Thursday, July 25, 2013

Was Your Family Uptight?





We can be uptight and seem heroic or uptight and seem destructive.  Uptight indicates that the brain pumps a lot of Fight/Flight chemicals into the brain at the slightest provocation. The result is the opposite of love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness and so forth. Think of the number of times parents spank a child or yell at one because of a very slight event.

That kind of quick trigger produces family members that are on edge and anxious or easily provoked. Or, a parent may React quickly to rescue a child and attack a neighborhood child for "bullying" one of the children. Both are born out of Reactivity.

Take a look at the scheme below and see what I mean. Anything not done with the fruit of the Spirit is less than healthy. The reason we use a Scale is to measure our own state of peacefulness in any endeavor.

Think of the scale applied to these family roles. If a person is reared in an Uptight family the members will probably coalesce abound four extreme points.





A Compliant Member is anxiously compulsive to Please the Authorities (Parents, Teachers, Cops)
A Challenger Member is anxiously compulsive to disagree with the Authorities (Parents, Teachers, Cops)

The higher on the scale a family operates and the members interact the farther out on the extreme they fall in Reactivity to events.  Any event, small or large has members anxiously Reacting, sometimes with very bad results.

A Hyper-Compliant as well as a Hyper Challenger is compulsively and unthinkingly driven to fulfill a role . So Compliant persons are out of biblical order. The answer is to move steadily toward Peace. It is not to switch roles from a Compulsive Challenger to a Compulsively Compliant role.

The other line indicates Energy. Families that operate out of a lot of Chronic Anxiety tend to produce children that are overly Energetic or overly Quiet and withdrawn. A Hyper Active child in school may be suffering from ADHD or from absorbing the family anxiety. He/She may also be born as an Introvert or be Reacting to too much anxiety in the family and withdrawing from it into a shell. Again, the answer is finding peace not trying to get the person to switch roles.




"My troubled thoughts prompt me to answer because I am greatly disturbed.
 Job 20:2
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts
Psalm 139:23



Worry is the cross that we make for ourselves by over anxiety. Mary C. Crowley

 Every evening I turn my worries over to God. He's going to be up all night anyway.Francois de Fenelon 

It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.
George MacDonald

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere. Glenn Turner

The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.  George Mueller

God's Word: "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." - 1 Peter 5:7

 Reactivity is a communicable disease. The opposite is Peace.

Our books and video tapes are all designed to help people move from Reactivity to Peace. Power Christian Thinking has specific skills in it to help readers "Cast all their cares on God".

If you or a person you care for has trouble finding peace, be patient and offer them relief in Power Christian Thinking.


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