Emotional Triangles -- Lent 2, 2017

Lent 2A 2017 – Emotional Triangles

Genesis 12:1-4; Psalm 121; John 3:1-17

                                                           Rev. Adam T. Trambley                                  

March 12, 2017, St. John’s Sharon

This morning we continue our Lenten look at ways that we can live into healthier, more loving relationships.  Last week we looked at the process laid out in Matthew chapter 18 to deal with instances when brothers or sisters in the church cause us harm.  The first and most important step we say was to talk to people directly. Direct communication fosters reconciliation and forgiveness, while keeping conflicts from spilling over into the wider community. 

(Thanks to Michael Wachter for diagrams.)

This same theme of direct communication is also going to play a role in what I want to look at today, which is a concept called Emotional Triangles. Emotional triangles help us think about many of our interactions, and can be particularly helpful in thinking about conflict, gossip, or times when we seem to be pulled in to someone else’s stress and anxiety.  The concept of emotional triangles comes out of family systems work, and I can give you more psychological and theological background if anyone is interested.  This model is also biblical, although it doesn’t spring out of one specific passage.  Instead, thinking about triangles gives us a concrete way to look at our own behavior so we can follow the teachings in Proverbs about being wise instead of foolish and saying the right things at only the right time, or First Timothy’s injunction not to “say things we shouldn’t say,” or James warning about just how dangerous our tongues can be. 

Emotional triangles occur whenever three people are in a relationship, which is almost always.  Given our belief in the Trinity, relationship triangles may actually be built into how God has structured creation.  A triangle just means that persons A, B, and C are inhabiting the same emotional space, if you will.  (See diagram 1).  People have observed that relationships between two people can have a lot of intensity and anxiety that can be difficult to deal with.  Part of how we maintain calm, stable relationships is to have another person that can help us with some of our emotional stuff.  Just having another person to talk to or interact with can help us process and handle issues that arise in the course of life.  A healthy triangle, like a good family with mom, dad, and child, can be very good. (Larger families just have more sets of triangles that can be even more helpful when healthy.)  A work triangle could be the boss, the administrator, and the client.  An unhealthy triangle, like a warped Victorian romantic love triangle, can obviously be very bad.  The question is how we deal with the anxiety and stress we carry in our relationships, and how we decide to act in the many triangles that make up our lives.

A healthy triangle functions well when everyone has a direct relationship with each other.  A talks to B and C; B talks to A and C; C talks to A and B.  This ideal of direct relationships with people is the goal. So in diagram 2, we see a conflict between A and B.  This conflict doesn’t have to be a fight or disagreement, but some sort of stress or issue that needs attention.  Maybe in a hospital setting Patient B has complained to Nurse A about some pain that she can’t figure out.  Now think about Doctor C.  In a healthy situation, the Doctor can talk to the Nurse about what she saw and then talk to the patient.  Together, they can resolve it.  Stress existed, everybody stayed in relationship, and worked it out.  Even if they couldn’t totally solve the problem, everybody is in it together.

Or, in a family example, maybe Parent A comes to Grandma C and says, “B is such a teenager.  I don’t know how I’ll live through these years!” Then Grandma C says something like, “Well you love him and almost all parents actually do survive.  Here, have a chocolate,” then she sends B a card telling him she’s was proud to watch his last soccer game.  Grandma C hasn’t decided that B is now terrible.  Instead she keeps good relationships with A and B, and supports them in healthy ways.  Hopefully by talking a bit, A doesn’t go screaming at B about how terrible it is to have a teenager in the house, which would just produce shame and blame, but maybe notes that taking a shower after a soccer game is a good thing.    

Not all reactions to stress in triangles are healthy, however.  The first unhealthy situation I want to look at (in diagram 3), is when C tries to take responsibility for what happens between A and B.  One of the rules of emotional triangles is that you can change your direct relationships with the others in the triangle, but you can’t control other people’s relationship.  Their relationship isn’t your responsibility.  In fact, when you try to directly control their relationship, things are likely to backfire.  Think about the story of Romeo and Juliet.  Romeo was a womanizer who never cared enough about anyone to stick around. Under normal circumstances, he probably would have dumped poor Juliet by Act 2.  But his parents so wanted him and Juliet separated that their actions actually pushed them closer together.  We see the same process in the other direction when a parent intervenes fighting siblings.  Often the more the parent tries to make people play nice, the longer the fight continues.

In triangles, all three corners don’t have to be individuals.  One corner of a triangle could also be an idea or a group or a think.  So maybe a parent is worried about their child’s drinking.  The triangle might be corner A – the adult child --, corner B – a healthy use of alcohol --, and corner C – the parent.  C, the parent, might spend a lot of time trying to push together A and B, and it doesn’t work.  What would be more effective for parent C, however, is to focus on loving, instead of fixing, child A, so that relationship gets closer. Then parent C could make whatever life changes need to happen in the relationship to C’s own healthy use of alcohol, B.  If C has a good relationship with child A and uses alcohol in a healthy way, that will do as much as is in C’s power.  It may not be everything that parent C wants, but C will be doing all he or she can, and many other efforts will be counter-productive.  If C is abusing alcohol, there is no way C’s efforts are going to help A until C’s own drinking is under control.    

This same concept applies in church attendance or spiritual life.  A lot of people worry about the fact that their children or grandchildren aren’t engaged in church or their spiritual life.  I’ve also seen any number of creative or dramatic attempts to make child A show up at church B by parent or grandparent C.  However, according to these principles of triangles, that doesn’t work.  What has the best chance of working is deepening the relationship with A, which might involve having them want to go with you places and really hear what is important to you and why, and then deepening your relationship with the church B, so that you get the full benefits of it.  That may or may not get everyone into church the way C hopes, but, again, it stands a better chance than anything else.  Everybody stays healthy when we attend to all our direct relationships and keep ourselves out of other people’s relationships.  When we don’t, we end up holding that stress bucket on the arrow in Diagram 3, and we don’t get any changes that we want, either.

Another way that triangles can become unhealthy is when one personal of the triangle tries to put all the stress of one side a relationship on the third person.  If we look at diagram 4, we see that conflict between A and B.  Again, this could be a disagreement or any kind of stress or static in the relationship.  Now imagine that A comes up to C and says something like, “Don’t say anything to him, but I’m worried about B.”  Now trouble is starting because C’s relationships with B has just had a barrier thrown into it.  C is now holding part of the anxiety and worry that is happening between A and B, but she can’t do anything to resolve it.  In this situation, here are some of the things that are happening:

·      A feels better because he’s just dumped part of his worries and anxiety to C.

·      C is caught holding A’s stress, but can’t do anything about it.  This situation is unfair to C. This kind of stress is also the kind that seems most harmful to people’s health.

·      B is not getting whatever feedback he needs to change.  The worry that A had could have gone directly to him in a helpful way, or C could potentially have helpfully talked to him, but instead no one is.  The energy that should have helped B is now making C feel worse.

Now the issue causing anxiety between A and B could be any number of issues.  A and B could have had a fight.  B could have a health issue.  B could be watching too much TV or staying away from church or be working too much or have picked up a crystal meth habit or left dishes in the sink for the third night in a row.  In many ways, the actual issue tends not to be nearly as difficult to deal with as the emotional anxiety that people get stuck with when an issue isn’t dealt with head-on.

Now things get really interesting in a small community like a church when C finds herself so worried about A and/or B that she has to tell somebody.  So C talks to D.  Now D was previously over in the corner eating a donut and minding his own business.  Since A told C not to say anything to B, C says something sort of vague like, “A is pretty upset and having a hard time, you know.”  Now who knows how D interprets all that but now he’s kind of upset (even though C feels a little better).  But D sees A’s friend E and says to her, do you know why A is upset. Now we have diagram 5, which is kind of a mess of triangles.  C, D and E all have some anxiety about what is happening with A, but no one is really in a position to help resolve the situation.  About this time, by the way, is also when someone usually comes up to the priest and says, I’ve heard so-and-so isn’t happy.   Now we have many people who aren’t directly involved and know only half the story, but are carrying the negative energy from it anyway. 

The only way to improve the situation is to talk to someone involved.  If E hears A is upset, E can go talk to A directly and try to do a couple of things.  First, it’s always worth finding out what is really going on.  Sometimes by the time an issue has gone through a couple of people, the message gets distorted, like a game of telephone.  Sometimes, the issue wasn’t really that big a deal to begin with.  Maybe A was upset for a few minutes, vented to C and then forgot about it.  Unfortunately, C didn’t forget about it and things kept going.  I know I’ve had the situation where I got mad at someone, vented about it, then I realized my part or had a conversation or reconciled with the person or otherwise moved on.  But later I find that my friend whom I vented to is still mad at that person for what they did to me.  I’ve learned not to give someone else the emotional baggage of a situation they aren’t a part of, because when I do finally resolve it for me, the other person still has to deal with the baggage I’ve handed them.  They can’t very easily go up to someone and say, “I was mad at you because of what I thought you did to my friend, but I found out you didn’t, but can you apologize anyway so I feel better.”   Venting, even when it’s true, isn’t helpful in the long run, because it leaves little stress buckets with other people.  Venting is also almost always one-sided.  As we looked at last week, when we have an issue, we need to go to the person directly and deal with it instead of talking with other people. 

Another possibility for C, D, or E is to try and talk to B.  Just because someone says, “Don’t say anything,” doesn’t mean we can’t say something if something needs to be said.  We don’t have to keep secrets from people or allow someone to put a brick wall in the midst of our relationship with someone else.  We might want to say, “I’m sorry, but with what you told me, I have to talk with B.”  As we learn in our Safeguarding God’s Children and People classes, secrets aren’t good.  The emotional environment gets weird when people start keeping secrets.  I’m not saying everything needs to be said. We don’t need to gossip or tell other people’s stories.  But we also don’t need to be quiet when we could be helping somebody.

Of course, doing this work to get out of the emotional stress of unhealthy triangles is hard work.  We can feel awkward when doing it, and sometimes it doesn’t feel nice. Many people would rather we held their stress buckets than resolved a situation.  In the short-run, often we would rather hold a stress bucket than push them to grow.  In order to deal with situations like those in diagram 4, when I’m person E or even F or G, I usually make a phone call that starts something like this: “So, I don’t really know what is going on, but I’ve heard that you’re upset.  Is that true and is there anything I can do?”  Usually that is enough of an opener to spark an honest conversation which will either help get to the root of an issue or find out who the person may be that really needs to be talked to.  Sometimes the answer is, “I’m fine, but so-and-so isn’t,” in which case I can call so-and-so.  Or maybe the answer is something like, “I’m having a hard time with B’s health issues,” and we can pray or talk with B or whatever would actually be helpful.

Any of us who find ourselves in the midst of this kind of free-floating anxiety can pick up the phone or ask to talk to someone and work at getting to the bottom of things.  In fact, all of us need to do some of this work in order to keep the relationships in our parish direct and healthy and loving.  Otherwise, relationships get weird, too much communication starts happening via gossip, and we don’t interact directly enough to really love each other.  I don’t think this is a particularly huge issue at St. John’s, but it is a temptation for all humanity, so we can fall into it from time to time.

I would also just note in closing that prayer is one way to help stay in direct relationship with people.  If we are praying for people, we are maintaining a direct link with them on our side of whatever triangle we may be in.  Times may arise when we also need to talk directly with them about something, but prayer is a helpful first step.  The more we are praying for each other throughout the church, the more likely we will be able to maintain the direct relationships we need to have in other ways, as well.

So, talk to people directly; don’t dump stress buckets on other people unless we are willing to let them help resolve our issues; and when people try to hand us their stress buckets, do the difficult and important work of having direct, healthy, loving relationships with everyone in our triangles.