Emotional Health Archives - Mission Central

Healing from Learned Helplessness

One psychological and spiritual malady that we can find healing from at work is learned helplessness. Because this kind of helplessness is learned, it also has to be unlearned. Healing comes in the form of learning to do things that we thought we couldn’t do. This makes the workplace an ideal environment for the healing process.

For disciples of Jesus, this healing is all about coming to know, in the most practical terms possible, that “the Lord is my helper” (Hebrews 13:6 NIV). He’s the one who helps us unlearn our helplessness.

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Healing from the Need to Win

Christopher Easley

Competition can bring out the best in us. The challenge posed by someone else doing excellently in our field makes us rally our internal resources. This is even true in church, where competition is sometimes discouraged. In a town with more than one preacher, the preaching is better. It has to be; people leave the churches with bad preaching and go down the street to another one!

But competition obviously has a dark side, too. At its best, competition spurs us to become who we were meant to be, to accomplish things we wouldn’t otherwise accomplish. But at its worst, competition feeds our insecurity and makes us incapable of loving other people.

Wanting to win can be a good thing–especially if it translates to wanting to do our best. But needing to win–to do better than others–is always evil. It twists us, wounding us, our teammates, and our competitors.

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Healing the Wound of Rejection

Christopher Easley

In our last post, I wrote about how shame and fear generate bricks in the backpack we all carry, putting a load on our shoulders that we were never meant to bear.

Usually, there are more bricks in my backpack than I care to realize. I’ve spent much of my working life so far hiding from my shame, trying to find ways to shore up my fragile ego through various impressive achievements.

If I hit it out of the park on my annual review, then I’ll be okay.

If I can just pull off this next big project, then I’ll be okay.

If I get that promotion, then I’ll be okay.

If I can just get my coworkers to like me, then I’ll be okay.

As these examples show, there’s almost always a social dimension to my achievement project. To be impressive, there has to be someone to impress, whether it’s my boss, my colleagues, or even just the people who read my posts on LinkedIn.

The social dimension of ego management makes one possibility most terrifying: rejection.

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Carrying The Work Lightly

Christopher Easley

All of us carry our work responsibilities with us. It’s like we have a backpack stuffed with our to-dos, pressing down on our shoulders as we move through the day. But some people, like Dallas, somehow seem to carry their backpack lightly. They still have the backpack, but it doesn’t weigh them down in the same way.

They are able to set it aside and come back to it.

They can give their undivided attention to the people in front of them.

They are not anxiously distracted by what they have to do next.

They are fully present.

I’d like to be that kind of person, wouldn’t you?

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When You Just Can’t Work: Depression, Self-Acceptance, and God’s Love

Christopher Easley

For me, one of my major spiritual wounds is bound up with work. My anxiety that my true worth comes from my work is a distortion of reality, a sickness of the soul.

Your soul might get sick in different ways than mine. Even so, I bet that your wounds show up in your work, too.

Rather than trying to anchor your self-worth in your work output, you might be fixated on how your peers at work perceive you. You wonder if you’re really valued by the people you see each day.

Or maybe you ground your sense of worth in a specific relationship or friendship outside of work. That in turn affects the energy you can bring to the work day. If your relationship is strained, your whole sense of self feels fragile, and focused work is elusive.

Regardless of what our wound is, to receive healing, we must come to believe that there is a different source of worth and well-being for us.

As I consider my own hurting heart, I ask myself: What could that source of deep wellness be?

Of course, I’m a good enough theologian to identify the right answer: God loves me. He created me. He will care for me. The cure for my sickness of workaholic self-worth is the conviction that God accepts me just the way I am.

But it’s one thing to be able to type out that sentence, and another to let the love of God saturate my soul. I need help connecting the truth of God’s love to my lived experience.

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The Work of Healing

Christopher Easley

I often find it’s easier for me to think about God than to talk with God or listen to God. Even when the subject is healing, I tend to settle for thinking about healing in the right way, rather than welcoming the healing God might want to extend to me.

It’s easier for me to project an image of myself as an expert in the way I speak and write about the things of God, than to come alongside others as a fellow human being in need of healing. My tendency to over-intellectualize while side-stepping healthy self-disclosure comes out in this blog as much as anywhere else.

But to write this series with honesty, I’ll need to be forthcoming about my current walk with Jesus. In my own life at work, I see the grace of the healing he is bringing to certain wounds, and still feel the sting of others that are, so far, unhealed.

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Work to Be Proud Of

Christopher Easley

I’m writing this post from the lobby of an auto shop while waiting on an oil change. It’s a wet, gray day and the mechanics are working by the light of fluorescents, wielding flashlights as needed. The guy at the counter is looking out the window with a grimace but gets chipper when a customer walks in. Along with me and another customer, a big donation box sits in the lobby for a toy giveaway at a children’s hospital. You can smell the rubber of the tires on display.

I haven’t spent much time in garages like this, but it seems like a typical day. The shop is busy but not overwhelmed; they could fit me in without an appointment and I doubt I’ll finish this draft before they’re done. I go here because when I first moved to town, a friend of mine at church told me they do honest work.

That’s been my experience. They level with me when work needs to be done but never pressure me or overcharge. Today, they tell me that one of my battery terminals isn’t latching tightly. They take the time to explain the issue so I understand it, and they’re adding a shim to fix it.

These guys do work to be proud of.

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Letting Go of Work

Christopher Easley

There’s a tree in my neighbor’s yard that I sometimes watch across the backyard fence. I’m no expert, but I think it’s a linden. Although winter has already stripped the leaves off most trees in our neighborhood, the linden tree is stubborn. I see a smattering of brown near the bottom of the trunk, the first prizes the cold has pried off. But hundreds of orange hearts still cling to the branches, making a rare spot of color in the snow-strewn landscape.

As I look at those leaves, it strikes me that they’re having a hard time letting go. They just don’t want to give up on fall. Winter is here, but they’re not ready for it.

We’re not so unlike those leaves. When it comes to our work, we can hold onto it tightly, even when the time has come to set it aside. It’s hard to let go.

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The Dignity of Dishes

Christopher Easley

My wife Katie and I know a local potter named Tim who makes bowls, mugs, luminaries, garden planters, and other sundry dishes. A few of his works grace our home, including the bowls in the photo above. They bring a touch of beauty to the domestic environment.

Although Tim’s bowls are dishwasher safe, Katie and I do not own a dishwasher. We wash these handmade wares by hand, like all our other dishes.

As I glove up and squirt dish soap onto our plates from IKEA, it’s easy to pine for the convenience of a dishwasher. But with Tim’s bowls, it somehow seems appropriate to give them special care. It’s an almost comic-poetic moment: “Righteousness and peace kiss each other; handmade bowls and hands for washing meet each other.”

We care more about Tim’s bowls than the rest.

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The Work Monster

Christopher Easley

I’ve known work as a refuge. In a time of family crisis, when things at home were anything but steady, work was a sanctuary. In my personal life, I felt scared that I wouldn’t find my way. But at the office, I felt secure, competent, effective.

I’ve also known work as a monster. I was in over my head, and each day when I powered on the computer, it felt like something was getting ready to pounce on me. It wasn’t a question of if the Next Terrible Thing would happen, but when.

Like a school bully who you know you’ll run into at some point during the day, the Work Monster doesn’t have to be sly or strategic. It just throws its weight around.

It’s the long hours. It’s the unclear expectations. It’s the all-too-clear but impossible demands. It’s the meaninglessness of it all.

The Work Monster can beat you up. You come to the end of the day exhausted. Defeated. Alone.

You want to quit.

But you can’t bring yourself to choose the abyss of unemployment. The Work Monster is, at least, the devil you know.

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