Latest / Church Staff Book Club / Get Healthy by Facing Your Shadow
Transcript
- Jonathan Malm: You cannot become self-aware by yourself. Hey, welcome back to the Church Staff Book Club. My name is Jonathan Maul. And I'm Jason Young. And we are in chapter two, week two of looking at this book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Peter Scazzero. Last week was honestly a fun conversation. It was. I feel like it was a lot of really good stuff that we talked about, but also a lot of really good stuff in the book. The point of this podcast is that we want to be able to learn together. You can read a book by yourself, you can listen to an audio book, a podcast by yourself, but when there's a community of learning that happens, there's just more you get out of it. You see things in a way that, okay, that person unlocked something in me that maybe the book wouldn't have unlocked. So that's our hope with this podcast. Whether you read along with us or whether you just listen to the podcast, we'll kind of talk about the book, summarize generally the concepts in it, and hopefully expand it. apply it, all of that stuff. this book, this chapter rather, chapter two is about facing your shadow. Jason, do you want to talk about that? Yeah. So we're talking about, ⁓ the author invites us and really we're inviting you to really look at the most. hidden parts of who we are, maybe the most difficult task of leadership. it's okay, what are the parts we'd rather ignore? So what are the parts that shape us? What are the parts that drive us? What are the parts of our lives that leak into our leadership that we may or may not notice? More may not notice. And so he calls it the shadow. And so we'll unpack what is the shadow? How do we... work through the shadow, what does that look like? But this can be difficult because these are not the things that we get up every day excited to talk about, but essential to talk about. Yeah, after reading the chapter, this one quote, not from the book, but a quote that I always hear stood out to me. It's, cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. The cave you fear to enter. this is, mean, and he kind of talked about this. We're afraid to... figure out what that shadow is, we're afraid to address that shadow, but that might be the very thing that unlocks emotionally healthy leadership or more effective leadership for you. So I thought that was really good. think ⁓ the shadow for me, kind of what I got from this chapter, and he really tapped on it a lot, is the idea that it's something from, typically from your family system growing up. It's typically some sort of unhealthy behavior you learned, usually from coping from. unhealth in your leadership. I don't know, my wife and I, we've been going counseling, we lost a baby a couple years ago and we went to counseling just to kind of go through it together, to grieve to it together. But then we, as counseling should do, we got into other parts of our life. It wasn't just about the grief, right? And it was so interesting to see, you know, as shallow as it was because couple counseling is hard to get really, really deep because, you know, there's just two people talking versus one. but the things that are in our families that cause us to be the certain ways that we are. And I have a great family, she has a great family. We have very healthy functioning families, right? But there's still stuff that we learned that cause friction in our relationship, my wife and I, because we just operate differently or we operate with a little bit of unhealth in this one area because of something. ⁓ For me, tend to just kind of like, I mean, maybe this is just a white person too. for something too is I just tend not to ⁓ address problems like the elephant in the room. I'm like, ⁓ everyone can see the elephant. We just don't need to talk about it, right? I am happy to leave the elephant alone and not address it. And my wife, who is Hispanic, she's like, no, we gotta address that elephant. gotta take it out. And she almost addresses it too harshly, right? She's like, we gotta beat that thing to a pulp. I'm like, it's like. But when we take that into leadership, when I take that into leadership, I'm not willing to address the elephant in the room. That's actually a very unhealthy thing. And I've had to do some uncomfortable rather things in leadership ⁓ because I know that if I don't address the elephant, it's actually a very unhealthy thing. Yeah. Yeah, you bring up a topic. So we're talking about the shadow and you said something about families, which we'll unpack a bit when we talk about genogram and like, what you can do with that as a tool. We all have this stuff. So think about like untamed emotions. Think about, know, unconscious motives. Think about ⁓ less than pure thoughts that influence how we lead. So there's this question I use when I work with leaders or groups of leaders. And it's just like, what's something from your childhood that shows up in adulthood? Right? You know, whatever. We don't usually address that, right? Like I don't think about like the kid who bullied me in fifth grade in any way affecting my leadership, but it can. it can. And so of course, when I ask a question, people laugh and I'm like, I know, I know it sounds like therapy. In fact, this whole chapter felt like therapy, honestly. It really did. Yeah. I want to show you this thing. So my dad got me this last year, but it's this guy taking notes, sitting on like a therapy chair, asking questions and it plays these different voices and ask these different questions. And so this chapter may feel a little bit more therapeutic cause you're like, ⁓ we're going back there, but think about this, think about this. We're not, there could be, you know, some elements of sin, right? Could be, could be, but primarily what we're talking about are, are there hidden wounds? Are there? protective patterns that we want to carry or don't want to carry, but we do, right? Because they protect us from something. They're familiar to us. They're comfortable, whatever. And these things formed long before we ever became a leader, long before we ever became part of a church staff, long before ever ⁓ those roles. But they've shaped us. So what from our childhood shows up in our adulthood, That's really what we're talking about. So you say, well, how do I figure those things out? Are there some tools, et cetera? Yes. So Jonathan, let me ask you this question. why, and this sounds like a simple question, but why is it so easy for leaders, mean, including myself, to not see their own shadow? You know, whenever not trying to get too personal with some stuff my wife and I working on, right? Like, you know, there's some things that I've had to, with my parents, just kind of accept, you know, for 20 years or whatever, growing up in their house, there were certain things that I just became, know, I just, okay, this is how we function as a family, right? Like I maybe felt it when I was 16 and addressed it. Maybe we had like a family meeting whenever we were six, I was 16. But at some point I'm like, you know, this is just the way it is, right? And so there becomes this sort of survival mechanism where you're like, this is just the way that things are. ⁓ The way you see the world is that way. The way you interact with people is that way. And you just accept it. partially because you can't do anything about it. Whenever you grow up in that family, if you're gonna survive in that family, you just kind of have to adapt, right? So you adapt to create sort of like a rut, like a path of least resistance to get through this family obstacle or this family struggle or whatever. And again, my family was wonderful. So, and that's often, I don't want to address that like maybe that was unhealthy because my family is wonderful. My wife even makes a joke that like, she's like, you have Billy Graham. And then you have Rick Maul. She's like, he's a wonderful family, right? Like my dad is, we were missionaries, we were pastors, we helped a ton of people, really wonderful family. So it is hard to, if you have a really toxic family, like, yeah, my family was trash, but sometimes you don't necessarily even wanna address that. So I'm on the opposite side where I sometimes don't even wanna address the fact that, there's some unhealthy behaviors that happen in our family. And here's the reality, there will be unhealthy behaviors that my son and daughter. have to unpack, right? Like that is the reality. We're flawed people. It doesn't mean we're bad people. It means we're flawed people, right? So I think that's part of it. It's just we get into this 20 year pattern of sitting in this rut of this path of least resistance. And it's just the way that life has functioned for 20 years. So how are we going to now dismantle that since it's been serving us for 20 years? I think that's what I would say. Yeah, I think it's a great answer. And I have a follow up question, but I want to make this comment that pairs with what you just said. I think this is true. So I'm working this out real time. I love these conversations. This is again how we write books. I like it. Yeah, I'm working this out in real time, but I wonder if sometimes we use the shadows and we make them strengths. Oh, a hundred And so when they look like strengths, we... to a label to them that they're good. Or it's giving us something good. So it's a strength, not paying attention to the unhealth behind the curtain. We just see what we present on stage and we become good at it. ⁓ so, yeah, sometimes like I think about this, which leads me to the question, what do you think about this? So we got the shadow, right? So we're talking about patterns, thoughts, untamed emotions, things that were formed in us long before we ever maybe we're in a church staff role, leadership role, right? So we've got all these things typically from our familial settings ⁓ upbringing. How does the shadow show up differently under stress versus an everyday leadership when maybe things are calm and chill? You know, one of the things I talk about whenever it comes to ⁓ think we talked about this in Don't Burn Out, Burn Bright is unhealed wounds in your past will get poked by things that look like the same thing, but are not the same thing. So for instance, I think about this all the time, I left a church growing up as a pastor's kid, anytime someone left a church, it hurt me. I felt personally rejected. I felt like they rejected my dad. It was very painful, right? So when it came to this point in my life where I was having to leave a church, I had to unpack all these things like, am I a bad guy? Because when I was a kid, anyone who left my church was the bad guy. Am I being the bad guy now? And so I had to realize, okay, maybe I'm not the bad guy. So maybe all of those times that people left, they weren't actually doing anything to me, but I associated it with the most painful person that left. That one person that left that, you know, re-tavic on our church, re-tavic on my dad's ministry. Every time that someone left, that pain point was poked. even though they weren't wreaking havoc, but I felt that same thing, right? And so I could then cast them as the villain, even though they were just doing what was right for their family, right? Like they felt like God was leading them somewhere else. Like it was not a bad thing. I think that's what happens in our leadership where some pain point gets poked by something just, it feels familiar. It's not the same thing, but it feels familiar enough. They were like, ⁓ there it is. And we react sometimes with, you know, maximum aggression. Sometimes with our, you know, sometimes we, we, we, ⁓ We close in on ourselves. Sometimes we get silent. Jason and I, were talking about a situation with you where you got silent over something that happened. know, whatever it is, whatever our reaction is, the fight, flight or freeze, right? We react with that. And then the more stressful it is, the more aggressive that response is going to be. Yeah. Yeah. I when you think about, we've talked about this in other episodes, when you think about the construction of the brain, you know, you got this brain stem. If you were to look at a profile view and something happens, that poke, that thing that whatever it is, somebody's words, the way they look at you. It's the lizard brain, right? That's the like, the not scientific term, but that's often used. Right, right. When you think about the limbic system, right? It's where something comes in the brain stem and it hits that limbic system first. we, it's the kind of emotional housing center, if you will. And so we want to respond in such a way. And so when the pressure's all the more, we tend to default to that versus maybe what, we wouldn't do if things were calm. In fact, if you were to unpack, and we referenced this in an earlier episode, emotional intelligence, part of that, which is simply recognizing, understand, and managing your own emotions, but also being able to read the room and navigate relationships in a healthy way. Well, one part of that, the first part of that is self-awareness, right? And in fact, there's been a number of people that have written on self-awareness, but really self-awareness is the hinge. on which the door swings because if you can't lead you well, you can't lead them, whoever them they are, you can't lead them well. And so in this leading yourself well is what we're talking about. Like how aware are you because the reality is this, what you refuse to see will eventually lead you. What you refuse to see will eventually lead you. ⁓ I will also say, even if you do see it and don't do anything about it, It will still lead you. In fact, let me give an example. So my upbringing, I was really responsible in light of the circumstances of my upbringing, really responsible, part of it's wiring, part of it's kind of how I was raised. And so if I were to ask myself the question, Jason, what from childhood do you bring into adulthood? I would say there's this aspect of responsibility. If you know anything about strengths finders, responsibility right up there for me. And when I say that you're like, That's a good thing, right? Yeah. Yes. And there was a particular situation. I was running ⁓ a particular project for a group of leaders and it was my responsibility. was my idea. was my responsibility to see it through. It doesn't mean I have to do everything, but in my responsibility, the voice I hear in my head about responsibility is yes, you do. So I remember one particular conversation. I remember where I was in South Carolina, this guy called me and he was simply checking in. And in essence, he was kind of offering help with the project. But I felt this need to defend or explain or excuse or whatever, because if I said I needed help or whatever, it would say, I'm not responsible enough. to do X, Y, and Z. And what's happening, a shadow side of responsibility is I was suffering in silence because I wanted everybody to know I'm responsible, I'll figure it out. Versus I'm responsible. And the most responsible thing right now is to invite other voices. That's right. Ask for help, asking for help is a learned skill. So this is a long story, but it's an example of when somebody was asking me they were really offering help, I got defensive. I explained and excused because of that responsible part of me and I was protecting myself. And so even though I knew it, it was still the element that was leading me because something I was still navigating. So that's just a personal illustration of like what from childhood shows up in adulthood. And so I think it's... It's important for us to be reminded that leaders, they don't act out of who they think they are. They act out of who they haven't yet seen themselves to be. But most other people already see that. They're just waiting for you to catch up. Yeah, or they see maybe the symptom and they don't see the actual root cause. have that same thing. Interestingly enough, I only have that problem when it comes to my wife. Like I have this need to be the fully self-sufficient father, husband figure. I can do everything. can, every responsibility that she has for me, I should have already anticipated it. And so I find myself saying this thing where she asks like, hey, have you filled the bottles yet? And I say, not yet. The reality is I forgot to fill the bottles. But I say not yet as a defense mechanism. And I've noticed that in the last like week that I say that, I'm like, wow, that's really annoying that I say that. because I'm trying to like, it's almost like an annoyance, like, ⁓ you haven't given me a chance to do it yet. And I'm like, I'm sorry. And I even addressed it the other day. said, I'm sorry. I don't know why keep saying not yet. I forgot. So thank you for reminding me. I'm going to do that now. And addressing that, it's been very healthy for me. When it comes to my business, when it comes to running my company, I'm like, everyone on my team knows that I'm like, not self-sufficient, not fully perfect, right? I'm like, ⁓ yeah, thank you for taking that up. I needed that, right? But for some reason, only in my... only in my marriage relationship that happens. And I don't know why that is. I probably need to go to counseling to really get to the root of that. But ⁓ I got you covered right here, buddy. Thank you. Well, after this, we'll do a session. But ⁓ there's this reality that sometimes we function in ⁓ a certain role a certain way. Yeah. And that's probably, again, seeing something in my family relationship. That is how a husband is supposed to react to. But I saw him in a professional environment where he was a different thing. Right. So there's this like. We're not fully integrated people. We are different in different scenarios, right? I think that's important to know that something that maybe serves you well in one relationship doesn't serve you well in an organizational relationship. I talk about this with my wife all the time. She sees things, she's like, ⁓ I wish I wasn't this way. She says that regularly. And I'm like, but babe, because you're that way, we get to do this. Because you're that way, you are a physical therapist. You're a doctor of physical therapy. Because you're that way, we found you're great at researching, right? So what can cause anxiety for her is also a strength. And I think sometimes, like you said, sometimes we label it as a strength and then we're not willing to address with the unhealth. I think sometimes we label a weakness and we fail to recognize the strength that it is too. That's not what this chapter is about. That was just an aside, but I think that there's value in that, that sometimes your weakness is just a really strong strength that hasn't been matured. Yeah, definitely could be. Let me ask you this. So you said, second, you said the word perfect, which generated this question. What are some common ways, here we're talking about the shadow, right? Which is untamed emotions, you know, motives, ⁓ the way we show up, who we are, hidden things, wounds, That formed Ways we respond. Yeah, ways we respond. Which comes to this question, what are some common ways the shadow shows up in leaders? We've illustrated it through some of our stories, but if we were to like kind of give some bullet points, like what are some common ways the shadow shows up in leaders? I have some thoughts, but I was just curious, like if anything comes to mind. Yeah. I mean, I can think of specific people that have done specific things. think of people who maybe won't address, again, the elephant in the room with like, You know, this person is being a drag on the organization. This person is causing trouble in the team, but I don't want to address it. And this gets even more complicated when you cloak it in Christianity, in ministry, where like, well, we can't fire that person. can't tell them that they're not, you know, they're no longer on the team, right? We can't do that, right? So there's that kind of conflict avoidance. There is the shutting down of ⁓ contrary opinions. ⁓ where anything that feels like a contrary opinion is shut down immediately and with force, maybe even aggressive force, because that is a threat to me. I think of those two things as really common in ⁓ leadership. There's also the ⁓ being nice, but actually being mean, cloaking everything in niceness, but almost to the point of like, you're actually being more harmful than if you just like told me straight out, like beating around the bush to the point of like hurting someone. I think those are the things that I see regularly in church leadership. Yeah, yeah. And I think I would add to your list, you know, perfectionism, the need for affirmation, ⁓ the pace at which you work and, you know, live and move. think those who are, they like to rescue. I think people who are controlling, who are heavy on judgmental, ⁓ kind of the way they think or maybe even respond or they judge, but they don't want it to show up. So they cover it. think about, this is an odd one maybe to say, but I think sometimes overzealousness is a way that the shadow could show up. So it's like, what's behind all of this stuff? And so maybe that's where we kind of step into, right, we've talked about like, Here's what it is. Here's how it shows up. Maybe the question is, okay, well, how do I discover it? Like, actually have some really fun idea for that. Yeah, do it. I have a friend who sends me reels all day, Instagram reels. And he sent me one the other day that I could not relate to at all. And I'm like, that might be a source of shadow for you. He sent me one where it's like, you know, that moment when your parents almost divorced at 3 a.m. And so like they're playing this skit and I'm like, holy cow, you went through that? He's like, oh, it takes me back, right? Like, obviously he's saying that as a joke, but I would say that sometimes those reels that maybe you're afraid to send to a friend or you only send to a certain friend, probably point out some things and you could even say, okay, that did happen to me. Apparently that's not a common thing. I wonder what that... made happen in my life. I wonder how I'm reacting to that now because of that sort of thing that happened in my life. He's a child of immigrants, of African immigrants. ⁓ So his parents have very strong, like you will succeed, you will achieve, right? ⁓ That's a really common thing with immigrant children of immigrants. We came to this country to give you a better life. So you will have a better life. And this what we decide is a better life for you, right? So all of those things, but yeah, I think that's, it's a silly idea, but it is one of those, like the things that you see that like, ⁓ my gosh, that was me. I thought I was the only one. Those are probably the trigger points. Those are probably the things that happened that like, okay, that's the, that's the inciting incident. Now what is the shadow that developed from that? Yeah. Yeah. Cause really what we're advocating is shadow work is not optional if you're interested in sustainable fruit. Wow. That was a really good statement. Yeah. Like this. shadow work is not optional. Unless you don't want sustainable fruit, then it is optional and do it if you want or let it just be what it is. So when I think about some like concrete ways that you can face your shadow, that we face our shadow, it's naming these feelings. You're like, Jason Young, you're the soft stuff, right? But the reason it's important is because these are part of what form us. It's the reality. You may call it soft stuff, it's fine. But it doesn't mean it's not true. In fact, there's an adage ⁓ that says, and Peter Scazzero may, he references something like this, but there's another guy in psychology, Alex Howard, that talks about this. If you can name it, you can tame it. Right? Now, one thing I do want to say is this. You do not, nor should you do this on your own. You do this in a community of trusted people, but really with the power and the person of the Holy Spirit. So we can't forget. E, and this is where a lot of pastors that I know get in trouble, is with trusted people. I know a lot of pastors that feel very lonely, especially senior leadership. They don't have trusted people. They don't have other pastors they can talk to. They are at the top of the totem pole. everyone else under them serves them and their paycheck is from them. And I can't work through this with my staff, right? I can't, maybe my spouse, can, okay. But it's so important to get trusted people. This is a segue into our resource, into our sponsor, but ⁓ there is a reality of like, get trusted people around you. ⁓ Our recommended resource is lobbylabs.co. It's something Jason and I launched. ⁓ This is the coaching community group for guest services and connections leaders. If you've ever felt like you were drowning on Sunday mornings and couldn't get up for air, this is your lifeline. This is the help. You can learn systems, you can learn from other high level leaders. ⁓ They might have already solved a problem that's stumping you. So check out lobbylabs.co, see if it's right for you. Yeah, so that's the first step that Peter says to face your shadow is tame your feelings by naming your feelings. I have a tendency not to address that I'm angry. I never want to admit that I'm angry. I'm frustrated, I'm irritated. I will never address the fact that I'm angry. And I've had to start realizing, okay, I'm angry right now. There are some times, especially, you know, any Gram 7 like I am, I don't want to address negative feelings. I don't want to address negative things or things that like, Anger was always a bad thing for me growing up. Like you can't be angry. And so I would never say, I'm not angry. I'm not angry. And my wife's like, you're yelling at me. I'm like, no, I'm not yelling. I'm maybe like adding passion to my voice and starting to realize like, okay, I am angry. It's not what I think anger looks like, but it is anger and I need to address it. Yeah. And you you can, if you're watching listening right now, there are these feelings, wheels, and you can, and what's interesting to talk about anger. there are gradients, right? So not every, it's not like it's this emotion or it's That's a good point. The extreme of each emotion is not necessarily what we're going to see coming from us. Yeah, yeah, it could show up, you know, maybe anger's over here, but frustration's over here, right? And there's a word or two in between. So there's this gradient aspect. So naming, this takes practice because you're looking for it and then you're naming it. I remember I worked with an organization for 18 months. I asked every single group of leaders the same question for 18 months, give you 20 seconds as a group, name as many ⁓ emotions as you can, right? The most, any group, and these are high level leaders, the most named across 18 months in 20 seconds, eight. Because we're not used- We're not in tune with emotions. No, we're not in tune, we're not used to naming and then what do we do? So we wanna encourage you step one. And again, we're giving you a high level capture. Another thing that Peter talks a lot about is using a genogram. You say, it genogram? You could say it either way, but I listened to the audio book and I heard genogram. So I'm gonna go with that. Yeah, yeah, you can, yeah, either way. But you can use that as a tool because what it is, and he's got some stuff on his website. ⁓ which is emotionally healthy. It's thing in social work. It's like, I looked it up. 100%. It's the starting of your genealogy and how people interacted with each other and points of conflict and yeah. That's right. Yeah, yeah. can, you know, it's a visual representation and you can look at emotional dynamics, inherited patterns, the relationships. So it gives you a visual representation. You can go online and there's some. color coded things you could do if they're deceased, it's usually an X. There's all these different things that you can do, but that's a way to at least begin to identify familial scripts or patterns, right? And then he also talks about seeking trustworthy feedback. This goes back to your comment earlier. This can be hard because you're like a struggle trusting people or maybe somebody burns where go to a counselor. Counseling is so good. Yeah, yeah, it really can. I I say this when I do work in emotional intelligence, primarily in self-awareness, you cannot become self-aware by yourself. You cannot become self-aware by yourself. You might be good, but you ain't that good, right? You need the voice and voices of other people because if you think about it, feedback in essence is a mirror and without it, then we're leading blind. Intellectually, nobody wants to do that. So I would ask you this question, know, like for you to think about like, where is your shadow shown up recently? Has it been publicly in a meeting, you know, with a volunteer you lead, with your boss from the platform, you know, has it been at home or privately with a spouse or a kid or your best friend? And you just begin what we're inviting you to do is to strengthen your notice or muscle. by notice more often what it is that you see so that you can know more strategically and intentionally what you can do. So that shadow side, the shadow doesn't eclipse the greatness and the healthy part of you because then it leads you to places you don't wanna go. Yeah, and I think it is important. You mentioned your shadow side showing up at home and I think maybe some listeners would say, okay, what does that have to do with my role in the church or my role in leadership? The reality is if things are struggling at home, you're going to carry that into the workplace. You might think you're as segmented as compartmentalized as possible, but if you're feeling the stress at home, the stress leaks into every other area. So if it's the shadow side at home that you need to address, and maybe you're wonderful at work, it's still going to benefit you. So it's worth addressing the shadow. So, and you're of time. ⁓ let me make one last comment. Yeah, one last comment. Sorry, sorry, sorry. ⁓ You just said something. And I love it. The shadow isn't your enemy. It can actually be your teacher. And as your teacher, it's calling you to be an emotionally healthy leader. is like a jujitsu, like using your enemies momentum against them, right? 100%. That's it. That's it. So just want to like slide that in right as we wrap up. Yeah, that's good. So, hey, we hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe, be sure to find us on social media, ask us questions, engage with this, leave comments if you're watching on YouTube or wherever the comments are available, but we will see you next week.