Session 4 - The Trouble with Isolation
This is the fourth talk in an 8-week class called "Trauma and Transformation, Level 1". The course takes a bio-psycho-socio-spiritual approach to healing. Both Christians and non-Christians are welcome. This is a reflection time of about 10 minutes that occurs in the class, before the remaining time which is spent in trauma education - helping people understand the impact of trauma on the mind and on all of life.
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We're pretty far out of the woods of the covid pandemic now, and have been for a while now, depending how you count. Who here didn't get Covid? I managed to avoid it from 2020 to 2023 only to have had it twice last year.
With generally some distance from the plague, Can you name something that you appreciate more now than you did before the pandemic?
One of the biggest struggles we faced during the pandemic was isolation. For some this is an ongoing issue. Not many people do well in isolation. Even introverts need people. We were created for relationships, and we do best in relationships. We need relationships. We often don’t do so well on our own. Sometimes the worst place to be is in our heads.
And one of the best practical contributions of healthy relationships to our well-being and mental health is that talking to others, caring for others, keeps us from living in our own small worlds. So in giving and receiving in friendships we do far better than in isolation.
Aristotle said that a friend is another self, or a second self. A friend reflects back to us the fact that we are alive and that we matter. So a friend is another self, not as a mirror image but rather as a partner in experiencing life in all its moments, good and bad.
My brother, who had a pretty awesome sense of humour wrote this once in a birthday card: Proverbs 17:17 A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. In fact we got along extremely well, and I had the privilege of spending a lot of time with him in particular during his final year, in 2006, before he succumbed to cancer.
The first part of this verse is the heart of friendship: our friends we love at all times. We are loved at all times by our friends, by our true friends. And we are shown to be true friends to others and visa versa when we consistently behave in loving ways toward another.
It’s sad but true that we tend to notice when our friends are failing us, but we don’t tend to notice as much when we are failing our friends.
Romans 12:10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.
The spiritual life is a life of love. An integrated, whole, holistic way of doing life is to seek to live a life of love, of giving to others.
This passage encourages us to even value those outside of our immediate orbit. Our most immediate orbit is just us, just us in our own heads. Outside our orbit, that’s where friendships thrive.
How do you enlarge your orbit? How do you gain more friends? Here’s the best advice outside of the Bible that I’ve read: “You can make more friends in 2 months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in 2 years spent trying to get people interested in you”. - Dale Carnagie
So the way to enlarge our social world is to seek to be to others what we would like to receive from others. Taking an interest and asking questions about others is a great way to build friendships.
As in all relationships, seeking to be the best friend or partner is far more constructive and possible than seeking to find the best friend or partner. And as we think of friendships, of building trusting relationships, I think of how someone I deeply admire did the whole relationship thing.
Jesus' circle of friends included 70 people who knew well enough in the community. His world also included a closer inner circle of people that were closer to him - 12 fellows in particular named Andrew, Philip...(9 total). They are known to us as the disciples or students of Jesus who Jesus ended up sending out with his message.
Jesus also had an inner circle of 3 friends. That included John, but also added a guy named Peter and a guy named James.
They shared very special moments in life and were each other’s closest pals. They spent a lot of time together.
Now John has his best buddy. John wrote one of the biographies of Jesus’ life, called the gospel of John. As might be expected John was able to write much more detailed accounts of Jesus than the other gospel writers.
And then there was everyone else he encountered - acquaintances he met on His journey.
That’s a healthy way to structure our lives. We can have people in each of those circles. We spend the most time with the fewest, and the least time with the most, but we end up with a pretty vibrant and alive social world, one that we build with purpose and intention.
One last thing about building trust. Naturally we will have the most trust reserved for the fewest people. We’re careful with our trust, careful and wise with who we share secrets and the deeper questions of life. One more short passage from Scripture. (The Bible is the most densely-packed source of wisdom and understanding that I’ve found in all of my reading. It’s where I get all the best advice that I give people).
Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; 6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
I said we reserve our deepest trust for the most trustworthy one we know. For a lot of people as they expand their lives and the hearts and their minds, spirituality is a key part of that growth.
This passage encourages us to place our deepest and fullest trust in One who is genuinely good, who is greater than all, Who is Love itself, and Who has an incredibly long track-record of goodness and faithfulness.
Our experiences of trauma can, as we’ve heard, impact our faith. Just after I lost my brother, which was a profound and life-altering loss, a friend said this to me: we can either run INTO the beliefs and values that have grounded our lives, or we can run AWAY from our beliefs and values. It’s entirely our choice.
We can be embittered by life and all its suffering. That’s a legitimate and understandable and common response to suffering. Or we can do the tough work of choosing to dig deeper into those beliefs and values that have given us hope and sustained us in the past. My brother Craig, when he learned his condition was terminal, would say this: "Hope is the best of things; without it there is only time".
What I’ve observed is that those who choose to dig deeper and longer end up more grounded in their faith.
They find even greater meaning, and begin living more of an anchored, grounded life than they have in the past.
They can find more strength and joy in their relationship with God than before their trauma.
And that is always a tremendous source of healing - digging deeper into our faith, into our trust of God.
It can help tremendously to have a community around us, and maybe even a counselor if and when we decide to sort ourselves out spiritually.
So as we grow in trust, may we grow our circle of friends, carefully and wisely. And may we seek to be open-hearted and open-minded to the best wisdom, and find as a result a clearer path to joy in life.
