John Murphy:
Hello, this is the Rock House Center podcast and I'm John Murphy.

Beth Murphy:
And I'm Beth Murphy. We're talking today about fighting over dumb stuff, which is something that is commonly expressed by clients in being puzzled and upset, hurt, disappointed about why they get into something that doesn't seem like a big deal to them and turns into something that's blown out of proportion and ends up with hurt feelings.

John Murphy:
Yeah, the one who doesn't understand is the one who thinks it's the dumb stuff. It's the person on the other side who's having a big response. It's really clear to them, or at least they're the one feeling the emotion.

Beth Murphy:
Commonly, one person can be on one side of it and be completely puzzled by, if it's in a marriage situation, by their spouse or their child, and then not see how they've done the very same thing where they were the one that got upset over something where the other person thought it was really a non-event. And so we want to get at why does that happen? Why does it feel so bad? What's the resolution? What's the way out of this fighting over dumb stuff thing, which actually can not only be bewildering to people, but ultimately discouraging and upsetting. And there's this feeling that I've got to tread on eggshells in life because I could wander into something that's pretty insignificant to me and ends up being a big out-of-proportion fight.

John Murphy:
It can also be some sort of practical thing, just some basics like how do you do a task or whatever. There's a concern and you're having to watch what you're doing because this is highly sensitized to someone else about how a particular thing is done. And then it becomes kind of a fear thing that they're going to mess up and create a relationship issue, but they still have to get the task done in some way or another.

Beth Murphy:
Things like moving is an example. There have been any number of things expressed to us about fights that arise out of really mundane aspects of the way in which the U-Haul has been packed and one person unpacking or redoing, the other one feeling hurt or rejected by that decision or when the lamp is broken and being upset, not so much about the lamp being broken, but how it threw the schedule off and it's going to make the sequence of things fall out of line and that blowing into something that becomes a whole lot bigger than the lamp or the schedule, either one. Also things like directions—one person getting really upset and feeling like there's a whole lot at stake if they miss an exit, for example, and freezing up with a sense of fear about they might miss an exit and giving directions, which then makes them miss the exit.

John Murphy:
It does sort of roll into dysfunction at some point. There's too much concern.

Beth Murphy:
So the back and forth that can end up with tears, anger, hurt feelings over something that may have resulted in being five minutes late somewhere or not even late, but just an inconvenience in the directions not being exactly right.

John Murphy:
An interesting example that we have actually seen a couple of different cases of are concerns around what happens at Christmas time around gifts under the tree. One person in particular was looking for gifts to come fairly early in the season and start to kind of build slowly and they would be going in and checking every day or maybe twice a day what was going on there—are there packages? Children do this, spouses do this. This is kind of a category for a lot of people. Well in advance of Christmas shows a lot of consideration, maybe more love than a gift that shows up on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day for sure. And then we won't even talk about gifts that showed up that really should have been wrapped and weren't wrapped from their perspective because of the wrapping itself and how much trouble you go to wrap the gift. Where the other spouse was like, they just never wrapped anything. They just brought it all down, dropped it out down on Christmas morning. Everybody dug into the pile and it was all over in 45 minutes, kind of a Christmas. Those two people will go under Christmas with their biases and what their biases mean to them about Christmas. You have someone who's really hurt because the gifts are not showing up early on and slowly building over time so they can really appreciate the climax of the whole moment of Christmas as the expression of all this love and value to them. And if that doesn't happen, that spouse expresses their unhappiness towards the other spouse: Where are my gifts? How could you have waited till this time to have done this? Do you really love me? What does this mean about how you feel about me? That's what's going on on one side. And the other spouse could just go, wow, that's really crazy that someone would be that worked up and worried about the timing of gifts. But the spouse could also be someone who is very sensitized to criticism. So they're thinking they really went the distance to get all these gifts under the tree. Life is busy, work is busy, they got the stuff there. They're just really happy that they landed that plane before the bell of Christmas Day, and they're feeling pretty good about themselves. Well, if their spouse is complaining about the timing of gifts, and they're someone who can't stand criticism, then you end up with a really significant fight. You have people on both sides of that situation bringing their sensitivities to how this rolled out and having a really big negative response. And so an outside observer would look at that and go, wow, that's a crazy thing to have a giant response to. As we talk about here, it's #2 events and #10 responses. In the eyes of some people, they would go, that's a #2 event, but they're observing #10 responses. So there's something going on a lot deeper behind some things which seem really insignificant.

Beth Murphy:
And that's really the picture behind all these things in one way or another where people are scratching their heads or puzzled or upset about why do we fight over dumb stuff or people will say it that way or silly things or stupid things. But what we need to all realize is that while the thing itself, like directions and when you get off the interstate or how you stack the boxes in the back of the U-Haul, that itself may not be all that significant, but what's underneath is. And back on the level 10 response to a level 2 event. So it's a clue that this must be really important to me if I'm having that level of response to it. And so I want to get at what does it mean to me? What do I think is at stake? Why is it so upsetting? Because it's some pre-existing sensitivity. It's something about the way my whole life has developed probably before I met the person that I'm really upset with. That's what I want to get at because that's the only way to get at peace. I can try to get, if it's in the case of marriage or it's my child or just in any relationship, if I'm trying to get the other person to behave differently, not bring the topic up that way, treat me differently, act differently, make a different decision, not comment on how I stacked the boxes or folded the laundry or loaded the dishwasher, that doesn't do away with the fact that the next thing that comes along is going to upset me in that way. And really, if I want to get at peace, I want to get at the why of what's inside me if I'm the one having the level 10 response. It indicates there is an inner powder keg of some kind that has gotten tripped off.

John Murphy:
Yeah, like you said, what's at stake, I think, is a great phrase for that. And if you experience big responses to things, either on the receiving or the giving end, I think it's very reasonable to consider that there's something really deep going on inside, that there is really something very significant. A sense of unconditional love and acceptance and peace and worth, assurance about life, purpose in life. Some really important things that we need to have resolved in our lives are usually at stake when something like this happens. And of course, these are things which really need to be satisfied on a divine level. What we have a tendency to do is to pick the thing other than going to the Lord. And so something as deep as divine assurance could be riding on something like when do my gifts come in? If my sense of being lovable is established by the way people give me gifts, then the problem with that is then I'm out of control of how I feel. So whether someone performs or not based on the standard I create, that really puts me at risk that they're just humans, they may not come through, they're not divine, they're imperfect, they do their imperfect best, but we have something really deep and divine riding on them being able to come through on the expectation that we might have of them.

Beth Murphy:
So it results in a feeling of, say, in that example on the gifts, probably results in a feeling of being unloved or rejected, not appreciated. Those are pretty deep things. That's way beyond timing of when something's wrapped or if it's wrapped and when it's under the tree. So again, if I'm the person doing that, then I can exert a lot of pressure to try to get my husband to do what I want him to do and getting a certain number of gifts wrapped at a certain time before Christmas, but it doesn't resolve why that would be such a source of something so important to me because I'm looking to that, in that case, to make me feel loved, valued, not rejected. So I'm carrying around the belief that I'm not. I'm looking for something to fill my cup and I've designated that as a strategy for making me feel better about myself and the assurance that I need on a God level of assurance about being loved and valued.

John Murphy:
Whenever it's a situation where there's something at stake that's here in the world that we have put all this value and worth on and we have to put this dependency on to satisfy something inside of us, it always fails. So even in the situation, if you think about the gift-giving scenario, if all the gifts did come over whatever the timeframe that they were supposed to come and they progressively got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and they were wrapped better and better, and they had greater and greater levels of value in them, and you're showing up on Christmas Day, and you open up all those gifts, what will happen is that by 2 o'clock that afternoon, you'll be waiting for the next Christmas, because none of that stuff actually is going to solve the problem. It's a broken strategy. The whole idea of trying to fill a divine need with something in the world is a broken strategy. So there's kind of two ways that goes. There's the one where we try to satisfy those needs in our own strength through our own control or whatever it is. And then we have the side where we're trying to, through our own diligence or working hard or some sort of accomplishment metric in our mind, we're going to satisfy some of that deep worth need. And both of those strategies are really broken. They can't ever fill a divine need. There's no worldly thing. There's no strategy of man that's ever gonna fill a need that really only God can fill. And we're gonna have to move off of trying to control and do these things at our own strength and give up on that as a failed strategy and move into trust with God. Which may be hard to do because of the life story of someone. It may be very hard to get to the idea of releasing control of these things because those muscles have been developed over a long period of time. This is how I deal with this issue.

Beth Murphy:
So in the whole many examples of getting a task done and getting it done within a certain time frame to a certain level of correct execution and feeling good about yourself, that can relate to several examples we've given, like how the boxes are stacked in the back of the U-Haul or how the dishwasher is loaded, the laundry is folded or any of those kinds of mundane things. But if I'm the person doing the task and I value doing it well and being complimented for doing it well and feel like if someone unloads the way I stack the dishwasher and redoes it or is disapproving of how I'm stacking the moving boxes, if I've got value associated with that, then I take offense and it feels like a nick in my value. Or if I'm really focused on getting what we call getting from point A to point B, and my value is associated with ticking things off the list that I've gotten accomplished today and doing it just right and doing it within a certain time frame. And if you get in the way of that, then I don't feel like I had a good day because I don't have as much value. I didn't get as much done that day. And so if somebody gets in the middle of that and getting ready in the moving process or any of these household tasks or doing a project that you're working on and your child interferes and wants to learn and slows you down, but your value comes from getting the project done, not enjoying the process, but getting it done, getting it completed, feeling like I've got more value because I got more done today. Then underneath that and the irritation or the impatience or the eruption, then there's a whole lot that does feel like is at stake. And just the way that you were saying is a different sort of a thing that's at stake, but it is a need that the other person can't fill or my strategy for what I get done today and my performance isn't going to make me feel good because the next day comes and then I'm still a slave to how much I get done that day and if somebody gets in my way or slows me down in traffic or whatever they do and I accomplish less as a result or I'm two minutes late to an appointment then if I associate my value with those things, then forget the fact that the event itself or the item itself is mundane, because it is triggering something really deep inside me in terms of what I believe to be my foundational value.

John Murphy:
It's really interesting to look at it from the perspective of what would happen if we fully trusted God in terms of our interactions? If we had all of these deep needs met and we really were leaning on Him and trusting for Him and giving up trying to control the satisfaction of these things, my thought would be that it'd be nothing really to argue about. That everything would be a #1 or a #2 on the scale. They'd be things that could be worked through. They wouldn't have a lot at stake and they wouldn't have a lot riding on them. And I think the outcome would be that people wouldn't argue, certainly wouldn't have any big arguments and fights over things if they were looking to God to satisfy those deepest needs. So certainly I've seen that here at Rock House is the more people move into the trust category, trusting God for the things that they need, then the relationships improve and improve and improve. We actually have data behind that shows that that's what happens when people move into trusting God and feeling satisfied that those deepest needs are being met.

Beth Murphy:
So the description of an event where one person gets really upset and they have a level 10 response to a level 2 event. Well, if the other person also has a level 10 response, they've got basically opposing objectives, and one person is looking for this event in, say, the moving process and getting ready to move and stacking things up. If one person is looking for their value to come from how well that's done, and the other person has got a huge thing riding on their emotions about moving, say, and the decision to move from one place to another. And they're looking for something out of that and the way that you communicate the transition to the new house. Those are completely different underlying objectives and sensitivities that have been brought into the situation. And if both people are having a level 10, now you've got a huge out-of-proportion argument. And so you can see where if just one person diffuses what's going on in their heart, then the whole thing diminishes enormously. And if both people actually deal with what's going on in their heart, then there isn't an argument.

John Murphy:
One of the stages in diffusing is to try to translate a number 10 response as an expression of pain.

Beth Murphy:
Looking at the other person's.

John Murphy:
And of course it's true for us as well, but it's easier to see if I'm in the middle of it and I'm a little too close to the fire, and it's going to be hard to really necessarily decode that in the moment. In the moment, there's the opportunity to have empathy for the person and to think about this: wow, look how upset they got over that. It was really nothing. They must really be hurting. Something really big in them is riding on this. There's some pain point behind this. There's some message. There's something pretty deep going on for someone to have a number 10 response. For any relationship, if we can move into empathy and recognize that even when people have number 10 responses and even as they're maybe focused on us, they're looking in our eyes and they're having a big meltdown, to be able to see that that's really not consistent with what the magnitude of this issue is and to be able to translate that into observing pain and have empathy for them and forgiveness for them and to pray for them, obviously, that's going to defuse a situation tremendously.

Beth Murphy:
I want to drop anchor on that, because if you think about leaning on God to help you do that, to first see the pain in the other person that's having the level 10 response, back up, not take offense, ask God for His help to not take offense in this situation, but see them the way that He sees them, then that radically transforms a relationship, whether it's with your husband or wife, with your child, with someone at work, or the person who cuts you off in traffic. Any level of relationship, any level of interaction, if we can engage with God to have His perspective on recognizing that there must be a lot of pain underneath this person's response that's way out of proportion to the event, then the entire interaction changes. It becomes one of empathy and compassion, trying to help in whatever way God leads, to de-escalate the thing rather than taking offense. That's the point at which it goes one way or the other. It can go into exponentially worse. If I take offense and really get engaged and fire back and say things that I will always regret, I can go that track, or I can go the track of backing up and going, whoa, there is something really wrong here with this person having that response. What's going on, Lord? And how do I reflect your love to them?

John Murphy:
Obviously, if we will move off of our trying to fill these needs in our own strength, and if we move into more and more trusting God, then that's going to create a much better relationship. The things that are at stake that are dependent on the imperfection of the other person become less and less, and so it turns down all these number 10s into lower numbers. So we have a set of legitimate needs. You have a legitimate need to have your divine needs met, and we're in no way saying give up on that need. Some might even hear what I'm saying and say, you mean that I'm just supposed to be okay with him showing up with whatever gift he brings me the day after Christmas? And what we're trying to say is that the underneath reason why the whole gift-giving thing is so important, let's resolve that and let's satisfy that deep, legitimate need. And then you have the ability to have sort of a rational response to whatever the way Christmas works out and you're able to actually talk about expectations and how you'd like it to happen without having something so deep riding on it. The foundational thing that has to move is that we need to give up on our strategy of doing it in our own strength and moving more and more into trusting God. That's really sort of the way out, and that's what we've seen at Rock House, is that the resolution of all relationships, the struggles that we have seen, have come as a result of removing dependencies off of others that they really can never satisfy no matter how hard they try. It's actually, there are divine hurdles there they're never going to cross, and to move over to having their deepest needs met in their relationship with the Lord, and trusting Him to love them the way they need to be loved, or to provide for them, or to assure them about life at a level that really another human being can't provide.

Beth Murphy:
And so the first step in this is taking a look at our own heart, which is a hard thing to do in terms of just determining that I want to go with the belief that what they're doing is about them and the condition of their heart. But how it's making me feel is about me and the condition of my heart. And that's where I want to engage God and really just open my heart to Him in prayer so that He can change my heart and maybe I become the one who can step out ahead here in this relational strife and let God work on my heart and trust that He can work on the other person's heart. But the resolution here isn't going to come from me controlling them and changing them. It's going to come from me looking at me and how this feels to me and engaging God to ask Him to help me get peaceful with Him in a way that is available regardless of what the other person is doing.

John Murphy:
Yeah, and so it's basically trusting God to fill the need and moving it off of our strategy or the thing that we have at stake.

Beth Murphy:
So I think the way that we want to do that is just how we like to close with a prayer to engage God to do this thing in my heart that I'm not able to do on my own.

John Murphy:
I think I'd like to just start off with a prayer where we ask God to show us what that thing is, because sometimes it's hard to see without some help from God. So let's start off with asking Him for help, because that's what He says He will do, is that as we ask Him for help, He will give help. So let's start with asking God to give us leading on what it is that I am not willing to really release yet to really trust Him with, that I feel like I have to solve this in my own strength. I just haven't been able to trust Him. So I think to see what that thing is. And for a lot of us, it has to do with things as simple as unconditional love, self-worth, peace about the future, and some of those kinds of things. And then once we ask Him that question, just try to get some sense of what that might be. And then we'll follow that up with a prayer that will help get us some movement in letting that thing go and turn it over to the Lord.

Beth Murphy:
Sounds good. Let's do that prayer.

John Murphy:
So Heavenly Father, we just ask right now that You would show us what is the deep need that we are all trying to fill in our own strength. Lord, we know those things are in there because they are the basis of our loss of peace. And Lord, we just ask that it would be revealed to us where it is that we are trying to, through our own control or through our own strength, trying to do something that really is a divine, needs a divine solution. So please reveal that to us now, Lord, as we pray. So whatever it was, it's the first thing probably that came to your mind that if you felt some leading from the Lord, don't go to the second or third thing that pops up, but usually that's that first thing that really it is that we want to take to the Lord and get some resolution. So remember that for the blank that's coming in this prayer. Lord, please forgive me for not trusting You to fill my need for [blank] in my own strength. I release my spouse, or any other person through whom I have tried to fill my divine needs. Father, give me the strength to release control and begin to trust You to fill this need. Please heal me of how I've suffered because of my failed strategy. Help me connect with how much You love me and how trustworthy You are to fill every divine need that I have. I pray all this in Your Son's name. Amen.

Beth Murphy:
That's our podcast for today. We really appreciate you joining us. Hope that it blesses you and we look forward to talking to you next time.

John Murphy:
Thanks for being with us. Goodbye.