How do you let go when someone has dumped their emotional mess in your lap?
I’m not convinced I am better at disconnecting than anyone else, but if someone
else has noticed, maybe I am better than average. In 20 years of ministry, I haven’t always been good at it. I have struggled with sleep and lost my appetite because I was wrestling with someone else’s problem.
I’m not sure that grappling with someone else’s struggle is the problem—after all, prayer is interceding for another person. The problem arises when we internalize another’s brokenness, and then it becomes our own.
The great predicament with internalizing another’s hurt is our incomplete perspective. We see a snippet of the burden of their life. We fill in the gaps for our friend based on the five minute or five hours they gave us in conversation. Minutes or hours is nothing compared to living with an affliction all day every day—so we decide what they must think or feel. We are not privileged to decide what other people think.
When you onboard someone else’s baggage, here are some things that are worth recognizing and practicing.
1. Admit, “I am not God nor should I try pretending to be.”
This seems obvious, yet it is the struggle of humanity since the beginning of time. If we aren’t trying to shape God in our own image, we are attempting just to be him. Years ago, I had to realize that I couldn’t fix people. I could hear them out. I could be present in a particular moment. Sometimes I could even offer some advice, but I could never fix the brokenness. A wounded heart is beyond our ability to heal, the best we can do is point to a loving God and allow Him to do a wonderful work in the lives of our loved ones.
2. Journal
We all started this practice in elementary school. In January of my fourth-grade year, I wrote about Desert Storm. It allowed me a space to process my emotional state without internalizing the angst or stress I felt as a little kid hearing about war and not understanding what it meant. It’s a discipline I have continued, in fits and starts, over the years. My journal is now more a place I go to pray or clear out the mental cobwebs so to think more clearly, and it provides space to get unhealthy thoughts out before they become lodged in my psyche.
3. Realize some don’t want to be fixed they want to be heard.
Sometimes in life when I was struggling, I just wanted to speak the issue out loud. I struggled to find a space where I thought I could, because everyone I knew wanted to fix things. There are times people want to be heard—not fixed. All you can do is ask. If they simply want to be heard, honor the desire, listen and move on. If you genuinely listen in those circumstances, you have done your part and you can sleep that night.
4. Recognize, “I can’t carry a burden that isn’t my own.”
As I said above, I can’t understand every facet of another person’s affliction, and so I can’t allow it to become mine. When we do onboard baggage, we marry it to our own thoughts and perspectives, creating an entirely new dilemma that exists nowhere but in our minds. That isn’t helpful to the other person or yourself. Seneca once said, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”
5. Pain and difficulty are not always bad things, it is good to struggle.
In our culture, we have become convinced that pain is an evil. It is not. Look at nature, she tells us that pain isn’t an evil but is, sometimes, a great good. If I want to become stronger than I must endure the pain of sore muscles. A person suffering from leprosy will tell you, “they wish they felt pain.” Study and learning fatigue our minds, and in that mental exhaustion we form new synapses. During childhood I was all over the place emotionally, as most of us are. From the struggle with emotions, I learned how to sort through feelings and understand what a healthy response is. In our striving we don’t need people to take on our problem, we need cheerleaders that have walked their own road of pain and know we can survive. I don’t need them to take the pain from me I need friends to remind me I can make it.
6. I train people not to lean only on me from the beginning.
Many will think this cold, but it’s the job of any adult in a young person’s life. I tell students from day one, “there will come a time you will forget me.” If I have played my role well, I have taught young people how to think, how to make decisions, and how to better the world through love and service. Occasionally over 20 year’s students come back around and we become close friends, but that’s not the point or the object. 2,000+ students passed through programs I led, there are a couple of dozen I still talk to regularly, I have no sense of failure. I did something right because they were all seeking advice as teenagers. When they come back around as an adult it’s because they want me to share in a significant celebration (marriage, birth of a child) or their life has gone off the rails and they need help to find the reset button.
7. Make the decision that their problems can’t become yours.
This feels simplistic and on the verge of insulting, but it’s a basic truth. You decide you will not allow someone else’s problem to become yours. It is a loving action. If I allow others’ problems to become mine, then I become burned out and tired and become unhelpful to anybody.
The greatest gift we can offer someone that’s dragging too much baggage around is to love them where they are, pray for them, and point them to Jesus who can help unload their burdens.
