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.

Christian Conflict Resolution: Matthew 18:15-17

Lent 1A 2017 – Conflict at St. John’s and Matthew 18

Genesis 2-3; Psalm 32; Matthew 4:1-11

                                                           Rev. Adam T. Trambley                                  

March 5, 2017, St. John’s Sharon

This morning is the first Sunday of Lent.  Lent is a time to refocus on the things that matter.  Sometimes giving something up is helpful to us in refocusing our attention on what is important.  Sometimes taking on a good habit or discipline is helpful.  Additionally, Lent can be a good time to take a look at places where our responses and actions are not congruent with the kind of love we want to show, and change how we react in those situations.  During this Lent, what I plan to talk about in our sermons are aspects of some of those areas in our parish life.  Specifically, we are going to look at how we can do a better job of loving one another when difficulties or conflicts arise.

I want to look at loving relationships in the midst of conflict because this issue arose as a primary factor inhibiting St. John’s health and growth in the Natural Church Development survey that we took last year.  The NCD team or I can give you more details if you are interested, but after surveying core members, looking at the results ourselves, and doing a focus group, we realized that as a church we need to do a better job of handling conflict.  That we need to handle conflict better shouldn’t be a surprise given both our parish history and the surrounding culture. 

Saying that we need to handle conflict in a healthier way doesn’t mean that everything will always be perfect for everyone.  Sometimes it won’t.  Sometimes people will still find they need to be somewhere else because St. John’s and its life and mission aren’t the right fit for them, and that’s OK.  But the deeper our relationships are with one another and the more we are able to handle disagreements with love and concern, the more we will be able to be like Christ for others.  We will also be better able to help each other when other aspects of life become overwhelming, since often church conflicts, like other conflicts, ignite when people are under significant stress.  We also hope to be able to listen more to each other, and do the hard work to forgive one another and to ask one another for forgiveness. We will never be perfect, and we will never be all things to all people, but we can hopefully deepen our love of one another such that we can hold onto our relationships more tightly while also putting less strain on them in the way we handle disagreements.

In terms of our parish history, we have some interesting experiences regarding conflict.  The first clergyman to serve here, William Stone Hayward, had his tenure end after only seven months.  Our records read that, “’On account of the disunity among those who considered themselves to be of the household of faith, and of the vile and malicious slanders upon his character,’ Mr. Hayward ‘offered a letter to bring the vestry to a better state of mind which, being slighted,” he resigned.  So, we see things don’t quite get off on quite the right foot. 

A few years later, in 1886, the longest serving rector to date, Reverend Wood, had been here about twelve years.  He had a disagreement with the choir over what canticle they would sing at the service on Easter evening.  When he heard the choir practicing the one he did not want right before the service, he walked into the church and announced that he didn’t feel well and that the service was canceled.  Over the next few months, a quarter of the church refused to speak to him and refused to contribute, so in response he wrote an eighteen-page pamphlet explaining why parishioners ought to listen to the rector.  Surprisingly, no one seemed to be convinced and he left later that year. 

In more recent years, we know many left the parish in the aftermath of Gene Robinson’s ordination in 2003.  I also had an experience of dealing with a significant conflict even before I was installed as rector seven years ago.  At that time, there was a significant split in the parish about who should be teaching confirmation class and how it should be structured.  People on both sides were threatening to keep their children out of confirmation class if things didn’t happen the way they thought was best. The grace, however, was that in the midst of that conflict, which had well-meaning people with a real love for the parish’s young people on both sides, people were willing and able to have some hard conversations and do some difficult things.  In the end, we came up with a way that everyone could move forward.  It wasn’t easy or fun, but it was right, and I think that working through the conflict helped the church as a whole grow stronger at that point.

Part of what these events tell us is that conflict is not bad, in and of itself.  Conflict is part of life, and necessary for growth and development.  When there are no disagreements, usually nobody cares what is happening.  What makes a huge difference, however, is how we deal with conflict.  Dealing with our disagreements well allows us to grow stronger and to knit ourselves together in new ways.  Dealing with disputes badly can pull us apart and leave wounds and resentments.

As a church, we need to focus on dealing well with conflict not only so that St. John’s can thrive, but also so that our wider community can thrive.  We live in a time and place that is not dealing well with differences.  The past few year or so of our national discourse have for the most part been a primer in how to deal with disagreements in the worst ways possible, complete with blaming, shaming, assigning motives to others, name calling, and dealing with the speck in the neighbor’s eye instead of the log in our own.  We also live in a community that has been largely dominated by a mill culture that was not particularly interested in resolving conflict in a holistic way.  The people in charge told the working folks what to do and they did it, at least until something got bad enough that it caused a strike or other labor issues.  When we have work cultures that don’t promote loving conflict resolution and we live in an increasingly polarized environment, we as church have a duty to learn how to deal with conflict in a healthy way and then practice those skills in our other networks.       

Over the next few weeks, we will look at conflict and relationships stresses from a few different perspectives.  To start with this week, I want to look at the basic instructions given in Matthew chapter 18 for dealing with situations when someone in the church hurts another person.  Matthew 18:15-17 says:

¹⁵ “If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. ¹⁶ But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷ If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. 

Not all conflicts are the result of someone sinning against you, but the basic principles given here apply in other circumstances.  We should also keep in mind that just because we think that someone has sinned against us, they may not have.  We’ll look more at those situations in future weeks, but we should always be listening to each other and seeking forgiveness for what we may have contributed to a situation.     

Four steps are listed in Matthew 18 to resolve conflict.  1. Talk to the person directly and privately.  2. If talking to someone directly doesn’t work, take one or two people with you to help facilitate a conversation. 3. If that doesn’t work, take it to the church, which in our case probably means either the priest or the vestry.  Then finally, 4. If there is still no resolution, treat them like a Gentile or a tax collector.

The first step is talking to the person involved directly and privately.  This step is key, and almost every situation can be resolved by simply doing this.  In general, people in the church don’t want to hurt each other.  Most issues are based on misunderstandings or miscommunication or unmet expectations or some other simple issue.  For most of us, when we find out we hurt someone, we apologize and try to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  In the rare instances that doesn’t happen, usually when we hear their side, we understand why they did what they did and can be OK ourselves.  The goal here is reconciliation and forgiveness, and those can only happen if we engage each other directly.

When we don’t take this step, things can get difficult.  Notice that Jesus doesn’t say to talk to all your friends first, or to get a bunch of people on your side, or even to pretend that nothing happened until you get REALLY upset and explode.  Until we talk to people directly, whatever else we do might just cause more damage we need to undo later.

Also, going to the person who sinned against us is necessary for them. If they are doing something wrong and we don’t let them know, they don’t have an opportunity to repent and change.  They may also not even know they are doing something wrong.  Unless we have the conversation, we can’t expect things to get better.

The second instruction in Matthew 18 is that if that direct conversation goes badly, or if there are reasons why I can’t manage a direct conversation one-on-one myself, I can ask one or two others to come with me to have a conversation.  The idea here is not to pick the seconds you want should things come to a duel, but to take wise people who can help you resolve the issues.  I can be that person, or members of the vestry, or others.  Hopefully, bringing in a neutral party will help both sides hear what they need to hear allow them to move forward.

If that conversation with an arbiter doesn’t work, then Jesus says to take it to the church.  In our polity, that would probably mean talking to me to look at the situation or to the Senior Warden to have vestry take up the issue, if that seems the appropriate place to handle it.  The goal here, again, is to resolve the issue and make sure no one is continuing to harm anyone else.  This step is a significant one and involves the hard work of honesty and accountability to each other as a church.  Jesus says nothing here about anonymous complaints or passing along things that “people are saying.”  Another assumption is that both sides will heed the decisions of the church.    If for some reason they don’t listen to the church, then Jesus says to treat them like a tax collector or a Gentile.  Treating someone in those ways means that we love them and we pray for them, but we don’t give them responsibility or put them in situations where they can continue to do damage to others in the church.  They can always repent and return.  But when they do, they have to realize that they have caused harm to people, and that they are going to have to take responsibility for that harm before they can become a full and trusted member of the community again.

Of course, almost no conflicts should get to levels 3 or 4 if we consistently do the work of living into levels 1 and 2.  Most conflicts in the parish and in other parts of our life could actually be dealt with if we were willing to pray for those we feel at the moment are our enemies in a situation, trust that people are doing their best and really don’t want to hurt us, and then talk to people directly about how we feel and how we are experiencing their actions and where we have been hurt.  This parish is made up of great people who really do love each other.  We are capable of dealing with conflict in ways that make us stronger and increase our love for each other.  Let’s focus on trusting that love and talking directly to each other whenever disagreements arise.  In the coming weeks, we’ll look at some other skills for dealing with conflict, as well.