The Secret things of God

Page 73-74

Dealing with negative emotions leads to happy ones

Ecclesiastes 7:3

Sorrow is better than laughter,

Because a sad face is good for the heart.

It is a paradox, but sometimes to feel better, we have to feel worse.

My first job in the field of psychology was as a psychiatric aide in a psychiatric hospital. I took a year off between college and graduate school to make sure of my calling and that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was invaluable experience. But I have to admit, in the beginning something surprised me.

I kind of thought that psychologists and psychiatrists were supposed to make depressed people feel better. So it made sense to me that that’s what they would do in a hospital. But what I found was the opposite. It seemed that they tried to make them feel worse! In the group sessions, they would get people to talk about their hurts, their pain, their losses, the trauma of the divorce they just went though, the sadness of past abuse and trauma, their abandonments, anger, bitterness, and the like. Groups were not “Happy talk” at all. They were the opposite – a lot of talk about a lot of pain and misery.

But I learned something. The secret that God revealed through Solomon in the verse above is true: a sad face is good for the heart.

It’s true that sometimes we have to feel worse before we can feel better. We have to face the pain we are not dealing with in order to get past a depression or an addition of whatever it is we are suffering with. Just waiting for the pain to go away is not enough. It may take a little surgery.

Page 74-75

Drain the Wound

Page 82-83

Suffering can be good, if it’s the right kind

Page 104

Like attracts like

There are character dynamics that explain attraction and how we are drawn to certain kind of people and not others. Let’s take codependents, for example. It is part of their makeup to need someone to fix, to repair, to make better. They are rescuers. Now think about his. What do rescuers need?

Exactly. A person to rescue. And what kind of people needs recuing? Responsible people? No. Responsible people take care of themselves. The kind who need rescuing are those who are not taking responsibility and ownership of their own lives and are a mess. So codependent people will always have irresponsible people or addicts in their lives until they realize that their codependency is what makes those relationships exist and necessitates their having problem people in their lives.

Likewise, on the other side of the equation, if people are not taking responsibility for themselves, what kind of people do they need? Rescuers. Someone to take care of them. Voila! There’s your match. They find each other. In some sort of unconscious way, they have the ability to sense each other, and the match is made, even across a crowded room. They hear fireworks when they meet. They just like each other. If feels right or familiar. They have no idea what is driving that attractions, but they just know that if feels good in the beginning. It’s after the dynamics begin to kick in that it all unfolds.

Page 104

It’s about you

So here is the way to unlock this secret: take responsibility for the fact that you are drawn to dysfunctional people in friendship, romance, business, or spiritual community…there is a reason.

It is about you, not them. Find out why you are attracted to them.

Page 122

Listen and validate before all else

From there, we had really helpful discussion as he began to see something: finding the other person’s heart is more important than getting that person to see that you are right.

It did not matter if he thought he was being loving. She did not feel loved. If he could hear that, he then could use that same effort and care to do something that would make her feel loved. But until he could listen and not try to convince, that was not going to happen.

Page 124-125

The beginning

The beginning focus is not just to “get our point across”, but to make sure that the other people get a chance to get theirs across as well. Then you have connected to the heart. Once you do that, problems can be solved.

And after you take the beginning stance of seeking to understand, the next step is to make sure that they know you understand. Remember this rule : You have not understood someone when you understand them. You have understood them only when they understand you understand.

Page 203

Sovereign

What does sovereignty means? As I eventually learned, sovereign means “ultimate and supreme power”. In the Bible it is sometimes translated “Most High”. It means that in your life there is no evil force, no person, no chance, no randomness, no anything that is higher than God – for He is the MOST high. So no matter what happens that is out of your control, He is still in control.

Source: The Secret things of God: Unlocking the Treasures Reserved for You by Dr Henry Cloud (2007)