Boundaries

Hope When All Seems Hopeless

August 18, 2019 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 2 minutes

When you feel discouraged, where do you turn? Hoping in hope is empty. Positive thinking won’t last long unless it’s based upon the reality that comes from God. I want to hope in something real. That’s what truly inspired me when I first became a Christian.

When I became a Christian, my whole understanding of life crossed over from complete meaninglessness to an ordered plan. At times I lose the sense that the details of life are ordered. When bad things happen, life doesn’t make much sense. But this doesn’t change the ultimate truth that God is real.

When all seems hopeless, there is always still hope for a believer in Jesus Christ. You might have had the worst luck or just received the worst news. You might have nothing left, but if you’re breathing… If you’re alive, then you have a purpose for being here. If everything is failing, but you are alive, then God still has a purpose for you being here.

You can be experiencing nothing much happening that is meaningful, but still know that life has meaning and purpose.

You can despair of this life and the difficulties and pain it brings, yet burn inside because the flame of God’s hope will never go out.

When you hit bottom, you’re ready to give up hope in everything else. God’s message of hope shines all the brighter.

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18

I encourage you to ponder what your life might look like if you hold onto God, and move in the direction that God is leaving open to you. Is God closing doors? That’s God pruning you, so you will grow in another direction.

God doesn’t want you to give up; He wants you to try something new – something you haven’t tried yet.

With God there are infinite possibilities, but only a finite number of closed doors. Share on X

What dream is in your heart? What other ways can you pursue your dream beyond closed doors? Leave me a comment or send me an email about your dream so I can pray over you and your dream.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Master Conflict Resolution With 5 Concepts

April 3, 2022 by Matt Pavlik 3 Comments

Reading time: 4 minutes

Conflict resolution is the ability to be satisfied with what is within your control. That sounds simple enough, but it’s not necessarily easy. It implies that finding a solution requires knowing what you can control and what you can’t.

Do you know what you are entitled to? To be entitled is to be empowered to accomplish or obtain something. If you are entitled, you are authorized and you are in control. Unfortunately, for too many people, this creates the idea that they can demand certain activities from their spouses as if marriage comes with enforceable guarantees.

However, just because something is supposed to happen in marriage, doesn’t entitle anyone to demand that it happens. You could make demands, but if you can’t control your spouse (and you can’t or at least you shouldn’t be able to), what does this accomplish? Making a demand is prideful while making a request is humble and doesn’t rule out exercising your boundaries (controlling what you can control).

Here are 5 concepts to help you resolve conflict without overstepping your bounds:

Conflict Resolution Concept #1: Be Responsible for your Happiness

Each person is 100% responsible for their own emotions/happiness. If you aren’t happy, don’t blame your spouse. God expects us to find a way to be content even when other people are not cooperating.

If you are feeling anxious, angry, or sad, those are your emotions. They say something about you. You are empowered to take action to manage your feelings. If you make your happiness dependent on someone else’s behavior, you might never be happy again.

Conflict Resolution Concept #2: Clean Up Past Hurts

It’s an essential skill to be able to bring up hurts from the past, or whatever is bothering you, so you can discuss it and resolve it as a couple. When you solve a puzzle, it is finished. You can put it behind you and move on to the next challenge. If you don’t find a solution, you’ll be stuck or limited to what happened in the past.

Cleaning up the past is different than blame-shifting today’s problems onto your spouse. Resolving present-day conflict often requires looking into the past to see the larger scope of the problem. It’s like making sure you have all the pieces of a puzzle before you start working on it.

Conflict Resolution Concept #3: Find Balance with Multiple Options

Find an appropriate balance between the urgency to work through your concerns and the acceptance of your spouse. Everyone needs grace for their spiritual journey.

You should spend a percentage (for example 50%) of your time working on conflict resolution and the rest on having fun together. You should spend a percentage (for example 70%) of your time together and the rest on individual pursuits.

Conflict Resolution Concept #4: Be Clear About What You Want

Speak clearly (directly if necessary) about what is going on with you and what you want. Don’t expect your spouse to know what you need or want (read your mind).

Communication is hard work. It’s okay if it takes time to put into words what you are experiencing. See if you can say what is on your heart in a way you’ve never done before. Use different words to explain how you are doing. You might learn something about yourself in the process.

Conflict Resolution Concept #5: Keep at Least One Listener in your Conversation

Watch out for the trap of two people needing to be heard at the same time with no listeners present. This will mean taking turns speaking and listening without defensiveness (turning the focus back to you). Listening doesn’t count if you spend your time speaking about your perspective. Your spouse isn’t usually interested in your perspective when they are trying to share theirs. They want to know if you understand their perspective.

Anything less than one listener results in wasted effort at best and complete chaos (fuel for conflict) at worst.

I hope these concepts help you with your conflict resolution. What struggles are you having that seem unsolvable? Let me know. Remember to make sure you have all the pieces of the puzzle before you become too discouraged or frustrated. If you need someone to help you find all the pieces and where they go, there’s marriage counseling for that.

Other ideas about improving your marriage.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Decision-Making Made Clear and Confident

March 13, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 5 minutes

Decision-making is challenging to the degree people are reluctant to make use of a worldview. In this context, a worldview is a set of prioritized values (convictions) that you can use to evaluate opportunities.

Making a decision requires discriminating between alternatives. To discriminate means to judge one opportunity as better than another. People who don’t like to be judgmental can therefore struggle to make decisions. For everything elevated as more valuable, there must be something else devalued. People who like to people-please can be reluctant to make a decision when no option will leave everyone happy.

You can become confused when you have too many options and no way to either emphasize the best ones as superior or eliminate the worst ones. You have two alternatives to make this decision-making easier. First, by choosing the best option, you don’t have to declare any option as bad (a more positive approach). Second, by rejecting the worse option, you can completely eliminate it from consideration (a more negative approach). Different personalities might prefer one alternative over the other.

Decision-Making with Spiritual Discernment

You can formulate your worldview with spiritual discernment. God is good. The devil is evil. Worldviews simplify decision-making options into right or wrong. Racism and other unhealthy discrimination result from choosing other categories for evaluation. Instead of good or evil, people choose false dichotomies like black or white, conservative or liberal, male or female, native or foreign. These are false dichotomies because, for example, while a person can only be born male or female, sex doesn’t determine if a person is right.

When a person refuses to believe God is 100% good and all other options are 100% evil, they must choose their own categories for evaluation. The problem with this is that people will then evaluate based on past experience (prejudice) rather than God’s standard of truth (objective right and wrong).

What do you base your worldview on?

Decision-Making with Personality

Almost all decision-making can benefit from spiritual discernment. Even a simple decision about what kind of car to buy can have moral implications. You might have plenty of money, but should you buy the most expensive car you can afford or should you buy the less expensive one and use the difference to help someone?

You might prefer to eat at one restaurant but your friend prefers another. Your preference isn’t right or wrong, but what you end up choosing could be, if your selfishness harms your friend. This situation requires a balance between following what you want and doing no harm to your friend. The more mature a person is, the more they can put aside (temporarily) what they want (or believe) in order to care for another person. Loving others takes precedence over having life go your way all the time.

In a three-legged race, two people are tied together, so they must run at the same speed or else they will come apart or fall down. If one person attempts to run faster than the other, just because they are a better athlete, that person achieves nothing. Members of a team all win or all lose together. Running faster means little if doing so will injure your partner’s leg. Is winning a race worth more than a person’s health?

The context of Romans 14 is eating food that has been sacrificed to idols, but the basic principle applies.

Don’t let your appetite destroy what God has done. All foods are fit to eat, but it is wrong to cause problems for others by what you eat. It is best not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else that causes problems for other followers of the Lord. What you believe about these things should be kept between you and God. You are fortunate, if your actions don’t make you have doubts. But if you do have doubts about what you eat, you are going against your beliefs. And you know that is wrong, because anything you do against your beliefs is sin.
Romans 14:20-23 CEV

Decision-Making with Freedom

You are free to choose whatever you want, as long as you don’t go against your convictions and you don’t lead someone else to go against their convictions. God says such actions would be wrong because they are destructive.

God wants you to develop your worldview, which includes your preferences, convictions, and spiritual discernment. With a well-defined worldview, decision-making can be a positive, pleasant experience.

I have two points of clarification before I finish. Personal boundaries can possibly be in tension with the consideration of others. I’m not going to go into detail here, but Paul has written plenty about following what is right and confronting what is wrong. So, in Romans 14, when Paul suggests we should deny ourselves what we want it is for the sake of preserving the conscience of a fellow believer who is genuinely distressed about the practice of their faith. Otherwise, this would be abusive to the person who lacked faith. He is not saying anyone should submit their God-given ability to make healthy personal choices to a bully. This would be allowing someone to abuse you.

Consider too that emotional immaturity is similar to a lack of faith. Those who are more mature must bear with those who can’t yet help themselves. Again, this doesn’t mean you give in to their every desire, but that you treat them with patience and understanding to minimize creating unnecessary distress for them.

As an exercise, make a list of areas where you need extra understanding because you are insecure and another list where you are confident. How does it feel to be in each position?

Read about boundaries and being assertive.
Image by Gerhard G. from Pixabay

Recover From Trauma-Induced Dissociation

March 6, 2022 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 4 minutes

Trauma can result from an experience that is too powerful to handle within too little time. Dissociation might be the only way to cope when a bomb goes off in your life. To create a different outcome, you can decrease the intensity by decreasing the power or increasing the time you have to endure it.

You can reinterpret the meaning of the trauma (to lower its power) or you can manage its effects over time. This is essentially what happens in therapy to recover from traumatic events.

Why Do People Resort to Dissociation?

What can you do if it rains 10 inches in your backyard overnight? How do you drain a lake? One bucket at a time. But what do you do with the water until you have the resources to deal with the problem?

Each of us has a limited ability to manage an overwhelming event. Let’s say that your capacity is like a 32oz cup. That might seem like a big cup. It can hold enough for you to survive one day.

A manageable event might fill your cup. Someone might pour you a glass of water. You tell them when to stop filling your cup and they listen. Perfect.

A traumatic event could be like someone dumping an Olympic swimming pool of water into your cup or, even a gallon every day for years. Where does it all go? It’s going to flood you with so much water that you won’t be able to cope. Or, the only way to cope will be to store the water until you can drink it.

Most of us don’t have the space for that much water. But our brains have the capacity to alter reality (hopefully temporarily) to pretend (deny that) the water (the trauma) isn’t there. Most of the time this ability, dissociation, is an involuntary response much like closing your eyes when an object moves toward you too quickly. This ability does have its limits. Stretch it too far and it can lead to more serious complications–it becomes increasingly difficult, though never impossible, to return to normal.

The more dissociated you are, the weaker your connections are to your memories and feelings. To be dissociated is to be numb or oblivious. As you probably realize, being numb can be beneficial if the pain has no purpose. For example, it’s easier to have a cavity removed without feeling the drilling. But what would happen if you didn’t know you had a cavity in the first place because you couldn’t feel the discomfort? In this case, being numb would be a liability.

How to Recover from Dissociation

Just as novocaine is meant to temporarily numb, dissociation is also only meant to be a temporary fix. After you’ve experienced a trauma, you should begin the work to deal with it as soon as possible.

To address dissociation, you reconnect what became disconnected. For example, if you are vacuuming and move too far away from the electrical outlet, the plug will disconnect and the vacuum will lose power. That could be desirable if lightning strikes your electrical system, creating a surge. To restore power, you must reconnect the vacuum to the outlet. To use the vacuum at a greater distance, you must add an extension cord to bridge the gap.

Likewise, to recover from dissociation, you create a bridge between present-day awareness and past events you have forgotten. If you only focus on today, you won’t be able to reclaim your lost memories and therefore, you won’t be able to heal. Yet, if you become too focused on the traumatic memories, you can become isolated from the truth you’ve come to know today. Both options are ineffective.

Instead, to optimize the healing process, attempt to form a bridge by keeping one foot in the present and one foot in the past. You can be aware of who you are today and at the same time, focus on remembering, feeling, and reinterpreting what you’ve been through.

This bridge allows God’s comfort to flow from this moment back into your painful experience. In this way, you can recover from day-old trauma or even decade-old trauma.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 ESV

Are you becoming aware of any lakes in your backyard or power surges you’ve been through? You will feel better as you clean up the mess and restore power to your life. Seek a professional counselor to guide you through the recovery process.

Make A Commitment To Complete Your Training

October 9, 2021 by Matt Pavlik Leave a Comment

Reading time: 3 minutes

Reaching your pain threshold is enough to drive you into the recovery process. But you must make a commitment if you expect to be able to endure the pain long enough to heal emotionally. This post describes step 2 of 4 of the transformative journey.

Make A Commitment: Pursue the Help of a Counselor

When your life becomes unmanageable, when you experience a nervous breakdown, you become motivated to try a new approach to solving your problems. You seek out someone more experienced than you and willing to follow them.

In Star Wars, Luke recognizes Obi-Wan as a mentor of the force. Initially, Luke resists joining him, but he decides to take the next step forward after he sees that the empire killed his Aunt and Uncle.

Without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.
Proverbs 15:22 ESV

Who in your life has more expertise in the areas in which you are struggling?

Make A Commitment: Discover Your Allies and Your Enemies

Your emotional pain will likely continue to intensify the more you strengthen your resolve to confront the enemy. The enemy’s goal is to escalate self-doubt. While your pain increases and you become more desperate, you will attract the people that will help you achieve your goals, as well as the people who will hinder your progress.

The intensifying pain forces you to make a decision one way or another. Will you commit to seeing your recovery through to its conclusion or will you turn back to your familiar ways of coping?

Luke learns that Obi-Wan, Han Solo, Chewbacca, and Princess Leia are his friends. He also experiences confirmation that the empire is his enemy. He could have decided to quit. But with encouragement and support, he commits to finishing what he started.

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. What is the first thing you will do? Won’t you sit down and figure out how much it will cost and if you have enough money to pay for it? Otherwise, you will start building the tower, but not be able to finish. Then everyone who sees what is happening will laugh at you. They will say, “You started building, but could not finish the job.”
Luke 14:28-30 CEV

Are you willing to make a commitment to your recovery no matter what it costs you?

Make A Commitment: Examine the Origin of Your Problems and Distress

Moving forward in life often requires first looking backward to where you have been. This usually stirs up more pain as you look at your defects without any filters or blinders. There is no room for denial if you sincerely desire recovery.

Luke and his friends face overwhelming discouragement when they realize the empire has the power to destroy whole planets. They lose Alderaan, a peaceful planet. When they become trapped at the death star, they realize they can no longer turn back. They must overcome their problems and find a way forward.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:3-5 NIV

Are you willing to acknowledge that you have serious problems to overcome? What self-doubts only seem to complicate your path to recovery? Can you endure whatever pain is necessary in order to realize a victory? Are you willing to look beyond friends and family to God for help?

Step 1 of the Transformative Journey.
Photo by MART PRODUCTION from Pexels

Overcome Resistance To Complete Your Training

October 2, 2021 by Matt Pavlik 1 Comment

Reading time: 3 minutes

In order to complete a transformative journey, you first need to overcome your resistance to asking for help. This post describes step 1 of 4 of the transformative journey.

Often, life must become unmanageable or unbearable in some way before a person will be willing to seek help. There is a saying, “Only when the pain of remaining the same is worse than the pain of changing, will someone make the effort to change.”

You can let your pain build until it reaches such a critical level that you suffer a catastrophic breakdown. If you want to avoid this and move forward in your life, don’t make the following three mistakes.

Mistake #1: Fail to Overcome Resistance by Ignoring Problems

When a person is in denial they will attempt to cope with their problems so they can remain self-sufficient. Coping attempts to minimize the pain instead of eliminate the pain. Most people think of a problem as a negative event, but a lack of a positive event can also be a problem.

In Star Wars, Luke’s problem was more than the fact that he wasn’t happy as a farmer. He also wasn’t happy because he wasn’t able to pursue using his gifts for an even greater good. Helping his aunt and uncle was good, but helping to destroy the death star was far better.

There is a path before each person that seems right,
but it ends in death.
Proverbs 14:12 NLT

Are you on a path that seems good, but it is really leading you nowhere?

Mistake #2: Fail to Overcome Resistance by Clinging to Selfish Goals

When a person believes lies (such as “I’m worthless”), they lack the insight to look beyond their own circumstances. A person who clings to their selfish goals will fail to overcome problems and will experience painful loss.

Luke wants to fight the empire but he can’t see past his obligation to help his uncle. He does what seems right until fate brings serious trouble to his doorstep.

A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.
The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.
Proverbs 22:3 NLT

Are you pressing ahead just because you want to or because it seems to be the safest route, despite some sense of looming consequences?

Mistake #3: Fail to Overcome Resistance by Refusing Help

The foolish person will refuse help even while they are suffering. Fear can stop many a dream from becoming reality.

Luke knows the rebels need help defeating the empire. Obi-Wan asks Luke to join him and offers to train him. Luke isn’t ready yet to leave home. He uses the excuse that he can’t get involved because he has work to do.

Fools think they know what is best,
but a sensible person listens to advice.
Proverbs 12:15 CEV

But when he finds that the empire is looking for his droids, he realizes that his aunt and uncle are in danger. Only when he is faced with their death does he have nothing left to prevent him from accepting Obi-Wan’s offer.

This logic might look like I’m saying that a young adult should always put their own ambitions ahead of their parent’s counsel. There might be more times that it is prudent to follow your parents. But in this case, the parents are the ones holding their child back from what is better–meaning what is better for God’s kingdom.

If you love your father or mother or even your sons and daughters more than me, you are not fit to be my disciples.
Matthew 10:37 CEV

So then, consider if there is anything you are refusing to do that would benefit God’s kingdom more than what you are already doing. What help do you need to overcome your resistance and make it happen? Who has already been offering their help? Ask God for wisdom and understanding so you can see your best path forward without serious consequences, if possible.

Photo by form PxHere