Monthly Archives: September 2021

Fun and Serious, Deep and Delightful

Katie shipped out Sorin Starts a School last week, and then the fun began.  We started receiving texts and emails from you all about reading the book for the first time.  What a joy to connect, especially about something we have anticipated sharing for so long!

The brief message from the father of a friend stood out to us.  He wrote that the book struck him as both “fun and serious,” both “whimsical” and inclusive of “faith and determination.”

This weaving of depth and delight is precisely our aim, and hearing that the book makes good on this promise fills us with gratitude.  Thank you for believing in what Katie and I made.

If you are the sort of person who shares things on the interwebs, we’d love to have you as a partner in sharing the book.  Of particular value are: 1) leaving a review here (scroll down and click on the part that says “reviews”) and 2) emailing folks you know who would delight in the book.  

Let the (serious) fun continue!

Our Defenses Affect Our Flourishing – Part I

Life presents us with conflict, stress, and change, so we develop (often unconscious) defensive habits to deal with this pain.

There is compelling evidence* suggesting that the maturity of our defenses can determine the extent to which we develop psychosocial health. 

Here are some mature defenses (articulated in the DSM-IV).

(1) Altruism – Taking action to decrease the world’s suffering

(2) Anticipation – Holding future pain in awareness (i.e. memento mori)

(3) Humor – Being able to laugh at oneself and the vicissitudes of life

(4) Sublimation – Engaging healthy, gratifying alternatives to an opportunity denied

(5) Suppression – Stoicism (i.e. “If you are going through hell, keep going.”) 

Development of these habits is not a matter of will power.  They are cultivated in the context of significant relationships, drawn out of us in empathy and safety.  

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*For more, check out Chapter 8 (entitled “Resilience and Unconscious Coping”) of this fascinating book reflecting on the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

Our Defenses Affect Our Flourishing – Part II

Here I wrote that the maturity of our unconscious defenses in the face of life’s pain contributes to our overall psychosocial wellness.

And the opposite seems true as well.  Immature defenses tend to undermine our wellness. 

Here are some common immature defenses.

Some (dissociation, fantasy, passive aggression, projection) avoid or externalize responsibility for the situation we find ourselves in.

Other defenses keep the threatening thought or feeling out of our awareness.  These include displacement (directing anger at something other than the source of the anger), intellectualization, and repression.

Awareness of these immature defenses can help us leave them behind.  To truly grow, though, we need to witness exemplars of the mature defenses as well as experience the relational support to integrate them.  

Showing One’s Face

My wife and I used to work here in downtown Cairo, Egypt.

My wife’s work was in the legal aid clinic.  She worked often with one translator, a young woman from Somalia, when preparing the cases of Somali clients.  This woman wore the niqab, so my wife had only ever seen her eyes.

Then, the day before we were to return to the US, this young woman approached my wife to say goodbye and told her that she wanted to find a place alone so that she could show my wife her face.     

There was no real privacy on the compound.  The workspace of the entire legal aid clinic was, generously estimated, about 14 feet by 24 feet, with an adjoining bathroom.  So my wife and this Somali woman went into the bathroom, saw each other face to face, and said goodbye.

Deciding to show our face to someone takes significant courage. 

How do we become people who have the desire to show our face to one another?  

How do we become someone of such love that people want to show their face to us?

Power-tropism

Plants are phototropic.  Over time, they orient themselves according to the light source in their environment, bending either toward the light or away from it.

Many people are power-tropic.  They bend toward (or away from) those that they perceive are in power, and reflexively take on (or react against) their characteristics.

Seeing this phenomenon can help us understand our own motivation, the motivation of others, and, then, how to shape culture in a just way.

A Fresh Piece of Paper

Growing up, when we (one of my siblings or I) had convinced ourselves that a homework problem had stumped us, our father would do the following.

He would bring us to his desk, turn on the desk light, give us a blank sheet of paper, and sharpen our pencil.  He would talk out the problem with us if we wanted and then (this part was key) would leave.  He showed that he trusted us to solve our own problems.   

And, surprise!  We always figured it out.

I think often about that exercise, particularly when I feel momentarily stuck.  What a gift to be given the habit of trying again, at a different angle, with a fresh piece of paper.

Difficult Conversations

One of the things that makes difficult conversations so difficult is that there are actually multiple conversations going on.  In a truly tough talk, there is probably:

1) The Feelings Conversation: Narrative spun out of the reality of how I am / we are feeling

2) The “What Happened” Conversation: Narrative establishing the facts the conflict

3) The Identity Conversation: Narrative and analysis about what this means for how I see myself / us.

If two people are stuck in different “conversations,” they can neither attend to each other nor communicate effectively. 

So, in a relationship where conflict is possible, it is an enormous help to have the ability to talk about and refer back to these three conceptual hooks before a conflict begins. (For more, check out the book on difficult conversations.)