A Volley from the Canon, Number 102 Chronic Anxiety

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 102

LEADING IN THE CHURCH DURING TIMES OF CHRONIC ANXIETY

Summarized from a presentation made by The Rev. Doug Hester,
The Episcopal Network for Stewardship Conference, Camp Allen, Texas, June 2, 2011

Rapid change causes anxiety, at various levels, according to the type and severity of the change. Very rapid changes, in many areas of life, affecting people in ways they consider to be important, and over prolonged periods, cause a condition of Chronic Anxiety, which affects different people in different ways. Anxiety pervades the entire family system like a combustible gas, but it manifests itself most acutely in the most vulnerable, the most dependent, and the most responsible persons in the group. Only a small spark is required to set off an explosion of emotional reaction. In the church, we live in the “splash zone” of life (like the first rows at Sea World). We are going to get wet! Anxiety in the home spills over inevitably (and unconsciously) into church life.

Over twenty years ago, Edwin Friedman, founder of Family Systems Theory, said (still true), “We live in a seat-belt society that is more focused on safety than adventure. A pain-relief society.” Evidence: drug culture, prescription drug abuse, constant TV ads on pain/symptom relief, gated communities, home security systems, phobia of strangers, general fear and distrust—all are symptoms of the chronic anxiety of our society.

Other evidences:
• Quickness to blame, with loss of integrity/ accountability. Someone else is always at fault. Much of this is scape-goating, fixing blame on a convenient target. In the church, this target is often a clergy leader.
• Active triangles. Instability of two-person relationships due to lack of self-individuation (i. e., one does not talk to the person with whom one has an issue, but talks to others about them).
• Automatic reactivity. One has to respond, to do something. (Often, the best response is to do nothing.)
• Loss of playfulness. Everything is serious. As a result, leaders become less resilient. Under constant pressure, they break down and give up. The best-qualified leaders decline to serve.
• Over-focus on togetherness, with a herd mentality. Leaders become indecisive, just want to keep the peace. There is the illusion that we all have to stay together. Fear of losing anyone, even the destructive ones, leads to “peace-mongering.”
• Adaptation to immaturity. We let the least mature people set the agenda, fearful of losing them (or their financial support).
• Desire for quick and easy answers. Fundamentalism in religion, reductionism in science.
• A focus on playing it safe rather than adventure or creativity.
One way we respond unhelpfully is to focus on placating the acting-out individual, the one most dramatizing the anxiety in the system. Therefore, we put our greatest resources in the ones who are least likely to benefit. We have an “unreasonable faith in reasonableness.” We try to use logic and information to convince the disruptive person to calm down. But you can’t reason (left brain) with emotion (right brain), and even less with “reptilian brain,” the lower, instinct function!
Chronic anxiety causes regression to “reptilian brain” function. It manifests itself in “toxic behaviors,” such as: 1) lack of self-regulation, 2) being “perpetually invasive” in the group, and 3) invulnerability to insight. Leaders must impose appropriate behavior limitations, since the acting out person is unable to do so.

Some Family System principles that may be of help in dealing with Chronic Anxiety in Congregations:

1) The system will always return to its original shape unless the emotional relationships change among the various relations and triangles involved. (You can remove a malignant tumor, but you don’t thereby remove the malignant process.) Focus on one-to-one relationship building helps reduce the triangling, among those who are willing to try.
2) Togetherness in humans happens naturally. If it is not happening, there is a problem! But trying to force it by making the togetherness itself the goal is counter-productive. This false togetherness is coercive and fake, and it doesn’t work, anyway. We have to give people the freedom to leave us if we want more, especially the healthier ones, to choose to stay with us.
3) A system, even the church, cannot tolerate continuous destructive behaviors. We have to set clear limits, and we have to enforce those limits. Otherwise, all abandon the ship, healthiest first!
4) Anxiety is “serious.” Anxious people are serious. One way to reduce anxiety in a system is to be, as a leader, less serious.
5) Sometimes, the best reaction to a situation is to do nothing!
6) Creativity is more important than knowledge. (Listen up, you who want to cut arts programs from schools!)
7) Lead by the nature of your presence—by who you “be” rather than by what you know.
8) People can hear you only when they are moving toward you, emotionally. If pursued, they distance themselves.

Hester pointed out that, in a chronically anxious congregation, a predictable response is that the vestry becomes very concerned about how the clergy spend their time, and they want to receive reports documenting the clergy schedule. They also have concerns about retaining members and reclaiming lost ones: the task of visiting the “lost sheep,”—often those run off by the dysfunction of the system-- is generally assigned to clergy as well, along with blame for the loss of any sheep. Though every group naturally sheds some members, if you first fix the system, the hemorrhage stops.
His suggestions for leader responses include: 1) Avoid “peace-mongering.” Differences of opinion are natural and healthy. Don’t try to agree with everybody, but value everybody’s input. 2) Try to “imagine the unimaginable.” Unleash creativity. 3) Develop a mission statement for your professional life, and one for your personal life—each four words or less! Use these to help remain centered. 4) LIGHTEN THINGS UP! Anxious people are very serious. A lighter tone reduces anxiety (first, in the leader, making better leadership more possible!)

Next: Part II, The Paradox of Seriousness