love and be loved with all this stuff lurking in the background? It destroys "our positive sense of self, and the meaningful of order of creation". We can't look to the future because we are so busy putting out fires of today. Our heart is cloaked in guilt, regret and shame that comes along with most traumas. We spend our time preparing for the next attack, whatever that might be. All of this might sound like woo-woo (his words not mine), but when we look back on the last 100-200 years, we can see the amount of changes, death and disaster that our previous generations have faced. It's all dumped down on us, adding to the accumulation that we face ourselves.
After all that doom and gloom, let's look at solutions. We get to choose which bricks we want to carry and which ones we want to let go of. We can try to keep editing the stories of the past so that the bad things didn't happen, or we can choose to (1) own our stories and go forward from where we are. We have to be honest with ourselves first, and this may be the hardest step yet. Most of us don't want to feel our pain. We didn't even realize that our anxiety, depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorder or other diagnoses (his list) are actually our body's responses to the bricks we carry. The energy is instead spent forseeing problems in the future. He says the reason we build up these grandiose mental pictures is to avoid the pain of when it happened. We must be willing to face this pain and grieve it. This is step (2) acknowledge reality. We have to look at life as it is, instead of how we wish it was. Radically admit where the line is between where you wish things were, and where they actually are. From the parent/spouse you want to be, the financial situation you wish you were in, the relationships you want, the health you desire, etc. The difference in between these needs to be grieved. Grief is the difference between what you expected or hoped, and what actually happened. Write them all down in a journal. (Writing them down is the hardest, because then they become real not just imagined, but this makes it easier to own them).
No one likes to talk about grief. Grief is the pain and hollowness when someone dies. It's the inability to breathe when you hear bad news. It's the numbness when you felt abuse, or the feelings of betrayal. Grief is also the denial of losing your job, or another pending reality. Grieving is filling the gap to experience the truth. We can be put there by tragedy, or we can go there willingly on our own. We do have to acknowledge reality, and we can't run away from it. We often try to minimize it by comparing ourselves to others, or by trying to be thankful for what we do have. This doesn't work, by the way. We also try to weaponize other people's grief by making them feel like they deserve it somehow or another. We minimize it by telling people to "get over it" or "suck it up" or whatever it is we try to do to avoid our own pain or someone else's. We've got to stop. Stop it all. Quit comparing grief or hurt, or judging it with our own experiences. It's all subjective and irrelevant. Hard is hard, sadness is sadness, hurt is hurt. Every human being has the right to mourn the gap between what we had hoped for and what is reality. This is the place where we can finally heal. (Often our self is our own worst enemy here). We have to acknowledge the loss is real with our mind, and then our body accepts it. Otherwise it just keeps on building up inside of us. We would like to pretend that grief is optional, but it isn't. Grief is normal, healthy, good and is the beginning of healing our wounds. No one else gets to decide this for us either, by the way.
How to help someone grieve~
He goes into how to grieve, and this is good too. Most of us don't really know.
- Grief demands a witness. For better or worse, grieving is social and external. You cannot grieve alone. And yes, when we're hurting people will give us stupid advice, quote pithy sayings or blame us or God. We have to ignore all that and get it out. It's about being known and heard in our pain. We also need them to help us too- mow our lawn, bring meals, clean our kitchens.
- Grieving demands clarity. This is most helpful if we can write it down. Writing is cathartic, clarifying and powerful. It could be a journal, letters to the one you've lost (either sent or unsent), a friend, whatever. As we write, our thoughts will clarify. It creates distance and perspective.
- Grieving involves honoring your body. Eat well, sleep as well as you can, get some exercise and do a hobby if possible.
- Remember that grief won't kill you. It's like big ocean currents washing over you, but as you heal, the waves get smaller. Once in a while a big one comes again, but keep treading water. You'll be able to smile and laugh again as you heal.
- Disregard any thoughts of "getting back to normal". There is no more normal, there's only a new normal. Something was lost, so something has to take it's place. We are not in before, we are in after. After means we can't go back.
Grieving ultimately acknowledges owning, learning and practicing remembrance that everything is different now. It's time to start writing new stories in your life. New and different ones.
This below infographic applies to all of us, not just husbands. When you see someone in pain...
The next section is on (3) getting connected. A.k.a. making friends. Friends are people in your life that you see in real time, who are there for you (and you for them) when life gets tough or weird. Friends aren't disposable, and they are human so they make mistakes, and ask for forgiveness (and you forgive them). Friends say "I'm sorry" when they are wrong, and move forward together. Friends aren't returns on investment, or about getting ahead. They don't try to outperform each other, but they love you for your individual-ness and brokenness. If you have to "put it on" to be with someone, they aren't your friends. Friends are authentic to the core. These are not acquaintances, this is your closest circle. They are people who challenge you, hold you accountable and even argue with (in a healthy way) because they are worth engaging with. Friendship also isn't caretaking nor codependency. Those who constantly ask for more are not your friends, and a friend is also not someone who you need to fix or help so that you can have self-esteem. It's equal giving and receiving. It's something you are and something you do. Most importantly, friendship is a skill to be learned. We can always practice it, and we can always get better. We can learn to open up and be more vulnerable, we can learn to listen better, we can also learn when it's time to let an old friendship flame out and seek new ones instead of heading into resentment. Here's a few questions to see if someone is your true friend~
- Can you tell them the good things? Do we have to hide our good things because someone else might feel bad? Will they tell you the dark cloud side of whatever you're excited about? Will they one-up you with their story?
- Can you tell them bad things? Can you tell them when you've messed up big time? Do they listen to you and challenge you and hold you accountable, or do they degrade you and share your juicy flop as gossip down the line?
- Can you tell them about the darkness? Those hard things in your life that are weighing you down? What really happened, not just the surfacy details. Can you talk about the trauma, so that you can heal for good? Can you lovingly call them out when they hurt you? A friend is someone who you can tell your deep hurts to and they will listen and not load you up with dumb advice, but check in with you again so you can talk some more.
- Will they show up? Can you call them in the middle of the night? Would you show up for them, whenever and however they needed you to?
He says we hopefully have 1 friend like this, and hopefully 2 or 3 would make us extremely blessed. If not, you know what you need to do! And remember, all relationships are a risk. Friendship is a 2 sided skill. We can all learn and grow, no matter how old we are.
How to make friends?
- Decide it's a priority and that you're going to do it.
- Look for shared experiences.
- Go first and extend hospitality, however you can. Meet for coffee, invite someone over, meet at a park or event. Just start asking people. Yes, it's possible people will say no, but it's also possible that they'll say yes. Go first, don't wait for someone else to do it.
- Say yes to invitations and adventures. Say yes as often as your life will allow. Stop hiding at home, stand up and get on with it, whatever it is. Say yes to adventure!
- Get out of your house and go where other people are. Sounds simple, much harder to do, oh the excuses we can make up!
- Find people to serve. Serve your community, your church, wherever. Use your skills and talents to serve others.
Then keep showing up, invest in people, prioritize people and you'll get connected to people. This infographic can apply to us all too, not just our kids~
Next we have to (4) change our thoughts. First of all, who do we let hurt our feelings? Everyone? Only those whose opinion we value should be allowed to. Start asking what happens if everyone can hurt our feelings. This is a boundary issue. We live for everyone, and we can't please everyone. We need to recognize who can and who can't hurt our feelings. He has you create a list of people who can and who can't. Our children shouldn't be able to, our parents and in-laws shouldn't (because we are living our life not theirs), our extended relationships (acquaintances) shouldn't as they don't carry much weight either. The only people left on our list should be our spouse, and a few close friends who we trust their opinion and we know they love us enough to tell us the truth (lovingly, and because they love us). Doing this unloads a heavy burden of how we spend our thoughts each day. Are we at the mercy of pleasing everyone? Or are we confident in who we are and can live each day in that, trusting that our closest people will tell us the truth and hold us accountable as needed. Or do we live each day predicting the worst-case scenarios, focusing on my pessimistic outlook and having all kinds of imaginary conversations in my mind? Are we in control of our thoughts, or not? (side note: Nat Mur homeopathic remedy is great for expediting this).
We all have dealt with voices in our heads, never stopping the chatter. We constantly approve (or disapprove), justify and judge. If we had to listen to someone else talking like this, we'd end it pretty quickly. But it's in our heads, and it's on repeat all day, every day. We can choose to speak life into our thoughts, or negativity. Most of us have done it so long, we don't know anything else is possible. We don't realize that we decide what we think. When we have a thought do we judge it, or get curious about it? When we judge it, we give it value. When we get curious about it, we can breeze on by it and replace it with something real. Yes, real. Just because we have thoughts, doesn't mean they are real or true. They are real in that they exist, but they aren't necessarily true. They can signal us to relax or to get hyped up. They run on autopilot until we take charge of them. Our stories are also thoughts, and we can rehash them over and over, reexperiencing the pain in an attempt to protect ourselves. But this is false. Rumination is an utter waste of our time.
We also need to be intentional about what's coming into our brains. Is it fearful doom and gloom? Or is it life giving? It's not about ignoring reality, but we should be getting our information in real time with real people. Looking for beauty in all of life is a good way to keep our focus in a good direction. We also need to be intentional about our thoughts. It's going to take effort. It's really hard on the head, when you first start at it, because most of us are changing decades of bad habits. Guarding our thoughts can be exhausting to start with too, but is a good thing over time. This is also hard because our thoughts have become our identity, and changing that means changing our identity, and some of us want to stay the victim, and want to hold back forgiveness and still blame. Owning our thoughts doesn't let those excuses fly anymore. If you think of your mind like a garden, whatever you water, that's what will grow. Writing down our thoughts here is helpful too. Calling them what they are in your mind. This is hard though, because then we have to own them! Once we've done that, we should listen to our body when we have those thoughts and feelings. Are they feelings of calm or feelings of anxiety? Do I want to numb them or be at peace with them? Do I have evidence for them? Are they actually true? When they are down on paper, we can regain control, and sort the truth from the lies. If we want to keep them in our head and not do anything about it, then we are choosing to keep carrying the bricks and choosing to be miserable about them each day. The next step is forgiveness. Forgiving yourself for past wrongs (either done in ignorance or willfully). Forgiveness for those who've wronged you is next. Forgiveness frees us from resentment and bitterness, and keeps us from rehashing painful experiences over and over and over. We "wash it away in the sea of grace, never to be remembered anymore". We have peace instead of pain. This is also intentional. Forgiveness doesn't just happen over time (resentment and bitterness do though). We have to want it, and we have to actively pursue it, sometimes 70x7 times. It's a thought and an action. And especially if we want to hold onto the hurt feelings, we aren't going to feel forgiven or like forgiving, so this means we're still carrying those bricks. Then we live in joy again, after we've done these things.
(5) Change your actions. We first of all have to stop making excuses and take inventory of your actions each day.
- How do you treat your body? Do you take care of it?
- How do you treat your friends, family, community? Do you make time for friendship, and connection?
- How is your work? Is it meaningful? Do you work hard? How are you learning and growing?
- How do you treat your faith community? Do you gather regularly with believers? Do you pray, read Scripture or are you in a season of doubt?
- How is your home? Is it a wreck or an obsessively clean wreck? (both extremes aren't good!) Do you know where things are when you need them?
- How do you treat others? With dignity, respect, care? Do you treat others kindly? Do you owe people money, or they owe you money? Do you have any abusive relationships?
Don't overthink, just jot them down and see how your daily actions might add up to your identity. Is this who you want to be? Your identity is a sum of your actions each day. Do we want to change our identity? Instead of focusing on what we want to achieve, we should focus on who we want to become. If we yell too much, instead of trying to stop yelling, we need to want to become a person who treats everyone kindly and with respect. It's just a small mindset change, but is crucial in our success in changing our identity. If we are routinely anxious, and we want to change, we need to see ourselves as a calm person who people can rely on to be calm when they come to us. Our thoughts will change over time, to be more calm, and then we can take actions to work on whatever is causing our anxiety (which is most often lack of control when we wish we had control in some area). Have people hold you accountable for these things is helpful too. We will meet with resisitance within ourself as we try to learn new patterns. We live in a society of excuses, indecision and whining. One quote he writes is "If you have to talk to more than 3 people about the same problem, then you don't want help you want attention." Stop the excuses, stop the whining, stop the blaming, stop. Get some help and start finding solutions.
To end with, he tells us how we can get stuck between hope and truth. How we want life to be and how it really is. Being whole and well doesn't mean our life will be trouble free. It means we adapt as we go. We grieve as we need to. We put down our bricks when we can, but we also realize that our bricks helped us learn valuable lessons too, that shaped us into who we are today. We can remember all those bricks with peace, and they won't weigh us down anymore.
