React or Respond

For many years I was defensive and reactive to the innocent comments of other people. You know the joke. Two psychiatrists met in the hallway of a psychiatric hospital and one said, "Good morning, doctor. How are you?" and the other thought to himself, "What did he mean by that?"

Once whileworking at the University of Cincinnati, One of my profs introduced me to a colleague and said, "Gary is a country boy trying to act like he is from the city." I was immediately anxious, worried and upset. It was impossible to get that phrase out of my mind. It was a very small thing that got a very big reaction.

Such a reaction indicates an inner sense of stress, anxiety or nervousness. When we have a minor experience but react to it in a major manner we are simply releasing some of the energy, anger or frustration that is inside us. So, instead of saying, "That makes me mad" we need to admit that "I am making myself mad when I see you do such a thing."

Consider the following scale with 0 as perfect peace and 10 as extreme reactivity. Most of us come from families that fell somewhere in between those two extremes. A normally anxious family may be 4 to 6 on the scale but a family suffering from alcoholism, suicide, illness or abandonment will probably be a 7 or 8.

0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

Family distresses act like earthquakes and the resulting stress, anxiety, and trauma are tsunami-like in their ability to devastate family members far from the original quake. Imagine what happens when sexual abuse occurs in a family. Gran Dad Jones forces his grandchildren to perform acts of sexual intimacy with him. However, no one admits this for several years. Will the victim's children and grandchildren be effected even if they are unaware of the crime?

Yes! Sexual abuse is a Huge earthquake sending tremors into the entire family system. The abuse victim will keep the secret but act differently toward everyone else in the family. She will not be able to develop a truly intimate connection with siblings, parents or a future husband and children. The tsunami wave does damage across the family for many generations.

Now we can see why some people are very reactive. They simply absorbed the wave of anxiety from silent relatives and carried it about like a water soaked sponge ready to let loose with a stream of water at the first slight.

What can we do? Seek healing from Jesus.
Read Isaiah 61