is<\/strong><\/em> a really good kid…” and then transfer some money into his account. When the girlfriend comes over I compromise by letting them go upstairs but yelling, “You have to keep the door open!”…until I walk upstairs and realize the teenager has a different definition for “open” than I do.<\/p>\nThe question is, do I argue with them about every one of these things or do I let them go because…sigh, I’m tired. I mean, come on, if there was only one teenager I might engage more with each slip of a boundary but there are FOUR OF THEM! FOUR! If I engaged in conflict with each compromise I’d be arguing ALL DAY LONG. Scratch that. I’d be arguing ALL NIGHT LONG. Because again, teenagers.<\/p>\n
Perhaps, though, my husband and I, as the leaders of this family system, are doing something right. Through the long game of parenting I think the two of us have known who we are, what we stand for, how we hope our kids will grow and live. We don’t helicopter our kids (though my teens say otherwise). \u00a0We stay in our parenting lane while they stay in theirs and we don’t let them drive the family car. (That was a metaphor…two of them do drive our car sometimes.) We haven’t done it perfectly but I’d say that 70% of the time we have stood firm in who we are and what we expect, even in the midst of their reactivity, and have remained connected to them while instilling responsibility. [1] We do let boundaries slip from time to time and we do let some things go that perhaps we shouldn’t but mostly, we parent well. And maybe<\/em> part of parenting well is<\/em> letting some things go.<\/p>\nThere are a million books out there on leadership, many of those we have or will probably read for this course. Some of them will be helpful, others, not so much. Some we will buy to keep on our shelf others will never even be purchased. According to the late Edwin Friedman, we could read all of the books on leadership, gather all the data, even acquire skills and knowledge, but if we don’t have the nerve, presence, and self-awareness to set the course and stand firm in the midst of other people’s emotional anxiety and reactivity, we will fail in our leadership. Leading from a place of differentiation, where leaders are connected to those in the system but not emeshed with them, will lead to long-term and lasting change for systems instead of short-lived change that happens when a leader reactively tries for a “quick fix.”<\/p>\n
While reading this book I couldn’t help but think about how our lead pastor led our staff and church during and out of the pandemic. At a time when the entire world was in chaos, Steven, our lead pastor, led with creativity, sensitivity (not empathy), courage, but most of all, he was self-differentiated and a non-anxious presence in the midst of high anxiety. Even though I know<\/strong><\/em> he was feeling anxiety around leading the church through this “unprecedented” time as well as worried for the health of his wife who had just spent months at OHSU with severe pneumonia, he didn’t let his anxiety take the wheel. Instead, he set our course to protect the most vulnerable among us and guided us to creatively meet the needs of our church community. Many times he was criticized or perhaps even sabotaged as anxious members and staff questioned his stance on not returning to in-person worship so as to protect those with compromised immune systems and hospital workers. Some members and some staff even left the church but he did not waver in the course he set for us. Friedman describes it this way, “In other words, leaders can stay involved in a non-anxious, influential way. Personal and internal management of their own reactions to what is going on in others is crucial. They are able to take stands at the risk of displeasing others, without being controlled by them.” [2]<\/p>\nSteven was\/is a healthy individual, able to self-differentiate, clear on where he ends and others begin. He was and is able to separate himself from anxious emotional processes while still remaining connected to our staff and church members in a way that brought us through the pandemic intact. \u00a0We were far from thriving as a church community when we returned to in-person worship but even then, he was able to lead us to who we are today – a church that is rebuilding and re-membering, while continuing the creativity we leaned into during the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Last night I taught a Family to Family class for NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness). The entire class was about the role of empathy in recovery and rehabilitation, making the claim that without empathy, recovery and rehabilitation is not (as) possible. The class members agreed with this position, especially after participating in an activity in which they tried to follow the directions of the instructor while the others in the class talked over the instructor directly into their ears. The exercise was supposed to mimic how frustrating it is to try participate in life when you hear voices in your head or struggle with other forms of mental illness.<\/p>\n
As we reflected on the activity a mother of two grown children who live with serious mental illness asked, “But what do you do when you’ve tried everything and nothing seems to work? What do you do when you are tired of trying and you are losing empathy for your child?”<\/p>\n
What a devastating thing to feel.<\/p>\n
To support someone living with serious mental illness is tricky. Friedman makes the claim that to have empathy for someone leads to emeshment whereas to have compassion for someone is to suffer alongside them but to maintain boundaries and require responsibility. [3]<\/p>\n
In some ways it is like parenting teenagers and leading a church through a pandemic and even being the owner of a really anxious, fiercely loyal German Shepherd. You lead and support from a place of differentiation. You are not your teenagers, you are not your church members or staff, you are not the one who requires support, you are not your dog. You are you and you have expectations, boundaries, and goals. Friedman comments in his talk, “You can give a choice for others to change to have a relationship with you or you can allow them to remain the same and yet be clear with them that you will not allow your life to be destroyed in the connection with them. It’s powerful medicine.” Teenagers are going to push your buttons and cross your boundaries, church members are going to try to sabotage you because their own anxiety, those with mental illness might not be able to take responsibility but as Friedman said in his talk, “When the leader\/healer has worked on her own differentiation she can be the kind of presence that will promote the strengths to come out of a system.”[4]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1] \u201cLeadership Through Self Differentiation – YouTube.\u201d n.d. Accessed February 24, 2023. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/. In this video Friedman talks about how he is only right 70% of the time and that people can really only self-differentiate 70% of the time.<\/p>\n
[2] Friedman, Edwin H., and Peter Steinke. 2017. A Failure of Nerve, Revised Edition: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix<\/i>. 10th Anniversary edition. New York: Church Publishing. 17<\/p>\n
[3] Ibid, 127, 128, 129<\/p>\n
[4] \u201cLeadership Through Self Differentiation – YouTube.\u201d n.d. Accessed February 24, 2023. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a member of our family who we all, and I do mean ALL of us, allow to set the agenda. She is needy, definitely the most anxious member of the family, afraid of her own shadow, and constantly demanding attention. Always watching, following us from room to room, she is undifferentiated and fully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":170,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2651,2535,236],"class_list":["post-31261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afailureofnerve","tag-dlpg02","tag-friedman","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/170"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31261"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31345,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31261\/revisions\/31345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Photo-on-2-10-23-at-11.36-AM-2.jpg\")
<\/a>But lately I’ve realized how tired parenting three teenagers and a tween is making me. Don’t get me wrong, they too have hearts of gold and few behavior problems but they are teens and a certain amount of laziness, craftiness and general rudeness often comes with that age group. Adolescent angst, sass, and sneakiness is to be expected but does it have to be tolerated?\u00a0I don’t want to fight with them so I let my boundaries slip just enough to make them happy. I empty the dishwasher instead of nagging one of them to do it because it’s easier to do it myself. When one of them asks for gas money even though he doesn’t have a job I justify his ask by thinking, “but he worked hard all season and is<\/strong><\/em> a really good kid…” and then transfer some money into his account. When the girlfriend comes over I compromise by letting them go upstairs but yelling, “You have to keep the door open!”…until I walk upstairs and realize the teenager has a different definition for “open” than I do.<\/p>\n