34: Resilience: VCR

[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 34. We’re continuing our discussion of connecting with people with the tool VCR.

Hello, my Father.

[00:27] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be with you in your home turf here in Kentucky.

[00:32] Stephanie: Indeed. It’s always a delight to have you and mom in my space, in my area and I can take you to my favorite places here.

[00:39] Marcus: And for those of you who can’t see this beautiful picture, she’s got a lovely princess couch that she’s sitting on and a bookshelf full of novels. Next to it are all these really deep biblical studies books. Right. You are starting to have a better library than me, this is impressive.

[01:00] Stephanie: Yes. Depending on which bookshelf you’re looking at you might think oh man, all she cares about is this, because that whole bookshelf is full of that topic or fiction or whatever. But yeah, I have many bookshelves, I am very blessed. And this couch was a hand me down from one of my aunts. Yes I’m very blessed, it’s very fun, and yes, thank you for being here. So today we are talking about an important tool that I’m looking forward to getting into, what it is and what it isn’t. Also some stories maybe of when you’ve used it. So this tool is not for watching videotapes.

[01:42] Marcus: Right and that’ll make more sense when you hear the tool, right?

[01:45] Stephanie: Yeah, it’s VCR.

[01:47] Marcus: Yeah, so you know VCR. I’m trying to remember, you were a little kid when those things were around.

[01:52] Stephanie: I remember VCR’s. Yeah, I remember winding back cassettes.

[01:57] Marcus:  I remember when you were little mom and I would have date nights and we would go get vhs tapes from the grocery store, and give a couple of them to the babysitter. Yeah, it’s been a long time since that was a thing.

[02:14] Stephanie: Yeah. Or having to sit and rewind it. Yes, I said the wrong word. I also remember cassette tapes, but yes vhs tapes. Anyway, VCR the tool is all about?

[02:30] Marcus: Is validate, comfort, and recover. I first learned about this tool when I was in Colorado and Brenda and I were in a car with Jim Wilder and his wife Kitty, who has since passed away. We were just looking at the mountains and having a good time together. But I asked him a question about something and he told me about an organization that was called, I believe it was VCR or something along those lines. And the idea was that you would call in for help, and they would have two people on the phones. One person, who their only job was to validate the emotions they were hearing from you. And the other person, their only job was to offer comfort.

And what they found was even those people who had zero skill at validating and comforting themselves to recover from their upsetting emotions, after a month or two of doing this they were beginning to develop the skill for themselves. And within three months most of the people didn’t have to call back anymore. They had developed this internal capacity to validate their own emotions, comfort themselves, recover, or what we might call return to joy.

[03:45] Stephanie: Yeah. So it’s a really helpful tool for both being able to work through an issue yourself and recognizing what emotions you’re feeling. Taking yourself through VCR and also relationally with other people. Not just through counseling but also in day to day relationships, I know it can be really helpful. So let’s dig into it. Actually, before we dig into that, could you give us just one quick story of a time when you used it?

[04:16] Marcus: Well, you know, your mom would say that learning about validation was the most important tool in our marriage history. Right. Because when you validate emotions it makes the other person feel seen and heard. And the goal when you’re trying to validate somebody’s emotion is to get them to nod their head and say, “Yes, that’s how I feel. Yes, you’re correct and that is what’s going on right now.” One of the things I learned about it was that you don’t have to agree that they should be feeling that way, that’s not the point. You’re just acknowledging that this is the starting point of where they’re at. So we do it all the time.

[04:58] Stephanie: The one that comes to my mind if you’re searching for a story, is when you were on a live radio program and you’d write VCR at the top of the page so that you would remember.

[05:08] Marcus: Yeah, now I remember. First time I was on a national radio program doing a live call in, I wrote VCR at the top of the notepad. To remind myself that before you start solving the problems these people bring up on live radio, validate the emotion that you’re hearing first. I remember one lady who called and we were on a spiritual warfare topic and I had said something about spirit guides. And this person was like, well spirit guides are good I’ve got spirit guides and they’re really helpful. And so the temptation is to just go, no spirit guides are demons, and there’s only one spirit guide, the Holy Spirit.

But I remember you validate first. And I said, “Well it sounds like you’re very spiritual, that spiritual things are really important to you, that this means a lot to you and you have  found a lot of comfort from this.”  And she’s going, “Yeah, it’s been a very comforting thing.” So now that she feels seen, we can go to, but from a biblical perspective, there’s really only one spirit guide. So that was the direction it went and it was a very helpful tool to be able to do that. In fact, I got feedback afterwards that they were like, wow, you really handled these callers really well. And that was kind of the secret sauce behind what was going on with VCR.

[06:34] Stephanie: Very good. So now with that kind of complete picture in our head, let’s dig into validation. So what it is, what it isn’t. So like you said, “You don’t have to believe that the person should be feeling that emotion in order to validate it”

[06:52] Marcus: Yeah. So another example of this is parents and kids and we do this all the time. So if your child comes in and they have just stumbled and fell and they think they’re dying, right? Ah, my world’s falling apart. You don’t have to agree like, “Oh no, you’re dying your world’s about to end.” You don’t have to agree with all of that in order to go, “Wow that must be really painful and this has got to be really scary”. And they’re like, “Yeah painful and scary.” And the goal is to get them nodding their heads and going, yes, you see me you’re correct. So this is where it starts. And every parent kind of knows that you’re not always going to agree that they should be feeling this way. Parents with teenage kids sometimes get hung up on this  like, why are they such drama queens? Why are they such drama kings?

And so they want to just shoot down the emotion or they want to fix the problem really quickly. And what we’re saying is take the time to validate the emotion and let them know this is what you’re feeling. You’re feeling betrayed, you’re feeling this is hopeless, you’re feeling absolute despair and you’re doing it in a very non sarcastic way. So we tell people validation really has two core elements to it. You have to accurately name the emotion they’re feeling and you have to accurately name how big it is. I think about the conversations you see in movies and tv shows between parents and their teenage kids where they sometimes miss completely where they’re at.

A kid will be feeling despair and fear and they’ll say, “Why are you so angry?” And I was like well that’s not validating if you misidentify the emotion. If you say, “Why are you so angry,” when they’re just a little bit miffed, that’s not validating the emotion. You have to be correct on what the emotion is and how big it is. And it gets a little more complicated when you think that sometimes people can be feeling a mix of emotions. And it’s like, “You’re a little bit angry here aren’t you?  But you’re also feeling some shame I think, am I right on that?” And so you’re pushing in. So this can be a conversation as well as you are trying to make sure you’re pushing into understanding what exactly is the emotional state that they are in.

[09:19] Stephanie: Yeah. You are not telling somebody what they are feeling. You are figuring out what they’re feeling. You’re not imposing an emotion on someone.

[09:32] Marcus: Exactly. And that’s why the goal is to try to figure out what in fact they are feeling.

[09:40] Stephanie: You’re listening to them for their emotions and not first for their problems, but you first listen for the emotion.

[09:46] Marcus: In the book I wrote with Chris Coursey, The Four Habits of Joy Filled Marriages, we have “PLAN.” Play together, listen for emotion, appreciate, and nurture rhythm. The “L” there is listen for emotion. And we talk about this a little bit more extensively there. And it’s this idea that most of us listen for problems and as soon as we hear the problem we quit listening, and we kind of tune them out until they stop talking and we can fix their problem. And I find that people when they’re not validating make one of two mistakes. They either only listen for problems or they lead with their own emotions instead of taking the time to validate the other person’s emotion.

For example if I’m leading with my own emotion, I’m like, “You are making me so angry right now. Don’t you see what you’re doing to me, don’t you see how this is affecting me?” And especially when parents do that to little kids it’s really bad because it’s teaching the child that you need to parent me in my upsetting emotion, and not that I need to parent you in your upsetting emotion. And so it’s very important that we start with validation and that becomes a habit in the way that we interact with people.

[10:52] Stephanie: Yeah. What you were describing feels like somebody needs to be validated, but instead you’re jumping into demanding that they validate you.

[11:06] Marcus: I see parents do this with even little kids. It’s like you’re going to make me mad or don’t you see what you are doing? Don’t you see the problem you’re causing for your brother or your sister? Don’t you see? And they start with the problem. They start with somebody else’s emotions. They start with their own emotions instead of saying, “You’re really upset about this, aren’t you?” Connecting with where they are at in their emotion right now.

[11:30] Stephanie: So once we get that order correct it is good to not just leave it with validation we can move to comforting, and that can look like a variety of different ways. But why don’t you describe what we mean when we say comfort?

[11:42] Marcus: So comforting has three parts to it. The big idea here is we want to take a big problem and make it smaller or take a big emotion and make it more manageable. Either way we’re trying to make something smaller. So the first strategy for doing this is to tell people what isn’t true or what isn’t going to happen. Like, don’t worry this is not the end of the world, don’t worry I’ve been through this before. You’re not going to lose your friendship, you’re not going to lose whatever it is that’s going. You tell them this isn’t going to happen. And by doing that you are kind of chipping away from the top down and making this thing smaller.

[12:23] Stephanie: And I will just interrupt here to say like we said before with the validation. If they’re not feeling a huge emotion but you say, “Why are you so mad?”Or if somebody is not thinking, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to die”.  You don’t say, “Don’t worry you’re not going to die”, because their brain wasn’t even there, but maybe now it is.

[12:40] Marcus: Right. You’re trying to meet them in what is overwhelming them right now.

[12:46] Stephanie: So once you have accurately identified the level then you can meet them at that level and make it smaller.

[12:51] Marcus: Yeah, exactly. And you also have to be accurate about what’s not going to happen.

[12:57] Stephanie: Well this isn’t going to happen, but actually maybe it will.

[12:59] Marcus: But that’s one strategy for how you comfort and how you make this thing smaller.

[13:05] Stephanie: That would be a perspective strategy..

[13:08] Marcus: That is a type of changing perspective and actually strategy number two is to change the perspective. This is the lens through which you’re seeing it but what if we looked at it from this angle? Or what if we looked at it through this lens and have you thought about it this way? Offering somebody a different perspective can sometimes change the whole thing. I think of a guy who was either on a train or an airplane, but in the story he was behind somebody whose kids were just acting up. They were disrupting all of the passengers who were trying to have a quiet flight or a quiet train ride. And he finally said, “Why don’t you keep your kids under control?” And the guy was like, “What?” And then he noticed that they were out of control.

He said, “Oh I’m so sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. We’re flying home from my wife’s funeral right now.” All of a sudden you got a whole new perspective on what’s going on. And sometimes helping people whatever it might be, by changing their perspective it can just change their whole attitude towards something. It all of a sudden looks a whole lot smaller than it did a minute ago. So the first one is, what’s not going to happen. Second one is, let’s look at this from a different angle altogether. And then the third strategy for making the problem smaller and comforting someone is to help them develop a manageable plan. And a manageable plan is not three phases or seven parts; it can be as little as one step or it could be two or three steps at the most.

And so again you think about a parent with a kid who comes in from playing and somebody hurt their feelings or they got hurt, or they’re in some big emotion. It’s like, ah my life is ending, I hate all this. I don’t want to ever do this again. And what do you do as a parent? So you start by validating the emotion, “Okay I see how big this is and I see how overwhelming it is.” And you’re getting to the point with the goal being getting them to be  like, yes, that is what is going on.  Well don’t worry I’m sure that eventually this is going to get fixed. Here’s some ways we can look at it. What if we look at it from this angle?

And then eventually you get to the point where you’re saying things like, “So do you think you’re okay to go back outside and play?” And they might go, “No, that’s too much.”  “Well, do you think you are okay to go color in your color book for a little bit?” And they go, “Yeah I could do that.” Well at that point they have recovered, right? They have gotten to the point, not where they’re all better and everything’s all better, but they can function. They are back within their capacity and you have managed to make this smaller.

[15:48] Stephanie: The problem isn’t fixed but you have recovered from the big emotion. You’ve returned to joy enough to be yourself.

[15:55] Marcus: So there’s a lot of terms for this in various literature. Window of Tolerance I think, is Daniel Siegel’s term for this. It’s the idea that when you’re overwhelmed you’re outside of the window of what you can tolerate. And so what we’re trying to do by validating and comforting is making this fit back into that window again. Where I am not overwhelmed by this and I can actually take the next step and be okay here. That’s the whole idea behind VCR though.

[16:27] Stephanie: Awesome. And I know we’ve talked about in all of that literature sometimes VCR is recover, sometimes it’s repattern, or sometimes it’s return to joy.

[16:41] Marcus: We have changed it in different books depending on the topic or the audience. For instance, in Rare Leadership we call it repatterning. The more times that we go through the process of validation and comforting our brains learn a new pattern, of how to handle the emotion and how to handle this. And we are retraining our brain to quiet more quickly from this particular upset. And so there is a new pattern being developed. So we call it repatterning. And other times it’s recovered, in the sense of  okay, I am back within my window of tolerance. I’m back within my capacity to handle what’s going on here and to do some and be productive.

[17:28] Stephanie: And part of the repatterning would also feed into that return to joy language, because what you’re doing as you’re training yourself to do the VCR with each emotion, you’re building that joy pathway.

[17:38] Marcus: VCR is the classic pathway for how do I return to joy from something that is upsetting? And by return to joy we’re talking about from a neuroscience perspective, which is how do I go from operating in the lower parts of my brain while it’s in a cramp? How do I get uncramped and get back to having a whole brain function, back to the higher levels of my brain where my joy center is? And so we talk about return to joy because it is returning to the ability for my joy center to be in control of what’s going on and not shut down.

[18:12] Stephanie: Will this look different for different age groups?

[18:14] Marcus: Yeah, it looks different for different age groups although the process is the same. So the VCR part doesn’t change. But one of the things that’s happening is as a parent I have to do this for my infant level children, and then I am training my child level kids how to do this for themselves. And by the time they’re adults I may just have to remind them or coach them through it a little bit.  And so I still do this, your whole life you do this.

What happens is a lot of people do this without even realizing they’re doing it because they’ve just kind of developed that skill through the years. This doesn’t have to be  a rote thing. Like I got to make sure I do step one, step two, step three every time and you’re consciously thinking about it. But if you don’t have the skill then that’s what you need to do. You need to consciously think about this while you’re developing that habit until it just automatically comes out without you really even thinking about it.

[19:14] Stephanie: Well and sometimes I’m just thinking about it in the context of connecting with people. You know sometimes VCR can look in function to be a very counseling kind of feeling and sometimes that’s okay. But sometimes you can do it just naturally without turning it into a sit down session of like, let me listen to your emotions or whatever. You can do it more on the fly. Just making sure that you’re actively listening for emotions and addressing that first.

[19:46] Marcus: There are nonverbal validations. Right. And I didn’t spell this out initially and I probably should have. Sometimes you just have to make eye contact with somebody and they feel validated.

[19:58] Marcus: Yeah, we’re making eye contact nodding like, I get you, I see you. There are non verbal ways to validate people and that communicates a lot. And so it doesn’t always have to be this formal thing. The other thing is it can be very quick. I do a lot of corporate leadership training things and I tell people there that you’re not here to be a counselor to somebody. But we still use VCR in the corporate setting and the validation of a person’s emotion can be a 30 second process. But that 30 seconds is going to save you hours or days or weeks on the other end if somebody leaves feeling like you don’t get it, you don’t care, and you don’t see what’s going on. So spend the 30 seconds to a minute to validate before you go into the problem solving part of it.

[20:44] Stephanie: So people don’t think you’re just saying,”Shut up.”

[20:46] Marcus: Yeah, exactly right.

[20:47] Stephanie: “You’re stupid and here’s how I can fix your problem.” But people feel cared about and seen.

[20:52] Marcus: Exactly. So just the order is important and making sure that you get it in there at some level will make the rest of it go much better.

[21:01] Stephanie: Do you want to circle back again while we’re on validation, to talk about left brain emotions and how you can’t validate them?

[21:07] Marcus: Sure. Left brain emotions and how you can’t validate them. All right so the right hemisphere is like its own engine and the left hemisphere is like its own engine. So you can picture it this way, on the right hemisphere the neural pathways are kind of going from the bottom to the top, and then on the left they’re going from the top back down to the bottom. So there’s like this little bottom to top, cut over top to bottom, and out. So because of this what’s happening on the right hemisphere of the brain is all happening pre conscious thought. Everything that happens in the right hemisphere of my brain is operating before I even start thinking about it.

And that’s why somebody can walk into the room and you can have a reaction to their presence that you didn’t talk yourself into, it just happened. And then it gets over to the left side of your brain and now you put a narrative to it as to, why am I feeling this way? What’s going on? So just understand that when we’re talking about right versus left, the right side is largely the intuitive side that is reacting based on my life training. And then the left side is where I’m putting a narrative to it and it’s where my belief system enters into the picture. So there are emotions that are generated on the right side that are just intuitive, automatic reactions. And that’s actually what we’re trying to validate. We’re trying to validate those right hemisphere emotions.

If you get to the left hemisphere it gets harder to validate the emotion because the emotion is so tied to the narrative. And that is when somebody says to you, “My mother hates me.” So how do you validate that? You can separate out the emotion a little bit by saying, “I can see that you’re feeling really angry right now.” But if you say ,”Yeah, you’re right your mother hates you.” You have to be careful there. Validating left brain emotions is a whole lot trickier process because you can really only validate the anger that they’re feeling or the despair that they’re feeling that is on the right hemisphere of it. But if you’re not very careful about how you do that then you have to end up agreeing with them.

[23:22] Stephanie: Yeah. You want to validate the emotion and not affirm the narrative.

[23:27] Marcus: Yes. And there are people who are very manipulative and controlling about this and they’re going to get angry at you if you don’t agree with their narrative. So it can be tricky. That’s where we get ourselves in trouble.

[23:43] Stephanie: All right, well, so this has been a really good crash course in VCR, really helpful. It’s a tool we can use for ourselves and with other people. Next week we’re going to wrap up the ABC’s  of bounce by looking at connecting with God. But for now, are there any final thoughts or stories or anything you want to give on VCR?

[24:04] Marcus: Yeah. The classic story that always comes to my mind on VCR is the premarital counseling appointment where we had a young lady and her fiance. They were talking about their argument over whether to build the house they were going to move into before the wedding or after. And it was just one of those classic things where before the argument they were holding hands, sitting close together, and just oozing joy.

As this conversation went on they stopped holding hands, they moved away from each other and the joy just left the room. And so I had them practice just listening for the emotion this time, don’t listen for the problem, and try to tell the other person what emotion that you hear them expressing. And the first time we went through it the husband to be, bless his heart, he just totally missed the emotion.

She was afraid that he was going to get preoccupied and it was going to diminish the joy and the value of the wedding day itself. And he said, “Well it sounds like you’re angry.” And  it caught me off guard, I was like there was no anger in what she was saying. I told him that you’re either a really bad listener or you’re really intuitive. And he says, “I think I’m really intuitive.”

So I’m like, “All right, so where did you hear anger?” And he’s like, “She knows she’s losing this argument and she’s mad.” Well that’s completely reading into something that’s going on. So I said, “All right let’s try this one more time and this time don’t be quite so intuitive. You tell her what she thinks she’s feeling.”. And to his credit he did a great job, hit a home run. And he’s  like, she’s afraid I’m going to get so caught up in this project that I won’t be available. Now she’s crying because she feels understood and seen.

Then we flipped it around and asked him, “Why is this so emotionally important to you to do this?” And at first she didn’t think there were any emotions to it. But as they pushed in and asked a few questions it came out that he knew how proud his dad would be if he had a house built for his new wife. And now everybody’s crying, I’m crying, they’re crying. We hadn’t even gotten to the comfort part yet but just through the validation process everybody felt seen and they felt heard. And now all of a sudden solving this problem became a whole lot easier. And the rest of that story is they waited till after the wedding to build the house and they’re still happily married.

[26:44] Stephanie: Very good. Well, thank you for sharing my father and thank you all for joining us on the trail today. Deeper Walk International is a non profit 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, and our video streaming The Learning Library Basic.

Also, like the free January conference where John Eldridge from Wild at Heart just joined dad to speak about emotional resilience. And if you missed it you can catch the recording at 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 like and subscribe to The Deeper Walk podcast and share with your friends.

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