You are not the only one: Part 1 (Episode 29)

Janis interviews Brent about the most common issues he is seeing today in counseling.

The Life & Love Nuggets podcast will help you learn valuable insights into relationships, life, and love. Brent and Janis have been empowering couples through pre-marriage and marriage therapy in their private practice, Life Connection Counseling, since 1982. They recently retired after forty years of pastoral ministry and are continuing to help individuals, marriages and families in their private practice.

This podcast should not be considered or used for counseling but for educational purposes only.

Transcript:

[Brent]: Hello, friends. Welcome back to Life & Love Nuggets. We're glad that you're with us today. For the next two times, we're going to do something just a little bit different. We're actually going to kind of interview each other and so, Janis is going to interview me today about some things that I kind of naturally deal with and then I'm going to-- The next podcast I'm going to interview her.

[Janis]: Yes

[Brent]: And we're going to see how this goes and so, we'll just let it roll.

[Janis]: So, Brent Sharp. Welcome to Life & Love Nuggets.

[Brent]: It's good to be here.

[Janis]: We appreciate having you as a guest.

[Brent]: Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for inviting me.

[Janis]: So, one of the things I really wanted to start with is, what are some things that you are seeing in counseling right now? Like, when people come in, what are some of the issues that you're dealing with?

[Brent]: Yeah. Well, I would say probably the number one thing that, if I were to look at 40 years of being a counselor and a pastor, probably the number one thing that I've dealt with that is kind of underlying pretty much everything that I think everybody walks in with. They don't come in with this issue necessarily and say “I want to work on this”. But if you look at how they're dealing with life as an individual, if they're looking at their relationships, which I do a lot of marriage counseling, obviously. This is still underneath all of that and I would say it's “who am I? Am I worth much, and where do I get my value from and who am I in the world?”. That's what they tend to be struggling with.

[Janis]: Which affects all their relationships.

[Brent]: Absolutely.

[Janis]: And their work. Everything else.

[Brent]: Yeah, absolutely and so, I find that there are some significant misbeliefs that they struggle with in this area. Because we believe-- You know, we talked podcast previously, that every single person is created with kind of a divine imprint on their life. We talked about this fascination with fingerprints, that separates us from every being that has ever been or ever will be and that we have a unique expression in the world to reflect the nature of God and who he is and how he loves his people and his world, and we're to reflect that in the world.

[Brent]: And if we felt that sense of natural value, this intrinsic value that I'm uniquely designed and I'm loved deeply and I'm acceptable exactly the way that I am, I don't think we'd struggle with as much stuff that we do, you know?

[Janis]: Right.

[Brent]: So, people probably the two most significant misbeliefs that people deal with, which is kind of the kingdom of man world, and I certainly understand how we get this, but is my values based on how I perform. That if I perform at this really high level, I excel in my job, I have the nice house, the nice car, the nice family, all of those kinds of things, then that makes me valuable and the other one, which is really closely tied to that, is my values based on what other people think of me. That if you like me, if I'm acceptable to you and you like and love me, then that makes me important. That makes me valuable in the world and how this affects relationships is, if I don't know that I am valuable in and of myself. If I'm married to you, which I am for 45 years now.

[Janis]: [Unintelligible] guest on the program.

[Brent]: Yes, yes. Then if you're not quite loving me the way that I need you to love me, then I'm going to go into some pretty unhealthy reactions to that, you know? One would be-- On one end of that spectrum, it would be I'm going to kind of try to control you. I'm going to try to make you meet my needs and do certain things. That can be from aggressiveness or anger or frustration to silence and quiet to manipulation. I mean, it can be all kind of craziness that I would do to try to get you to do right, to love me a certain way and then, the other end of that continuum is, I'm going to become what we'd consider kind of codependent, is that I'm going to just adapt myself and do everything I can to make you happy. Because when you're happy, then you're in a good mood and you treat me nice and it gets my needs met.

[Brent]: So, that all comes out of a struggle with the sense of self. That if I feel secure in who I am, then if you're not meeting my needs right now-- Okay. I mean, I might be sad. I might want to talk to you about that and see if we can't collaborate a little better on that. But I'm not going to go into some unhealthy craziness on trying to get you to do that. I'm going to realize maybe you're not capable of doing that, or maybe you don't understand what it is that I need and when I try to communicate my needs to you in a marriage, I'm not going to do it in an aggressive way or I'm not going to pout or whatever, you know? And so-- But it really comes out of those basic core-- That basic core struggle with “who am I?” in the beginning.

[Janis]: And as we talked in the 90/10 lie, nobody is going to meet those needs completely.

[Brent]: Absolutely.

[Janis]: You will not find the perfect spouse.

[Brent]: Yes.

[Janis]: I'm pretty much as close as it comes.

[Brent]: I have, but-- Sorry, people, most of you will not. Yeah, and so, that's a really good point and we have to realize that, okay, my spouse can do so much, but first of all, they're one person. They can't be them plus a whole bunch of other people that have other different qualities or characteristics. So, if I'm okay with me and feel okay with me, then I'm okay with that and I realize I'm going to get some of what I need from you and I think that, you know, God's designed us that the marriage relationship on a human level is going to get probably the highest level of needs met in that relationship.

[Janis]: Yes, right?

[Brent]: But we get some from our work, we get some from healthy, safe, same gender friendships, you know? And we get it certainly the most of it-- If we don't get most of that from an imprint, from God, from I am valuable regardless of what I do or what people think of me, that I'm going to get off track and so, that's where we get most of it met. But then we're going to have it met on a human level in other ways and so, again, most people don't necessarily come in with that.

[Janis]: Right.

[Brent]: They don't come in with, you know, “I've been struggling with who I am and my sense of purpose and stuff”, but it's underneath there and there's a couple of other misbeliefs that people struggle with and maybe in the podcast in the future, we'll unpack all this in detail, but one of those is blame. That if I fail in some way, that I should be punished, that there's something wrong that I've done and I should be punished and boy, we see this a lot in our culture. If other people fail, then we should punish them. We should help make sure they get punished.

[Janis]: I think we talked about that in another podcast of how we need to correct the people that pull in in front of you.

[Brent]: Yes, exactly.

[Janis]: That’s why we have a horn.

[Brent]: Yes. “I need to correct you. You should be punished and you should feel bad”.

[Janis]: I always think that instead of having our regular horn, we should have the regular horn that sounds mean and then we should have like a nice little horn that's like “excuse me, the light’s changed. Could you move on, please?”

[Brent]: “Could you stop looking at your phone?”

[Janis]: Yes, but in a very nice way.

[Brent]: Absolutely.

[Janis]: So, how do these present themselves? Like, what are the issues that people say they're coming in with lately?

[Brent]: Well, certainly a lot of marriage issues I see as an underlying component of that struggle, that “I am really not okay with me” and so, that's manifested itself in the marriage. Now, we don't necessarily start there working with them, because it's like “okay, if you really need a drink of water, I'm going to give you a drink of water first”. So, we might work on how that's manifesting in their marriage and help them work together with their spouse more effectively and move away from controlling their codependency strategies and so forth.

[Janis]: Which sometimes I think can come in as “I love her, but I'm not in love with her anymore”.

[Brent]: Yeah

[Janis]: I mean, some of that is just dissatisfaction with life overall, [Unintelligible]

[Brent]: Yes, absolutely. Yeah, and so, another one of the misbeliefs is shame, which is “I’m just-- There's something flawed in me that I'm never going to be quite okay. Because of my past failures I'm never going to live an A class life. I'm going to slip in at C minus maybe, you know? Because there's just something wrong with me and it's about me. It's not I've done some wrong things. It's that I'm wrong” and boy, that one's really deep and it's hard to move through. But oftentimes people are dealing with shame or even these other insecurities, believing these lies as if they're true. Now, again, I realize why we believe these. I mean, we were taught since we were little kids in school that you get A's and B's and C's and you get blue ribbons and red ribbons and yellow ribbons, and we knew which one's better, you know? And so, we've been taught to try to achieve.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: But I found that some come in and they've gotten into some unhealthy outlet, you know? They've gotten into [Unintelligible], which big part of what I deal with. They're having an addiction issue, sexual or alcohol or whatever, and they're actually trying to deal with that “who I am”, that “I'm not okay”, and that “I need other people to do certain things for me”. They're dealing with that in unhealthy ways. Either they're numbing out or just getting an adrenaline rush somewhere. So, they're basically looking for love in the wrong place. They’re--

[Janis]: They're trying to escape pain.

[Brent]: Yeah, it's this “I don't know who I am. I don't feel okay about who I am” and so, there's like a gazillion counterfeits out there that will say “This will make you happy. This will be an escape for you. This will numb your pain so you don't feel bad any longer” and so, it's not a surprise that we choose those things.

[Janis]: Right.

[Brent]: One of my definitions for sin, it's an inappropriate response to a real or legitimate need. You know, we all-- We've been designed with real needs to feel loved, to feel important, to feel cared about, to have close relationships, even for intimacy. These are God designed things. But if we don't know how to get those met appropriately, then there's, again, a whole bunch of counterfeits that people go after.

[Janis]: And sometimes they're not addictions, they're bad habits.

[Brent]: Yes, yeah.

[Janis]: We're going to talk about that in another podcast on change.

[Brent]: Yeah, and so, we call them counterfeits because they don't do the full thing. They do some of the thing or we wouldn't go after them.

[Janis]: Right. We get some benefit from it.

[Brent]: We get some benefit or we wouldn't do these things. But I always say it's a little bit like drinking saltwater, you know? If you're out in the middle of a desert and you come over a hill arising and you see the ocean, it's like “oh my gosh, my thirst is going to be quenched”. Well, the minute you drink salt water, this just makes you thirstier and so, I have to have more and more and more of it and so, that's what counterfeits do. It looks like it's going to quench your thirst, but after that first drank and second and third, it just makes us need more and more and more because it's not enough. It's not the right thing.

[Brent]: So, if I were to undergird everything that I deal with, with kind of an underlying issue. Now, again, some of those things come from just the training of our culture. Some of those things come through trauma and abuse in people's lives and it's not that I get to that issue in every couple, you know? Again, we may deal with more of the things that they're struggling with at that moment.

[Janis]: The immediate need.

[Brent]: The immediate need with the counterfeit they're struggling with or whatever. But usually, particularly if they hang in there long enough, then we're going to get to some of that underlying things. Now, I deal with several other things, but that's the number one thing. If you-- You could lace it through pretty much everything I've ever dealt with.

[Janis]: So, let me switch gears for a minute. Given the climate and the culture that we have right now, what are you seeing with extended family and your clients? Like, do you have clients coming in with extended family issues?

[Brent]: Oh, certainly, yeah. Because we're old people now.

[Janis]: So, we get all the old people.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, I have quite a few people our age coming in trying to get me to fix their kids, their grown kids that are married and have children.

[Janis]: Yes. That are messing up.

[Brent]: Yeah, that don't let them see the grandchildren often enough or putting the kids in the wrong school or--

[Janis]: Don't go to their church.

[Brent]: Whatever, you know? And I have to kind of let them down easy and say “your role has changed” and so, they're still trying to be parents. They are. I mean, we're still parents of our kids, you know? But we're not in that role. We have that title, but where we were actually coaching and training and even critiquing, which parents do when their kids are little. You know, I always tell people, if you've got a little Johnny as a kid “well, if he's five, it's an appropriate thing to say to sometimes”. “Johnny, go brush your teeth”.” I did, daddy”. “No, you didn't. You haven't even been close to the bathroom. Now march in there, young man, and brush your teeth”. That's a reasonable thing to say to a five-year-old.

[Janis]: Right.

[Brent]: Now, if that's the main way I communicate to him at 15, if I'm still trying to just critique and judge and coach all the time, I'm going to get fight or flight from him. You know, either he's going to be the kid that comes in from school and goes upstairs and doesn't talk to anybody because I'm so hovering and trying to fix everything in his life or he's going to fight. “You're not fair, you guys are too strict, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”. So, I have to kind of coach parents to move from that kind of communication into more of an adult [Unintelligible] because particularly if they're trying to talk to their 25-year-old or 35-year-old--

[Janis]: Or 40-year-old.

[Brent]: Or 40-year-old that way.

[Janis]: And I’ve even seen 50-year-old.

[Brent]: Yeah. It's like “do you want them to ever come home? Do you want them to ever call you? Do you want a relationship with them? If you try to force yourself on them, you're going to lose them and it's your fault, not their fault”.

[Janis]: We say it in a much nicer way than that.

[Brent]: We do, we do and we have to help them with grief and some don't know how to let go and they live their life through their kids and they don't know how to have their own life and all that stuff.

[Janis]: Well, it’s like I talked about in the last podcast, the sermon that I had, your role moves from being the teacher to being the encourager and that's hard, especially if you have a personality type that you see things that need to change and you want to change those. It's tough being a parent when you really feel like they're not doing things right.

[Brent]: Yeah. So, I encourage them that “hey, we now with our adult children, we now move alongside them” and share them on, encourage them. We may see stuff that-- Choices they're making and things that they're doing that we aren't thrilled about, but it's really not our role. Our role is to have a relationship with them at this point and the magic words are “hey dad, what do you think I should do about this?”, you know? We wait on those words.

[Janis]: Yes

[Brent]: And we try to love and encourage them and strengthen them and I know there are some extreme cases where you've got an abusive thing going along or addiction or something, that sometimes we have to--

[Janis]: Where parents have to step in.

[Brent]: We have to step in and help with it and even challenge in some of those ways. But for the most part we release them now. So, I've got that and then I also have our kids, age kids and even younger, coming going “what do I do? My parents are so extreme on this” and they're talking about these issues or that, whether it's political or these kinds of things and I try to help them to first of all, know how to let go. It's the whole leaving and cleaving kind of idea. It's that you have left now, we give some respect to those that gave us life, but it doesn't mean that we just obey orders now. We're our own person.

[Brent]: But how can you do that without fighting or flighting? How do you step into your adults and communicate respectfully to them and say “I understand that these-- What we've decided to do with the kids, we decide not to put them in private school or whatever. I understand that that's concerning and I appreciate that, but this is our decision” and if the parents keep going, “I understand this is not comfortable, but this is our decision. I don't really want to talk about this anymore”. Anyway, that kind of thing, right? So, we certainly see that going on.

[Janis]: I've said for years that I think one of the best things kids can do as they're adults or after they get married, is to move at least 5 hours away from their parents for several years, because it really helps you establish who you are and parents have no idea what's going on when you're somewhere else. Not that's an excuse to live a wildlife, but I do think we need to do that sometimes to have the leaving from the parents.

[Brent]: Now, fortunately, our two children that live here in town did go away for a while.

[Janis]: They did. In fact, all of ours have gone away.

[Brent]: Now, two of them came back.

[Janis]: Two came back. That's a good sign.

[Brent]: [Unintelligible]

[Janis]: Of course, that's just 50%. So, we're still failing. We have to get at least one more back to get us above the passing grade.

[Brent]: Yeah, that’s right, that's right. So, certainly deal with that. Of course, I do a lot of marriage work and probably what I spend most of my time doing and there's a lot of stuff going on culturally right now that's causing challenge, unique challenges. You see a lot of-- Big part of my practice is a fair recovery now with good people that committed their lives to each other, even people that honor God in their life and it just misstepped. It's just so easy to happen in our culture right now because boundaries just aren't as strong.

[Janis]: Right.

[Brent]: And the natural boundaries that we used to have just aren't there any longer and so, if people aren't purposely putting boundaries in their life, then people are vulnerable. We have way more men and women working together in their jobs and professions. I remember when we were kids, there was one phone in the house and it had a cord attached to it and when everybody was on the-- Everybody's on the phone, the whole house heard what you were saying and who you're talking to. Now we have these amazing little smartphones and things can be secretive and things can be through a text message or whatever.

[Janis]: Or all the apps.

[Brent]: Yeah, even innocent, you know? There's some apps and stuff that like “hey, you want to find out how to have a relationship with somebody else?”. It's just craziness. But even just innocently, you know? Gone to a conference together and then we kind of text each other afterwards and a little joke that happened or whatever and things just slowly start happening. Rarely do people decide “I'm going to go have an affair”, you know? But they just let boundaries loosen and loosen and loosen until they've stepped across that line and they've been ensnared.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: And then there's a whole recovery process that is so hard. It's one of the most difficult things to recover from. But we've also seen amazing stories of people that I thought wouldn't have a chance.

[Janis]: Yeah

[Brent]: You know, when they were telling me their story, I'm like “oh my gosh, you're like-- You’re like toast. I mean, this is just-- You're burnt. I mean, this is not possible”.

[Janis]: Yeah, yeah. “I don't know how this is going to work”.

[Brent]: I didn't say that to them but inside I'm like, listening to that and they did the right things and again, in a future podcast we'll talk about how people recover and how do you help somebody that has gone through-- Almost everybody knows somebody that's going through this and so, there is a way through and we see a huge percentage of couples that eventually walk away saying “we're better off than we ever were”. Because it forces them to really make the marriage a priority. We can't just coast any longer. We can't just-- I mean, none of them want to go back to what we had a few years ago. I mean, usually that was not thriving and so, it forces them. I say either you're going to really press into this and you're going to end up with an amazing marriage or you're not going to make it. You know, it's going to be one of those, it's not just we can kind of put a band aid on this and coast.

[Brent]: So that's a real significant thing we deal with in marriage and then there's very common things that we see in our culture. I don't know that this is all just cultural or not right now or just today, but there's a couple of major themes that we see that almost every couple that walks in the door is going to need to deal with at some point.

[Brent]: On one hand, they don't know how to blend, they don't know how to work together as a team. You know, we talked about this in a previous podcast on conflict resolution. Probably the most important skill a couple could learn. We just aren't taught it, we're just supposed to be a magical world and we're supposed to fall in love and be happy and shouldn't really have conflict, which is crazy and so, we see that. That need for breaking out of unhealthy patterns and developing healthier patterns for that, and then the other is we just are neglectful.

[Janis]: Yeah.

[Brent]: That-- I mean, talking about this-- Probably is more of even an issue that happens more common today is, you have a lot of couples where both parents are working now, and for them to both do their careers well and then to manage the children and all of their activities after that, they're just spent at the end of the day and just oftentimes don't have good practices of how do we make the marriage a priority and how do we feed and care for the marriage and so, that's a real common issue that so many couples are struggling with. But again, is help and if we can just kind of wake up and pay attention, I tell people it would be helpful if there had been an alarm system, that the first time we had been neglectful in our marriage, that alarms would have gone off and said “danger, danger, danger! Course correct!”. We would have all corrected quicker. But we're just not even obvious aware that it's happening and we just think “well, shouldn't we be prioritizing the kids? And I've got to show up at work and do well to pay for everything”, you know? And those are squeaky wheels we say, that are just going to demand your attention.

[Janis]: And I think consciously or unconsciously, we kind of think “well, my spouse is a grown up, they'll take care of themselves. I got to take care of these kids” and so, I think it goes both male and female. It's like we put our focus on the kids and eventually we'll be together. Unfortunately, sometimes they don't like each other by the time the kids are grown.

[Brent]: Right, yeah. That the relationship becomes stale and we just end up being more roommates and, of course, we did a few podcasts on that. What are practices that you can begin to implement. But we certainly see a lot of that today and couples that started out great and they still do care for each other and it's not slipped into a catastrophe like an affair or something. But I hear very common that “we just feel like roommates”, you know? “We're co parents. I mean, we're okay, but neither one of us are super happy”.

[Janis]: Or “we're kind of bored”.

[Brent]: Yeah, and so, again, this is not true always, but oftentimes you women are the first ones to raise a flag on that, because I think-- Over generalizing to say it isn’t all the cases, but I would say majority of the cases we see that women are more naturally relational and they can be doing great in their career. But if they're disconnected emotionally with their husband, they're going to start feeling that faster and unfortunately, we guys can be a little numb to that. If our job is going well and our family is happy and we eat often enough and have regular intimacy…

[Janis]: “You're fine”.

[Brent]: We can live on a pretty shallow level. Unfortunately, that's not best.

[Janis]: Yeah, and again, that's not everybody, because we are seeing--

[Brent]: We see opposite of that happen.

[Janis]: We are seeing opposite of that happening sometimes and I think with people that are a little younger, we're seeing that more and more.

[Brent]: Yeah, yeah. So, those are some of the common things that we see. But in every one of those, we've seen some ways through, you know?

[Janis]: So, what would you say to give people hope?

[Brent]: Yeah, I would say whatever you're facing, whatever you're dealing with, these are some of the common things. First of all, everybody's got stuff, right? Everybody. I mean, these are just some of the things, you know? Another one I deal with a lot is just grief, you know? And that's not just-- It's usually actually not death of someone, it's the loss of an ideal or the loss of a dream in their job or their marriage or this, that, or the other and everybody's dealing with this stuff, you know? In our field, we all say that everybody's grieving something all the time, but everybody's dealing with all this other stuff.

[Janis]: And that's why I thought it was important for us to do this today, is because sometimes we just need to know “oh, really? Other people deal with that too?”. That's what we're going through and it helps you feel more normal and not that you're the only one struggling with this.

[Brent]: Yeah. I just guarantee you anybody in your friend group, anybody in your church groups, any of your neighbors, anybody at your work, if they would be open and honest and you could actually drill down in their life, they're all struggling with all this stuff. But we have this sense that “oh my gosh, everybody else looks like they're doing fine”.

[Janis]: Their Instagram pictures are great.

[Brent]: Oh my gosh, yeah.

[Janis]: And their kids are perfect.

[Brent]: Absolutely, you know? And so, we see falsely-- These false lives and so, everybody goes internal and they hide. They're afraid. Again, back to that first thing I talked about, “I'm afraid of what you're going to think of me”. Because what you think of me is so powerful that creates whether I'm okay or not. So, I'm worried about that. Or if I admit I'm not performing at this uber high level, then that means I'm a failure in some way and no, this just means we're humans and it means we're all struggling. We're all putting our shoes on every day, walking out, trying to do this life, but struggling with some of this stuff and now, fortunately, we've seen in the last few years people reaching out more.

[Janis]: Definitely.

[Brent]: You know, people that going to a counselor. I mean, it was kind of like a bad word years ago, having a therapist, all those kinds of things that that's more common now and people are seeing the benefit of that and they're reaching out.

[Janis]: So, there's hope.

[Brent]: There is absolute hope in every one of these things.

[Janis]: There are things we can do to make things better. But it's recognizing that we're human and we're going to have stuff, and we're going to have stuff in our relationships, but there are some things that we can do to make it better and to have some encouragement. We don't have to stay stuck.

[Brent]: Yes, and realize that pain is the greatest motivator for change in our life. So, let pain in your life steer you towards something different. Because if we don't do something different, these things won't change. If we don't make a decision to reach out and get some help or to at least open our lives up to a friend or someone, we're going to stay exactly where we're at and actually, that rut the groove that we're creating because habits form grooves in our life and even patterns in our brain of how we do things and so, if we keep doing that, it just gets harder and harder to change and so, no time like the present. Know that you are not in this alone, everybody's dealing with the same stuff you're dealing with, and let's help each other. Nobody is supposed to do this by themselves.

[Janis]: That’s right.

[Brent]: So, for today, peace to you. Bless you as you go.