Minding One's Own Business

Why is it important that within your support group, not all of your friends and associates, and family members know each other?

I have a couple of personal reasons...
1. Space - a chance to show my individual preferences in friendships, and work, school or interest related activities.
2. Freedom of expression - I have different roles in different relationships. I don't necessarily want my work and personal lives overlapping ( oh, wait they already do). I do like having some say in the information other people have about me though.

From the previous post there is an activity on identifying individuals in your support system. From that paper you have completed with the number of people identified in the following groups - total the number of people in your support system.

1. Family in the 1st Degree: Parents, Siblings, Children
2. Family in the 2nd Degree and farther: Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins 
3. Friends: Lifelong and current
4. Associates: work, church, clubs, recreation, school


What is your total? The number of people that you are able to share your life with in a meaningful way, both in a instrumental way, and in friendship or familial bonds that you enjoy participating. That number has a significant impact on your ability to maintain emotional stability every day.

"When a (support) system drops below a minimum number of people it tends to fall into one of two degrees of impoverishment:

1. The Neurotic System: People who are supported by as few as 10-12 people begin to show signs of depression and distortions in their world around them. Only about 30% know each other. In this system a person feels fragile and anxious.

2. The Psychotic System: When the support system drops as low as four or five people 100% of them know each other - because they are all focused on this "basket case" of a person who needs constant attention." (Bonding: Relationships in the Image of God. Donald Joy, Ph.D.)

The "neurotic individual" does not have the confidence to share his/her friends and family with others and therefore never feels really connected. It is usually the person who continually carries that wistful attitude about them - "I wish that I had more friends, people who really know me". Getting to know a person is expressed in some manner in the relationships around you. As C.S. Lewis describes in the four loves "in each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity ; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets" (C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves).

The "psychotic individual" is where true mental illness plays out. I have actually been involved with a family where the only individuals available to support them, were "formal supports" due to services offered professionally to help maintain the integrity of the family. This is a heart-breaking situation to observe. The level of mental illness involved untreated is just astonishing. This kind of relationship though is ....exhausting, and can only be maintained in the short term, before someone exits the relationship and the hurting self involved will find another to take their place.

I have observed though another response, where personal responsibilities are intertwined with that of another person, or several other persons. This "relational enmeshment" is developed out of sorrow, and a fear of growing through the pain. There is always someone willing to rescue another in pain, and in a moment, the responsibility of managing one's own resources (spiritual, financial, relational, emotional) may transfer from self to other. In an episode of "Friends" Rachel becomes so discouraged with her choices in men, she allows Monica to make all of her choices about whom she will or won't date. This is the beginning of "enmeshment." By the end of the episode Rachel decides that she would rather make her own mistakes, then let someone make decisions for her. This is actually a step of maturity. One of the pitfalls of therapy is becoming more invested in an outcome than a client shows. That is a sign that responsibility for the problem has transferred from the person in crisis, to the Therapist, and enmeshing is occurring, over involvement in finding a solution is occurring on the part of the Therapist. A church is another place that boundaries may blur, out of initial compassion, but once responsibility has transferred from a hurting self to other, it can be an obsession on the part of other to fix the problem, no matter the consequences, or interest of the hurting self to cooperate in "fixing" the problem. One of the signs that toxic attitudes and beliefs exist in a church:
"Unbalanced interrelatedness – either under (neglect) or over (enmeshment) involvement in the lives of others. Everyone is responsible for everyone else, while ironically no one is responsible for himself or herself. The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse.


It reminds me again of something C.S. Lewis wrote. Susan completely vexed by the way her younger sister Lucy is acting approaches the Professor (who is providing shelter and care for them until Susan and her three siblings may return safely to the care of their Mother), for help managing her "lies".

"But what are we to do?" said Susan.
"My dear young lady" said the Professor, "there is one plan which no one has yet suggested and which is well worth trying."
"What's that?" said Susan.
"We might all try minding our own business."

What does this mean? To maintain your own integrity, your own expression of who you are as an individual, make sure your own business (i.e: work, family, home, schoolwork) is completed before you worry about other's business.

Who will catch me when I fall?

Activity:

Dr E. Mansell Pattison (quoted in Bonding: Relationships in the image of God by Donald Joy Ph.D) completed research on "psycho-social kinship systems." To make it easier to understand, Dr Pattison is discussing an individual's support systems.  "Here is an amazing way to test the health of your present connections with other people", according to Dr Pattison.

Write in names of individuals that would need to be notified if you were involved in a life threatening accident. Include individuals from these four groups:
Family - 1st degree: parents, siblings, children
Family - 2nd degree or further: Aunts, Uncles, cousins, grandparents, etc
Friends - Lifelong Collection and present confidantes
Associates - work, clubs, recreation and church.


Now that you have written down your current support system - will these individuals help you "sustain your mutual sanity and well being:"


Do both of you have a high investment in the relationship?
Is there frequent face to face contact?
If you aren't able to have face-to-face contact are you in contact via phone, mail (I know 'old school'), text or facebook when you miss seeing each other for a few weeks?
Would you invest time and/or money in order to help them in a time of need?
Is this relational investment mutually reciprocal?
(Bonding: Relationships in the Image of God Donald Joy, Ph.D.)

It is important that your support network is connected to each other, but for various reasons it is healthy that not everyone in a support system know each other. The primary reason, is that your mental health will be much stronger, if at least 40% aren't connected to all the other individuals in your support system. I have also observed individuals who are supporting emotionally, relationally, or financially many other individuals, but don't have anyone to turn to when their own world is falling apart and that is only slightly improved from being all alone. Support systems have a natural rhythm to them, there is give and take, as caring shifts from one person to the next. Thinking that you have to be strong, and that no one else can do things right, will lead to an obsession with control. An obsession with control, will only lead to an emotional, mental, or physical breakdown, and that breakdown will likely damage your support system in the process.  Take some time to reflect on the people in your support system; God has brought them into your life for a reason, and vice versa. Through the process of learning more about creating healthy support systems, I am amazed at how important people are in helping me continue to be resilient, so that I may overcome life's challenges. How often it is, we don't even realize how much we need each other.

Broken Hearts

 I have always enjoyed observing individuals and attempting to discover motivations for different actions. Most importantly, how do psychological forces affect our relationship with God? One of my favorite areas of study is attachment. Attachments formed in infancy will influence every other relationship we have throughout or lifetimes. Profoundly though, I believe people who have experienced attachment trauma, will struggle to make any trusting connection with God.

Attachment trauma occurs when a child is removed from the care of their birth mother and is placed in the care of another person. Trauma may also occur if a parent does not respond in a prompt, caring, sensitive manner to the needs of a baby during its first six months, up to the age of 1 year. Attachment trauma will likely occur as well if a parent is abusive to the child. Abuse may be in the form of neglect, physical, emotional or sexual.

Here are the five criteria needed for an attachment relationship to form:
(Attachments Dr. Tim Clinton and Dr. Gary Sibcy)
1. Proximity

2. The caregiver provides a safe haven

3. The caregiver provides a secure base from which to explore the world

4. Any threat of separation induces fear and anxiety

5. Loss of the caregiver induces grief and sorrow

When attachment trauma occurs, a child learns that the only person who will meet their needs, is themselves. Parents are not to be trusted because they are "lazy" and "only care about themselves." Denise L. Best LMHC shared a story at a training on Attachment Disorders about a child who had been removed from her home and placed in a pre-adoptive home. The family moved to adopt the family, until the last minute when they changed their mind and then packed this child up and took this to another foster family, and left this child there(the child did not know them, and was left there without a familiar face to adjust on their own.) Eventually the new family filed for adoption. However one night close to the finalization of the adoption they went out to eat, and their child stood up, went over to another family and attempted to join them for dinner. When this child's family asked what they were doing, the child said simply "I am choosing my new family." The message coming through loud and clear was that this child didn't trust adults to continue to want them and care for them. Imagining a feeling of love is even more scary, because this will create a feeling of vulnerability, and a child who has attachment trauma will fight to prevent feeling vulnerable again. These scared and hurt little people eventually grow up to form adult attachments and may not have the relationship skills they need to develop healthy relationships.

Dr. Donald Joy Ph.D, has done extensive research on marriage relationships, primarily focusing on the steps of physical bonding that occur as a couple is dating.  The first people in life that we "bond" with of course are our parents, but as everyone knows fathers and mothers have different approaches to connecting with children. Mothers tend to have a very "concrete" approach to mothering. Having carried a child in utero she is often familiar with their individual cycles of wake and sleep, and due to feeding, changing and playing with a child, often has an intimate knowledge of who their child is, preferences and all. Fathers have a more "abstract" approach to fathering, as their first connection with their child might have been feeling him or her kick several months into the pregnancy. Fathering for them didn't really start until they met the baby for the first time at birth. Fathers often get to know their child through experiences, and challenging their child to try new things; a mother is often focused on meeting  the everyday needs of the child. How then do these natural human needs for attachment and bonding impact our ability to create a trusting, saving relationship with God?


Our relationship with God and the church tend to mirror our experiences with our fathers and mothers. Our experience with God will tend to mirror our experience with our fathers (God has always expressed Himself to us as our Father), and church tends to mirror our experiences with our mothers (the church in the Bible is continually referred to as the Bride and expressed to us as female). An individual who has a strong attachment to both of their parents, and trusts what their parents tells them will have an easier time creating an "abstract" faith relationship with God, and will have an easier time relating to church members in a church environment, a "concrete" experience of faith every week. What happens though if you remove a parent from someone's experience? If you lose a father either through death, divorce, or abandonment, the abstract relationship skills will not have been experienced, and so relating to a "father in heaven" will be difficult. If you lose a mother, either through death, divorce, or abandonment, the concrete relationship skills of relating to other people will not have been experienced, so relating to people in a "church body" will be difficult.  Attachment trauma though carries a whole different set of consequences.

Individuals who have experienced attachment trauma struggle to trust anyone other than themselves. If they have lived with their siblings during the time of abuse,  they may also trust their siblings. Adults are often viewed as lazy, bad people who don't care about the needs of children and are not to be trusted. The question was asked at the training on Attachment Trauma "how long does it take a child to heal from attachment trauma?" The social workers of the group suggested 2-5 years, maybe 10 at the most. Foster Parents of the group started with 10 years, and one said "27 years." Our trainer said that "27 years is the most realistic time frame mentioned."  One child who experienced 30 different foster care placements by the time this child was in elementary school, most likely will never heal from that level of trauma.

How do you reach out to someone who has experienced attachment trauma, and is unable to accept love, or compliments for that matter, and is completely distrusting of people they meet? How does a person who experienced attachment trauma develop a trusting, saving relationship with a God that appeared to abandon them to the care of abusive caregivers? It is my personal belief that marriage will continually be attacked, as it provides a safe haven for children, and provides both "abstract" and "concrete" relationship skills for children to experience as a part of their natural development. Fatherhood for the last generation has been under attack, as more and more children have been raised without fathers (my own husband included), the result is that their Father in Heaven is much more difficult to understand. Motherhood, which seemed to be the last safe haven of relationships, in my opinion is under attack as well. Some adults are unable to maintain a relationship at all with individuals in the church body, even though these relationships are much more tangible and desperately sought after. I have seen individuals leave a wake of destroyed relationships through multiple churches, as they seek someone to relate to, all the while completely unable to relate in a healthy manner themselves. These are challenging times to reach out to people in the name of Christ. Much has been done that damage an individuals abilities to relate to God and the body of believers and it will take a compassionate, caring and flexible church body to meet the needs of these individuals. New believers won't become a part of the church in a night, a week, or a month of Bible studies. I believe it will take a generation of caring (individually and as a church body) about an individual, their accomplishments and their relationships, before they will consider taking the steps of belief, and establishing a relationship with the only One who can truly heal their broken hearts.

An Observer

As we go through this journey together, I want to clarify a couple of important issues.
1. Spheres of Grace is my own creation, however the majority of the material used to provide credibility to this way of thinking, is the accomplishments of wiser more educated people than I.

2.I am simply an observer of human behavior, watching the interactions of my clients, friends, family and people who pass by me on a daily basis, learning from my mistakes more than anything else. While observing, I will attempt to identify the behavior that is helping or hindering the individual(s) in developing or maintaining healthy relationships. Once on my own, I take time to think about and process what I have observed. I research, as thoroughly as I am able, drawing from the wisdom of philosophers, theologians, psychologists, educators and many others who have found a grain of truth within their field of study. Unfortunately, the information usually stays within that field of study.

It is because of my curiosity that I will often try to combine different ways of thinking to see what the outcome might be. For example: what if the philosophy behind C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves" is combined with research on human bonding by Donald Joy Ph.D.? How might my behavior change when I apply that knowledge? When looking for solutions to relational snags, it is often difficult to find what I am looking for, and I spend valuable time looking for help, rather than applying that help to my own thoughts, behaviors and words.

So at the beginning now, this is my hope, that "what" will help relationships grow in a healthy manner will be easily accessible and God will be glorified, through increasingly joyful and harmonious friendships, marriages, families and communities.

Be the Blessing!