00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 158, "Sometimes Dysfunction is Easier." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Well, hello there, my friends. So happy to have you here today. Thanks for being here. If you are new, welcome. I hope that you find here things that are going to help you move into a better space emotionally in your relationships, with yourself, with other people, and also with God. And for those of you who are returning, thank you so much for your support. And again, I can only hope that this is blessing your life in such a way that that's why you keep returning. I love the work that I get to do here with you, and for you, and for myself, because a lot of this is my own work as well. And I just want you to know that just because I understand these concepts, I am not always fully functional in putting them into my life. I was laughing the other day because I'm dating someone right now and he mentioned that he had listened to one of my podcasts and he kind of said it with a smirk and his eyebrows kind of went up a little bit like, "yeah, right, you're teaching this stuff?" and I'm like, "hey, I know, right? I can get it, but it doesn't mean that I'm always proficient in understanding how to implement it into my own life." And that's just the beauty and the joy of the growth that we go through and in, in what we do in life, right? We can understand things and struggle to implement them sometimes. And I am a person, I'm a human, and I struggle and I'm working through this stuff as well. 

01:50 

So, and today is no exception to that. We're going to talk today about dysfunction in our relationships and in our lives, and the fact that sometimes dysfunction is easier and why that is. Even though we all hate the dysfunction once we see it, we just don't always know how to move out of it. And not only do we not know how to move out of it, sometimes it's just hard and it's painful to move out of and it's easier to stay in it. So we're going to talk about that today. 

02:22 

So first of all, dysfunction, I looked up a definition because sometimes that's a really good place to start to help get us started. It says "not functioning properly, marked by impaired or abnormal functioning or abnormal or unhealthy interpersonal or personal behavior or interaction." Okay, I'm going to focus today mostly on this last part: "unhealthy interpersonal or personal behavior or interaction." Okay, so I think when we start looking at ourselves and all our relationships, every one of us has aspects that are going to be dysfunctional. Things that are not healthy for how we're relating to ourselves or how we are relating to other people. And we want to take a look at this because sometimes we just don't. Sometimes, for one, we don't see it. We don't even know that it's there, which I've experienced that in my life. And other times I see it and I'm just like, "well, I don't even want to go there. That's too big for me right now." So part of the trick of understanding this is how do we know what's healthy or not? 

03:34 

The reason this can be tricky is because all of our normals growing up were so different. We can grow up in a very dysfunctional home and yet it seems very normal to us because that's all we've known. So we want to kind of be able to step outside of ourselves a little bit and see things, see what's working, see what's not working, and move from there. So let me give you some basic examples of some dysfunctional behaviors that could be happening in a home. So one, a parent may drink daily to excess and family members are afraid to talk about it. Now, what makes it dysfunctional is not necessarily the fact that the parent drinks on a regular basis, but that everybody's afraid to talk about it. They tiptoe around it. That's what makes it dysfunctional. Okay. Another example, a couple deals with conflict by giving each other the silent treatment. Again, the conflict is not the issue. It's the silent treatment. It's the behavior that does not move them forward. That keeps them stuck. Another one, parental neglect on one end of the spectrum, or an over controlling parent on the other end of the spectrum. Okay. Again, the fact that the parent wants to be involved, wants to do things, is not the dysfunction. The dysfunction is when it moves to either end of that spectrum and oversteps boundaries of what's healthy, what's appropriate. Physical violence would always be an example of something that is dysfunctional. Emotionally abusive behaviors. 

05:18 

Now, if you want to run down on these, go back to podcast number 60. This is my most downloaded episode of my podcast, "Emotionally Abusive Behaviors." I'm just going to give you a quick run down of several of them, but by no means is this exclusive here. Some emotionally abusive behaviors would be patronizing insults, name calling, gaslighting, threats, controlling behaviors, trivializing the other person, blaming, dehumanizing, withholding affection. These are all things that would be emotionally abusive behaviors. If that intrigues you, go back to podcast number 60 and check that one out. It was based off of an article that I found and it's still...I sometimes go back and read it and just floored at the things that we just engage in on a regular basis that are dysfunctional. 

06:10 

Another dysfunctional example, one spouse takes on a child's role while the other spouse routinely goes into the parenting role. Okay, so the fact that we sometimes move into these behaviors and these roles sometimes is not an issue. Regularly? That is when it becomes dysfunctional. So part of what makes something dysfunctional in a relationship is when it is not moving us toward a solution. It keeps us spinning in behaviors that aren't helping and they are most likely hurting. And when these behaviors become the norm, that is when it can really start to become unhealthy. Remember, we were talking about unhealthy interpersonal or personal behaviors, things that, you know, we all engage in behavior that that is hurtful or something occasionally, that's just part of being a human. But when it becomes the norm, when avoiding conflict, when we're not moving into resolving the issue, when that becomes the norm, then it starts to become dysfunctional. And from what we talked about before, yes, it can be tricky because our understanding of what is normal can vary so much. 

07:34 

For example, my home growing up, we didn't have emotional discussions and real emotional connections. Amazing parents, wonderful parents, but that was not a part of how we grew up. It seemed very normal to me. It wasn't outwardly dysfunctional because there wasn't abuse going on. There wasn't, my parents were not abusive emotionally or mentally or verbally or physically. There was none of that. Okay? But I did not recognize the dysfunction that I had incorporated into my life until after my divorce. I was like, what, 47 or something when I got divorced and I didn't even recognize the dysfunction that I had brought into my own marriage, into my parenting as well, until after I had gotten divorced. And this showed up in patterns of me not speaking up, pushing aside difficult emotions and expecting my children to do the same, having these unrealistic expectations of my children. I was speaking with one of my sons just last week and that came up, you know, these unrealistic expectations that I had of him and how that has affected how he views the world today as a man. And so we have these patterns of things going on that we move in that we move in that area. 

09:02 

So moving out of dysfunction is the place that we really want to start going into. We have to start creating awareness of the dysfunction. That's the first step for me. Like I said, I didn't even recognize it for the first 47 years of my life. Didn't even know that there was dysfunction going on there. So becoming aware is the first step, because we cannot fix what we're not aware of. If we don't see it, if we don't even know it exists, we can't fix it. So where you are here on the podcast, listening, engaging with this kind of content, you are seeking awareness. You're seeking it to understand how to have better relationships with yourself, with God, with other people. Okay. And this is the place that we have to start moving into. So kudos to you for being here and for listening and for seeking more information to help you make adjustments to your life so that you can move into more healthier behaviors. 

10:07 

So this is the trick though about discovering these kinds of dysfunctionals. What is easy upfront is always harder later. What is hard upfront makes things easier later. I call this the easy, hard, hard, easy. Okay? The healthier path is often the most difficult path upfront. The hardest thing for you to do today is going to make your life easier in the future. The easiest thing for you to do today is going to make your life harder in the future. And this is the thing: our primitive brain wants to stay in easy, even if it's dysfunctional, even if it's creating bigger problems down the road. Our primitive brain doesn't care about our future. Our primitive brain doesn't care. Our primitive brain wants what's easy right now, what's comfortable right now, even if what we're doing is keeping us stuck. These older patterns that our primitive brain loves, they don't require evolving. And I'll tell you what, evolving is tough. Evolving is painful. Evolving requires a lot of energy from us. And our primitive brain does not like that. So your primitive brain thinks that dysfunction is easier today. Is it easier? Yes. Is it easier to walk away from a difficult discussion today? Yes, but that makes it harder later on when we haven't taken care of what what really needs to be taken care of. 

11:40 

Okay, so I've noticed this recently with me with my current struggle with my perfectionist tendencies. So I'm continually circling back around to my perfectionist tendencies and seeing how they are impacting my life in negative ways, and having to see them, having to engage with seeing things in my life that are not moving me in the direction I want to, it is hard. It is hard to see myself in my raw state like I'm seeing myself sometimes. It's really difficult to see what I'm creating in the lives of the people around me. And my primitive brain is fighting me all the time on going into this space and on looking at it. My primitive brain is just like "hey hey hey, it's okay, you don't have to go there. Let's just do this. Let's just do this. Let's just take the easy way out." But I have to just keep moving forward and moving into this space. I want to evolve into a person who has healthier patterns in her life, and it's tough. There has to be a willingness in me to see and to seek to understand what's going on. 

13:01 

And so some things that I'm doing...I'm doing thought downloads. I am writing a lot of stuff down, getting it out of my head and onto paper. I am getting coached on a regular basis on this topic. I am discussing it with friends, my friends that I exercise with in the morning. We are discussing this all the time, helping me to figure it out. And there's one other girl there who struggles with a lot of the same stuff I do. So it's really good that we're both able to go "oh yes" and help each other see that. So these are things that I'm doing. 

13:32 

But I want to remind you that the pain of awareness, which this is painful to see how this shows up in my life, it is better than the pain of avoidance. We've talked about that phrase before, but it's going to keep coming up because this is what coaching is kind of about. It's about moving into the pain of awareness rather than continuing to to avoid. Okay? So I look back at my marriage before I got divorced. Making changes in my marriage was hard and I avoided it a lot. 

14:10 

It was easier to stay where we were than to fix it and I remember making the comment to my ex-husband many times: it just feels like we're fighting the same dragon over and over and over. We would have a conflict come up. We would both back out of the situation, wait for the dust to settle and then we would just continue on. Anybody else? Can't believe that it's just me who was doing that. Right? I think so many of us just don't want to walk in to the arena. We don't settle and then we go on as if nothing had happened. It was dysfunctional. All these patterns that we went through were dysfunctional because it was keeping us stuck. And stuck for so many years that eventually it seemed unfixable. And that's when the divorce for us happened. It just seemed like there was no where to go. We were so stuck. And tell you what, facing a problem head on can be challenging. It can be really tough. 

15:22 

But here's where the easy, hard, hard, easy comes in. If I look back at my marriage, it was easy to stand back and let the dust settle. But hard later on because we got to that place that it was unfixable. Had we understood what was going on and seen what was happening and dealt with the hard right up front stayed in the arena where it was difficult and where the struggle was happening, then it would have resolved issues up front that would have made our marriage easier in the future. Facing that problem head on. So challenging. And this is what we sometimes refer to as "becoming pain" versus "self betrayal pain." Okay, there is pain in becoming what we need to be versus the self-betrayal pain of not stepping into what I need to do for myself. 

16:20 

So bringing up a concern in a relationship for me, I will say that this has been a dysfunctional behavior that carries over from my marriage. And so as I'm in this relationship with this person now, bringing up concerns has been really, really difficult. And this sweet person has been really great at recognizing, as we've talked about it, that this is hard for me, and creating a very safe space for me to step into bringing up concerns. Hard for me up front, but I'm seeing the fruits of the fact that we are doing this up front now, it is making it easier later on. And I'm learning to move into having the tough discussions. Avoiding them is easy first, but harder later. Having the discussion is hard first, but easier later. And I've had to find myself willing to be able to step into the struggle and deal with that hard first, easy later and really put it into context for me, because this is where the real growth occurs. It occurs in the arena. That's where the struggle is. And this is where we meet the dysfunction head on. When we don't look away, but we step in for a closer look. So easy to avert our eyes from things that make us uncomfortable. But we have to be able be willing to step in to the struggle step in for a closer look. There we go. 

18:05 

A great question to ask is "Why am I engaging in the dysfunctional behavior? And what am I avoiding by doing that once I see it?" We've got to be able to see it first, but once we do why am I doing it? What am I avoiding? Are you avoiding talking about a destructive behavior in your family? You know, like the first example I gave of a spouse drinking on a regular basis and nobody's willing to say anything. Why are we afraid? What are we afraid of? That is the work. The work comes down to figuring out why you're afraid. What are you scared of? This is facing our fears and moving into it, stepping into the struggle. Okay? Are you consistently giving your spouse the silent treatment? Ask yourself why? What are you avoiding doing? This is the work: figuring out why you're avoiding it and facing that head-on. Are you being overly controlling of your children? Ask the question. What might happen if you're not? This is the work. Am I afraid of what other people are going to think of me if they don't live a certain way? Am I afraid of them making decisions and going to hell? This is my work. Right? I have to figure this out, not just changing the behavior and stepping back from being controlling. Often we think that just changing the behavior is the work, but it's not. Figuring out why we engage in the behavior is the work. What are the thoughts that are creating that behavior. And make no doubt about it, this is work and it can be hard and it can be painful to see how we're creating so much dysfunction in the lives of the people that we love. 

20:07 

This takes us back to this is" becoming pain" versus "self-betrayal" pain. Betrayal pain. We're betraying ourselves. We're betraying our greatest desires when we choose not to see, not to address it, and figure it out. When we love people so much and we choose to stay in dysfunctional behavior with them. That is a level of self-betrayal that is so painful. Is it easier today to avoid it? Absolutely. But the long term effects can be so destructive. The willingness to take an objective view, to step into the struggle, is so courageous. So let's talk about three ways that we can step into the struggle. 

21:00 

First of all, step number one: pay close attention to yourself. What's going on when you feel uptight, when you feel stressed? This is the awareness piece. We have to become aware. So here's some things, some questions, to ask yourself. What are you disliking so much about your life? Where do you feel there is disconnect in your life? What do you hear or engage with that makes you feel a little bit uncomfortable and you look away? What are you scared to look at more closely? What do you wish didn't exist? I know for me on a kind of fairly personal level right now, I know when I was married, I just wished the sex didn't exist. I didn't want it. It caused so much stress in our marriage and I would try to fix it by just having more sex. That didn't fix it. The behavior didn't fix it. I needed to go back, as I'm doing right now in my life, and looking at my views and my ideas about it and trying to step more into my own sexuality. So I have to pay attention. What is making me feel like, I just wish that didn't exist. I don't even want to look at it. I look away and I pretend like I didn't see it. Anybody else do that? Gosh, darn it. Sometimes this life thing is so tough. But we have to start paying attention. We have to courage up. We have to step into this place where we don't look away at what makes us uncomfortable, where we step in and look a little closer. 

22:47 

Okay, second way to step into the struggle: go there. First, become aware of it, see it, and second step, go there. Engage with it. Okay? Here's some things. Do your thought downloads. If you don't know what those are, if you're new enough, go back and you will see some things about thought work, about that kind of stuff. If you get stuck, set up an appointment with me and we will talk about it and I can help you out with that. But you've got to be doing thought downloads. That helps us see our own brains. Basically, you write down all of your thoughts and you just start to see what comes out because you're going to have things come out. Okay? So, whatever you see that you wish didn't exist or that you're scared to look at and you finally do, go there. Do thought downloads. Figure out what your own brain is thinking about it. 

23:42 

Another thing in this section, do your own research. Read about it. Learn about it. Watch YouTube videos. Look at TED Talks. Find the information that's going to help you understand it better. Another one for me that has helped a ton, talk with friends. Be willing to have that vulnerable relationship with your friends, with people that you trust. And talk about these things and help other people. Have other people help you flesh out the information and figure it out. Another one, work with a coach or a counselor. Boy, tell you what. Depending on what it is, you may need to work with a counselor, very often working with a coach. Is is a terrific option. I know that for me, the coach that I work with...I cannot survive without my coaching sessions. They help me do this. They help me go there. When I'm afraid to look at it, they put me in a place where I need to look at it. They challenge me. They push me into going there and to seeing the things that I really don't want to see and to discovering them and uncovering them and looking at them more closely. And the last one for this section of "going there" is to acknowledge how you are creating dysfunction. Really own up to it with yourself and say, "look, I see what I'm  doing. I acknowledge that this is where I'm at and I want to fix it." Right? 

25:16 

The third thing that you can do to step into the struggle is to start communicating with the other people who are involved in your dysfunction, which means you're going to have to have a tough discussion. You're going to have to go there and in that discussion, own your own behaviors. Don't blame or criticize the other person. Step into 100% responsibility. Own it. "Own your own," I call this. Own what you're bringing to the table and don't look at what other people are bringing that has nothing to do with this process for you. This process is all about you stepping into your struggle. So own your own stuff. Apologize when appropriate, which is probably, in most cases, going to be very appropriate to apologize for your own dysfunction, what you're bringing. Let the other person know how you're working to improve. "Listen, this is what I've been doing." Apologize. And then "this is how I'm trying to fix it. This is what I'm doing to move forward." And then last of all, seek for accountability, whether that accountability is from the person you're having that communication with, whether it's from a coach, someone, it helps to be able to talk about this with other people and to process it. 

26:37 

Okay, so this internal work, my friend, can sometimes seem very evasive. We don't see the outward effects as clearly as if we set a goal to exercise or to eat healthy. Not only are those very measurable in the sense that I did exercise for 35 minutes today, I ate...we could list exactly what we ate, and we might see external benefits of that with weight loss or with having more energy, those types of things. Sometimes this internal work is hard to see the progress that we're making because it's not external. It's very internal. But figuring out the "why" behind our dysfunction helps us to move into these healthier, happier places. What we do notice is that over time the internal work brings us to a place of greater peace, greater satisfaction, greater fulfillment, all these things that we really want but that are sometimes really difficult to measure. And this is why sometimes this work is hard, because we can't see the benefits immediately, or if we do, they're not really measurable. But what this is going to do as we step in and engage in this work of looking at our dysfunction and working through it is it's going to start resolving long-standing frustrations and concerns that we've had in our lives. I look back at my marriage and we had frustrations, concerns from day one, that by the end of 24 years had never been resolved. That gets exhausting. And you hit a point where you're just so discouraged and frustrated with it. 

28:38 

And I will tell you that getting unstuck and moving forward feels so good. In this current relationship that I'm in, I am engaging in behaviors that help us to move forward, behaviors that I never engaged in in my marriage. And it feels amazing to me, terrifying, absolutely, and so uncomfortable. So uncomfortable. I'm just gonna leave it at that. But once I move through that first hard phase, then things get so much easier and it feels so good to be moving in a space of not being dysfunctional. So remember this again, I'm gonna come back to this phrase again and again: the pain of awareness is better than the pain of avoidance. Awareness creates a space of light and hope that things are moving in a better direction. Whereas avoidance is surrounded by darkness and despair because we can't see outside of it. There is no hope of a better place outside of it. So courage up my friends. Look at it. 

29:56 

If we've talked about things on this podcast that have kind of made you go, eh, and then you look away and you just pretend it didn't exist and it didn't happen, that's what you got to be looking at. That's where we have to start moving into. We have to start moving into this space of looking at what makes us uncomfortable. We can't keep averting our eyes if we want to move out of dysfunction. And that's why I say that sometimes dysfunction is easier. It's easier to look away. It's hard and it's painful to step in for a closer look. But until we do, we do not move into this better space of healthier relationships with ourselves, with God, with others. 

30:44 

Okay, that's what I've got for you, my friends. Growing up into middle-age, brilliant, right? Painful and exhausting and beautiful and engaging and fulfilling as we step into these difficult places and work through them. Okay, have an awesome, awesome week and I will talk to you next time. Bye. 

31:07 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.