How Anxiety Shows Up

Josiah: 0:02

Welcome to Praxis, a podcast where we explore how to practice and embody the way of Jesus in our everyday lives. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen. We're in a series right now on emotional maturity and how it is essential to discipleship. We believe that Jesus had more EQ, or emotional intelligence, than any other person who has walked the planet and consistently embodied emotional maturity. So if we're going to grow as disciples of Jesus, we must grow our own emotional maturity as well, and right now we're talking about anxiety. Anxiety often impedes our ability to embody emotional maturity. So in our last episode we talked about where anxiety shows up and we discussed four different spaces in which it does, and today we talked about how anxiety shows up in those spaces. So I thought we had a great discussion. You guys, what do you think stood out to you as might be helpful to clue people into what we're going to be talking about today?

‍Katie: 1:02

Yeah, one thing that stuck out to me is how we talked about these as responses to relational anxiety, like anxiety that pops up in the context of relationship, and how each of us may have kind of a strong default, but how that default can also change depending on the relationship or the context that I meant. So I could have one default response that comes up really strongly when I'm at work. I could have a different one that comes out when I'm parenting and with my kids. I could even have a different one in my marriage or with friends. So I think we add some nuance to the conversation by just going hey, this might look different for you depending on your context.

Mac: 1:40

Yeah, and just to piggyback on that, I think because of that, if you're looking to grow in this area, there's just no way to do it without a lot of self-reflection. So I would just kind of, for our listeners who are just beginning as you're listening, just think, be in that reflective space where you're thinking through your own life and that's going to be part of your practices as you walk away. We can't make forward progress here without creating some space to reflect.

Josiah: 2:05

All right, well, let's get into it.

Katie: 2:18

Welcome everyone. My name is Katie.

Josiah: 2:20

I'm Mac and I'm Josiah.

Katie: 2:23

Well, hey guys. So we are closing in on the end of summer here. Fall is right around the corner and normally I would say I'm kind of a summer person Like I like the heat. It's hot as you can get it Like I'll take it. I like to sit in the sun. Mack your wife gives me, starting to give me some grief for that.

Mac: 2:41

Well, you're going to get skin cancer if you don't adjust to like.

Katie: 2:45

I mean, she bought me a hat for my birthday and repeatedly kept putting it on me throughout the day as I was out in the sun. But yeah, I'm a summer person. My birthday is in summer. It's fun, I like the heat, but this year I'm kind of like excited for fall.

Mac: 2:59

Why is that?

Katie: 3:01

You know apple cider donuts probably have something to do with it. We go to this place called Peckin' Bushel where you can pick apples for like $100 a pound and it's not that much but it is kind of pricey Feels like.

Josiah: 3:13

That's what it's like. Yeah, it does.

Katie: 3:15

It's this very Magnolia kind of Joanna Gaines theme, which probably is one of the reasons that I like it. Are you just, joanna Gaines? I was talking so disappointed. No, but they have really good apple cider donuts. That's probably a part of it, but just like the cooler air and the pumpkin farms and All the best parts of fall. Yeah, yeah. What about you guys? You fall people.

Josiah: 3:39

I have a really strong opinion about something that I'm going to share. I think summer break is one to two, maybe three weeks too long. It feels like at this point in the summer, even the kids are antsy to get back to school. And there's like two to three weeks right in this period of August where I'm just like it feels like summer's over and I want fall to be here, but it's just waiting period. Kids at home, they're antsy, they want to get back to school, they want to see their friends. I'm ready for them to be back at school. So I'm with you. I am over summer, you're done, I'm ready.

Mac: 4:19

I will third that, Josiah, I see you and I'm with you. In fact this has happened for the last several years. Like the end of August you just feel like you're hanging on by a thread because all of the fun activities you did with your kids you've done them, you know, and so the list is kind of used up and you're just ready to get back into that that rhythm, and you've had so much togetherness time. It's just it's time to move on and I agree there's lots of parts of fall is one of my favorite seasons, so I tune kind of looking forward to that.

Katie: 4:52

As long as it's not a really cold fall, like it's got to be, like a sixties Sure.

Mac: 4:57

Yeah, and I like when the leaves change and there's something about coffee in the fall. Oh stop.

Katie: 5:04

Yeah, I'm not going to put it in.

Josiah: 5:06

No, I it was. It was raining the other day when I was working at a coffee shop and I ordered a dirty chai and it was just like it felt like I was ushering in fall, but then the next day it was hot again, so it sucked.

Katie: 5:20

Put some pumpkin in there, you know one other thing I've noticed.

Josiah: 5:25

Cameron pointed this out. Cameron is from from Oregon and he moved here a handful of years ago. He pointed out that people from Wisconsin really like to complain about the weather. He said he's never met a group of people that are so picky about their weather than people from Wisconsin. That's funny. It's either raining too much or it's not raining enough. It's either too hot in the summer and I want fall, but oh, it could be too cold or maybe it's too hot or maybe the humidity.

Katie: 5:52

in the summer he's like they're just always complaining about the weather, yeah, Well, I feel like it's just a topic of conversation in general. You know, probably goes back to how the farmers with their farmers almanacs, that's true.

Josiah: 6:04

I wonder if there's some, what if there's some? We're picky and snarky, just own it. It's like the Midwest, a lot of farmers, so like a weather matters a lot.

Mac: 6:14

Could be interesting. Well, speaking of the weather, let's jump into this. I let's do a recap. We last episode was super long I think it was like the longest episode we had recorded yet. We kind of threw a lot at our listeners. So I thought it might be helpful just to do like a quick recap of what we talked about to orient to where we're headed today. So we're in this series on emotional maturity, how it's essential to discipleship Within this EQ conversation, we're taking some time to do a deep dive into anxiety, how our anxiety, or our emotional reactivity, impedes our best attempts to embody emotional maturity. Our anxiety messes us up. So just a quick review Last time we did this distinction between acute and chronic anxiety. So acute anxiety is a response to a real threat that's short in duration. Right, josiah, you did a great job describing this as a transient state of unease in the face of a current threat. So, like my son Griffin choking on pulled pork, his face literally turned turned blue, or, you know, purple, and I'm color blind. Yeah, I was gonna say maybe you couldn't tell the difference. Yeah, yeah, couldn't tell the difference. All I know is his face was not a normal color. Josie has to do the Heimlich maneuver. This giant piece of pork like flies out of his mouth and you know that's like an acute, acute anxiety in that moment. Like this is an emergency. Chronic anxiety is different. It's a response to an imagined threat that has an enduring quality to it. It's an inviting sense of unease about an imagined or an anticipated threats. So, katie, you'd mentioned I like this metaphor of like that power line kind of buzzing in the background, you know, and you can almost ignore it or you can pay attention to it. Right, it can be background noise, it's sort of like something simmering on the back burner, and I shared. I think this is the cultural water we're swimming in. We're living in a VUCA world of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. So we've got acute anxiety, chronic anxiety, and anxiety isn't just worry, it's not just worrying about something. Murray Bowen, the pioneer of family systems theory, used the word like kind of emotional reactivity, interchangeably with this word anxiety, and I like that because it's like anytime our emotive response is bigger than the circumstances usually indicative that there's some underlying anxiety that's informing that situation. And the goal is never to eliminate anxiety, right, we talked about this. The goal is not to eliminate it, that would be impossible. It's to notice it, name it so that we can better manage ourselves within whatever circumstance we happen to be in, right? So you guys connecting with this summary, and then we talked about these four spaces that Steve Kuss gave us, four different places where anxiety can show up the space in me, sort of internal anxiety. The space between me and another person that's relational anxiety. The space within another person someone else might be anxious. And then the space between others, a group of people. There might be anxiety between those involved. So all of that is review. We've got four spaces where anxiety can show up, and today we want to talk about how anxiety can show up in those spaces. So last time was where. Now we're talking about how, and the goal here, once again, isn't to eliminate it, it's to notice it and name it so we can better manage ourselves. So I want to get into this. Anxious people do what anxious people do. This will just help you, because sometimes we can get frustrated or upset with ourselves or other people when they get anxious and then do stupid things. This is what anxiety does. It makes us stupid. So anxious people do what anxious people do, and there's some common ways of how anxiety will show up when people are anxious. So today we want to talk about three of those. They are fight, flight and fake. These are common ways that people try to when they're stirred up, when they're anxious. These are common ways that people try to alleviate their anxiety, to try to free that feeling of anxiety. And, of course, jesus teaches us a different way, so we'll get into that a little bit too. So fight, flight and fake as strategies people use to lower that feeling of anxiety, let's get into it. Who wants to kind of get us started with the fight?

Josiah: 10:57

response yeah, so I can start with that. So fight happens when people respond to their anxiety by becoming oppositional. So they're you need to get there. It's called separation, seeing the, they sense the anxiety and then they direct their, their, their attention or their energy outward to try to change either the circumstance or the other person. It's like an attempt to to deal with it essentially by changing someone else. And, for instance, this can look like maybe maybe someone who can't it can't bear to be wrong or proven wrong. So if someone is in opposition to me, I'll use my energy and my attention as that anxiety spikes, to sort of change their viewpoint or maybe even just change their physical posture, sort of needing to win. So this can look like, you know things like aggression or irritability, hyperactivity, you know, maybe your thoughts are racing and you'll raise your voice to be louder than the other person, sort of asserting this dominance and control either over something in your environment or another person.

Mac: 12:13

So yeah, there's probably a spectrum there, right, josiah? Like sometimes it can be pretty loud and obvious that someone is going to fight or, you know, directly confrontational. Other times it's kind of more persuasive, like, just like a friendly persuasion. You know it's a little more subtle, but it's still kind of underneath it is. I'm trying to alleviate my sense of anxiety by changing you or the way you think about something.

Josiah: 12:37

Yeah, it's directing the energy outward. So instead of focusing on my anxiety and relieving it within myself, I'm focusing externally to try to change this so that my anxiety goes away.

Katie: 12:55

Yeah, I grew up in a family that was gosh lots of fight defaults, Not in a bad way, but an extended family that has Italian roots. And so like if someone was thinking something like you knew it, you knew exactly what they were thinking and there was no mincing words, so it was all on the table all the time and then it was like, hey, can you pass the garlic bread? And everything was fine, seriously. So I recognize this in myself and I think on some level there's something to affirm. I would say in wanting to work through conflict in a way that kind of puts everything out on the table Right, like if you were to ask me why is it that I go to fight? It's like, well, I want my perspective to be heard. I want you to know what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking. I'm a firm believer that, like, if there's conflict, hey, let's just talk about it, like let's get it all out there. But if I'm really being honest, in my unhealthy moments, when I'm resorting to this fight response, it's not in order to get through conflict in a healthy way where both perspectives are heard and we can move towards reconciliation. If I'm being honest, what I'm really trying to do is get you to see things the way I'm seeing them, so that my perspective wins.

Mac: 14:13

Yeah, and then that would lower your sense of anxiety.

Katie: 14:16

Yes.

Mac: 14:17

Right. So, like one of my sons, is like his default is fight. Whenever there's anxiety in him, he's going to go to conflict and it's like he can't handle someone thinking differently than him, having a different opinion, not getting his way. And whenever that happens, his default is to put all of his energy into changing the circumstance or the other person. And I think this highlights I mean, he's a young kid, so he has some growing up to do but it highlights that this is an immature response. Right, Fight reveals why fight is an immature response. The person can't handle someone else thinking differently. We wouldn't say that's a sign of maturity. The person is always trying to change someone else, how they're behaving or whatever. Also not a mature response.

Josiah: 15:05

Yeah, right, yeah. If I direct my sense of control that I need to have over my anxiety externally to someone else, that's where it sort of crumbles, because fighting isn't necessarily bad. I mean fighting the word fighting can maybe have some negative connotations, but going toe to toe with someone that you're having trouble seeing eye to eye with is not inherently bad. In fact, I can think of lots of instances in which that's actually helped bring intimacy and closeness with someone. It's like you're feeling oppositional and you feel like there's distance and I sort of want to close the distance and really have a discussion about this and maybe tell you how I'm feeling about it. But if my attempt to alleviate my anxiety goes away from trying to have control and self-control over myself and it goes towards changing you, that's when we've sort of crossed into this unhelpful, unhealthy territory.

Mac: 16:11

You guys and this happens to me all the time yeah we know I know Parenting right. Oh my gosh, yes, like my kids won't be behaving the way I want them to behave and that will make me anxious or reactive. And so what do I do? Like I get big and loud and I power up in order to get them in line. What is that? That's like that's me being anxious about how they're behaving and then trying to change them with force. You know that's not me at my most mature parenting moment, right?

Josiah: 16:48

Well, I think it's worth noting, and maybe this is a generational thing, but good parenting has often been compared to maybe in other areas, not as much anymore as how much control you have over your kid's behavior. Being able to control your children's behavior is the mark of a good parent in some eyes. Yeah.

Mac: 17:13

Like if your kid misbehaves. Get them back in line. They don't have control over your kids. They blame you as the parent.

Josiah: 17:18

You're the one who is responsible for that and, although there obviously is some truth, you are responsible to your kids to keep them safe and whatever else there is. Obviously we can see some problems in the statement that my kid's behavior is mine to control. As a reflection of me, it's a problematic statement.

Mac: 17:42

That's probably. We should probably do a series on parenting at some point.

Josiah: 17:47

Well, you might want to get some actual experts in here, but it's just, I don't feel like an expert.

Mac: 17:53

None of us are experts. We're all in process. Yeah, of course, of course, of course. But there's also just some theological frameworks even with this. That I think is important, like we name controlling as not a positive thing, and yet people say God is in control all the time, but we wouldn't want to say God is like controlling everyone in, like a manipulative way. What you see is that God is non-coercive love who influences people, not lobotomizes people, but he influences people. And what does that do to our parenting? What does it look like to relate to your kids in a non-coercive way, while seeking to influence them through participation and partnership? Anyway, that's a separate, probably a separate dialogue, but the point is is that this fight response, I think, surfaces quite frequently in parenting, in decision making, when you're making a complex decision and your marriage or even us as a staff, and there's differences of opinion and, before you know it, you're like feeling reactive about the direction it could go, and so you power up and try to get someone to see how stupid their ideas and how brilliant yours is Right. I shared a while back. This happened to me in a leadership team meeting. We were discussing a really sensitive topic. There were some differences of opinion. And what did I do? Instead of like remaining the same size, I sort of got big, puffed up, went to that fight mode because I was feeling reactive or anxious about, maybe, the trajectory of where the conversation was headed. And it did really bad work. I had to write an email the next day and clean up that mess. It wasn't good and that was all, because I was feeling stirred up and went to fight mode.

Katie: 19:32

Yeah, fight to me sometimes feels like I can envision, like the ideal outcome of where I want us to land and it feels like a shortcut to that. You know what I mean. Like it feels like the shortest, most efficient route to just get where I know we all need to be.

Mac: 19:49

Which is where you are, which is where I am. Yeah, exactly.

Katie: 19:53

So if you would just understand it, we wouldn't have to spend all this time talking through it. Can I tell you guys a funny story about fight? You may already know this On my first date with my now husband, Alex, I picked a fight about a Supreme Court case that had just come down.

Mac: 20:08

How romantic, I don't know.

Katie: 20:11

I don't know if it was a response to anxiety. Potentially, I don't know. Maybe I was feeling nervous.

Mac: 20:14

Some nervous energy.

Katie: 20:16

Yeah, yeah, anyways, all right. Well, that's a good job. We did a good job covering the fight response. Another one I would name would be flight, also known, as you know, distance Go ahead.

Josiah: 20:29

I wanted to say one more thing about fight.

Katie: 20:30

Oh, go for it.

Josiah: 20:31

Is that okay? Go for it, yeah, I don't know.

Mac: 20:33

It feels like we're past that now. Go for it, Jose.

Katie: 20:37

No, you can't say anything about the fight response. I'll dare you yeah.

Josiah: 20:42

One more thing about fight that I think is worth naming is that we need to have the right framework. I think sometimes we're working off of some false frameworks when we think of what it's like to be a leader or in control of your environment. Often, like you just mentioned the example of powering up right, you sort of you puffed up and you got bigger in the moment sort of assert control. I did do that Over the room. I think that there's probably some people listening who might hear that and say that just sounds like Mack was asserting his authority and being a good leader.

Mac: 21:26

A strong leader In the moment.

Josiah: 21:27

He was a strong leader, he had to take control over the situation and the conversation, and it doesn't mean that there isn't ever a time to sort of stake your stake. You know, put a stake in the ground and say something boldly. But if we're working under the, under the frame of reference of good leadership as asserting dominance and control over your environment and having the ultimate influence, I think that I think that's going to be problematic, even in just someone listening to. Like why would I even deal with this? Like that just sounds like Mack is being a strong leader. I don't know. I feel like that's worth naming that we do need to reframe how we see leadership and influence in our circles to be able to see it through the lens of how Jesus asserted his dominance and authority.

Mac: 22:20

For sure, dude. I appreciate you sharing that because I do think we're syncs. We're in a cultural moment within the American church where actually unhealthy leadership presence is rewarded and we've seen leader after leader fall because they've been, their ego has been puffed up and they've been encouraged to continue to embody that kind of presence. And actually it's. It can become toxic and abusive when it lacks repentance and emotional maturity. So yes, yeah, Thanks.

Katie: 22:55

Yeah, that's a really good insight. All right, let's talk about the flight response. I need to emphasize that L to distinguish it from the fight response.

Mac: 23:04

They sound similar, but they're not the same.

Katie: 23:06

Flight. Um, so the flight response looks like, you know, we sense conflict in the context of relationship and we just want to avoid it, like we want to get as far away from it as we can. It's almost like we're thinking well, if it's not there, I pretend like it's not there, it'll just go away, it'll fly away like a little birdie. So flight can look like withdrawal and escape. It's where my anxiety drives me to escape this relational intensity that I might be experiencing, so I might go into self-isolation. It could look like chronic avoidance. It could look like just kind of being closed off and it doesn't always mean the person is physically leaving the room, right, you could be in the same room with someone and very much feel that their engagement is just shutting down.

Mac: 23:56

They just shut down emotionally or their participation stops.

Katie: 23:59

Yeah, and it could be complete shutdown, like they're just giving you the silent treatment or they're like ghosting you, or it could be that they just sort of go to minimal contact, like I've been in a situation where someone sort of minimized their engagement just enough so that they weren't overtly giving me the silent treatment, but it was just kind of this like minimal engagement where you can tell they're not fully present in the way that they normally would be, and then you're kind of left guessing as to like what's going on here and what's underneath that.

Mac: 24:31

Yeah. So just like with the fight response, there's sort of like a spectrum right From like overt aggression to maybe more playful forms of persuasion, for instance. There seems to also be a spectrum here where maybe the extreme would be relational cutoff. I just don't talk to you anymore, I ghost you. But then there's all these like more subtle ways that flight can manifest or surface from shutting down in a conversation to giving just enough so that I don't get called on it Right, Yep, but at its root, what I hear you saying is it's an attempt to escape relational anxiety through flight. I'm trying to make things less, make myself less anxious, assuming that if I can escape this situation it will lower my anxiety. And of course oftentimes it just makes it worse because distance can intensify anxiety.

Josiah: 25:27

Right, yeah, it can create quite the cycle.

Mac: 25:31

Which is why, by the way, some people go from flight to fight from flight and they get trapped in this circle of distance and then confrontation and back and forth. They can go yeah.

Katie: 25:42

Yeah, in past episodes we've talked about how anxiety is like a threat. I think we've used the idea of like, if you're being chased by a bear, it's a good thing that your anxiety kicks in, because it's trying to protect you from the threat and flight is kind of like that, if you're actually being chased by a bear you want to If it's an acute source of anxiety, yes. Yeah, you want to actually run away. Do you want to run when a bear is chasing you? And it depends on which one right.

Josiah: 26:06

I think this depends on the type of bear.

Mac: 26:07

Yeah Well, let's say, it's the type of bear that you Better know your bears.

Katie: 26:12

Let's say it's the type of bear that you do want to run away from. That's sort of that flight instinct. There's a threat in front of me and I want to get as far away as I can.

Josiah: 26:19

Yeah, yeah. If fighting is a response to anxiety by asserting control over something else, flight is me responding to anxiety by just running away from it, just getting as far away from it as I can, and I think we can see that, especially when safety within relational dynamics is lower, like if I don't sense that our relationship is secure, my attempts to assert myself and be like and to make myself known is, you know, I'm going to feel less permission to do that, because not only am I afraid of this you know this feeling of tension between us I'm also afraid of losing connection with you as a person.

Mac: 27:11

Yeah, yeah, and you know, as we think about how this shows up, let me share, like how this can show up with me and with other people. I'll start with other people. One way I've seen this happen a lot. If you're part of pastoral ministry or leadership in a church for an extended period of time, you're going to see people come and go, and if you were pastoring during COVID, you saw this a lot and I've noticed this is a predominant response for people in the church, especially when there's like this consumer mentality where we kind of church shop and then decide which church we like the best and if it doesn't work out, then I can kind of leave and just go to the next church that seems to hold promise for good programming or preaching or whatever. I noticed this a lot where people will be upset about something or start feeling tension around something that's happening in the community and rather than facing it which we'll talk about in a bit they just slowly withdraw. They go into that flight mode to lower their anxiety about what might be happening in the community rather than staying present and talking through it. Right, that would be an example of like. That's not the healthiest move to do. There are times and reasons for leaving a church. What I'm saying is is that our flight response isn't usually a mature response to the anxiety. It's an effort to escape the anxiety. It actually increases the cycle that you're just going to keep doing that, which is why you see people going from one church to another church, to another church. As soon as that church becomes less than perfect, they move on to the next one until that one becomes less than perfect, and so on and so forth.

Katie: 28:37

Yeah, and people do that with relationships too.

Mac: 28:40

Yes, they just cycle through relationships, kind of going through that honeymoon phase where everything's we like all the same things, and then eventually there's differences that arise, which what do difference? They create that sense of anxiety and slowly I disengage. Peace out, yep.

Josiah: 28:55

Yep Marriage. Again, I think that it creates some bad references for us. It's one of the reasons why we jump to these conclusions we sense this spike of anxiety as a threat to our well-being when in reality, if we see anxiety as more of this force that exists and it rises and falls, I can have more of it or less of it. If I take away the moral stamp of is this is a good or a bad thing, I can just sense that it's there and have a much more chill response. But when, especially in the flight response, when we see anxiety as this, it's bad, it is scary, it's threatening, when there's something wrong between us or I sense tension because we disagree, that tension when we can learn to reframe that, not seeing that as something bad, necessarily with quotes but just see it as something that exists and it can be addressed.

Katie: 30:03

Your body is trying to tell you something. Anxiety is not necessarily good or bad. It's your body trying to tell you something.

Josiah: 30:11

And if something is a threat, often it's not the disagreement that's the actual threat. If you say something and I disagree with it, sometimes my initial response might be to pull away from the table. I don't want to address this with you. I'm nervous about how this is going to go. Or I can fight and choose to try to assert conversational dominance and try to prove you wrong and talk more than you to make sure you don't get a chance to say anything, and then that helps calm. But, as we'll talk about in a second facing, it is just simply you could just acknowledge it Like oh, we seem to disagree on this issue and that can just like I can move towards you instead of either run away or try to fight you for it.

Mac: 31:00

I know that you guys think I live in the fight world all the time but, believe it or not, there are times when I run away. One example or context of this happens. A lot is with my in-laws. So I want to be clear in case they're tuning in I love my in-laws. No seriously. They're wonderful, generous people, they're beautiful people. I've noticed in the last five years or so, perhaps with the rest of America, that they become more vocal about their political opinions. Maybe it was there all along and I just didn't notice it. But I've noticed it more frequently when we visit etc. And initially it was like any time it came up it was very much like butting heads, like kind of two people fighting over who's right and who's wrong, etc. And now I just notice myself totally trying to escape, Like any time a topic comes up that I know is like oh, here we go. Like sometimes I'll just shut down, like we talked about before, Like I'll just disengage from the conversation so we don't have to go there. And sometimes I'll literally just get up and leave the room and hang out in a different space for a while in an effort to like avoid what's happening there. You know, I just share that to go, even if you have like. This is the primary way. I use all these strategies in unhelpful ways, depending on the environment. I'm in.

Katie: 32:23

That's what I'm trying to confess. Yeah, and we probably all do to some extent.

Josiah: 32:27

Yeah, yeah, and small little caveat before we go on it's worth noting that there are some situations and I think you mentioned it there are some situations and people and relationships that you do have to run from for an actual safety Sure. I'm not saying that in any time you feel scared, you should just face it Like we're not saying that. Yeah, in these broad strokes terms, obviously there are times when there is a real threat. We're not speaking of abuse and manipulation and some of those other things that are a real threat to you. We're talking about times when there is a perceived threat with someone that there probably isn't an actual threat to your life and well-being, and that is what we're talking about when we're running from something. If it's a legitimate threat, well, you probably should.

Mac: 33:17

Right for sure. And this is all different than just having boundaries too. Like there might be a reason I don't engage because I'm operating out of principle, in a sense of boundary. That's different than I'm feeling anxious and I run away from the situation in order to lower my sense of anxiety. Right, so there are a lot of nuances here and we can't, of course, cover all of them, but just broad strokes. Fight is this effort to reduce my anxiety by exerting control over another person. They're thinking their way of being. Flight is an attempt to alleviate my sense of anxiety by escaping the relationship and then fake. Okay, so let's dive into this one a little bit. A fake response is when it's more subtle and perhaps it's even maybe a form of flight a little bit. It's a form of putting that. It's a very subtle form of putting distance in place, but it's basically turning the volume down on my anxiety by being really nice. Okay, so I try to lower my anxiety by ingratiating myself to the other person Instead of facing the conflict in a relationship and talking through things. The move here is to stay nice on the surface in order to keep the peace. It's sort of a superficial niceness that does the work of actually avoiding the conflict itself. So with this response a person might be smiling, but underneath the smile they're gritting their teeth. Behind the smile might be a lot of anger and resentment. And man like I, grew up in the Midwest, as you did. I actually grew up in Minnesota and they have this little phrase Minnesota, nice. So we've been inculturated into this that if someone else offends you or there's relational tension, you don't let that be known. You sort of covered up with niceties in an effort to keep the peace, but of course it's not peace, it's pseudo peace, right, yep, yeah. So again, the big idea here is we avoid conflict, we avoid facing the anxiety that's present by sort of another word would be fawning Like we try to keep the other person happy and we fake that sense of niceness to keep the peace. Yeah.

Katie: 35:40

The idea that comes to mind for me is you're trying to appease other people and in doing so, you're denying your own needs. Yes, right, like your people pleasing is what this really is At your core. You're trying to. You may be appearing happy and agreeable, but underneath that, it's just an attempt to, like you said, mack, ingratiate the person in order to avoid conflict.

Mac: 36:03

Because disappointing someone else would create anxiety for me. So in order to avoid that anxiety it would create for me, I keep the other person happy, right yeah?

Josiah: 36:15

I almost think of this, as this is a little more like preemptive to avoid conflict. It's a little more like preemptive to anxiety. So if flight is, I noticed the anxiety and it run away. This is like I don't want there to be anxiety, so I'm going to. I'm going to yeah, I'm going to relate to this person in a way that's fake. Yeah, I think of the. I just think of someone wearing a mask. Yeah, I don't want you to see who I really am. If I, if you did know, that would be a problem. So I'm, I can only relate to you in this way that I know will be agreeable in this situation and ultimately, it's just a dishonest, a dishonest response.

Mac: 36:52

Gosh, this frustrates me, you guys, and I'll tell you why, because obviously I'm more on the like. My anxious response is fight, and when someone goes to fight mode they get big and loud and puffy and it's obviously problematic. So my faults are sort of out there for everybody to see, which requires public repentance at times, and so on and so forth. But this one, you guys, is just as destructive. Like, as you just named, you're wearing a mask, you're being disingenuous and you're lying, and yet there isn't the same acknowledgement that this is like corroding our sense of community and connection and it's just as problematic.

Josiah: 37:33

Yeah, you know, yeah, because I think, especially in Christian circles, this is I would, I would imagine. This is all. This is more of a problem than in other places.

Mac: 37:48

So just as a leader can be padded on the back for having strong convictions and having kind of a domineering presence, so that's just strong leadership. Yeah, christians can also get pats on the back because they remain kind and nice, right, yeah, and we even like, maybe attach fruit of the spirit to it, like, oh, yours and bought. But it's not that.

Josiah: 38:10

Yeah, yeah.

Mac: 38:12

There's a lack of integration between what's happening internally and how you're showing up externally, and that incongruity is not good for your soul.

Josiah: 38:21

No, and it's not good for relationships, because if you don't know who I really am, how are we supposed to have an honest relationship? If you're relating to the people in your life by lying and by lying to yourself that I don't really need this or I don't really need to advocate for my own needs, it's fine, I'll just figure out how to make nice with everybody else. That only works for so long and then pretty soon the people that are in your life, they think they're close to you, but they don't really necessarily know the real you.

Katie: 38:55

Yeah, yeah, I agree with all that. And yet I can also think of many times in my life when I have gone to fake. For me, I think about probably like high school, early adulthood. I feel like this response comes off, comes up more frequently for me when, when I'm with people that maybe aren't as assertive so I named that I think I have a natural default response, kind of to fight, and I feel really comfortable going there, like if I know the person can handle it and like like if I know you're a fighter, like great, I'll meet you there. But when I tend to be around people who may be not as assertive, I start to become to tie it into a prior episode. I become overly attuned to the potential anxiety within them and I think, because I'm so concerned about the anxiety within them, I feel like, well, this person isn't going to be able to handle my distinction or my tension, and then I feel myself go into into fake, whereas growth for me in that might look like, yeah, this person might be anxious as a result of me. I'm not agreeing with them. Or I feel like this a lot with like invitations to things, like when I might get invited to something, and in the moment I feel really pressured to say like, yeah, I'd love to do that. I think I've gotten healthier. But there's probably still a little bit of that where asserting myself might look like you know what. Actually I'm really busy this week and I just need time at home and but I'm so concerned with how the other person might receive that they might feel disappointed, they might feel like I don't like them or I don't want to be friends with them. All those thoughts are running through my head and because I want to alleviate the anxiety within me that's feeding off of the anxiety within them that may or may not even be there, I'm more likely to go to fake.

Josiah: 40:36

Yeah, okay, if you're listening and you're like I don't know if I struggle with this, I think a good indicator would be once less time you told a little white lie to try to alleviate what a potential disagreement with someone. I think that would be a strong indicator. And you don't necessarily notice it because you're probably going to get away with it. No one's going to know for sure, but you told a little white lie just to get them to like, believe, like maybe it was partial truth but not total truth and the motivation is the fake. I don't want you to see what's really going on, so I'll tell you a little bit of the truth so that anxiety doesn't spike too much.

Mac: 41:21

Yeah, and to maybe build on what Katie was saying, notice that when we do that, we might convince ourselves we're predominantly doing it for the other person. So there's like this layer of oh, I'm being self-sacrificial, but if we really get underneath it, it's because I can't handle that other person perceiving me this way, or I can't handle the disappointment that they might have in me. Right, yeah, that's exactly it.

Katie: 41:46

That's exactly it. I saw someone post on social media recently something along the lines of they have made it a goal for the year to tell 100% of the truth, 100% of the time, and that stuck out to me. I don't know if it's actually possible, but it just kind of hit me like wow, do I do that? Could I do that? I think that's kind of what we're getting at, like think about what it would be to actually say what you're thinking and be really truthful.

Josiah: 42:16

Yeah, and that isn't an excuse to be a jerk. No truth is different than transparency.

Mac: 42:21

I can be truthful, but less transparent, depending on the situation and what's appropriate. Sure, you know. But yeah, I think we're supposed to live in the truth. I don't think we're supposed to put on that mask or say things that are untrue or fake or be disingenuine. But I don't need to say everything I'm thinking to someone with. You know what I mean, in order to be truthful, right? Okay, so I imagine I'm confident, fairly confident, that All of us here today and those who are listening have all of these responses when they're anxious. But I also know that we probably have a default. You know what I mean, like I've named mine, is fight. For other people, it might be that flight response. How might someone identify their default? What would you guys say for our listeners? Like Gaining some access to how do I figure out how I'm pivoting, you know, out of my anxiety?

Josiah: 43:23

Yeah, well, I think there's a few ways, you know, I think, for one just, there are really helpful ways of just identifying maybe some of your own personality traits. And you know, some of these, some of these defaults, are really intertwined with With how we're wired as people. They're not necessarily just, although they, they can form into habits and. You know things we have a lot of. It can be explained just by our sort of basic wiring, Our family of origin. Maybe the way we experienced growing up you know we've mentioned that quite a bit where you know you mentioned like you grew up in a family that was sort of like pretty assertive with their opinions and things that sort of helps identify. Oh, I might have a default towards that in certain situations that I wasn't aware of Before that. So I know that things like personality tests and assessments can be a little overused and they definitely get, you know, co-opted by pop culture and social media and things like that. But I'm a strong believer in In and some of them as being really formative tools as long as you're looking at yourself very like, Honestly mm-hmm.

Mac: 44:42

Yeah, but one way I think what I hear you saying is one way we can figure out our defaults Would be to look at our, the family we grew up in, our first formation and maybe our personality, and that will give us some access to know. Okay, I'm more likely to respond this way when experiencing anxiety yeah, anything else.

Katie: 45:05

Yeah, I think that's helpful. Another thing I guess I would reiterate something We've already touched on, which is that we may have different defaults depending on the context, right? So I already named, I feel like I'm more comfortable fight with people who can handle it and I maybe go to fake with people who I feel like can't. What would you guys add to that? Do you feel like you see yourself operate differently in different contexts?

Mac: 45:24

for sure, mm-hmm power is a big one for me, I've noticed. So, for instance, I've noticed I noticed that when I'm Underneath someone who's in authority, I'm more likely to To have a fake response to maintain that relational connection or, you know, feel like there's a smooth relationship here. That's when I'm most likely to go to fake. At the same time, I've noticed, being in a position of power and authority, other people are more likely to fake it with me than tell me what they really think. So I've had to work overtime to create environments when there's safety and trust to go. You don't have to fake it with me. You can be honest and genuine. You don't have to put the mask on. Be genuine, and so we can handle that you know.

Josiah: 46:13

So that would be an example of like Sometimes I go to fight, there are certain contexts where I might run and then there are certain scenarios when I might fake it for whatever reason, you know yeah, I think the context is really important in identifying the default, because, broad strokes, if I just say like, oh, yeah, I'm a fighter, that doesn't necessarily help me Apply it to certain parts of my life. Like if I look at at home as a parent, you know, I I may be more prone to fight to assert control, but in, in the workplace there may be mm-hmm, I walk in and I might be more fake, you know. Or maybe my family of origin. If I go home for, you know, christmas or something like that, I may, I may retreat a lot more than I would in other contexts. Yeah, so if you don't do the work of identifying it in each context, you're probably missing out on a lot of the girls opportunity, you know that's it like when I notice what my default is in these different environments.

Mac: 47:20

It helps clarify what my next steps are for growth. So let's, let's talk about this. We've named fight, flight and fake as Unhelpful ways of trying to alleviate anxiety when we're emotionally reactive and stirred up. I think Jesus embodies something different. He embodies a face response. Jesus faced his anxiety so that he could show up in a mature way, without puffing up, without shrinking back, running away or without being disingenuous and faking it. And I think one of the challenges of noticing how Jesus Practice this managing his own anxiety is that he did so so consistently. He consistently shows up with a mature presence. So I noticed, as I was thinking through this, you almost have to anticipate, as you read the Gospels, how you would show up and realize how immature your response would be if you were in Jesus's shoes, to realize how brilliant he's showing up and and how much emotional maturity he's bringing to these situations in his everyday life. So maybe, to get us started, one example I thought of just this morning of how Jesus Embodied this face response was in his. It was in the wilderness, with the temptation narratives. Hmm, like it seems to me that, though, all three temptations he faced in the wilderness were in some way tugging on those anxiety, potential anxiety, strings of In our, in our leadership intensives or DGs. We we call it like appetite, approval and ambition. It seemed as though the Satan was trying to get his foothold in each one of those places and Jesus faced to those head-on and then was able to pivot into something different. So, for instance, like approval, you know, throw yourself off this place so that everybody can see you and be wowed by who you are. Right. Jesus chooses not to do that right, but instead chooses faithfulness, right.

Katie: 49:24

Mm-hmm.

Mac: 49:25

Mm-hmm. I Think in that moment he's going in and out. I'm not primarily going to pivot out of other people's perception he had. He had worked through sort of Disappointing other people, making other people's perception his center, so that he could choose to be faithful instead. And so we see this, for example, in moments where crowds get really big in the Gospels Jesus will often say really hard things that sort of thins out the. The result is it thins out the crowd.

Katie: 49:55

Which is fascinating, because that is the opposite of what my temptation would be.

Josiah: 49:59

Oh yeah, opposite of what, of what our framework of successful church is totally, and the disciples around them were like Jesus.

Mac: 50:07

Did you not notice that what you just said offended everybody? Right, like in Luke 14, there's large crowds that are following him and Jesus, like, turns to them as like unless you hate your father and mother and pick up your cross and follow me, you can't be one of my disciples. And everybody's like dude. That's like a horrible marketing strategy.

Josiah: 50:25

If you're trying to gain a followership.

Mac: 50:26

You know what I mean. Or or in John 6, he's got crowds of people following him because he gave them he did the miracle of multiplying bread, and then he turns it into this tough teaching on how, if you don't eat and drink, you know Me you can't be my disciple. And his disciples are so freaked out he's like hey, are you guys gonna leave too? So, so I think through. If Jesus hadn't wrestled through that Approval pivot in the temptation narrative, I don't think he would have been in a place to be able to say those things to these crowds of people, because he would have been so concerned about their perception and do they like me, do they not like me? Right? And it would have compromised his ability actually love the people in front of him by naming things sometimes that are really difficult to say and maybe difficult for people to hear. Yeah, yeah.

Katie: 51:16

Another one that comes to mind is when he goes to the temple courts in Jerusalem, where the people have turned the Temple courtyard into a place to do business, and it seems like they kind of do so in a way that Maybe takes advantage of people.

Mac: 51:29

There was exploitation happening there, for sure.

Katie: 51:32

Yeah, and this really upsets him and so you know, this is an example where perhaps the anxiety could have come out as fight Right. There's something that really upsets him and he easily could have used it as authority and his power to power over and to become highly emotionally reactive. But we don't see him do that. We see him. We see him rebuke, you know, in school, but I don't think he does sort of a place of relational anxiety. What's fight response? He does so from a very intentional, courageous place yeah and conviction. Honestly, he's operating out of conviction now out of you know.

Mac: 52:13

It's so funny. You use that example because I've noticed with some people that I talked to that want to justify their fight response like this unhealthy way of navigating anxiety. We'll point to that as if, like Jesus allows that.

Katie: 52:27

Yeah, I've heard that too.

Mac: 52:28

You know what I mean. Like, oh Well, jesus got really angry and and took it out on people, so I can do it too. And it's like no. In that moment, jesus first weeps over Jerusalem, he laments their lack of repentance and then he very carefully like this was prophetic drama. This is what prophets did throughout the Old Testament. They did something highly symbolic and sort of provocative to call people into righteousness, right relationship with God and other people. That's what Jesus is doing in that moment. He's not having a tantrum, yeah, he's. He's doing something provocative to name the injustice and invite them toward faithfulness.

Josiah: 53:08

Yeah, it's also worth. Something that's coming to mind is it's different as sort of, if I'm asserting challenge over someone else to manage my own anxiety, that is different than when you are Asserting some challenge for the sake of others. I don't think that totally justifies every outburst of anger just because Someone else is being hurt, but there's it. There's a selflessness to it, where I'm not doing this to manage my own anxiety, but I see an opportunity to be able to step into something. You know, if there's exploitation happening, that means there's someone being exploited.

Katie: 53:47

Yeah, it's like standing up the kid in the school yard, standing up for another kid who's being bullied.

Mac: 53:52

Yeah, let's be reminded that Jesus was ultimately killed for this type of behavior.

Josiah: 53:59

Right.

Mac: 53:59

It wasn't to lower his anxiety that he confronts religious leaders and their exploitation, injustice. It was to expose wrongdoing and invite right alignment at cost to himself.

Josiah: 54:12

Yeah, at cost to himself.

Mac: 54:14

Yes, man, it's not to learn yeah.

Josiah: 54:20

Yeah, so, just like we have been doing this whole, this whole series, how can someone hear what they're doing today, or hear what we're talking about today and Take this into their life? What does it look like to practice? This is practice time.

Katie: 54:35

What does it look?

Josiah: 54:36

like to sort of put this to work in your own life.

Katie: 54:40

Yeah, so one thing you already touched on, josiah, but I would emphasize is just the first formation work. Like all of us have some Formative years, right like the first 18 years of our life, where we had, presumably like a family of origin and the way that we grew up, sort of set these patterns in motion, defaults. They set these defaults and they, they get kind of cemented and and One way I've heard it described is as, like the moment you're bored, you're kind of scanning the environment for like safety, threat, safety, threat. And as you make sense of the world, you find ways to keep yourself safe. So if you sense a threat or anxiety, you're gonna find a way To kind of protect yourself. And then, as that works, as you go, oh, that worked, you know, I avoided, I kind of escaped that, that tension, I escaped the threat. That worked it you, it gets ingrained in you and so by the time we enter adulthood we've got these patterns that have been practiced over and, over and over and and they're literally like pathways in our brain that are so ingrained that we might not even notice them. So the older I've gotten and the more work I've done, it's just really helped me to dive into my first formation and to get information about Family systems, to really just be able to look at it with fresh eyes and go, oh, that's why I Reacted that way, or that's why these things trigger me and that's why I respond that way when someone says something, and it's been really helpful and Healing, I would say, for me.

Mac: 56:12

Yeah, maybe a tool there for someone who's like well, okay, how do you do that? How do you start looking at your, your family of origin and noticing some of those defaults that might have been cemented or become pattern behavior is a genogram. So a genogram is just kind of like a fancy family tree where you do your research on both sides of the family and pay attention to how people related to each other. I did this a few years ago. I used a book called a family genogram workbook. You just do it on Amazon, search for it and it was really helpful, really helpful to kind of look at a few generations back, like here are some of the struggles that people had in relating to each other and here's how that gets passed on through the generations and informed the environment that I grew up in and now that I'm passing on to the next generation if I'm not thoughtful about it.

Josiah: 57:05

you know, yeah, the Bible has some terminology in the older in the Old Testament about like generational curses. Yeah, yeah, I think some of that can be sort of uncovered when you do the work of first formation stuff.

Mac: 57:22

Yep, yep. So a genogram is a helpful tool to uncover your first formation. What else I mean? Practices, you know, to help people not respond out of fight, flight or fake, but actually face their anxiety and then show up in a mature way.

Josiah: 57:40

Yeah, well, one of them would just be the different contexts we find ourselves in. So we talked about that earlier, that you may have different defaults for different areas of your life, different relationships. So, taking a second in reflection and even if you're not even journaling, just simply be like I wonder how I show up at home with my kids, and just take one, just find one context and you can do this with multiple find one and really start to reflect how do I show up? And, of course, we've talked about this before. You could include other people within that, someone you trust for their feedback, who's a genuine friend, and start to look at what those contexts look like for you.

Mac: 58:30

Yeah, so it sounds like the first two practices are probably gonna be more reflective. Look at your first formation, then look at the context you're in and then in light of that it will expose sort of your defaults and then you'll have a better idea of what your growth areas are right Like. If I'm a flight over here, my growth area would be like to step towards it a little bit more right. So maybe a final practice I would name is just practice pivoting. Once you know your defaults, practice pivoting from your unhealthy default towards facing your anxiety and showing up with a mature presence.

Katie: 59:06

Pivot, Pivot, practice pivots You're.

Mac: 59:09

Reminds me of that Friends clip you know when they're moving the couch? Oh yeah, totally, the cross keeps going. Pivot, yeah, it's so funny.

Katie: 59:15

Maybe you can play that while you're practicing pivot.

Mac: 59:17

Practice pivots and, of course, you can't eliminate anxiety. So the first step is just to name it I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling emotionally reactive, I'm feeling stirred up, I'm buzzing right now. Whatever phrase you need to tell yourself and maybe, if it's safe, the people around you. I know we practice that as a team. If one of us is getting stirred up, we just name that I'm feeling stirred up right now and then, once you've named it, well, now, all of a sudden, in light of the fact that I'm stirred up, I can go okay, I'm aware of that. Now I can choose something different. I'm facing my anxiety. So now I don't need to puff up, I don't need to run away and I don't need to fake it. I can choose to be present and face my anxiety and this situation in front of me.

Katie: 1:00:00

Yeah, I love that what you just said. I wanna underscore that we're not trying to find ways to make ourselves automatically just snap out of where we're at Right. We're trying to understand what's going on underneath the surface, validate whatever might be there to validate. For instance, if I'm a flighter, maybe I just need space, like, maybe I feel like, hey, this person seems to really be able to articulate what they need. In the moment I'm not really able to do that and I need to ask for a break. Well then, do that. Yeah Right, don't flight out of your anxiety. Just say, hey, I need 10 minutes or an hour to kind of get my thoughts together and calm down and practice what it would look like to kind of pivot out of that place.

Mac: 1:00:43

Yeah, yeah. Or if you're a fight person, you notice you're getting stirred up. Normally, without that awareness, you might puff up. You can go look, I'm feeling stirred up right now. And then that's the cue to ask questions and to get curious about the other person's perspective. You know what I mean.

Josiah: 1:01:01

Yeah, yeah, I have an example of this from my own life. I've worked here for almost eight years now, sheesh, I know I don't think. I've hardly done anything for eight years, but yeah, so I worked here for eight years. There were years on staff here. There was a lot of people who came and went and there definitely wasn't a lot of safety in the team to be able to sort of just share your opinions in a sort of raw format you can just like. If you were to speak up in a meeting, you had to be ready to get not just challenged in a healthy way, but it wasn't safe. Sometimes your opinions, when they were shared, like in a staff meeting, were leveraged against you in later times. And I learned that pretty quick coming onto staff here. And when I did that I noticed when I look back I had a tendency of flight. When it was large spaces of people, when there was more than one or two people in the room, I would retreat and I would just sit back in my chair and I would often have reactions to things people were saying or doing, things I wanted to have input on, but I just would say nothing. And I remember, as our staff changed quite a bit and we did some more work, new leadership and things like that, there was some work being done to sort of like, hey, why don't we make sure everybody has contribution at the table and sort of be healthy. And I noticed that I was having a lot of reactions to things that I was hiding and what I would end up doing is like I would hide in the space and I wouldn't show up, I wouldn't assert any of my opinions and I would walk away feeling really frustrated and resentful and often have maybe different types of like side conversations and things like that, and it was really unhealthy. But the work I had to do was simply to like work up the courage to just say what I was thinking in the moment, even if I didn't have it all figured out. I didn't know how the conversation was gonna go and how it was gonna be received, because I had identified my default as the flight response.

Mac: 1:03:17

My work was to assert my opinion in a more raw format, essentially just to say it when it came to mind To lean in yeah, and Bro I've seen the transformation in this area, your presence, from what you were describing like hiding and then being frustrated and maybe resentful and having side conversations years ago, to now these like raw sort of reactions where you're risking. I don't know how other people are gonna feel when I say this, but I'm willing to go there because I trust the safety in the room and, I will confess, sometimes I delight and find your reactions quite comical.

Katie: 1:03:58

Like the.

Mac: 1:04:00

Josiah, reactions are really a hoot sometimes, so I've seen that growth in you.

Josiah: 1:04:05

It's been amazing. Yeah, I guess the reason why I share is it's really worth noting that because I identified my default as the flight, my path to growth was a little more assertive. I needed to be more assertive with my opinion, not in a domineering way, but in a sense that, like if I was having a reaction, trusting in my instinct to just like share it and to put it out there. Someone who has a fight response right In a meeting and has a more of like I have, a more assertive presence in the room, might need because they've identified their default. Their path to growth might be. Actually it might look like a flight response on the outside.

Mac: 1:04:50

But it's actually health Right which has been my journey.

Josiah: 1:04:53

Yeah, I remember, and I've shared this in another episode too, but you have named that often because your presence, because your tendency is to like, is to sort of be a bigger presence in the room and full of people. If there's differing opinions and things, you will just wait to share your opinion. Last, because you don't want it to hold too much weight. People are sort of giving it too much weight often and we do that in those circles anyway, so your response could look like flight from the outside, but because you know your default, that's actually the path to health.

Mac: 1:05:30

Yep, yeah, man. Hopefully this has been helpful to our listeners. So big picture. You guys were talking about how anxiety shows up and we named three unhelpful ways that we try to lower our anxiety fight, flight and fake. And yet Jesus embodied something different. He faced his own anxiety so that he could show up with emotional maturity, and we've tried to name a few practices for you to move toward a Christ-like way of embodying the world. So get after your first formation, try to understand some of the defaults you inherited from your family of origin. Maybe do some contextual audits of how you show up in different spaces or environments and then begin practicing pivots. Each person might have their own growth path, but once you know how you show up, it will clarify how growth might look like for you moving forward.

Josiah: 1:06:29

Well, thanks again for joining us today. We had a great time with this. We hope that you enjoyed it too. Next time, we're gonna continue this discussion on how anxiety shows up by discussing relational triangles.

Mac: 1:06:43

Yeah, a triangle is a three-sided shape. Yes, no, we'll get into this next time, but for those of you that might be listening, a triangle is when anxiety. I have anxiety in myself or between me and another person, and in order to alleviate that sense of anxiety, I bring a third person into it. So we're gonna talk about the difference between a relational triangle and triangulation. It's gonna be a great episode, yeah.

Josiah: 1:07:09

Yeah, so we hope that you'll continue to tune in and we will see you next time.

Katie: 1:07:14

Praxis is recorded and produced at Crosspoint Community Church. You can find out more about the show and our church at crosspointwicom. If you have any questions, comments or have any suggestions for future topics, feel free to send us an email. Also, if you enjoy the show, consider leaving us a review and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.