I offered this at our most recent Chapter and it led to a fruitful and honest discussion before we prayed for each other.
I am getting towards the end of my MA dissertation and find myself trying to understand if there is a connection between self-control, self-awareness and self-regulation.
We know self-control is a part of the fruit of the Spirit - if the Spirit is working in us then we will be growing in multiple areas, one of which is (at least how I have imagined it until this point in my studies) something about a discipline of ourselves. To pray when we don’t feel like it, not to swear when someone cuts us up at a junction and so forth.
Self-awareness speaks of how well we know, and can be compassionate about, ourselves. We have an idea of how we come across to others, or when we behave differently in one context to another - and why. I think it says something about how we might recognise patterns from our parents or our upbringing which sometimes unhelpfully repeat in our lives.
And self-regulation seems to address the idea of how well we can maintain our inner cohesion and stability. I think these three overlap far more than these simple few sentences suggest, but they are a start.
In Matthew 26:59-68 we see Jesus under real, provocative pressure - obviously, nothing like some of the PCCs I’ve had to chair! It is interesting how he reacts. Normally when faced with what we perceive as a threat, our chimp brain kicks in to protect us and we make an instantaneous decision for flight or fight. Adrenaline pumps round our bodies, our muscles prepare for action and the parts of our brains which are not necessary for survival are shut down - areas such as our capacity to reflect.
How does Jesus react? I imagine if that was me in front of the high priest I would have either fought - shouted back and let my anger out, raging against the injustice - or withdrawn because I would be struggling with the dilemma that whatever I say could make this worse. Jesus seems to be able to calmly respond with a statement which is both factually true, but also seems to suggest he is closing down a fruitless path for a discussion, thereby retaining an element of control. It is the others who are behaving angrily and in an uncontrolled manner.
I shared an example of a typical situation in which someone had been really angry with me because they had not been the first to know something and, despite my apology, the issue kept being raised. "There's no communication round here!", and so forth. In one rather heated meeting we tried to put a sticking plaster over the problem by agreeing a procedure in case this happened in future, but it was only a sticking plaster - it did not deal with their anger, nor did it address my frustration at being shouted at and spoken to like I was some sort of lacky. I was aware of that raised emotional state within me and I could only see a way to fight (shout back) or flight (in this case it would a withdrawal from the situation, again without properly resolving it, because I felt whatever I said would only make matters worse). How can we address this internal state referred to as anxiety, but which clouds our ability to reflect and speak peaceably?
I find the writer Gabor Mate insightful; (this is from his book When the body says no)
'self-regulation..."involves in part the attainment of emotional competence”’, by which he means the measure to which one is able 'to deal in an appropriate and satisfactory way with one's own feelings and desires.'
To be emotionally competent we must be able to;
- recognise our own internal emotional reactions brought about by stress.
- convey our own emotions clearly, being able to 'assert our needs and to maintain the integrity of our emotional boundaries.' Often, anger is a feeling created because somebody is impeding a physical or emotional boundary we want to maintain.
- discern between emotions pertinent to the immediate situation and emotions unresolved from our history. Many of us carry within us a pattern for dealing with conflict which was set for us early in life by our parents or siblings. For example, we bottle up emotion because it is easier for us to carry a pain if that is a way of appeasing someone else's anger and ending the sense of hostility.
- the identification of those emotions requiring resolution in that moment, rather than holding a discomfort so as to avoid loss of 'approval or others’.
I’ve just been doing three days of role-playing learning with Bridge Builders, and I have found myself having to dig in to my feelings of anxiety when someone kicks off with strong emotions about something. There are quite a few techniques they offer, but for me the question of curiosity is important. I cannot prevent myself feeling anxious, so I need to find a way of allowing my curiosity about my anxiety to come to the fore. I wonder why I am feeling like this? Curiosity also allows a less confrontational response to the strong emotion of others. In fact, curiosity allows a mechanism for exploring their strong emotion, rather than having to work around it. “Clearly you feel strongly about this. Would you be able to talk about what happened?” And then using a summary technique to feed back so that the strong emotions are acknowledged. “So what I heard was that you were really disappointed not to have heard straight away about Charlie. Is that right?”. This also allows, when the matter comes up again, for you to say “I notice that the issue around Charlie still seems to be causing distress. Is there something else on this area we haven’t touched on yet?”.
But I want to leave some silence for us to reflect on ourselves in our moments of anxiety.
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