I've lived -- and served as a pastor -- in small towns, suburbs, and a major urban center. The environment doesn't seem to matter: people are just as prone to loneliness and isolation in wherever they live.
Just because you're surrounded by people in the course of the day doesn't mean you interact meaningfully with any of them. People can be -- and often are -- lonely in the midst of a crowd and isolated from their neighbors.
Meaningful relationships take time and hard work. Since everybody is so busy, we have to be intentional about developing and maintaining relationships. It's easy to keep our relationships surface-level and safe. It's easy to just write people off and blow them off when conflict arises.
To have relationships that move into the territory of meaningful, supportive friendships takes an investment of time, a willingness to work through disagreements, misunderstandings, and disappointments, and -- probably hardest of all -- the willingness to be vulnerable.
- Letting
people know we value them and their friendship trequires us to be vulnerable.
- Being open with people about what is really going on in our lives -- our struggles, fears, and foibles -- requires us to be vulnerable.
- Expressing our true needs and desires requires us to be vulnerable.
And for many of us, this is very uncomfortable.
When we start opening up to people, sharing our honest and deepest thoughts, they will see our weaknesses and insecurities, and learn about our failures. They
might think less of us, because they're not seeing the air-brushed, edited social-media version that we like to project.
We don't let people know what's REALLY going on in our lives, because we don't want them to think we're broken and/or needy.
This might raise a question: do we really need to be vulnerable in order to have good relationships? Can't we just "let the happen?"
After years of experience in my own life, working with people as a pastor and recovery leader, I think the answer is very clear: YES this is what it requires. We can't overcome our isolation without being vulnerable ... and at times feeling like we're being "needy."
You
can either have people look up to you or love you. You can't have both. Admiration or love. You choose.
This is especially hard for people in leadership
I know this has been an important issue in my own recovery, and emotional / spiritual growth. Not only am I a member of the hyper-individualistic modern West, I'm also a pastor ... someone who's used to being the "go to guy" for other people who have needs, but not someone who is needy himself.
It is very uncomfortable for me to reveal my problems or insecurities. I know I'm not alone in this, and it's especially true of leaders. Over the course of my life, I've developed patterns of relating to others that help them feel safe and comfortable around me, and willing to open up to me about THEIR problems and needs.
Having it work the other way around? Not so much.
This is very detrimental to healthy relationships. What
happens when all your relationships are one-sided is that you get isolated. This can lead to loneliness. This can fuel naricissm. This can keep us from knowing, let alone dealing with, our blind spots. In this kind of environment, leaders and caretakers often get into trouble, because they don't get help.
How needy and vulnerable should a
spiritual leader be?
I remember talking about this some years ago with my then-mentor, Leith Anderson. I was trying to come to grips with how to have authentic relationships as a pastor, and I think my zeal to do this was making him worried about me. He was concerned about how to
do this in a healthy way as a minister. He used this analogy (and I'm paraphrasing here):
"When you're a pastor, your job is to help the people in your care. When I go to my doctor, I tell him about my problem ... I don't want him to then start telling me about his problems.
That wouldn't be helpful to me at all. I don't really care what's happening in his marriage, or if he is having back pain, or whatever. I'm going to him because I want him to help me get over my sickness.
"But not only that, the more he talks to me about his own
problems, it will undermine the confidence I have in him. I might start to wonder: if this guy has all these problems, is he really going to be able to fix mine?"
That was really wise advice, and it illustrates the challenge that people in positions of leadership have with
vulnerability. I don't think this is a black and white issue -- there is a spectrum between tight-lipped isolation on the one hand, and boorish over-sharing on the other. We need to find our place on that spectrum, and it will likely vary from person to person, depending on a host of factors.
But this gets us back to my point here in this article: I believe that many people -- especially those in leadership -- are too far on the side of tight-lipped isolation.
The relationship a pastor has with parishioner, or a
teacher with students, or a manager with employees, is not purely professional, it's also personal. And because of this, a certain amount of back and forth is healthy and expected.
Can this go too far? Of course.
I agree with Anderson that there's definitely a line to draw in vulnerability with the people we are responsible to care for and teach. Vulnerability doesn't mean telling everybody everything, all the time.
Vulnerability requires that -- at the very least -- we be honest with the people around us by not trying to project a more holy or "together" life than we really live. But as a general rule don't burden them with our problems and look to them to care for us ... our calling is to care for them.
But then: Be sure to find OTHER people -- people outside the system -- who can provide the deep care and support we need when we are struggling and need support.
A Meditation on "Having Needs"
Recently I came across this meditation from Melody Beattie in her great book "The Language of Letting Go." My takeaway? ... It's okay to have needs, and to share those needs with others. We can accept ourselves as people who have needs - the need for comfort, love, understanding, friendship, and healthy touch. We need positive reinforcement, someone to listen to us, someone to give to us. We are not weak for needing these things. These needs make us human and healthy. Getting our needs met - believing we deserve to have them met - makes us happy.
There are times, too, when in addition to our regular needs, we become particularly needy. At these times, we need more than we have to give out. That is okay too.
We can accept and incorporate our needs, and our needy side,
into the whole of us. We can take responsibility for our needs. That doesn't make us weak or deficient. It doesn't mean we are not properly recovering, nor does it mean we're being dependent in an unhealthy way. It makes our needs, and our needy side, manageable. Our needs stop controlling us, and we gain control.
And, our
needs begin to get met.
NEXT ACTION
Take a couple
minutes today and do one small act of relational connection:
First, think of one person in your life you trust -- someone who feels safe, kind, and reasonably grounded. This might be a friend, a family member, a colleague, or someone from church. Don’t overthink it. Just notice who comes to
mind.
Next, reach out to them in a simple, low-pressure way. Send a text, make a short call, or write a quick email. You don’t need to share all your problems. Start small. Something like:
“I’ve been realizing I don’t do a great job letting people know how I’m actually doing. Would you be open to grabbing coffee or taking a walk sometime soon?”
