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Divine Intimacy Radio - Carrying Your Own Cross: Spiritual Progress in Marriage · The Quest Atlanta Catholic Radio

• 0:01
  Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, a co-production of EWTN Radio and SpiritualDirection.com, where we provide you with a spiritual haven of rest and explore the riches of the wisdom of the saints and the path to union with God.
• 0:20
  This is Dan and Stephanie Burke.
• 0:21
  Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest.
• 0:25
  Your hermitage of the heart.
• 0:26
  Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints to help us navigate the tumult of this very challenging life.
• 0:36
  And today we're going to be talking about one of those challenges and how do you deal with...
• 0:42
  relational situations, and we all have that if you have a pulse, that can tend to distract you away from your mission to carry your own cross.
• 0:54
  There are these barriers that are often present when we, spousal relationships, child, parent-child, that if we don't view them through the lens of God.
• 1:07
  or through this divine story, God, that we can get stuck when we're trying to help us and someone else.
• 1:14
  It reminds me of the admonition in, we travel all the time.
• 1:21
  I have millions of miles of flight miles.
• 1:24
  I almost have a million, by the way.
• 1:25
  You almost have a million.
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  So you're, so yeah.
• 1:28
  Catch up.
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  Right.
• 1:29
  Yeah.
• 1:29
  I don't think that'll happen, but yeah.
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  It says, if we're low on oxygen, your mass will drop.
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  Make sure you put yours on first before you try to help anyone else.
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  So today, we're going to be talking about what that looks like in the spiritual life.
• 1:45
  I like that.
• 1:46
  That's a great analogy.
• 1:47
  All right.
• 1:48
  So we have a special guest with us today.
• 1:49
  We do.
• 1:50
  We do.
• 1:51
  So I love it.
• 1:52
  Yes.
• 1:53
  I know.
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  I was about to say, our audience doesn't know her.
• 1:56
  I was about to say Nissa Chadwick, besides being an awesome human being.
• 2:01
  Yeah.
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  I really love this woman.
• 2:02
  Yeah.
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  Has been a licensed marriage and family therapist in the state of Colorado since 2003.
• 2:09
  And she has worked in child protection, residential treatment, and taught undergraduate psychology courses and graduate level counseling courses for many years while her kids were growing up.
• 2:23
  She is also a trained spiritual director through our own Heart of Christ School of Spiritual Direction.
• 2:29
  She has been married to her husband of 15 years, for 15 years.
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  And she has she they have a recently married young adult son and soon to be married young adult daughter who is equally amazing.
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  And hopefully grandbabies on the way.
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  So, you know, don't we just wish that for everybody?
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  Anyway, welcome.
• 2:51
  It's so good to have you join us today.
• 2:54
  Good morning.
• 2:55
  Happy to be here.
• 2:57
  So Nyssa, you reached out to me after listening to the last show with Tim Glover, where we were talking about this very subject of how do you navigate the waters of marital relationships, parent-child, you know, however you want to pair two humans up.
• 3:20
  who care about one another.
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  And there's a real, there's a pattern that is very much driven by a kind of our normal human instincts that are problematic, that can hinder our relationship with the Lord and hinder their growth.
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  Talk to us a little bit about what, what touched you about that broadcast and where you want to go a little deeper today.
• 3:47
  Well, I just found myself thinking as I was listening about how much one's own stuff gets in the way when we're trying to maybe encourage those people around us or, and sometimes it doesn't look like encouragement.
• 4:07
  It looks like something else, but you know, so often when I'm working with couples or with individuals.
• 4:16
  they come into my office and want somebody else to change.
• 4:20
  They want somebody else to stop doing something.
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  They want somebody to start doing something.
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  And it's really so much about slowing down.
• 4:32
  And first, looking at the beam in your own eye, because...
• 4:38
  until we kind of know what's going on with ourselves, it's really hard to tell someone else what to do in a way that's helpful.
• 4:48
  It's usually pretty fruitless.
• 4:51
  So I'm going to give everybody a break here.
• 4:57
  And, you know, you and I go way back.
• 5:00
  We know each other super well.
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  Nyssa, what do you think is the motivation behind those individuals who want somebody else to change?
• 5:11
  I mean, are they just bad people?
• 5:13
  Yeah.
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  Are they selfish, narcissistic?
• 5:18
  What is kind of the driving force, do you think, sometimes underneath that desire for somebody to get their act together?
• 5:27
  Yeah.
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  Well, there's always good intentions behind it.
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  I would say 99% of the time in most cases, there are good intentions.
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  We love our spouses.
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  We love our children.
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  We love our family members.
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  And we see that they're hurting or we see that the direction they're going is not leading to their flourishing or thriving.
• 5:54
  So, so often...
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  people's intentions are good.
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  They just want their loved one to, to feel better, to do better and, and not in a mean way, not like do better.
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  Right.
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  We hear that a lot.
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  It's not like that.
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  It's just, um, we desire to see our loved ones.
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  flourish.
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  And then it's also easier to tell other people what to do than it is to sort of look in the mirror and say, well, what can I do?
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  How am I helping this situation?
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  How am I hindering this situation?
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  You know, what wins do I have?
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  Yeah.
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  And I want to kind of stay here for a moment because I think that ache and that desire.
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  So if you think about spouse to spouse or mother to child or father to child.
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  There is a desire and ache of the heart to see somebody become fully who they're called to be, right?
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  To walk in the freedom that God has for them, to step in that fullness.
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  And that I believe personally that that ache and the desire that comes from God.
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  But then I think we misinterpret what we're supposed to do.
• 7:14
  Oh, yeah.
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  That's huge.
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  That's what I think is going on, that it's not so much the problem of the desire to see somebody flourish and walk in their freedom.
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  It's that we misinterpret that ache and understand what we're to do with it.
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  So then in our brokenness,
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  and this is a lot of what Nissa, you know, you deal with in your vocation as a psychologist and a spiritual director, is that people often don't understand that it's kind of
• 7:49
  entangled with your own wounds, your own brokenness, the things that God also wants to heal in us, right?
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  He's working in that desire.
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  And, and so it's supposed to bring about self-awareness, but then a questioning of Lord, what are you asking here?
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  Like, what do I do with this?
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  Because it's the tension and the pain and the suffering that
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  is a little too much.
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  And do I become reactive and try to fix?
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  Yeah.
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  Or do I become introspective and then ask of what he's doing and what to do with that?
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  So, so that's really important because you covered the, so we covered the good intentions.
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  Then you covered the pain avoidance attention or desire to be relieved of pain.
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  Those are a couple of different things.
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  Yeah.
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  But, and we're going to get to the antidote here.
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  This is why we have NISA.
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  So NISA is going to help us begin to unravel.
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  Like, what do you do?
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  Before we go there, though, I think fundamentally, the thing that hinders at a macro level, the ability to get, to change the way you look at these things, is the narrative in your mind about your relationship and all of that.
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  And I think one of the lies that we often live with is that God isn't involved in the context of my relationship that he, or if he is, he's remote.
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  But we rarely go, well, that person is in my life because God placed him there and I need to fix the difficulties I'm facing for my salvation when we don't recognize that
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  We deal with the problem from a totally wrongheaded perspective.
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  We don't, we're not seeing the Lord working and realizing, oh, I feel that.
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  That was triggered by their behavior.
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  But my focus isn't on their behavior.
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  It's why did God cause or allow that?
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  what do I need to do?
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  What do I need to deal with in me?
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  What's this revealing in me?
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  And so the focus is more about you and your relationship with God.
• 10:06
  If you, if the story is right, I don't know, Nissa, does that make sense?
• 10:10
  Yes, yes, absolutely.
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  And I think the word that you used, trigger, though I have mixed feelings about that word, but it's descriptive enough, right?
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  We all know what we're talking about.
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  And I think when a person gets triggered, that's a cue from God to slow down, to slow way down and
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  And start getting curious about what that's about.
• 10:42
  Yeah.
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  In prayer, maybe in therapy, maybe with a spiritual director, maybe with a good holy friend, all of the above.
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  I mean, there's many means to get at that.
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  But...
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  to slow down and to really examine what is that trigger about?
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  Because it's not just what the other person did.
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  It's that something in me got touched on.
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  And it's usually something pretty deep.
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  It's usually something pretty tender.
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  And it's usually something that even predates the marriage, you know, from a very long time ago.
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  And especially,
• 11:25
  We know that's especially true in marriage when the same things kind of keep happening over and over.
• 11:32
  Maybe it's a different topic, but in some ways the fight is the same.
• 11:39
  And it's like, that's usually a clue that what's being triggered is really something that needs to be healed, needs to be looked at, needs to be taken out.
• 11:50
  Go ahead, Steph.
• 11:51
  I think it's important too that, that we, so, so let's kind of set this aside.
• 11:57
  Let's say, let's focus on the marital conflict because I think when you get into children and all this other stuff, it can be, it's such a broad topic.
• 12:07
  And I think Nessa's right is, is let's look at, okay, what do we do when our spouse triggers a behavior that,
• 12:17
  how do we analyze that, deal with it, go deep with that?
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  And we'll talk about this when we come back for a break.
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  So I really love this conversation.
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  I think it's so timely and so important.
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  All right.
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  So we'll be right back.
• 12:32
  Okay.
• 12:35
  Hey friends, this is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio.
• 12:40
  How's your marriage?
• 12:41
  Does it need a retreat?
• 12:43
  Yeah, if you're struggling and you're in the darkness and don't know the way out.
• 12:47
  Or if it's amazing and you just want it to be better.
• 12:49
  Or if you're not yet married, you're engaged and you want to start off really on the right foot.
• 12:55
  We have something we want to share with you.
• 12:56
  We have created a divine intimacy in marriage retreat.
• 13:01
  And we want to share with you the divine marriage secret, the divine intimacy secret, right?
• 13:07
  And we're not going to tell you right now, you got to come to one of the events, but basically the marriage retreat is based on Catholic mystical tradition.
• 13:14
  and our own struggles and journey to the healing that God has shown us and, and had mercy to give us.
• 13:21
  We want to share that with you.
• 13:22
  We want to show you the way the path forward to oneness with the Lord and each other.
• 13:30
  So we invite you to check out our events page at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events.
• 13:36
  We speak all over the country and all over the world with this retreat.
• 13:40
  They always fill up.
• 13:42
  So don't delay.
• 13:49
  This is Dan and Stephanie Burke.
• 13:50
  Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio here with Nissa Chadwick, who's a psychologist and a spiritual director.
• 13:58
  Before the break, we were talking about this issue of what happens when we get triggered.
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  Some of the problems with that language is it sounds like what happens when somebody does something to us?
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  And then we get triggered.
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  And that's kind of a problematic narrative.
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  It should be what happens when I experience anxiety, frustration, anger, whatever.
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  Reaction.
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  In the context of a relationship.
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  Right.
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  Because that starts to get the story right.
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  Because now we're saying, I'm the one feeling this.
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  I only feel the way I feel because I feel the way I feel.
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  Circumstance does help that.
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  But in the sense that's what I own and I can control, not perfectly, but it's the one I need to deal with with God so that then I can respond instead of react to the other and to be, and to be controlled by
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  Right.
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  And see a broader context, like, like, what is God doing here?
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  Start to ask the right questions and that slowing down in adoration, therapy, spiritual direction, prayer is the right place to start is Lord, what are you doing here?
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  Why does this bother me so much?
• 15:16
  So I'd like to get a little personal so people can understand exactly what we're talking about.
• 15:22
  So I want to ask either Nyssa or you, and you can use me if you want to use me as your trigger example.
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  It doesn't matter to me.
• 15:31
  Can you give examples or an example of how this can occur in marriage and then how how the person might look at it differently than the normal way, which is to react and get angry and get in a fight and that sort of thing?
• 15:45
  Okay.
• 15:47
  Well, I'll share mine and then maybe Nyssa has one as well.
• 15:51
  And I've shared this before I share it, you know, openly and freely.
• 15:54
  And we have a new book coming out and I think it's.
• 15:57
  Divine intimacy and marriage.
• 15:59
  Yeah.
• 15:59
  Ascent to oneness.
• 16:00
  So, you know, I think it's listed in there as well.
• 16:03
  But my kind of, I hate this word again.
• 16:07
  I'm going to call it a reactive point instead of a trigger point.
• 16:11
  Sure.
• 16:12
  is when I'm treated with efficiency, lack of love, harsh words, any kind of real intensity.
• 16:23
  Like the world can tell me whatever, right?
• 16:27
  But when you do it, I go, oh,
• 16:29
  Yeah.
• 16:29
  Right.
• 16:30
  Because I have this vulnerability with you.
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  I'm completely open to you as my spouse and I want nothing but good for you and from you.
• 16:39
  You know, I want to I want to pour my life into our marriage.
• 16:44
  So when I don't receive that, which hardly ever happens anymore, but you praised.
• 16:49
  God be praised because it used to happen a lot when we were first married, you know, that's, oh, ow, you know, and, and I had to come to the realization that God was allowing that to reveal a wound in me, which was my father wound.
• 17:07
  Yeah.
• 17:08
  No surprise, you know, here, right?
• 17:10
  A male hurting me, my spouse is often reflective of our father wounds.
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  And what's interesting about it is that it's magnified, right?
• 17:21
  Oh, it is magnified because it hurts so bad.
• 17:24
  Right.
• 17:24
  But in the circumstance, what I do, let's say it's on a scale of one to 10, it's a two.
• 17:30
  Right.
• 17:31
  In terms of difficulty, because of your wound, that takes it to, let's say, a seven.
• 17:37
  Right.
• 17:38
  And so that's.
• 17:39
  And there's longstanding language for this in the world.
• 17:43
  That's called making a mountain out of a molehill.
• 17:46
  But that's not an accusation.
• 17:48
  It's just...
• 17:48
  Right.
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  I'm smiling because it's true.
• 17:50
  Yeah.
• 17:51
  The reason the phrase is there is because that's what happens to us.
• 17:54
  Yeah.
• 17:54
  Now we know we have better understanding of why.
• 17:57
  So talk to us a little bit about how to get out of this cycle.
• 18:00
  Yeah.
• 18:02
  As I kind of mentioned before, one is just slowing way down because part of what happens when we react, our emotions get going, sort of physiologically we get going.
• 18:15
  And then we start going fast and we don't, you know, and when that happens, you know, we don't.
• 18:26
  we're just not online anymore, right?
• 18:29
  Our prefrontal cortex has gone offline.
• 18:32
  We're not thinking clearly, we're not seeing clearly, we're... Fight or flight, right?
• 18:40
  Fight or flight, absolutely.
• 18:42
  And we are just saying whatever
• 18:44
  comes to mind.
• 18:46
  And so, um, just slowing way down.
• 18:51
  How do you do that?
• 18:52
  So that slowing down is the principle.
• 18:55
  What are the practical ways, you know?
• 18:57
  Yeah.
• 18:57
  Because what, what can happen, I think we're either pursuers or we're retract or, we're running or pursuers, you know?
• 19:06
  And so as soon as the tension rises and we have this natural thing, but so to slow down is to, um,
• 19:13
  begin to mitigate that reaction, but how?
• 19:16
  How do we do that?
• 19:17
  Yeah, well, some of it is really as simple as beginning with just breathing, right?
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  We sort of quit breathing when we start, our emotions start going.
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  So just breathing.
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  Take a deep breath.
• 19:34
  Yeah, take a deep breath.
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  Take a deep breath.
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  And what that serves to do is physiologically we can't stay in this fight or flight situation.
• 19:47
  place when we are breathing well and deeply.
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  So it begins to slow us down sort of in a physiological sense.
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  It also just helps connect our brains and our hearts and our bodies back to the present moment.
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  Because when we're off in that place, we're just not
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  we're not in the present moment anymore.
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  And of course we know that's where God is to help us in this too.
• 20:17
  And so once we start breathing, then we can kind of, we get our brain kind of back online and we can start thinking about what's happening here.
• 20:32
  What just happened?
• 20:33
  You know, why do I feel so upset about what my husband just said?
• 20:39
  Or like in my case, what kind of triggers me sometimes is my husband doesn't always react quickly to something I'm saying.
• 20:48
  He'll slow down and his sometimes natural response is being quiet.
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  And if I'm stirred up and I want a response, then I'm like, okay.
• 21:00
  you know, why aren't you responding?
• 21:02
  Why don't you say something?
• 21:03
  Right.
• 21:05
  And I have gotten better over the years at realizing he's just taking in what I'm saying and he's not ignoring me and he's not shutting me down.
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  He's actually listening.
• 21:16
  And so, so that's kind of one of my little triggers or has been in the past, not so much anymore.
• 21:24
  But then I can tell myself, oh, yeah,
• 21:28
  He's probably not reacting and jumping in on top of me because he's listening to what I'm saying.
• 21:35
  So I can start thinking about what's happening a little bit more clearly.
• 21:42
  And I think this is really important when we talk about how we're the reactive response.
• 21:48
  And you're talking about how our blood pressure rises, our brains kind of go haywire and we're not in the present moment so that we can start processing our thoughts very, very quickly.
• 22:01
  And we get this sense of urgency.
• 22:03
  And I think it's really important through discernment of spirits to understand that God is not urgent.
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  The enemy is urgent.
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  And he knows that when we're in that fight or flight and our adrenaline's gone up, we feel hurt, sorrow, pain of the situation.
• 22:20
  I'm unheard.
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  I'm unloved.
• 22:22
  I'm I'm being, you know, hurt through words or or no words or whatever it is.
• 22:28
  Right.
• 22:30
  that the enemy wants us to start firing off everything he shoots into our head.
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  Just every thought, every thought, every thought.
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  And so those thoughts, if we don't take all thoughts captive to Christ, those will come firing out of our mouth.
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  So how we think is how we speak is how we start to act.
• 22:48
  And in the midst of conflict, boy, that can really wreck a marriage.
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  Because in Nissa's case,
• 22:55
  He's not responding.
• 22:56
  What's wrong with you?
• 22:57
  You don't care.
• 22:58
  Why aren't you saying anything?
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  You know, you're not doing anything.
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  And she can start criticizing, chasing, pursuing, fixing.
• 23:07
  Right.
• 23:08
  And in mine, it's reacting to the pain.
• 23:11
  Like, you know, how dare either I would flee, which is not my MO because I'm a Latin woman.
• 23:18
  I'm going to start escalating to, you know, you were sharp with me.
• 23:22
  I'm going to be sharper.
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  And by the way, we're going to go tete a tete.
• 23:26
  Right.
• 23:27
  And this is not going to work either because then it leaves a wake of damage.
• 23:31
  But that that urgency of the demonic can really start to.
• 23:36
  take us over and that slowing down, taking all thoughts captive to Christ, breathing, getting our bodies, our minds, our spirits back into the presence of the Lord and saying, Lord, help me.
• 23:49
  And getting back into abiding with him will keep us from then causing more harm.
• 23:57
  And then we can actually start to determine why is this upsetting me so much?
• 24:02
  I want to add two scripture passages where the Holy Spirit backs all of this up.
• 24:09
  One is St. Paul, and we always talk about this in the marriage retreat, and I make a joke about it, be quiet.
• 24:17
  I use the Spanish word, kayete, which is not that nice, which is kind of like shut your mouth.
• 24:23
  But St. Paul speaks about this, you know, when there's these differences between husband and wife.
• 24:30
  be quiet and be holy, which really it means be quiet and work on you.
• 24:37
  Another passage, which is in James, be slow to speak, quick to hear, slow to anger.
• 24:44
  But I can say as a person who suffered the sin of wrath for a long time, thanks be to God, not anymore, it is not an easy thing to slow down because when the wounds are...
• 24:59
  like right underneath the surface and there's rawness, unhealed junk.
• 25:05
  And then you push that button or somebody, you know, which the enemy can inspire then.
• 25:13
  But once we hit that reactive place, then things start to spiral out of control.
• 25:19
  We're, we're, we're running out of time.
• 25:22
  We're getting close to time on this show.
• 25:25
  I wonder, Nissa, if you have time for another, because I'd like to talk about how, what happens in terms of when we live a life of grace-centered life and a better story, our spouses actually have room to change, and they actually change more.
• 25:44
  What I found, what Stephanie's found, I bet what you found, Nissa, is when you follow this journey,
• 25:50
  wisdom of the Holy Spirit, changes actually come in ways that you never expected before and faster than you ever expected before.
• 25:59
  Yes, absolutely.
• 26:01
  And yes, I can stay on.
• 26:03
  Great.
• 26:04
  So friends, if you're interested in this topic and you want to dive deeper, and let's say you're struggling even in your marriage, there's a new book out or coming out pretty quickly, depends on when you hear this broadcast, but you can find it out on spiritualdirection.com and it's called Divine Intimacy in Marriage.
• 26:22
  Ascent to oneness.
• 26:23
  And it's, we hope and pray that it's based on our retreats, divine intimacy retreats that have helped so many.
• 26:31
  And another great book that helps to deescalate these things is called Fighting for Your Marriage, which we definitely recommend and take now to all of our retreats.
• 26:42
  We want to thank Nyssa Chadwick for being with us to help us navigate this topic.
• 26:47
  And in our next show, we're going to talk about some of the fruits that we've all seen when we follow this path guided by the Holy Spirit.
• 26:56
  Okay, so until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness.
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  May he preserve you whole and entire, spirit, soul, and body, irreproachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
• 27:08
  Amen.
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  Learn more about the interior life.
• 27:13
  Visit spiritualdirection.com.
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  Divine Intimacy Radio is a co-production of EWTN Radio and spiritualdirection.com and heard worldwide on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network.