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Drama Proofing Your Life

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Julie Albin

Lately, I have been learning a lot about drama and what to do when it is unavoidably forced upon you. One of the more recent resources that I have stumbled across is Ray Kane’s Drama Proofing Your Life series that has been airing monthly on Moody Radio’s Midday Connection program. To give you a taste of how helpful this series is when it comes to understanding and dealing with difficult people, I copied the notes that I took while listening to Part 5 of Drama Proofing Your Life (which aired on February 19th) and pasted them into the space below.

In a drama, there’s a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer. The victim says: “I’m blameless, I’m helpless.” The persecutor says: “I’m right. I’m powerful.” The rescuer or caretaker says: “I can help. I’m special.”

The five factors that make up a drama pattern are:

  1. Intensity
  2. Defensiveness
  3. Unresolved Fear
  4. Anger
  5. Sadness

Drama’s occur when an individual chooses:

  1. not to deal with his intensity (i.e., pain of the past)
  2. to be defensive
  3. not to deal with their fear anger and sadness
Fear is at the pinnacle of the drama triangle. There are more verses on fear than on love in the bible. Whenever I’m angry, 9 times out of 10, it’s because of fear. Anger is our way of growling when we’re afraid.
The fears that create drama are fear of …
  1. failure
  2. rejection
  3. abandonment
  4. death (someone else is going to die, or I’m going to die an emotional death)
Three questions to ask yourself:
  1. How do I deal with my intensity and pain?
  2. How do I deal with my defensiveness that is my ego?
  3. How do I deal with my fear?
The intensity card is critical to being able to disarm the intensity pattern.
Another reason that people create drama (in addition to a lack of problem-solving skills) is because they are defined by the outside-in.
Some people tend to be more outside-in than inside-out in terms of the way they live their life. Generally an outside-in person will look to their environment. They’ll read for acceptance and rejection, for instance. Or they may look for some form of excitement to invigorate them and help them “come alive” by getting some kind of self-esteem (a sense of worth, competence, and belonging) from the drama they are creating; and so they might have a tendency to stir the pot or to be in a go-between type of situation.Kane encourages  us to consider: What are we trying to gain by creating drama or perpetuating drama? Is this the best way to accomplish my goal?Everyone is responsible for their own pain. When a spouse is pouting, withdrawing because he’s hoping to be rescued and playing the victim, he’s not wanting to take responsibility. If the wife disengages without being mean and allows herself to understand what’s going on with her spouse, she can apply knowledge with wisdom and discernment to really grow.More about emotional intensity:
  • Whenever there is emotionally intensity, it signifies that historical feelings and/or experiences are being triggered by current events.
  • Intensity communicates to others that our needs, concerns, or disappointments are not being validated.
  • When we are discounted, our natural reaction is to fight for our rights rather than enter into reasonable and rational conversations that balance our ability to think about our feelings as well as feel about our thinking.
Intensity is a by-product of:
  1. Un-resolved trauma (i.e., we weren’t loved well) expressed through our pain in feeling shame, insecurity, guilt, or believing that everything is wrong with me.
  2. Fear (i.e., failure to meet expectations, rejection of thoughts and feelings, abandonment by someone leaving physically or emotionally, fear unto death where someone else is going to die or I’m going to die or I feel emotional despair)  marked by thinking catastrophically, becoming anxious, or becoming controlling and angry.
  3. Self-Absorbtion is marked by being egocentric or prideful, believing nothing is wrong with me, being selfish and self-centered which ultimately causes one to walk by others who are in pain. The  more self-absorbed a person is, the more ego-centric they are, the more unresolved pain they have, the more trauma they have in their life that they haven’t addressed, and the more afraid they are (but they’re not willing to deal with it).
If you have two people who are engaging in drama, it creates an unsafe but familiar environment where, even if it’s bad, we don’t want to step out of the familiar because it’s what we know. The law of familiarity states that I’m attracted to what I’m familiar to even though it’s unhealthy. We have to choose to want to work on our issues and undergo the process of growth and change.
Drama-proofing your life requires asking these questions:
  1. Are you committed to growth and change?
  2. Do you really want to be healthy?
Although there are true victims who are robbed or forced to do something against their will, generally speaking, people are volunteers because they aren’t willing to take responsibility. The three things Ray Kane measures when he works with people is: 1) willingness, 2) heart & 3) responsibility. Are they willing to engage their heart and take responsibility. If these factors are not present, an individual is not ready to be healthy and will continue to create drama.
What if only one of you is willing to enter the path of growth? Jesus didn’t play into the drama patterns. He was always outside the drama triangle because he took responsibility for his own behavior. When we’re in a drama, we generally feel powerless. Jesus’ power (how he stayed out of the drama) is that he took truth from the father and acted with:
  1. wisdom and discernment
  2. humility
  3. a heart of love and respect (Love is a feeling, Respect is how you show it.)
Truth, communicated with wisdom,  discernment, love, respect and humility is what real power is.If you have a family or work environment where you are committed to be like Christ in being centered and healthy, then the Lord will give you wisdom and discernment with how to set boundaries and how to even stay in a relationship that’s difficult. (If it’s abusive, that’s a whole other ball game.) If it’s not abusive, you take yourself out of the drama by choosing to be healthy and desiring to be more like Christ.In healthy problem-solving:
  1. something happens
  2. skills are applied
  3. solutions are sought
  4. the outcome is evaluated
  5. the next action step is taken.
In unhealthy problem-solving (which is what dramas create):
  1. something happens
  2. the skills needed to solve the problem are missing
  3. there is no search for solutions
  4. feelings of anxiousness and insecurity lead to emotional flooding
  5. aggressive tactics like the ones below are applied in an attempt to restore emotional equilibrium and get someone else to deal with the problem
    • defensiveness
    • using shaming, blaming, critical and judgmental language
    • justifying a position
    • playing the victim
  6. the drama becomes the new issue to be handled and the original problem takes a backseat to the drama that’s been created

We all haven’t been loved well. Because our parents weren’t loved well, we weren’t loved well, and we don’t love well. That’s a given. In our life, the unresolved pain where love didn’t exist (and where love needed to be) becomes an anchor that keeps us from being able to get up to full speed.

Either we’re moving towards Christ or away from Christ. The significant process of the Christian life is learning how to deal with pain because if we don’t transform our pain, we transmit it. And so we have to be willing to engage in a process of growth and change in order to want to be a healthy person, centered in Christ. When I become that person, I then can change my environment.

Skills vs Capacity:

  • Capacity is how much energy I have in my tank to be able to use problem-solving skills to resolve an issue. Capacity will either come from my ego or from my faith. If there is a true heart’s desire to want to connect with Christ in an intimate way, Christ can help to heal the traumas of the past and, as Christ is present in the midst of those traumas, Jesus connects and attaches with the person who is hurting to increase their capacity. That is what it means to be connected with Christ in an intimate way and to experience the fullness of healing when we experience pain.
  • Healthy faith is able to take truth, communicate it with wisdom, discernment, and a heart of love and respect because I’m not preoccupied with trying to look good. Jesus’ power came with his humility, purity and ability to speak the truth.
Over-functioning and Under-functioning Relationships:The over functioning person that wants intimacy and connection more than the under-functioning individual tends to put more energy towards and into inviting the other person who is under-functioning to step up. It’s like spinning your wheels, you feel like a gerbil in a gerbil cage. You have to change-up the dynamic.In a healthy relationship, both individuals need to want intimacy at the same level. Growing towards that ideal means committing to:
  • having a more intimate relationship emotionally
  • learning how to communicate our needs, feelings and pain
  • to learn how to listen, hear and understand
If the under-functioning individual is hesitant to commit to this, then the person is more interested in having you  pursue him than he is in allowing himself to be vulnerable. We can invite people into healthy relationships but, if they are unwilling to do so, we need to be willing to move on and allow the other person to do the same.Can you allow yourself to see your character-disordered person as a gift? We like to see them as the generator of our pain, but they are not. The Lord has us in this place, otherwise we would be someplace else. It is God’s will that we be where we are at right now.Five questions to ask yourself to find out why the drama you are in is a gift:
  1. What is it that I can learn about myself?
  2. What insecurities is it raising inside of me that I need to bring to Christ?
  3. What skills might I need to acquire to be able to set appropriate boundaries?
  4. How might I need to learn how to communicate my needs, feelings and pain in more efficient ways?
  5. How might this experience enable me to develop a much deeper intimacy with Christ?
Recap:Healthy problem solving requires a particular set of skills. With unhealthy problem-solving, those skills are missing. We compensate because we want emotional equilibrium.If I’m not growing by dealing with my pain (which is caused by shame, insecurity or guilt) or dealing with my fears of failure, rejection, and abandonment, then I’m going to compensate by using my ego to be able to counterbalance the insecurity so therefore I become reactive. Reactivity means that I’m being defensive. Defensiveness means that I’m denying a problem exists, discounting and dismissing what others have to say, projecting and making the problem someone else’s as I justify my position, play the victim, and perpetuate the problem by causing the unresolved problem to be buried.If we become reactive and start pointing a finger, there are still four pointing back at us.

When I am willing to deal with my trauma, to deal with my fear, to not be driven by my ego but learn to become more humble, then I can be  reflective and take ownership of my thoughts and feelings by expressing a desire to humbly confess my wrongdoings and turn from my bad habits to pave the way for  negative patterns to be buried dead.If we’re triggered, it’s about our pain. There’s a point at which God hardens someone’s heart, but as long as we’re working on our pain, then we become a safer person to tell someone else that we would like them to work on theirs.

To listen to or download this or other episodes that Ray Kane has presented on Moody Radio’s Midday Connection program, click on one or more of the links below:

Drama-Proofing Your Life Part 1

Drama-Proofing Your Life Part 2

Drama-Proofing Your Life Part 3

Drama-Proofing Your Life Part 4

Drama-Proofing Your Life Part 5

View All Midday Connection Episodes with Guest Ray Kane

Filed under: Dealing with Drama, Living With Integrity, Relationships | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How to Make Danish Crepes

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Julie Albin

My mother grew up eating Danish crepes. Slathered in butter and sprinkled with sugar, they served as the perfect snack to welcome her and her brothers home after a long day at school.  As an adult, she carried on the crepe-making tradition by mixing up a batch every Wednesday night before my brothers and I left for our weekly catechism class. Served with a bowl of scrambled eggs mixed with fried potatoes, it was one of my favorite meals of the week. I had no plans to follow in my grandmother’s and mother’s footsteps until my oldest brother (who is big on tradition) bought me my first cast iron griddle. Almost twenty years later, I am still using it to make a weekly batch of pancakes so that my youngest can heat one up every morning before heading off to school.

To start your own crepe-making tradition, follow the recipe below.

Danish crepes

1. Place the following ingredients in a blender:

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups of milk

1/2 cup of sugar

1/4 tsp of salt

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups of all purpose flour

2. Blend the ingredients, adding more milk as necessary until the crepe mix is easy to pour.

3. Heat a lightly oiled cast iron griddle over medium high heat.

Note: To minimize the amount of cooking oil that is needed, I purchased the Misto Gourmet Oil Sprayer (which can be used with any vegetable oil).  Another option for spreading a small amount of oil onto a griddle is to use a silicone basting brush that is heat resistant to 500F/260C.

4. Pour a soup ladle of crepe mix onto the center of the skillet and tilt the pan in a circular motion so the batter coats the surface evenly.

5. When the bottom of the crepe is lightly brown, loosen with a metal spatula and flip the crepe over to cook the other side.

6. Remove from heat when the second side is lightly browned.

7. Serve hot and refrigerate leftovers.

Filed under: Recipes | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Twenty Tips for Making Overnight Guests Feel Welcome in Your Home

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Julie Albin

Over the past several months, our guest room has gotten a lot of use. When a friend asked if I minded having so many visitors, I didn’t hesitate when I told her that it’s a privilege to welcome people to our home. Luke 12:48 says that much is expected from whom much is blessed. We are blessed to have an extra bedroom and anyone who has stayed with us knows that we go out of our way to make it (and our guests) comfortable. What people don’t know is why.

Why did we decorate the guest room with Bill’s mother’s old Christmas decorations before his aunt came to visit last December?

Why did I set a tray of freshly baked cookies and bottled water on the bed the last time a friend stayed the night?

And what prompted us to develop dozens of pictures of friends and family members so we will have the perfect snapshot to frame and place on the nightstand the next time one of them is scheduled to spend the night?

If my youngest daughter had to answer the last question, she’d say that it makes us look like stalkers; but I am less concerned with making an impression than I am with making a difference. Since our move to Illinois we have traveled to Nebraska on many occasions and, like the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:20, we know what it’s like to be in want and what’s it’s like to have plenty when we stop somewhere to spend the night. My goal is to use that knowledge to anticipate what would make visitors feel welcome and affirm their importance to our family.

If you would like to send the same message to your guests, here are twenty ways to make them feel especially welcome in your home:

  1. When visitors are arriving late, think beyond the porch light by placing a mint on their pillows and turning a lamp on low in their bedroom.
  2. Have a nightlight in the hallway so guests can find their way to the kitchen or bathroom after everyone goes to bed.
  3. Place a tray on the bed with a plate of cookies and a card to welcome them to your home.
  4. Save your wireless password to a text file on a clearly marked flash drive so high-tech friends and family members can access your network from their laptop or smartphone.
  5. Store a cable guide by the television if your guest room has one so visitors can easily locate their favorite channels.
  6. Purchase a brochure holder from an office supply store and use it to hold information about local tourist attractions.
  7. Keep a photo album of past visitors checking out local tourist attractions so new guests will have an idea of what attractions they might want to see while they are in town.
  8. Add flowers to surface areas and artwork on the walls to give guests something beautiful to look at.
  9. Place a notepad and pen on the nightstand so people can capture late night thoughts.
  10. Empty the drawers of a dresser and place extra hangers in the closet so people can use them if they are staying for more than one night.
  11. Provide a luggage rack , bench or other flat surface so guests won’t have to bend down when opening their suitcase.
  12. Store extra blankets and pillows where guests can easily find them.
  13. Place a fresh roll of toilette paper on the dispenser and a second one within easy reach so guests won’t run out during their stay.
  14. Set box(es) of tissues, disposable hand towels, and travel-sized toiletries where visitors will find them.
  15. If you subscribe to magazines, store recent copies in your guest room for visitors to peruse.
  16. Keep your iron and ironing board in the guest room closet so visitors will have access to them.
  17. Place a full length mirror where visitors can use it and keep a spare blow dryer under the sink.
  18. Store extra blankets, towels and washcloths so they will be easy to find.
  19. Hang two matching robes in the closet for guests to use during their stay.
  20. If your guest room is drafty in the winter, consider putting a space heater in the corner of the guest room and an electric blanket on the bed.

Photos illustrating many of the suggestions listed above can be found on Pinterest.com but before you view them, remember that implementing even one is pointless if no one stays in your home. Good things don’t always come to those who wait: Sometimes you have to make an effort by extending an invitation and trusting that the people who take you up on your offer will be the ones God has given you the privilege to serve.

 From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. – Luke 12:48b

Filed under: Guests in Your Home, Staging | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Using Smart Albums in iPhoto to Keep Track of Your Best Photos

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Julie Albin

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to change up the way you do things, especially when it comes to organizing your digital photos. It’s a time to keep doing what works and ditch what doesn’t. What works for me is organizing pictures by event and adding the year, month and day they were taken to the title of each folder. If I have two events in one day (like a program at school during the day  and a birthday party that night), I place them in separate folders and include “01″ after the date of the first and “02″ after the date of the second activity to make sure that the folders show up in the proper order (see example below).

Photos Organized by Year and Event

What also works is periodically backing up these folders to DVDs that I give to Bill to take to work. This ensures that, in the event of a fire, our pictures are not lost forever.

What hasn’t been working is having to search through every folder at the end of the year to find the pictures that I would like to include in our annual Christmas Card and end of year slideshow. In search of a solution that would make the most of software I already have, I read up on how to use iPhoto Smart Albums and created one called 2013 Best Photos. I then added parameters so the album only contains pictures from 2013 events that I gave a 5-star rating (see article titled How To Create Essential Smart Albums for Your iPhoto Library at www.makeuseof.com).

To test my new process, I imported a photo from our camera and gave it a five-star rating. The picture appeared in the new smart album and my photo-taking year is off to a great start, proving that Continuous Process Improvement is not just for companies: It’s for anyone who is up for the challenge of putting every system to the test until the good is better and the better is best!

Filed under: iPhoto, Organizing, Put Every System to the Test, Technology Tips | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

Making Proverbs 13 Your Mantra

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Julie Albin

This weekend at church, the most adorable little girl stood on the seat in front of me. She was wearing a beautiful silver dress and had a pair of velvet Mickey Mouse ears perched on top of her head. Her headband reminded me of the year that Bill and I took our daughters to Disney World on the Fourth of July. It was crowded and stressful and I told myself that we would never do that again.

No one wants to be so busy during the holidays that they have no time to enjoy them, yet so many of us pack our pre-Christmas days with an overwhelming number of To Dos. This year I resolved to not to fall into this trap, largely out of necessity. On the day before Thanksgiving, I had arthroscopic surgery to remove a bone spur and repair a tear in the labrum of my left hip.  Several people who have seen me hobbling around on crutches have commented on how awful it must feel to not be able to walk over the holidays but I don’t see it that way because knowing that I would spend all of December on crutches motivated me to get ready for Christmas early.

Proverbs 13:4 teaches us that the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied, but sometimes God works through circumstances to drive home the lesson. With presents wrapped, cards ordered, and decorations up before December 1st, I had none of those distractions to keep me from serving and spending time with friends and family.

Diligence is the earnest and persistent application to an undertaking, not a frenzied  race to December 25th, so let’s make Proverbs 13 our mantra for 2013 and lean on God’s promises every day.

Filed under: Exhaustion, Perseverance, Procrastination | Leave a Comment »

The Best Person for Our Possessions

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Julie Albin

I recently received a message in my inbox from a woman who received one of the books that I had posted on paperbackswap.com. In her e-mail, she gushed about how much her daughter was enjoying it.

Knowing that the letter art book that had been tucked away in our gift closet ever since I bought it 5 years ago was now being used every day served as yet another reminder that we are not always the right person for the resources God has entrusted to our care. And sometimes, the best way to benefit from our possessions is to give them away.

Filed under: Stewardship | Leave a Comment »

PaperbackSwap.com

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Julie Albin

December is a great month to clear your home of clutter. It creates space for the gifts that Santa will be bringing on Christmas Eve and gives others an opportunity to benefit from the items that have outgrown their usefulness to your family. One of the first two spaces I go through are my daughters’ closets because I know that I can pass the clothes that Katie and Hollie no longer wear to my niece when we see her over the holidays.

Next, I scrutinize our gift closet and get rid of the oldest items that I intended but never managed to give away. While in the basement, I also look inside holiday totes for decorations that could be donated to Goodwill. I prefer large pieces that have maximum impact with minimal installation time (like the giant wreath we hang in our entryway) and no longer enjoy setting out smaller items that create more clutter than Christmas cheer.

One of the last placed I scrutinize are the bookshelves in our living room as I challenge myself to let go of literature that I never should have bought in the first place. Books that are in good condition with no liquid damage, writing or highlighting are posted on paperbackswap.com. What I like about this site is how easy it is to use. For every book that I mail to another member of this free service, I receive a credit that can be used to request a book from the thousands that are posted on this website.

We all have a responsibility to be good stewards of the resources God has temporarily entrusted to our care. Sites like paperbackswap.com make it, not just possible, but beneficial to pass our unused items along to others.

Trade Books for Free - PaperBack Swap.

Filed under: Organizing, Reviews, Websites | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

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