What It's About

TRIBEWORK is about consuming the process of life, the journey, together.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Post grief growth — resilience from adversity


The experience of loss is the paradox of life; life that becomes death. Loss is suffering in one word; to have someone or something we value taken away. 

The experience of loss would be hard enough if it only happened once. But the fact is it happens several times, perhaps many times, and sometimes too many times to count, over one lifetime.

One thing I’ve often thought about is whether we have the potential to master loss.

It is only been recently that I’ve come to discover that loss, as a general and overall concept, cannot be mastered. We may master a certain kind of loss, accepting the grief as part and parcel of life. But that doesn’t mean we master every kind of loss. And I think God can teach us something in this; not least of which, this reality prevents us from becoming conceited (this aligns with what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10). He was given something painful that had to be endured to prevent him from becoming conceited.

What makes being human so hard is that none of us at any time can predict just when loss will occur. It comes like a thief in the night. And only when it arrives do we comprehend that it was ever present as a potential reality from our very beginning.

Loss is impossibly hard. Anyone who has been touched by this suffering of having had someone beloved or something valuable taken away from us knows that grief is a pain that never truly leaves during the entire season we experience it. And in most cases, closure for grief is a myth. It never happens that way. It just so happens that we learn to live a new normal, which on the surface of it is a sad and stark reality.

I have found personally that the greatest gift of loss is learning to die to self. It is never an easy lesson to learn, but it is always worth learning.

I call this the Revenant Blessing. It is a broad and general lesson; once loss has swept our hope away on a torrent to oblivion, loss may not blindside us to that degree again.

We are given some gift of resilience that I liken better to a hopeful resignation. Nothing unimportant wins our covetous hearts over again.

But this doesn’t mean we won’t experience grief again. Losses will continue to occur. The bigger and more complicated our families and lives are, for instance, the more susceptible we are to loss.

We may well have been broken by loss, and we may have learned the lessons of Christ in dying to self; this doesn’t mean that we are fortified against every form of loss, for different losses bring different costs and requirements of us.

There is a wisdom in life that helps us as losses come. This is not about imagining that being human can be made easy. On the contrary, as we accept that being human is hard, we are given to a deeper, more gifted, experience of life. We are matured as we come to accept there are many things we cannot change.

What makes being human so hard is that this life is so unpredictable, and we cannot exercise supreme control over our thoughts, our emotions, and others’ thoughts and emotions. If only we could! But then if we could we wouldn’t live a life capable of love.

Perhaps we have suffered many losses already. Maybe there are some losses yet to be experienced. What stands us in good stead is our acceptance of the day; to take each day as it comes, gratefully, as the mystery each day is. And whether the day involves trial or tribulation or a mix of both matters less than the fact that the universe spins the same way every day.

What makes being human easier is when we finally arrive in that place where we don’t need to control the day, other people, our circumstances, the weather, or anything else.

This is an ‘arrival’ to strive for, and that gives enduring loss meaning, which fuels hope.

I know this one thing for sure, however. I’m so glad of the person I’ve become because — in spite — of the grief I’ve endured. I would not be the person I am today had it not been for the things I’ve suffered.

Empathy and compassion are the gifts borne of great suffering.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Let’s agree on our differences


 

We will—all of us—disagree with anyone else (literally, everyone) at some point.  It’s true also that none of us even agrees with ourselves all the time.  Think about indecision and regret.  

We would all decide differently at times
if we were reflecting on different information.

The fact is we change our minds.  We also have set views on things.  And we have biases, including confirmation bias, which explains why we prefer certain information, and intentionality bias, which explains how we tend to judge others but are lenient on ourselves.

When differences become a problem for us our whole attitude zeroes in on the difference and how the other person is a problem—they are being obstinate.

But if we ACCEPT that there will be differences, we hold the difference we have with another person and resist the temptation of putting them in the naughty corner.

There often isn’t enough time or opportunity or relational tolerance to flesh matters out.  Sometimes people have set opposite views, and we find it frustrating when we can’t change a person’s mind.  Think about that from their viewpoint.  Who lacks tolerance?

Imagine if we lived in a world where we as people readily accepted that others think differently and that that doesn’t make them wrong—just different. Imagine the peace.

To make that world a reality in our own life we must accept it starts and ends with us.  We must work on our own attitude to others, we can’t expect them to do any of that work for us.  We can only impact our own behaviour and attitudes.

Imagine the relief in others when they relate with us where our acceptance takes the pressure off them to align to our views about things.  We all want to be treated with respect, and that actually needs to start with us.  Most people respond in kind.  Respect begets respect.

If we feel a person is judging us, we can ask ourselves if we’re doing anything to put division between us.

But if we’re honest, it’s hard.  Our differences with others create a lot of turmoil, for us and for them and for others as well, especially when we or they feel there is a need to influence change.

Agreeing on the presence of difference in our lives is important for a content life.

Accepting we have limited control over certain circumstances and others is the larger part of personal maturity and prosperity. It is peace for us, and that is peace for others, too.


Thursday, February 22, 2024

Wellness or Illness – what is it to be?


 

Remember the old adage, “there is no ‘I’ in TEAM”?

It’s the same with our mental health: “I” or “WE”?

“I” ought to remind us of ILLNESS, whereas
“WE” ought to remind us of WELLNESS.

Healing and wholeness are not rocket science. 

It’s the careful attention to connecting with a caring, compassionate world — the world of WE.

But it does take courage, it takes risk, to thrust ourselves into an often-unknown world, so we do understand the fear innate in shrinking, isolating, withdrawing — it feels safer.  Indeed, these forces are often too compelling to overcome. 

But when we are ready, we can take a plunge, especially when we give what we feel might be a safe space a chance.

Safe spaces of community are a boon for wellness.  But safe spaces are only safe when we feel safe, and others feel safe.  There is a shared responsibility to ensure a safe place. 

Safe spaces are places where a person can suffer and be comforted, where their primary emotions of sadness and fear might find acceptance, but not a place where secondary emotions like anger and rage are allowed to boil over to damage and traumatise.  The former is ownership of their emotional landscape, whereas the latter is a blaming of others.

Being honest about our sadness and fear will always pave a way to healing.  But unmerited anger just festers.

Anger contributes to illness
but expressions of sadness and fear
lead to wellness.

Friday, February 9, 2024

The holding pattern growth purpose in suffering


Against our modern-day proclivity in desiring the easy life (compare how ‘easy’ life was 70-100 years ago) there is one thing that suffering gives us hope for: growth. 

I’ve seen this firsthand in my life: first in suffering the loss of my first marriage and second in the loss of the career of my calling.  No matter what I tried and no matter what ‘work’ I did to recover, I could not escape the holding pattern of suffering that gripped my life.

There were forces in my life that conspired against my comfort; yet these same forces conspired against the escape I wanted that would have impeded my recovery.

There is a classic but painful irony in suffering.  What is true in ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’ turns out to be the acquisition of a growth mindset as a compensation for what we’ve been through.  The only caveat: if only we respond to the ignominy of suffering with humility, poise, and grace.

We lament the growing pains of grief, but if we can only hold onto hope enduring it; that it will produce perseverance, character, maturity, and wisdom, eventually.  Because it will.


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

The Drinker’s Dilemma

I lived the drinker’s dilemma from about my eighteenth birthday until about six weeks after my thirty-sixth birthday — 18 years, and though there weren’t many black outs, there were many seedy hangovers.  

The way I feel about alcohol now is balanced.  Having been a non-drinker for over twenty years now, I commend anyone to drink if they can enjoy it in moderation.  But as soon as the drink becomes a pattern for coping a person is in trouble.

2,900 years ago these words were penned:

“It is not for kings, Lemuel –
    it is not for kings to drink wine,
    not for rulers to crave beer,
lest they drink and forget what has been decreed,
    and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.
Let beer be for those who are perishing,
    wine for those who are in anguish!
Let them drink and forget their poverty
    and remember their misery no more.”  (Proverbs 31:4-7)

As a counsellor I know it’s not as simple as someone giving up the grog cold turkey.  For many people, drinking is a coping mechanism and there needs to be the right supports in place to help a person make their journey clear and free of alcoholism.

That support for me two decades ago was a tremendous body of believers in recovery, unity, and service — the rooms of AA, shout out to the Mandurah Steps group, Coolbellup, Fremantle, Rockingham groups, and the Kwinana Town Group (where I was Secretary for a short time before I received my call to become a minister of God).  In the grips of grief with my first marriage in tatters, so many men and a few women gathered me and encouraged me to go deep into my own pain to own it, to deal with my resentments and anxieties, to invest in my recovery by looking at ME, not blaming others.  AA gave me so much at the time I committed myself to a lifetime of recovery, unity, and service.  It is a constant reminder that my life — all our lives — has enormous purpose, much bigger than many of us contemplate or dare to imagine.

The fact is life wasn’t meant to be lived off our faces.  It is meant to be lived sober.  Life is its best when we are stone cold sober.

Recovery is worth every bit of the sacrifice it takes to get and stay sober.

Unity is HOW we get through and STAY sober, the mutual love and support of brothers and sisters of the same faith.

Service is what keeps us humble and fortifies us against the inevitable threads of disappointment, regret, betrayal, bitterness, unforgiveness, and resentment that remain ever present threats to our sobriety.  Truth is, these snares are everywhere in life, and we must get to a place where we’re girded beyond them, to save us when we might otherwise slip into the haze of a drunken spree.  Service is an offensive strategy to ensure we are blessed in being a blessing.  A person who serves simply for the joy of it, because they can, cannot be swayed by addiction.

Get this: sobriety is a state of mind, and less so much about whether we drink or not.  But it is also about being and staying sober.  Sobriety is the wisdom of maturity that contemplates that life is a bruising affair, that there are too many temptations and stumbles along the way, and that the only way through is the preemptive perspective that prevents us getting stuck in the salty mangrove swamps where there is no spiritual life.

The drinker’s dilemma is to drink to cope with the pains of life that could be resolved if only the drink were replaced with facing scary feelings which threaten to overwhelm but can be faced and can be tamed.

The drinker’s dilemma is a short-term solution that involves considerable consequences.  Alcohol always complicates things.  It is not only a physical carcinogen, it’s an emotional and a spiritual carcinogen as well.  It destroys lives and never builds.  And to think we still allow it to be advertised so much that young lives continue to be conditioned to think it’s part of a good life.  Trouble is the drinker’s dilemma, because for every person who partakes in moderation there is potential for another to tie on a bender.

We don’t need alcohol like we need food, water, and shelter.  Alcohol contributes nothing to our needs.  For nine who can ‘enjoy a quiet one’ there is one or two who will drink themselves to oblivion.  Theirs is the drinker’s dilemma, ten thousand regrets with the hair of the dog combined with another ten thousand on top — the daily drive to drink for 55 years.  The drinker’s dilemma is damned if one drinks and damned if one does not drink (for the fact that the drink is missed).

You can do it.  You can rid it from your life if you relate to the drinker’s dilemma.

Get support around you.  Go and face those emotions that beg to be met.  Commit yourself to the steps of recovery and be blessed to find your purpose in service.


Wednesday, January 17, 2024

What do I do with this crippling grief?


A polarising question to loss: “What do I do with this crippling grief?”

There is a simple answer to a question that is an eternal conundrum.  The answer is there is no answer.  Contemplating this leads us to a place of contemplation.  It leads to silence.  From silence comes respect for all things that do not have answers, for there are many problems of life that leave us without words or capacity of response.

To loss, there is no answer.  

And yet what is come of crippling grief?  

Silence.  Stillness.  Surrender.  

Acceptance as a response and goal of arrival.

~

In the discombobulating reality of loss, grief invades as an ever-present foe, stealing all semblance of peace, hope and joy.  It causes us to distrust both present and future as we pine for the past.  It annihilates all confidence that happiness is possible again.  It’s like we’ve travelled through a portal to hell.  We envy what we once had.  It’s like a parallel universe where we disconnect from others who are untouched by loss, getting on with ‘their happy lives’.  It leaves us mystified and dread-filled.  In loss, a series of blows is meted out in a season of unparalleled injustice that seems to last beyond forever.

There is no making sense of it.  There are no words.  Anything ventured is a waste of space and energy.  And yet, somehow the answer is closer than ever before.  

In a topic that makes no sense, sense is finally made when we agree that searching is senseless.  When we sit in the pain agreeing to hope when the presence of hope is a void we find a way of putting one foot in front of another, even if that’s a dream of the hope we cannot let go of.

At least we can know that someone sees us in the crippling grief.  We connect to a world we hardly knew existed.  Strangely we feel home in places that were previously foreign.  

In your crippling grief know that there is a purpose in all things, and that that purpose may not reveal itself for some time; yet, surely as I’ve heard it countless times, that purpose will come.  


Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Hope beyond the overwhelm

Life in the overwhelm takes us from the relative comfort we may have had to fear to questioning the meaning of life to questioning our existence.  It is fathoms below, and infinitely harder than, any pain we’d previously conceived.

When we endure loss and we are tipped into grief, overwhelm threatens every moment.  Even when we’re gifted a presence of momentary peace, we know that the overwhelm, the dread, beckons at the door — we wonder when our peace will be vanquished.  That terrifying reality is an ever present threat.

‘FAITH TO OVERCOME’

Some people have faith to overcome and it comes naturally to them.  For others — especially those who are more realistic than idealistic — faith to overcome comes much less naturally.

Let me explain that ‘faith to overcome’ is not inherently about religious faith — where your faith might be in God, for instance.  For me, faith to overcome is much more visceral than religious faith, but it is also the basis of authentic religious faith. 

It’s a faith that trusts that good is coming. 

Faith to overcome is
born of and is underpinned
by a hope that insists good is coming. 

Faith to overcome is
impossible to stifle.
It holds the overwhelm amid the promise
of something good coming from it. 

This faith to overcome somehow helps in the pain of the overwhelm because it hopes for something better on the horizon.  Ultimately this faith to overcome cannot be defeated because the hope underpinning it refuses to be despaired.  Eventually, all good hopes are vindicated.  Good does come eventually.

Sure, there are times when we do despair: 

… times that are, “far beyond our ability to endure,
so that we despaired of life itself.”
— 2 Corinthians 1:8

But even in such places of spirit, there is the intractable presence of hope beyond the overwhelm if only we cling to the fact that good is coming.  And good WILL come. 

While we’re on this sojourn of pain in the overwhelm and dread, we can enrol in the truth that enduring this harsh season will pay handsome dividends when it is over.

Life experience is the school of hard knocks. 
Such wisdom is hard-won. 
Once won is cannot be lost.

If we talk about peace, we can see that once we’ve experienced this travail, the premium for peace is a bounty worth paying the service of our lives for.  And peace becomes our soul’s aim and hence wisdom is our driver. 

This is what life experience teaches us, through the pain of tumult: 

Peace is worth the struggle to attain it.
Peace is a goodness that indwells hope and joy.
Suffering teaches us that peace is THE prize of life.

Hope beyond the overwhelm is something that refuses to let go of the concept that good is coming.  It keeps hope alive, and it certainly can keep us alive. 

The concept of an horizon is crucial on the cruel path of life.  The horizon never arrives but if there is goodness there, it fuels hope and the faith to overcome. 


Wednesday, December 13, 2023

The insight and motivation in mental health

Like diligence and prudence are opposite and complementary sides of the coin of character, insight and motivation are opposite and complementary sides of mental health.  

A thumbnail sketch of this topic:

Diligence is like motivation – action-oriented.  

Prudence is like insight – inaction-oriented.  

Diligence and prudence form wisdom.  

Insight and motivation form mental health.

~

THE MENTAL HEALTH IN INSIGHT

Insight is that beautiful characteristic where a person can literally see inside themselves.  

They can truthfully see their individual and social truth.  

They are aware and their awareness adds beauty to all their relationships.  

They accept themselves for who they are, not needing to be perfect, on the contrary, never happier to be content with what they have and are.  

They pick up on the nonverbals and astoundingly do not need to be told where they are going wrong.  

They are also not overly afraid of receiving feedback.  

Their self-awareness is a great tool
that protects them and provides for them.

One of the worst blows of mental ill health is a loss or lack of insight.  

Those who cannot see what they need to see to protect themselves and others are in harm’s way.  

Those who struggle to know how to provide for themselves and others also lack insight.  

We’ve all had times when we’ve been vulnerable to these things.

What do we do to nurture insight?  We live in the knowledge of truth as much as possible.  That takes courage and humility.  The key question always remains: how open am I to the truths pertaining to my person and relationships — to my inner and outer world?

THE MENTAL HEALTH IN MOTIVATION

Society mistakenly thinks that depression is about sadness.  

Depression is about sadness, but it is so much more.  

Principally it’s about motivation – depression sucks not only the motivation and drive from a person, but it also sucks their hope, peace, and joy dry.  It saps us to the point where we’re rendered powerless to control ourselves.

But mental ill health is more than depression.  

A person who is demotivated is not at their peak mental health.  There is a disconnect with their purpose and an inability to live life full and abundantly.  

If mental ill health is a lack of life direction and purpose, it reaches its pit in suicidal ideation – the lack of will to live and the goal to die.  What sets a person back on their course is them connecting with their innate purpose – their reason and meaning for being here.  There is always a “why”.

The pinnacle of human existence is wanting to live and desiring to make the most of every day — accepting that not every day is imminently liveable.  

The best indicator that we have room to grow mentally is that we are NOT experiencing this.  

It is a very good thing when we commit to wanting to make more of every day we have alive – that’s a seeking for good mental health. 

If this article brings something up for you, listen to your inner voice and go on a quest to seek for better. 


Sunday, November 19, 2023

The gifts of empathy and understanding

Truly understanding another human being is like seeing the entirety of an iceberg.  Much of the mass of an iceberg sits invisible below the surface of the icy waters.  The archetypal iceberg is much bigger in mass below the surface.  Only the smaller portion exists visible to the eye.

The metaphor of the iceberg is helpful for understanding empathy.  The more we see of the iceberg, the more we know its true mass, structure, and features.

The more we understand another person,
the more we can choose to empathise. 

When we more fully understand
and appreciate another human being,
we are positioned then to empathise.

But it also takes empathy to
achieve a fuller understanding.

Empathy is the capacity for one human being to understand and feel for another.  But empathy is also the behaviour of demonstrating care from the understanding gleaned.  Understanding comes first.

Understanding is the full iceberg.  It comes from the empathy of interest in the other person; the curiosity and integrity of interest for the right reasons.

THE HEART BEHIND EMPATHY

The heart is what underlies empathy — the WANT or the motivation to understand another person.  But many people have absolutely no inclination to do so. 

The heart in Old Testament terms is ‘the seat of the emotions’ — the heart is the basis of all our motivation or want to do anything.  This is a thing that we must personally see the inherent benefit of — to do it. 

The heart behind empathy is the WANT
or desire to see others prosper or be blessed.  

Only people who already feel blessed
have the capacity to willingly empathise. 

Only when we truly understand the power of giving our love away to the extent of empathy, do we fully grasp and take hold of the abundant life any of us can have at any time. 

Giving empathy is therefore a key indicator and evidence of full emotional health in a person in the realm of relationships.  It is not only wisdom to engage in it.  Demonstrated empathy is a gift to both the receiver and giver.

COMMITTING TO A FULLER UNDERSTANDING 

Making the sacrifices necessary to fully understand another person is worth it.  But it’s like the chicken and the egg — what comes first?  Empathy or understanding?  

To fully invest ourselves in understanding another, we must have sufficient security of worth within ourselves first.  Who gives the precious gift of authentic empathy without first having a safe sense of self? 

Seeking a full understanding of
another involves an inherent humility;
a heart genuinely interested in the other. 

A fuller understanding of another person positions that person to empathise.

Blessed is the heart of a person motivated to empathise.

A person motivated to understand and
empathise is blessed as they are a blessing.