142 Unconscious Catastrophizing

Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”

Moving on to unconscious catastrophizing: At one point in my life, the Christian pastor at my church who was also a practicing family therapist and clinical psychologist gave me an example of unconsciously associated and lost meaning that resulted in unconscious catastrophizing. He used the example of a child having disturbing nightmares of being physically assaulted and then having those same nightmares continue well into middle age.

The child as a toddler had indeed been beaten by a lamp-wielding, drunken father and suffered nightmares as a result. Years later as an adult, any threatening anxiety (work, financial pressures, personal issues, etc.) brought out the nightmares, the child’s frozen response to any sense of helplessness and fear of harm. Over time, this response grew to incapacitate the adult to adequately deal with an even mild range of fears. Threat meant terror to the child and that meaning got tagged to and stayed tagged to anything threatening, even into adulthood, resulting in pervasive anxiety issues for the adult.

As the pastor explained, the child’s response proved insurmountable for the adult. In this case, a threatening, out-of-control parent did mean a terrifying ordeal to a young child, yes. But as an adult, threatening, out of control situations are meant, in a rightly functioning psyche, to be a challenge to be met with mature coping mechanisms (such as reliance on God). (No, I did not say self-reliance. I said reliance on God. Do not mistake my meaning here, Gentle Reader. Scripture insists God is one’s available all-powerful solution, not oneself.)

What a life damaging holdover of meaning for that child! The pastor further explained that healing for such a condition lies in Jesus, the Wonderful Counselor, and through those prepared to carry forward His gift of healing. Over time, soul-sick people such as this burdened adult can develop awareness of the problem, petition Jesus to free her/him from bondage to this torment, receive Christ-centered behavior modification therapy and power to be healed through the agency of the Holy Spirit. This is a true Christian dynamic that countless numbers of believers have personally experienced.

Continuing, the pastor described how being blessed by infusion of the power of Holy Spirit to reshape thinking, feeling and will, the adult’s perceptions of and response to both positive and negative meanings in life can be restored. Best of all, when from then on anchored in Christ, the adult can confidently rely on Jesus for ongoing healing and dealing with any and all life challenges.

Most pointedly for our discussion though, Gentle Reader, is this—threat in childhood meant insurmountable terror to a vulnerable youngster, a meaning which persisted and unconsciously compromised the development of later mature understanding and response. With the right anchor of Christ, at any age, meanings can be transformed; and fear can be met, well-mastered and replaced with healing, God-provided provisions, protections, skills, strategies and resources.

From this brief sampling, I think one can easily see that meaning figures hugely in people’s understanding. No less so, meaning’s operation in understanding can undermine or prosper life. Jesus says he came that we might have life and have it abundantly and He means us to understand that through Him, through his intervention in our lives, His example of right living, right work and right character, things can go right for us. Bless Him!

To be continued . . .

141 Conscious Catastrophizing

Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”

Of course, there are also serious if not downright tragic situations involving meaning, its derivation, and its influence on understanding: Difficulty in discerning and applying meaning can have deep roots, resulting in wrongly associating or even losing touch with the original meaning, painfully compromising understanding. This dilemma can result in catastrophizing, specifically, catastrophizing of two primary types: conscious and unconscious.

Definition: Catastrophizing is a term that has gained popular acceptance in our time. As currently used, it refers to irrational extreme reaction in response to perceived real, unreal or unlikely threat.

In some truly tragic cases, whether consciously or unconsciously, meaning is often derived from some traumatic event and attached to an experience. Rightly or wrongly, meaning is attached at one point in time but fails to be discarded in favor of more relevant meaning as time goes on. Such compromised meaning can continue to haunt a person years beyond the incident that gave rise to the now stubbornly affixed and no longer appropriate meaning, resulting in severely compromised understanding and functioning.

Conscious catastrophizing was recently depicted by the mom, Kristina Braverman (played by Monica Potter), of NBC’s “Parenthood,” Tuesdays, 10 p.m. Kristina is a lovely woman, mature in many ways, though vulnerable to emotional jags of catastrophizing. She knows she does it, she just has a hard time reining it in.

In the “Learning to Drive” episode, as I call it, Kristina just about paralyzes herself and her daughter (Haddie), whom she is “teaching” how to drive, by dissolving into a hysteria of over-concern. Her husband, Adam, knows Kristina has neurotic fits of catastrophizing and is gently tolerant of it and supportive of her, time and again. Still it plagues Kristina and she exhibits no real way of regulating it.

What propelled Kristina down the road to acquiring the habit of catastrophizing I do not know. Maybe I missed that information by having my head in the refrigerator or something. But it is almost always demonstrable that such behavior arises out of some kind of desperation too great for the person to adequately process. By the way, I do not believe I have ever even heard the name of God mentioned in the show much less observed any character demonstrate Christian faith or practice (maybe my fault again because of another head-in-the-refrigerator excursion).

Oh, yes, now I remember, “Oh God” was used in one scene as an exclamation but without respect for God as the personal and living God. From all these clues, I have deduced that relationship with and reliance upon God’s worthy Word is not seen as an operable solution in these folks’ lives much less a high-priority approach to problem-solving. Instead their successes and failures are seen as the result of their own weaknesses and strengths; their solutions come from working it out on their own, among themselves or with secular counseling; and they seem to want it that way.

But in that their attempts are independent of God, I would never recommend or follow their approach to life issues, Gentle Reader. In Scripture, God warns people not to let weak thinking get a toe-hold and then a foothold in one's life. If it does, He calls for one to see Him as The Great Solution to all issues, every time, and to count on Him to thoroughly root out all problems and show us the way through. God calls this reliance on Him Right Practice for one's daily life. Scripture assures us that looking to God first always makes things better.

To God conscious catastrophizing is adversarial to His recommendation to let His peace, reason and His strong value system control our lives.

To God, catastrophizing is bondage to fear. According to God, emotion, especially fear, is not to be allowed to rule in our lives.

Makes sense to me.

To be continued . . .

140 Meaning Influences Understanding

Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”

Personal Finding #2: Meaning influences understanding and can be difficult to identify and express without practice.

Definition: Understanding— “1. Ability to grasp meaning; 2. Knowledge of something (Encarta).”

There are infinite meanings to be made in life from great to small, striking to humble, and they affect understanding in multiple ways. In that meaning can easily be overlooked, misconstrued, fractured into a mixed message, be wrongly associated or lost, and more; understanding can easily be compromised. On the other hand, in that meaning can act as a true anchor to ideas and concepts, understanding can be solidly enhanced and promoted. Thus God’s insistence on a top-priority relationship with people so that right meaning can be derived from His Word, learned, absorbed, retained and applied.

Right meaning has a powerful positive effect on understanding, Gentle Reader. It can help rightly form a person’s attitudes, actions and behavior by complementing knowledge-based understanding with multi-faceted implications, enhancing a person’s ability to perceive and function and ushering one into the way of wisdom. Scripture repeatedly asserts that wisdom comes from God, that understanding from God accompanies wisdom and both are His to give or withhold. Thus God’s desire for us to take our meanings from Scripture not from the world (opinion), the flesh (appetites) or the devil (and his half-truths).

In fact, Scripture points out that people in general, acting on their own, independent of God (airhead debutantes like me included, unless they are /I am studied-up on the subject and rooted in God’s Word and gifted with His wisdom and understanding) can poorly understand how to express what something means at all, much less rightly or wrongly, be it great or small.

Consider a small thing, remembering as described above that meaning can be overlooked, blocking understanding: If a woman breaks into tears over the gift of a rose from a suitor, she may or may not be able to explain that her thinking about the romantic message behind the rose is what has caused her feeling, not just the rose itself. Keep in mind, meaning runs deep in everything, even simple-seeming things.

As for more complex things? Well, this next situation is a classic grab-bag of mixed and even deliberately misconstrued meaning.

You see, meaning can routinely get scrambled—still be there, but be fractured and profoundly confused. Consider this: people are famous for over-eating, thus the frequent image of someone taking out the quart of ice cream and mindlessly eating every bit of it (from the container!). Oh, I can feel their satisfaction now! They know their eating is causing them pleasure and they know that there are very few things out there as pleasurable as ice cream or as available. Besides, they think, everyone knows that ice cream is better than any tranquilizer!

Anyway, doctor after doctor tries to prompt people to understand that over-eating is mostly an effort to satisfy the emotions and, to protect the body, should be stopped. People hate to be told this because it interferes with their very gratifying pastime, in this instance, consuming ice cream. So what if eating is bad for the body, they think! It is great for the emotions! The doctor said as much himself. They refuse to consider the subject any further and they hate the doctor even more for telling them to quit eating what they want. (Me, too!)

Upshot? They only become more protective of this favorite experience, keeping them from adapting, from taking the best (the well-meaning of the advice) and letting the rest go—in this case the best part of the intended advice would sound more like this— eat your ice cream and enjoy it, but exercise appetite control when you do. See, not so bad, is it?

Moral of the story: People don’t want to understand some things because getting the doctor’s meaning might kill a great pleasure. People would rather believe they know what means most, certainly at least to them, and ignore what others think should mean most to them. What a shame to miss the best all because of short-sighted meaning-making! Thinking others only want to wring all pleasure out of life, they short-circuit the positive meaning-making opportunity the doctor offers and critically compromise their own understanding and future good.

Amazing, huh? We all do it, be it in doctor situations or whatever. Don’t you think?

To be continued . . .

139 Meaning Influences Motives

Meaning: “conveying a significance that is not directly expressed . . .”

Personal Finding #1: Meaning influences motives.

To begin with, let’s look at how meaning influences motives.

Definition: Motive – a “reason for doing something or behaving in a specific way (Encarta).”

All people are affected for better or worse by their own or by others’ understanding, or lack of understanding, of meaning and how it influences motives. Individuals commonly embrace a highly diverse set of meanings all without knowing they do so. Then, unconsciously, they allow these meanings to influence their reasons for thinking and doing whatever they do.

But to the average onlooker, the attitudes, behaviors and preferences of any individual provide clear, demonstrable evidence of whatever means most and least to that individual. In fact, take me for example. Whether I consciously grasp that God is of #1 importance to me is not necessary for Him to be, and for me to be powerfully motivated by Him. Makes sense, right? And all of us operate unconsciously most of the time anyway. But be sure, all-the-better if we operate consciously. Deliberate, conscious thinking and choice is God’s highest standard of thinking and it is to this standard to which I am, to which we all are called.

In particular, God wants His thinking to be our thinking. In fact, God wants us saturated in His Word—full up with His thinking and ways, to the point that when squeezed (by life pressures) what comes out is the essence of His thoughts on everything.

Why? Because His thoughts are important and superior to our thoughts. My limited little mind bows to this truth every time.

Special Note: Sweet Spirit understands the compelling nature of the word “important.” It is a significant word (that separates the men from the boys, so to speak) for her, and because of her drawing my attention to it, I now recognize how often I use it and how it resonates with me too. To me, that word puts any matter under consideration in a special category all its own—the important category (In any major sort-out, I frequently can be overheard muttering, “That’s important! It’s a keeper!” Or the converse, “That’s unimportant. Out with it!).” Count on it, if some matter I am exploring falls into the important category, it will survive any and every cut session 100% of the time and will figure largely in who I am when, if ever, anyone encounters me.

To continue with me as an example, since I am a conscious believer, and since God is of #1 importance to me in the box of life and is a major keeper in my sort-out; one can reliably predict that one will find me seeing everything-but-everything in life as an adjunct to my priority confession. Further, one will find me daily, as called by God, deliberately pursuing God’s model of thinking and choice and thoroughly enthusiastic about it (Not because I should be excited by it, but because I find it important!).

Of course, if you have read much of what I wrote on Significant Truth #1: God (Blogs #11-110) then you would already know that God values exquisitely conscious being and doing and wants His “chilluns” both aware of our own personal motives and those of others, and to routinely and carefully evaluate the quality of those motives along with how they rightly or wrongly influence us.

Specifically, God expects us to recognize and understand how we and others derive meaning, and how we allow that meaning to influence our motives—our reasons for doing what we do in life.

To God, a conscious relationship with Him is the ultimate meaning in life and one that rightly should influence us and create the right motivation in us.

To God, no other meaning in life can or should ever be allowed to be the prime motivator in life or to supersede, much less replace, this ultimate meaning in life.

To God, right meaning, right influence and right motivation all start in right relationship with Him and proceed from there.This right relationship then promotes a cascade of all else into right context for right living. God wants us to know that when His meanings are allowed to influence our motives, we’re right- on in life. Things sort-out rightly. Now, as you can imagine, that’s important to me.

Dwell on that a bit.

To be continued . . .