33: Resilience: Connecting with People

[00:05] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Episode 33.

We’re continuing our Resilience series with a look at the ABC’s of bounce, connecting with people. And while we’re on that topic of connecting with people, I just want to thank those of you who share the podcast with others. And encourage you if you haven’t already done so, to “like” this episode and subscribe to the podcast at whatever platform you like to use. This will prompt the algorithms to connect us with more people.

So thank you and hello, Father.

[00:48] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. I could tell you really wanted to quote Pride and Prejudice there, didn’t you? “And that will throw you in the path of other rich men.”

[00:55] Stephanie: You know surprisingly it wasn’t even on my mind. I really appreciate that your mind went there and it was probably just like embedded in my subconscious.

[01:03] Marcus: Yeah. Anyway, I thought that was funny.

[01:05] Stephanie: “And that will throw you into the path of other rich men.” Yes, exactly. I love Pride and Prejudice. All right, so, oh we just came off of a wonderful conference.

[01:18] Marcus: We did. It was a lot of fun to connect with John Eldridge and hear what he had to share and to be able to interact with him a little bit. It was a good weekend.

[01:28] Stephanie: Oh, it was so much fun. And I have to say, it just made my heart happy that many times throughout the weekend he specifically named the staff that he was interacting with. He’s like, oh, yes, Nick and Emily and Duane. And I was like, yeah!

[01:41] Marcus: We had a great team and it was really a fun event. But one of the behind the scenes things that people don’t know is I actually had a fever the night before. I woke up sick that morning and called for prayer and had several people praying over me and the fever dissipated. I was fine by the evening and it never came back. I felt completely healthy on Saturday. So one of those things you wouldn’t necessarily know, but I remember being a little bit nervous, like, I hope I’m going to be able to get through this. God took care of it.

[02:18] Stephanie: Praise the Lord. I think that also works really well with the whole connecting with people topic because you connected with people. I think a prayer email went out to a prayer team and people got on Zoom with you and prayed. I know here in Kentucky there were a group of us who prayed for you and it was good. And the other thing about being with people, is I got to be with a really wonderful group of people live and in person. We got to do a little watch party of the conference which I highly recommend.

[02:50] Marcus: Yeah, watch parties are good, right?

[02:51] Stephanie: Yes, it’s the way to go and good to do it with people. So the ABC’s of building bounce, let’s dig into the “C” and we’re going to break this up. So there’s connecting with people and connecting with God. And so in this episode we’re going to look at connecting with people. Why don’t we start with the importance of belonging?

[03:13] Marcus: Yeah. So belonging is a word I think we’re all familiar with. But when I first came across Life Model Works, Jim Wilder’s teaching on this, it took on a new significance for me. And it was this idea that belonging has to do with knowing who your people are. Maybe you’ve had the experience (I’m talking to listeners now) of being at a church and feeling like you’re on the outside, knocking on the door trying to get in. It’s not that you couldn’t get in the building but you didn’t feel like you really belonged, like people were not really letting you into the circle.

I think a lot of us know what that feels like to be on the outside trying to get in. And so belonging is the idea that I know I’m in and because I know I’m in, I know that these are my people. That’s significant because when I know who my people are then I know who I am. From my brain perspective it anchors my identity and it lets me know that not only these are my people, but this is how it’s like for us to live. So all that’s included in the idea of belonging but there’s more to it as well.

[04:13] Stephanie: Oh, yes we actually dug into identity and belonging in two different episodes back in our FISH series.

[04:21] Marcus: We talked about identity.

[04:23] Stephanie: Well, that makes sense. So that’s the identity side of belonging, how about the building bounce side of belonging?

[04:33] Marcus: So part of what happens with belonging is what my co author in Building Bounce, Stefanie Hinman, likes to talk about, being safe, secure, and connected. And when I feel safe, secure, and connected, I’m not as easily overwhelmed as when I am all alone with my emotions. So the more isolated I am and the more I feel alone in dealing with things, the more overwhelming those emotions are. So you may have had the experience of being in a big group and actually feeling more alone than you would have just being on your own. Because you’re with all these people and they just don’t get it and you don’t feel seen and heard.

So that’s the opposite. You know, when I don’t have belonging it can actually escalate the trauma that I’m in. And on the other side of that is what Dr. Wilder calls, “Being with somebody with a bigger brain.” This goes back to the idea of infants who will sync with their mom or dad, or their big sister who they feel is freaking out, but there’s somebody there with a bigger brain who isn’t freaking out with what is going on. And so they’re able to kind of borrow that calmness from them.

[05:44] Stephanie: It reminds me of when we talked about when I used to be afraid of storms. It touches on many things, me being afraid of the storms and there was attachment and joy building there. I went to you and mom and you were my bigger brain in that situation and you could handle it.

[06:09] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. So one of the things that belonging does is it puts us around people who maybe can handle things that we can’t. As a result, there’s a little more peace that comes from knowing I’m going to be okay. Just like a child when they’re with their parents and the parents aren’t freaked out by what’s going on. The child can say, “I guess I’m going to be okay because mom and dad are okay.” You take that to a spiritual level and that’s kind of what our connection with God is meant to provide. We always have access to this bigger brain who is never overwhelmed, never worried, and is always happy to be with us in the middle of whatever we’re going through.

[06:46] Stephanie: Hallelujah. So in the conference this weekend and in your book Building Bounce, you talk about two principles, vulnerability and empathy. Let’s talk about both of those. But vulnerability, what is it? What is it not?

[07:00] Marcus: When we talk about vulnerability I always think of turtles sticking their heads out or pulling them back in. When I stick my head out I’m literally making myself vulnerable and I’m putting myself out there. And so there are levels of vulnerability. There’s the level of vulnerability where I just let people know that I am struggling, or I’m feeling sad today, I’m feeling angry today, or I have some kind of an emotional struggle. That’s one level.

The next level is where they get the background behind why I’m that way and what’s going on. Then the third level is where we get to the real root issues and we’re dealing with all of the junk. What you find is that if I am going to form a belonging with people and form a safe, secure, attachment with people, vulnerability is the only way to get there. The problem is that not everybody meets that vulnerability with empathy, which is what we’re after.

[08:02] Stephanie: So what are some strategies for determining if you can be vulnerable with someone?

[08:08] Marcus: Yeah, so that’s a good question. I do tend to think of this in terms of the three levels. A lot of small groups and churches will go to level one, I can admit when I have a struggle here or there, but I don’t go into a lot of depth about just how bad it gets. Then you have what we would call the journey group level. I am on a  journey with other people that I can share with and they see me, and I can be really honest about how bad this gets sometimes. And then there’s what I call recovery group level where I’m just laying it all out on the table and letting the chips fall where they will.

So one of the things that determines how deep you go with people is the maturity of the people that you’re sharing with and their trustworthiness. So for example, some people don’t have the maturity to deal with my deep stuff. You can tell they don’t have the maturity to deal with it because they shut it down quickly, they try to fix it really fast, or they gossip about it to other people. So I’m not gonna share with them.

And we see this modeled actually by Jesus himself. It says in the end of John two that many people were putting their trust in Jesus but he wasn’t putting his trust in them. Right? It has this interesting line that says, “Because he knew what was in a man.” And then right after that it says, “Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus who came,” which was setting up the idea that Jesus knew what his issues were and where he needed to go with him.

But at another level it shows us that Jesus was not somebody who just dumped everything out there for everybody. He was very careful about who he shared his true identity with. He was very careful whether he shared that with other people. I think that he models for us that we don’t have to wear all of our emotions on our sleeves. Some of us actually drive people away by being too vulnerable in too many settings, and people aren’t ready to go there.

[10:05] Stephanie: Well, and Jesus is a good model that he wasn’t wearing a mask when he was withholding. Sometimes people will say, “I’m just being me or you can’t deal with how big I am”, or whatever. Even on the reverse if people are not being vulnerable enough. But you are still you even if you’re not wearing everything on your sleeve.

[10:30] Marcus: Right. And part of the idea here is that there are two ditches you can fall into. You can fall into the ditch of being too vulnerable with people who can’t handle it, and the ditch of never being vulnerable with anybody, even with people you could trust.

So we started with this idea of belonging and how do you create belonging? How do you create safe, secure attachment? If I wear a mask and you’re attracted to that mask and you like who I am when I’m wearing the mask, then we’re not actually making a connection. You’re connecting to the mask.

And after a while I’m going to wonder if you would really like me if you really knew me. And so that doesn’t work, or at some level it does work because a lot of times people are attracted to the mask, but it doesn’t form a connection or a deep attachment. So that’s why you have to have vulnerability in order for connection to form.

And then if that is met with empathy, that’s when connections grow deeper and people are like, “Okay, you’re not overwhelming me with this. I’m okay. I can stay relationally engaged with you while you go there.”

[11:39] Stephanie: But let’s dig into empathy more now. What is empathy? What is it not?

[11:47] Marcus: So empathy is the ability to stay relationally present and seeing people without having to fix them, and without having to do anything else. It’s just seeing and acknowledging that this is what is going on, and being okay with you while you’re there. Let’s say you’re struggling with despair, people will cut you off from going to the depth of your despair and try to fix you fast. They want to inject hope as soon as possible to keep you from getting too low. But a lot of times what they really need is somebody who is willing to go to that deep dark place with them, and still be happy to be there, to just be there.

[12:31] Stephanie: To understand how deep and dark it is.

[12:33] Marcus: Right, this is all part of that. Empathy is what we would call in Rare Leadership, being gentle with weakness. The idea is that I’m not trying to fix your weakness. I’m not trying to stop your weakness, I’m not trying to shame your weakness,  I’m just trying to be gentle with it.

[12:56] Stephanie: Can we talk about boundaries?

[12:59] Marcus: Boundaries, sure.

[13:02] Stephanie: I’m just thinking that I’ve had conversations with people in the last week or so who are constantly giving empathy with people who are being vulnerable with them. Sometimes people helpers can fall into an almost a savior complex of you know, they need me, or how can I help?

[13:28] Marcus: It creates what we often call compassion fatigue, and that is, I’m just worn out from constantly having to be there for this person. That’s not the same thing as being an empathetic person. So the best way that I’ve heard boundaries explained to me was  the purpose of a boundary is to make sure that I’m going to be happy to see you when we’re together.

[13:55] Stephanie: Yes.

[13:56] Marcus: Right. So let’s just say as a pastoral counselor you just start with the obvious. Like, if I’m going to the bathroom, I’m not going to be really happy if you show up and want to talk to me about your problems. There’s a boundary there. If I’m in bed with my wife, I’m not going to be real happy if you walk in the room and want to start talking. There are obvious boundaries that are there.

So what we’re doing is we’re just extending that out. These boundaries exist partly so that you can be confident that when it’s your time, I am all there for you. You can count on the fact that I’m going to be happy to see you. One of the reasons when we don’t do that is out of fear that we’re going to lose the whole relationship. And so the opposite of the boundaries is codependency.

[14:43] Stephanie: Well I think it’s so important to keep our eyes on Jesus and to recognize just like you always say, “There’s only one wonderful counselor and it’s not me.” At the end of the day we are called to walk alongside people and to help people, but we are not their saviors. We are not the person who is going to fix it if we just show them enough empathy, enough compassion, enough whatever.

[15:11] Marcus: I’ve known people like this too and I’ve struggled with it a bit in my own life. I say a bit facetiously, I’ve struggled with it a lot in my own life. One of the problems I had when I was a pastor was that people would call and want to talk in the evening, and I would lose family time because I didn’t put up a boundary and reschedule for it. I felt like it was my job to stay on the phone with them until they felt completely better.  I was actually damaging other people in order to help them. In the end I was just creating a codependent situation where I couldn’t be okay until they were okay, and they couldn’t be okay without me.

In the long run that was not a good scenario. So when we talk about empathy, boundaries and empathy are perfectly compatible. Like, if it’s a true emergency, that’s one thing. But what people define as an emergency in most cases is that “I can’t handle the emotions I’m feeling right now, so this is an emergency.”

Well that isn’t technically an emergency, we can wait and talk about that later. It’s a good thing to bring up because those things are not incompatible. In fact, the reason for boundaries is to make sure that I can be fully empathetic when I need to be.

[16:29] Stephanie: And maybe we should address one on one connection versus, a group connection.

[16:38] Marcus: So we are talking about primarily the individual connection. I remember talking to Amy Brown about this and she was trying to help me understand how they measure certain things. For those who don’t know Amy Brown, she was the creator of the Journey Group curriculum that Deeper Walk promotes and publishes.

And in these  journey groups they had two extremes that we were trying to avoid. One is people not talking, not sharing, and not being vulnerable about their emotions. The other extreme  for instance, was in a mixed group and guys coming in talking about their p*rn addiction with women who had sexual trauma in their past. That’s not a good combination.

How do we make this a safe place for everybody to talk about their emotions, without getting so into it that we’re traumatizing everybody left and right? And so part of it takes some leadership in the group setting to kind of pave the way for this is how deep we want to go. If you need to go deeper than this then there is a place for that, but not right here. We’ll deal with that in another place, in another setting.

[17:49] Stephanie: Too many things to talk about and not enough time. Let’s talk about the three levels of connection, or the three up, three down.

[17:57] Marcus: Okay.

[17:59] Stephanie: When you’re in a group setting and you’re building connections with people what are some good strategies?

[18:04] Marcus: So let me start with the idea behind the strategy of three up and three down. Most people who are really struggling with resilience and bouncing back from things are also struggling with isolation. Those things routinely go together. And so part of this is how do you help somebody who is living in isolation and who has maybe not had good relational skills modeled to them. They do not have a clear image in their mind of how they create belonging in new situations? What do they do?

Again, I’m going to refer to Jim Wilder on this because I learned it from him. He said that he would encourage people to do a couple of things. One of them is a three up, three down strategy. And that is no matter how low you are or how broken you may be and feel, there is always something that you have of value to offer.

And it might just be a smile, it might just be a word of encouragement, or something. But the idea is to have three people downstream, three people you’re feeding into. It doesn’t mean you have to be mentoring them and sharing life changing insights, but that you are just an encouraging, joyful, presence in their life.

And in the same way we need three people upstream from us, those people who are having a positive input into our lives. Again, they don’t have to be in depth mentors, just somebody who’s having a positive role and input into our lives. So where do you even find these people, is the next thing. Start looking at this in daily, weekly, and monthly categories and say, “Who do I see every day anyway? How can I inject a little joy into that relationship? How can I bring them a smile?”

Who do I see every week that if I gave it a little thought, I could think of a way to brighten their day and add joy to their lives? Who do I see every month? And by thinking through those categories most of us do see people, we just haven’t thought in terms of trying to develop a level one connection.

Because sometimes we’re so desperate for level two and level three connections, that we ignore the level one connections that are available, and that in and of itself is helpful. Like, if we have enough of those level one connections that does help us with our capacity. It does help us with our bounce and then eventually we gotta find somebody who can go to level two and three with us.

[20:32] Stephanie: Well seeds start small. So it’s very rare that two people meet and they just have an instant connection and they’re just instantly best friends. And you know that sometimes that happens, but on the whole you know, instant love is a trope and is hated on for a reason.

[20:47] Marcus: You are crossing over to the novel writing side of you.

[20:51] Stephanie: When you talk about three up, three down, I think of it in terms of three levels and in terms of peers as well. Peers can be up and down from you depending on your skill sets.

[21:12] Marcus: Yeah, they definitely can. And so when you think about it, generally when we have the most resilience, it’s when we are in a group that we are happy to be a part of. We are with the people we know and they know us. And that gives us a sense that we’re never in anything alone. That is a huge part of resilience and capacity and that’s why we made connection such a big part of resilience. And again, we could do a whole course on this, one short podcast isn’t enough to do justice.

[21:48] Stephanie: We try to cram a lot in here but there’s a lot.  So how can we be intentional about connecting with people in life giving sustainable ways beyond smiling?

[22:03] Marcus: Honestly, this is where CAKE comes in, the acrostic CAKE from the book. Be curious, show appreciation, be kind, and make eye contact. I don’t know if you ever just go into a coffee shop, right? It’s amazing how many people won’t look you in the eye when they’re taking your order and the people who do.

If I show a little curiosity, right. I try to be curious about neutral things. You have to be careful what you’re curious about. But I’ll be curious about tattoos, or about a new nail job, or about something like that. It’s amazing how they’ll light up like somebody noticed.

And so you’re looking for ways to be kind, to make eye contact, and just passing on that little bit of joy,  just in that little 32nd interaction. I remember on Valentine’s Day not too long ago I went to pick up food from a restaurant and clearly the people were overwhelmed. And this young lady was there with stacks of to go orders next to her. And it was a high end restaurant, but people were just mean to her all night long because of this or because of that.

And so I had a chance to be a little curious. How has your night been? I imagine it’s not been easy.? And she just went on, that was all she needed, she told me about five stories. And by the time my food was ready to go she was thanking me profusely and saying her whole night had turned around.

And all I did was be curious and kind and made eye contact. I saw her, it took five minutes and her whole evening was turned around and then I left. And here I am a year later and I still remember it because it brought me joy to bring her joy.

[23:43] Stephanie: Yeah and I would just add onto that, kind of where my brain was is that (myself included) a lot of people who sometimes, especially in a new environment, will say, “There’s no community here.” Or it’s hard to build a community and we’re not going to where the community is. So if you’re not going to where the people are or inviting people over or doing something to actually have the community, it’s a common sense thing. Sometimes we need to remember that dose of common sense of yes, go to that game night or go to chapel.

[24:21] Marcus: You actually have to put yourself in an environment where there are people sometimes, that is true. And for some people that’s really scary because they’ve gotten burned in situations like that before. The other part that goes with this is a lot of us are looking for someone to provide belonging for us. And where we’re trying to put the focus here is the ability to develop belonging wherever I go, it is actually a skill set that we can learn. There are some people who don’t worry about moving to a new city. They don’t worry about taking a new job because they know they have the skillset to make friends.

They know they can connect with people. They know how to build belonging. There’s others who go places and wait and wait for somebody to build belonging for them. And so we have to start where we are. But the goal is to learn some of those skills that go into how to start establishing and creating community.

That’s why we teach CAKE. It’s why we teach the three up, three down. That’s why we teach being intentional about these things, spreading joy wherever we go and trying to make people’s problems smaller. There are a whole lot of skill sets that go into this that we can use to begin learning how to grow belonging, even if somebody isn’t inviting us into it.

[25:37] Stephanie: Very good. I’m so glad you came back around to that, that’s so important. Hey, next week we are going to continue our conversation about connecting with people with an in-depth look at the tool VCR. But for now, any final thoughts on the episode?

[25:53] Marcus: Well, you know I think back to times when I’ve really struggled. I think back to times when I was really dealing with anxiety and how helpful it was at times just to be in the same room with somebody else.  And you think about that and you extrapolate that out, we can borrow the resilience of other people sometimes just by being in the presence of somebody who isn’t stressed out.

And if I can get my relational circuits on and connect with them relationally so I can get into the higher levels of my brain, that can help me bounce back. Part of what we’re talking about is I don’t want to get stuck in the non relational part of my brain. I got to bounce back and return to joy by getting back to those higher level functions. So sometimes just being curious with other people and being relational with other people can actually help me with my own emotional state, because it’s getting me back into that part of my brain.

[26:50] Stephanie: Very good. Thank you so much and thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a nonprofit organization and we partner with people like you in order to do what we do. Some are on the trail with us as official Trailblazers who commit to donating $25.00 or more per month. Because of our Trailblazers we are able to provide free or discounted resources like this free podcast, or our video streaming service the Learning Library Basic.

Also the free January conference where John Eldredge from Wild at Heart just joined dad to speak about emotional resilience. If you missed it you can catch the recordings on our website. So as we close out today we invite you to consider becoming a Trailblazer. You can do this very simply by visiting our website, https://deeperwalk.com/trailblazers/.

If you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the Deeper Walk on The Trail podcast and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next week..