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Wednesday 15th, March 2023
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Series – Perfect Relationship: 24 Tools for Building BRIDGES to Harmony and Taking Down WALLS of Conflict in our Relationships.
Episode 20 : Wounded Parent creating Support Group in parent and teenager relationship – How I see it – How I see it is not how it is, it is just how I see it – Episode 20
Creating Support Groups
One beneficial way for wounded parents to help each other is through the opportunity offered in a support group. Before attempting to create a support group, it is important to understand something of small-group dynamics. Become familiar with the literature about small groups.
The next step in creating a support group is to locate other wounded parents. You might ask your pastor to assist you. He probably has been counseling some. Keep your initial list small. No group should be made up of more than twelve people. At first, six or eight might be better, but do limit the group to twelve members. Beyond that number, the group becomes unwieldy. Invite some of these couples or individuals, as the case may be, to your home to discuss the idea of a support group.
Tell your own story. The others will likely identify with you readily. Explain your feeling of a sense of the need for the support a group could give. To get started, such a group could use this book as a study guide, reviewing one chapter at each meeting but letting discussion flow from the review
of the chapter.
Some ground rules need to be suggested and accepted.
1. The group will meet once a week at an agreed-on time and day, preferably during the evening so that husbands and wives who work outside the home can
attend.
2. Members must commit themselves to the group as a significant priority, and to the meeting time, allowing nothing else to prevent attendance (short of illness or an emergency).
3. The meeting place will be rotated among the homes of the members.
4. One member will be recognized as convener and presider, although this person must be careful not to dominate the group’s discussions. This person will open and close each meeting, keep the group on track, make assignments when a book is to be studied (to be read in advance), and establish the next meeting place at the end of each meeting.
5. Anything personal discussed in a group session is to be considered strictly confidential, never to be mentioned outside of the group to anyone else. Members must feel free to talk within the group.
6. Group meetings must begin on time and terminate on time (e.g., 7:00 to 9:00 P.M.). If anyone wants to stay longer, they may, but others need to feel free to leave.
7. The group will establish calendar boundaries as well (e.g., September 1 to June 1). Some flexibility needs to be allowed during certain weeks when the group will not meet (e.g., holidays, vacations, unavoidable special events).
What takes place during group meetings? Again, the group decides at its first meeting, allowing for flexibility. Here are some suggestions. Use the first couple of sessions to discuss the group’s purpose and ground rules, and to get acquainted. The sessions could be composed of a brief review of a chapter by one of the members, followed by group discussion. The questions at the end of each chapter may prove helpful for starting a discussion.
In time a trust level of some depth will probably develop within the group. How soon this develops will depend on the willingness of the members to take the risk. This could take a couple of months of weekly meetings. The deeper the
trust level, the more comfortable each group member will feel about discussing his or her family situation. As members begin to share, others will be encouraged to offer evaluation, insights, relevant personal experiences, questions and answers dealing with the point at hand, as well as personal commitments of support, encouragement, and prayer.
Some structure may be needed for group sessions. It is never out of place to open and close group sessions with prayer. If a book is being used for background reading, the first fifteen minutes of each session could be given to a review or evaluation by someone designated in advance. But the remainder of the time should be used for group discussion.
The presider needs to be someone familiar with group dynamics, who will keep the discussion flowing and keep the group on the subject, but who does not allow one or two members to dominate the group. Everyone there is hurting and wants help. Although some members may not want to participate actively at first, those with hesitations about talking should be respected but eventually gently encouraged to participate if possible. Even then, it may take some people months to open up. Be patient with them.
When a group reaches its termination date, it should decide its future. Some groups find the experience so meaningful that they continue indefinitely, terminating only during the summer months. Others feel that they accomplished their objectives and no longer meet after this date.
Beware of certain dangers in groups. Determine in advance that your group will never become a complaint session about
“what’s wrong with the church or the pastor,” a substitute for church attendance, a clique that shuts out other people from your friendship circle, a therapy group for members who have unusual emotional problems which require special medical, psychological, or psychiatric care, or an effort
to solve all the problems of all the members of the group (the group is not a cure-all for the members).
Sharing the Pain
Wounded parents can be a great help to one another. A support group is only one way to help, but a group does provide an opportunity for people to share their pain and find resources for healing. A support group is neither magic nor a complete answer to people’s problems. It should be seen only as a temporary life-support system. Eventually you have to breathe on your own.
Sharing your pain helps you to get things out into the open where you can take an objective look at them: conflicts, disagreements, expectations, disappointments, defeats, resentments, anger. Also, sharing your feelings helps you to understand those feelings by allowing other people to reflect back to you what they are hearing. You will see some things
about yourself that were hidden before you began to talk.
Art and Betty Collins joined a support group at the same time that their daughter Irene began attending an alcoholic-recovery group. As a result, several insights about themselves came to light. They realized they had been too busy to include Irene in their lives. They wanted her and yet did not have time for her. Art discovered how aloof he was from both her and Betty. Essentially a loner, Art was afraid of intimacy and expressions of affection. Betty learned of her deep feelings of inadequacy as a mother. Consequently, both parents had withdrawn from Irene, who felt abandoned to her own private world. Alcohol offered her a narcotic for the
pain of her loneliness. The Collinses gradually began to recognize the need for Irene to be included, accepted, and wanted in the family circle.
Sharing the pain also makes it easier to bear. This is not to suggest that pain should or can always be avoided. Pain is a part of life. It has its lessons to teach. But there is an eventual need for relief. While on the one hand there is a sense in which each person “will have to bear his own load (Gal. 6:5), there is also, on the other hand, the principle of
“bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2). Mutually sharing the pain of parental discouragement is one way to fulfill Christ’s law of love.
Strength in a Community of Faith
Wounded Christian parents bound together in the fellowship of a support group have a unique opportunity to provide strength for one another within their community of faith. There is strength in the shared wisdom, the shared psychological insights, the shared parenting skills, and the shared common concerns, but there is greater strength to be found in sharing your lives in a fellowship of faith.
When wounded Christian parents relate to each other in a support group as fellow Christians, praying for each other.
encouraging each other, correcting and teaching each other, an unusual strength is provided. This strength can be found nowhere else, and motivates one to grow as a Christian parent and to be the kind of parent your children need at this time in their lives.
Outside of a support group of other Christian parents, there is also strength provided through your involvement in your church, that wider community of faith. The ministry of your pastor, through both his counseling and preaching, and that of other church staff people, the church’s educational program and library resources, Bible-study classes special family-life workshops, as well as numerous involvement activities, provide spiritual resources that can strengthen your home life.
Confessional Witnessing
How you respond to a wayward son or daughter will have an immeasurable influence on numerous people: other children in the family, relatives, friends, work associates, fellow church members, possibly several unchurched people who know you, not to speak of that son or daughter gone astray.
This is a time of testing for your faith. The way you respond to disappointment as a parent will say a great deal about the nature of your relationship to God.
If you will allow God to use this situation to work through the problems you are facing, it can be an unusual opportunity for God to reveal Himself in a most powerful way to those who are watching how you respond. I have known of several wounded Christian parents who have told their stories time and again to interested people and have related
how God continued to bless within their homes. Even in the midst of seemingly tragic circumstances, God was able to bring about miracles between parents and children. People do not ignore that type of witnessing. Such shared faith is never artificial but has the ring of reality.
From Suffering to Blessing
Sometimes suffering seems pointless. A life wasted by a son or daughter appears utterly meaningless. But God is able to take suffering, heartache, pain, and disappointment and turn them into blessings. This is rarely done overnight.
We may have to look back months or years later to see what God has been doing. Yet it is the perspective of faith that enables wounded Christian parents to affirm with Paul that “in everything God works for good with those who love him…” (Rom. 8:28; italics mine).
One blessing I have already alluded to is that wounded Christian parents can many times be sources of comfort strength, and reassurance to other wounded parents. We need to remember that the God we know in Jesus Christ is the “God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we may be able to comfort those who are in affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (II Cor. 1:3-4).
God has given to each Christian the power to bless. As a matter of fact, although primitive religion has known a great deal about the power to curse, one of the unique contributions of the Judeo-Christian faith, beginning with Abraham, was the power to bless. Telling others how God has helped you through your own suffering can be an immense source of encouragement to other wounded parents.
There are several things you can do to turn your suffering into blessing. You can increase your ability to care for others by developing specific skills (e.g., being available, getting involved, communicating concern through listening and responding, reaching out to people who hurt, praying for others). You can develop a ministry of friendship. You can be a friend when a family needs a friend.”
By becoming a wounded healer, you will be pouring purpose and meaning into all that has happened to you as a wounded parent. Just be certain to unwrap and rewrap your own wounds “one at a time” so you can be ready for the moment when you will be needed by other wounded parents. Your power to bless is partially the result of the fact that you, too, are wounded. But experience has proven to me and several other wounded parents that there is an unexpected source of healing to be found for oneself in exercising this power to bless, in performing the role of the wounded healer.
Questions for Discussion
1. How do you feel when you discover other wounded
parents in your church or circle of friends?
2. What does it mean to be a wounded healer? Have you known such people?
3. If you are in a support group, how has the experience helped you thus far?
4. What is meant by a trust level? Where is this level in your group?
5. Assess the strengths and dangers of a support group. Which outweigh the others?
6. Is confessional witnessing a viable possibility for you? How can you witness?
7. What are some ways you can turn suffering into
blessing?
How I See It
How I see it is not how it is, it is just how I see it.
I recently read an article that someone wrote about me. It was scathing, slanderous, and mostly untrue. Fortunately, the person was kind enough not to use my name. When my staff saw the article, though, they were deeply offended for me. They wanted to print a rebuttal and tell my side of the story. They wanted the truth to come out. I knew it would be of no value to attempt reasoning with the writer, however; what he had written was not true, but it was all that he was able to see.
One of the most important lessons I ever learned was this: “How I see it is not how it is; it is just how I see it.” Reality is distorted by our perception. Our perception, in turn, is forged by many subjective factors, the most central being our self-worth.
We see and interpret the world around us based on how we see ourselves. People with poor self-worth interpret the information they receive in a negative way-one that tends to make them the victim.
It’s like the old joke about the guy who goes to a football game.
At the beginning of the game, he jumps up and runs angrily out
of the stadium. When his friend catches up with him, the friend asks, “Why did you leave?” The man says, “It was too painful.”
“What was too painful?” “When they all got in that little group and talked about me.”
As silly as that joke is, it is nothing compared to the bizarre reactions that people have when they falsely assume they are being attacked.
My stepfather was a very violent, insecure man. He always thought people were trying to prove he was stupid. Most of the time, when there was conflict, it began with him shouting, “Do you think I’m stupid or something?” What he never realized was
that he was the one who thought he was stupid. I witnessed a lifetime of extreme violence that was the result of his judgments.
More than once I saw him violently attack complete strangers for simply looking at him. His judgment said, “They are looking at me because they think I’m stupid.”
The more negative people’s sense of self-worth is, the more judgmental their attitude. Remember, judgment always asks why. People who feel victimized always want to know why.
Because they experience low self-worth, they always answer that question in a negative, subjective manner.
If you do not think well of yourself, you will also think that others do not think well of you. You then judge all their actions in light of this negative self-perception. If you think you are not likable, then you judge others’ actions based on that preconceived idea. If you are fearful or paranoid, you think others do things to “get” you. These negative judgments, based on your self-perception, become the reality you experience, regardless of the intentions of other people.
I See Life through My Opinions
Self-centeredness is present in every sin. Now, self-centeredness is not always the obvious “make me first” attitude. Self-enteredness simply makes self the focal point for interpreting life and its events. On one end of the spectrum, a self-centered person may be the bully who takes from others and never considers the pain he inflicts. On the other end is the person with a negative self-perception who interprets everything in light of herself. This person sees herself as the center of the world she has created, and people in her world do what they do because of her. One seems arrogant, and the other humble, but they are both self-absorbed.
When people pass a judgment or develop strong opinions, they lock themselves into selective processing. Studies show that forming strong opinions causes activity in the reticular activating system, which is located at the base of the skull. This neurological activity produces a mental state in which one can see only what he or she has predetermined. In other words, you no
longer see it how it is. Your mind selectively processes information that confirms your perception while ignoring data that is contrary to your point of view. We all have done this. We all have
looked at a label and were sure that it said one thing, only to later discover that it said something completely different.
The mind seeks equilibrium. It seeks to validate your opinions. Once you make a judgment about a person, whether good or bad, you will notice only what validates your judgment. You will interpret all the person’s actions on the basis of that judgment. For example, let’s say that you see a woman dressed in
extremely bright-colored clothes. She has bleached hair, and maybe her dress is just a little too tight. You decide she is an immoral person. That is your reasoning/judgment about why she is dressed in such a manner.
As you observe her, you see her approach several men. You notice how she stands a little too close to them when she talks.
She brazenly looks them directly in the eye. Your opinion is now confirmed. She is an immoral person-probably a prostitute- and you have seen her approaching men. But what you didn’t notice was the handful of tracts she was carrying. She was, infact, sharing her faith with people. These kinds of blind judgments happen every day and distort our experience. We overlook the obvious once we have made up our minds.
Once you pass a judgment on someone, you then experience the person and the event based on your judgment. Regardless of the other person’s intentions, your experience with him or her is based on your judgment. Remember the example in an earlier chapter of the pastor walking past you without speaking to you one Sunday morning? All he did was walk past you, but your judgment determined whether you were offended or whether it was an insignificant event. You see, the aggression we feel from others may have nothing to do with them-but it has everything to do with us. So the pastor walking by you cannot cause you pain. The judgment you pass, though, can cause incredible pain.
Your Feelings Overshadow Actual Events
In the 1970s, I was speaking to a group about starting a Christian school. I was talking about the need for parental involvement, and I used the example of a single mother who, because of her work schedule, was never able to be at home in the evening to work with her son. Consequently, he seldom did his homework and got in a lot of trouble. Eventually he had to be released from school. The lack of parental support made him impossible to help.
In the audience was a grandmother who was a major contributor to the new school and had a son who had just gone through a bitter divorce. She had a granddaughter whom she loved passionately. She was defensive and embarrassed about the divorce, and this defensiveness caused her to pass a lot of
judgments. In her mind, she thought I had said that children of divorced parents could not go to our school. She was furious. I could not convince her that I had not, in any way, indicated this. She, however, knew what she had heard. The pastor came over, politely listened to her, then assured her that she had misunderstood. “No,” she replied, “I know what I heard.” We even gave her the tape and let her listen to it. She was convinced that it had been erased from the tape. After all, she knew what she had heard.
The sad thing is, she did hear what she thought she heard. But I didn’t say it. She heard it in her own mind. Her fears made her oversensitive to anything referring to divorce. The moment I began talking about single parents, she probably passed a judgment. That judgment affected her ability to process information. Her experience was real to her, but it just wasn’t true. She never liked me after that event, and she told others what she had “heard” me say.
As far as she was concerned, she was not lying every time she repeated that story. That was the way she had experienced the event. You see, you never remember what actually happened you remember how it made you feel. How many times have your kids said, “You were yelling at me”? You weren’t yelling at them, but that is what they experienced.
The misunderstanding doesn’t stop there, however. Every time you remember something, your experience of the event may change. Not only do you remember how it made you feel, instead of how it actually happened, but your memory changes every time you think of it again. The next time you tell the story, you remember it the way it made you feel the last time you remembered it. This is how most exaggerations grow.
Repentance Brings a New View
Our minds will allow us to see something from a different viewpoint only when we release our judgments. It is like the three boys who peeped through the holes in a circus tent to look at the elephant and disagreed on what they saw. One said an elephant looked like a long, skinny snake. The other argued that it had big wings. The third insisted that it looked like a big tree trunk. They all had seen the elephant, but each had seen it from a different position. One saw the tail, the other the ears, and the other the legs. Because they all were so sure of what they had seen, they refused to look through another hole in the tent.
All it takes to see something differently is to look at it from a different position. For us, the hole in the tent may be our fear, prejudice, or anger. It is the framework through which we view something. Again, our experience is real; it is just based on limited or distorted information. We must be willing to surrender our opinion before we can see it another way. This is what the Bible calls repentance to have a change of mind. In repentance, we must be willing to release the way we see something. Then we are free to look at it from another position.
Most of the time we tend to hold on to our point of view. By now we have taken a stand; we have invested in it emotionally. Repentance may mean we have to admit to being wrong. The mind would rather preserve its opinion. The ego wants to be right. We say that we want to see the truth, but we are not willing to suffer the risk of being wrong. Now we have an irreconcilable difference. At this point, a revelation from God will have no effect on us.
A revelation from God is not His showing us something new; a revelation is simply what we see when we are flexible enough to change our mental/emotional position about an issue and look at it from a different point of view. God doesn’t show us something He previously kept hidden; we see something He wanted to show us all along.
Only the pure in heart will see God, according to Matthew 5:8. So keep your heart pure from judgment, prejudice, and bias. Let go of your predetermined ideas, and you may see a lot of hurtful events differently. When you feel defensive or angry, remind yourself, “This is only how I see it. I must see it from another position to overcome this offense.” Then, discover another point of view.
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