Whenever I travel and people find out I live in Southern California, they often ask, “How can you live where there are earthquakes?” They’re terrified at the thought of the ground shaking because they’ve never experienced it.
My response is, “I’d rather have earthquakes than some other natural disaster. With tornados and hurricanes, you know hours ahead of time they might be coming, so you’re constantly dreading them and wondering when they might hit. With an earthquake, you have no idea that it’s coming until it starts. By the time you figure out what it is, it’s probably over. If you’re still alive, you’re OK. You might have some damage, but you start cleaning it up.”
I think toxic relationships are like that. You might be going along fine for a long time, when out of the blue, the crazy person “strikes.” They say something or do something that you weren’t expecting, and you’re left in a pile of emotional rubble. You survived, but you have to pick up the pieces.
Knowing that, how do we prepare for emotional earthquakes? We can’t stop them from occurring, but we can get ready ahead of time so we know what to do when they strike.
When an earthquake hits California, you can go to any home improvement store an hour later and find fresh displays of “earthquake preparedness kits.” They sell like hotcakes because people have just realized how unprepared they were. If the quake had been bigger, they wouldn’t have been ready for the level of damage or the loss of utilities and basic services.
Earthquake preparedness kits contain the essentials to survive for several days if you’re cut off from help: water, food, can opener, plates and utensils, first aid supplies, clothing, personal hygiene items, blankets, and so forth. People usually don’t purchase these things until the quake happens and they’re reminded of the need to get ready.
A Checklist of Supplies
In this book, we’ve talked about the futility of expecting another person to change. It’s possible, but we can’t count on it. The only guarantee we have in relationships is changing ourselves, becoming the type of people who can handle the chaos that others bring into our lives.
Knowing that people will bring drama into our lives unexpectedly, we need to get ready. As with earthquakes, we don’t know when that dramatic situation will happen, but we’re confident that it will. Rather than waiting until it occurs, true survival depends on getting our supplies in order.
What do we need in our relationship survival kit? Here are the basics:
We Need Perspective
Jerry is driven by performance. Some people would call him a workaholic, but he believes he’s just carrying out a standard of excellence. He gets to the office early, brings work home at night, and constantly checks his smartphone on weekends to stay in touch. His family appreciates him being there at night and on weekends, but they wish he was there mentally and emotionally as well.
“It’s just part of the job,” he says. “I hate the time and pressure it takes, but it’s the only way to stay on top.”
Unfortunately, that lifestyle has gotten out of control. Jerry agreed to marriage counseling when he saw the damage that was happening to his closest relationships, and he genuinely wants help. But he doesn’t see any way out of the work situation.
After several sessions, Jerry began to see the reason for his perspective. As a child, he wanted to please his domineering father. The only time he received praise from his dad was when he was productive and accomplishing something. Any time he took a break, his dad would call him lazy and tell him he was using up oxygen that a productive person could be using.
His father has been gone for twenty years, but Jerry is still trying to please his dad through his performance, having never experienced unconditional love.
When we look at ourselves honestly, most of us discover that there are hidden reasons why we do what we do. We relate to others through the lenses we’ve developed and wonder why nothing ever changes. The crazy people in our lives seem to be the problem, and we feel like our pain is because of their behavior.
It’s time to correct those lenses. Our lenses provide our perspective. If our perspective is wrong, our relationships won’t work.
We Need Other People
The problem with self-help books is that we’re trying to solve our problems without having anyone else coming alongside. We have a problem that we don’t know how to solve, but then we try to solve it alone (following the suggestions in the book).
Books are great, but they’re no substitute for human interaction. When we’re caught in the emotional chaos of our lives, we need someone else to challenge our perspective, provide insight, and ask the right questions.
Sometimes people connect with others for the sole purpose of complaining about their crazy person, hoping that they’ll get some emotional support. That’s no way to find a solution; it’s simply gossip. However, the old adage “Two heads are better than one” is appropriate; bringing multiple minds to the situation keeps our thinking clear.
Deep-seated pain might need more than supportive, challenging friends. When the impact of crazy people in our lives becomes overwhelming, that’s usually a sign that it’s time for professional help. There’s no shame in going to a psychologist or therapist to sort through tough issues any more than in going to a skilled mechanic to help us fix problems with our car. They’re experts, and their training and experience have prepared them to diagnose and treat issues we don’t recognize.
We Need Boundaries
When people use mind games to try manipulating us, knowing how to respond takes away the pressure when it happens. We’ll still feel the emotion in the moment, but we’ll recognize their tactics when they occur. Boundaries are like fences; when we’ve put them in place, it helps keep intruders from invading our sanity.
Boundaries are the decisions we’ve made that protect our emotions. When someone crosses a boundary, we don’t have to get upset; we simply restate the boundary and stick to it. The other person might get upset and try to manipulate us, but we keep calmly reiterating the boundary we’ve established.
Jill loves her husband, John, but her mother constantly finds fault with him in her conversations with Jill. There might be a lot of truth in what she’s saying, but Jill finds herself feeling more and more negative toward John after those discussions. She realizes that her mother’s input is poisoning her attitude toward her husband.
So she sets a boundary, deciding that she won’t listen to any more negative input about John. The next time her mother starts to bring up her concerns, Jill says, “You know, Mom, I really love John and believe in him. When you talk about all the things that are wrong with him, I realize that it’s not healthy for me, and it’s messing with my attitude. It’s not fair to John, because you really need to be talking to him about your concerns, not me. So I need you to have those conversations with John from now on instead of me.”
If her mother says, “I can’t talk to him about those things,” Jill could use her boundary: “I’m really sorry you feel that way, but it really needs to be between you and him.”
If her mother says, “That’s ridiculous. I’m just trying to help,” Jill could say, “I’m sorry, but I really can’t have those conversations anymore.”
If her mother uses guilt and says, “Well, if you don’t want to talk to me, I just won’t call anymore,” Jill could respond, “I’m sorry you feel that way, and I would miss our conversations. There are lots of other things we can talk about, but I just won’t be going there about John.”
That’s the value of planning ahead. We can respond without emotion if we know our boundaries. Even when the other person gets upset or tries to manipulate us, we simply state our boundaries over and over. We don’t have to explain or justify them. We just have to stick to them. Boundaries become a tool we can use to form the structure of relationships that work.
We Need Examples
Many people grew up without healthy relationships. Their models demonstrated the wrong way to connect with others, and it’s the only way they know how to relate. They’re often the ones who feel the need to fix everyone around them, and they base their own self-worth on what others do or say. They haven’t learned to let others take responsibility for their own choices.
However, my wife’s parents demonstrated this masterfully. Looking back over the early years of our marriage, Diane and I made some pretty crazy choices. We thought they were good at the time, but we recognize in hindsight how foolish we were. We survived but made a lot of mistakes along the way.
They were our mistakes. Diane’s parents probably had some long private conversations about the insane things we were doing, and I’m sure they wanted to jump in and tell us what we were doing wrong. Still, they didn’t interfere. Sometimes they expressed their concerns in the form of questions (“Have you thought about this?”), but they always hung in there with us no matter what choices we made. They knew it was our life, and they let us make own our decisions.
The result? They laid the foundation for us to have a healthy, loving relationship with them. We think they do some pretty crazy things themselves, but it’s their life and their choices, not ours.
If we haven’t had good examples, it’s worth the effort to seek them out. It might be a family member who connects well with others, a friend’s relative whom they recommend, or a respected couple from church. We can make an initial contact for coffee or a casual backyard dinner. It doesn’t have to involve a deep interrogation of their techniques. Simply getting to know them over time gives us the chance to learn from their informal mentoring.
We Need Encouragement
When speed bumps appear in relationships, it’s natural to get discouraged. We have great intentions to keep a positive attitude, but it disappears during a relational crisis. Just when we thought things were improving and we were responding well, our emotions take a nosedive.
Discourage means “dis-courage”—to take the courage out of someone. We lose our courage to stay focused and positive, and we have trouble replacing it by ourselves. It’s like walking through a dark forest or down a deserted street at night. It’s scary on your own, but much less threatening when you’ve got someone next to you sharing the experience. That’s when we need encouragement—someone to put the courage back in.
We can’t do that alone. In times of discouragement, we need people we trust to build into our lives. They provide the courage when we can’t provide it for ourselves.
Where can we find someone to fill our tank when it’s empty?
No one can predict an earthquake. No one can tell us when a painful encounter might happen. In both cases, the key is to be prepared. Preparation takes place before the earthquake takes place, not after.
The earthquake is coming. It’s time to shop for supplies.