119 - Isolation

Foreign.

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Yo, yo, yo. This is your host, Trevor Windsor, and you are listening to episode 119 of the Pure Desire podcast. Here with me is my co host, as always, Nick Stembo.

Keep calm and podcast on.

That's good. That's good. Back into the, like, early meme days, what that was.

Do you know where it comes from? Because I was trying to figure that out and I couldn't get a definitive, you know, but there's keep calm. Everything now. Right? Like, keep calm and chive on, drink on, carry on. Like, whatever people are promoting now. It's just been used a thousand ways. But where it comes from, this is. I don't know.

This is great, because now I have a meme to post next Monday. It's gonna be awesome. You and I sat down for this episode and we talked about isolation.

Yeah, well, and like the keep calm phrase, maybe we can have a hard time knowing where it comes from. Like, we know we do it. We know there's times where we're headed into that place where we're just in our own heads and we get kind of stuck there. And hopefully what we process today allows everyone to get a little deeper into their own story and creates a little better self awareness, because that's really what's needed at the end of the day. Yeah.

And we kind of dive in a little bit to how we tend to isolate, too. And so we hope that our conversation on our examples help you identify it in your life and know that you can break free. So enjoy the episode. All right, so let's talk isolation. So this is not a basketball terminology. This is not what we're talking about. I just was watching some of the Kobe Bryant documentary this morning, so that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about one on one, but we talk about isolation in our material and in our podcast a lot. And so when we refer to it, what Are we talking about.

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you asked it because I wrote notes about it. I think really when we were talking about isolation, the word that should come to mind is avoidance. That we're seeking to avoid something unpleasant or unwanted, whether it's in our world around us in a relationship. And so rather than, you know, facing the pain or facing the difficult situation, facing something challenging or awkward, we choose to turn away from it and withdraw. And the other thing to keep in mind with that, that doesn't mean we necessarily physically withdraw. Now isolation can include physically going off by ourselves somewhere, going into the garage, going to the health club, just going on a walk or a run. So there are many ways we might isolate and withdraw from actual people and being in their presence. But also it may be with our family sitting all around us and we're isolating on our phone or on a device or we are present maybe at a social gathering or even at church, but we're not really mentally and emotionally present. We're there in person, but because of a need to avoid whatever it is that's going on, we don't really engage. And so I think that's a way to think about it. Is just anything where I'm avoiding something in my life or something in a relationship that I don't feel like facing at that time?

Yeah, I think kind of just as you were talking, I'm even thinking about like when a turtle retracts into its shell. It's about self protection. And that for me is what isolation has always been. It's always about how do I isolate myself or insulate myself in some ways from. From what's going on around me. And it's a really easy thing. I think that happens a lot when you maybe feel like you're just checking out. It could actually be isolating that you're avoiding as you were talking about, but it's avoidance. And in some ways I think that self protection can be pure in motivation, but oftentimes it is muddied with selfishness and just being just outright self centered about what's going on. I don't want to address this or I don't want to feel that pain or that emotion. And so I just withdraw into my shell. And dec, you know what, I'm just going to protect myself. And so for me that's kind of where it tends to land.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost always emotional before it's physical that we're feeling the need emotionally to avoid. And so then we end up doing something physically to avoid it emotionally. And that's why it's so key and what we're going to talk about on this podcast, that we can't just change our behaviors to change isolation. We really got to begin addressing what's going on at a deeper level for sure. So we know that biblically, God made us for relationship. You know, God is relationship existing in that perfect Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Trinity, that unbroken union between the Godhead. And then he creates Adam in Genesis 1. And very early in the biblical narrative, the first problem is that Adam is alone and he has no one to help. He has no one to be in relationship with because he's not like the animals. And so God creates Eve. And yes, that speaks about obviously the marriage relationship, but even more so, just the need that we're made for community. We're made for relationship with God and other people. And so in light of that, that relationship and connection should kind of be our default. It should be in our DNA. It should be what we long for or want. And yet it's not always the case. We don't always want relationship. So why do we isolate? Why do we withdraw from relationship?

I think for me, I mean, two things, and they're usually actually it's two things wrapped really into one. But it's shame that I feel shame about either something I've done. So meaning, like, if I've done something that I know is wrong, or like, I just had a friend this last weekend at church reach out to me and talk about, really he was just saying that he misses me and wants to spend time with me. I started to feel shame about being a bad friend. And so when I got home, that's why I isolated. Because I isolated to my phone and just scrolling, looking at fantasy football or on Facebook or whatever. Mostly because I didn't want to be emotionally present in the feelings that I felt. And so for me, it's. It's shame of maybe a decision I've made. But then also for me, it's almost the one, two combo of shame because of the decision and then shame because I feel bad about the decision. And so it's this like double helping or scooping of shame. So for me, I tend to isolate. And this is just me speaking from my experience. I tend to isolate when there's pain in life or something has happened externally that I either don't feel up to dealing with, whether it's just I'm just too tired or whether I don't have a way to deal with it or Process it in a healthy way, or it's just, you know what? I don't want to put up with this. I'm done with this. I don't want to have to think about it. And so for me, you talked about avoidance. It's almost trying to, like, stiff arm shame and keep it at a distance. And so that's why I think a lot of us isolate.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think pairing really closely with shame and they actually kind of play off of each other is that that base human emotion of fear that because I feel shame, I have fear of being exposed, I have fear of being known? And so much of isolation at its root, we could find. There's fear, there's fear that if I engage in that conversation with my spouse, for example, that I might be wrong or I might have to change my behavior or they might get angry. And, you know, I can identify with that of. I don't like the anger. The emotion of anger. I don't always know how to deal with it. So sometimes it's easier to just not and to isolate with something. But I think it just becomes. And this is the other thing I would say about why we isolate. For many of us, it's become a pattern that has just gone unaddressed. So the fear may not actually be of that moment. We may be still responding to fear of something that happened in our childhood, that we grew up in an insecure environment or we were kind of led, you know, for a lot of men, given that fear or insecurity of not being enough or not being good enough. And so that pattern of anywhere I start to feel a little bit of emotion that I'm not good enough, maybe from 10 years old, we just learn to avoid it and to isolate and to go work on our hobby or read our book or zone off to sports or, you know, online gaming or video games. And so we could still be responding to that pattern and not even see that what I'm feeling is fear. And so I isolate. But the fear isn't in the moment anymore. It's still connected to things from our past because as we've talked about on a lot of our other podcasts, those traumas and wounds from early in life create that kind of that pocket or black hole, if you will, where we feel fear and we just are still responding to it the way we always have. And so in some ways, and I find this encouraging, dealing with isolation is actually just a statement to say, I'm going to mature. I'm going to grow and develop and learn I don't have to avoid these things anymore because I'm not that little kid that was in that bad environment. I'm not the same person I was. I have tools and resources. I have friends. I have people around me that I don't need to keep responding that way.

So we talked about it a lot, just isolation in general. I think that every way that we've talked about it makes it seem like it's harmful to us. And so for our listeners, why is it. Why is isolation so harm to us?

Yeah. Well, if you think about isolation as avoidance avoided, things rarely get better or maybe ever. You know, I'm sure someone can think of an example they would send in. But, you know, if you've got moldy food in your fridge and you just avoid it.

Yeah.

Like, it doesn't magically go away or stop being like, it'll get worse and worse until your whole house is just.

Being destroyed by avoiding your golf game for two years. And then let's see if it gets better. Right.

You know, I'm going to avoid the dirty dishes. I'm going to avoid cleaning up after my pet. I'm. Anything we avoid, it just multiplies the problem. And now it becomes a catch 22, because now the thing I want to avoid is even worse. So if you think about a relationship problem in your marriage, let's say there's something you're avoiding, it won't get better over time. It gets more messy, more complicated. And so that's a big issue. And then I also think about how, as I was speaking to earlier, it becomes a pattern that when there's a pattern of avoidance, we really begin to be absent from our own life, the very things that have the potential to bring us joy, peace, excitement, happiness. Many of those things only occur when we've gotten through some avoidance that. That we've worked through the relational pain and now there's joy again. Right. We've worked through some discomfort at work and maybe slogged through a really hard project, but it works out. And now there's accomplishment and contentment. Like, there's very little in life that can happen through avoidance. It makes me think of the. I think it was in the 90s, an Adam Sandler movie about a remote control. Was it just called remote control?

It's called click, click. That's. I couldn't in the 2000s.

I think it's newer than I thought. Well, you know, he's got kind of. His way of isolating is this incredible thing he has of a remote that he can just fast forward and kind of the point or to me the punchline of that movie is he realizes he's fast forward through the good and the bad, that you couldn't do the one without the other. And he's gotten all the way to the end of his life. And this regret of I didn't even live it. And I think that's why we want to make such a big deal of isolation, is it's not just, okay, quit going on your phone when you should be talking, that it become this pattern that really robs us of the very stuff of life that God gave us to live. The depth of relationships, the kind of friendships we can have. And so there really is a lot at stake here if we're willing to see it from that lens.

You know, I think of like, and I'm not a big science guy or plant guy, but the idea of you need the perfect environment for things to grow and the perfect environment for shame to grow is in isolation. And I think that it's one of the things I've seen even in my own story, is that shame breeds isolation and isolation breeds more shame and isolation. And so it's like this. It's this thing that just multiplies on itself over and over and over and again. In my unwillingness to address the pain or the difficulty in my life, I seclude to isolation. I feel shame about what happened and then I feel even more shame about isolating and which then makes me feel even more shame because I'm shameful. So it's just this awful, awful thing that just keeps going and going and going. And so for me, that's why it's so harmful. And I love that you're talking about that idea of breaking free with community and really experiencing the things that can help us. We're avoiding those and missing out on those. But it's just so harmful. Because the perfect breeding ground for shame is isolation. And really the perfect breeding ground for addiction, especially in the realm of sexual brokenness, is in a shameful, isolating context. For me, I never felt like I could tell anybody about it because of the shame. And then once I got into that isolation, I knew I needed to break out, but I was so buried in shame that I just couldn't. And so isolation does only what it does, which is just push you further into it.

Yeah, it, it really is a self replicating, self sustaining cycle that just keeps happening. And you're right that we've got to address the environment and all the factors that lead to It. Otherwise, it does just keep on going.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So if we're beginning to recognize that boy, isolation's a big deal. I don't want to keep engaging in that. How can we know that we're isolating? What are things we might look to for that?

So maybe I'll let you kind of address how it more commonly looks like. But something that I think is really important with this question is that there are ways that you may not look like you're isolating, but you are, for me, one of the easiest ways. And I can tell you an exact time, even yesterday that I did this. Football's on. And I'm on my phone while watching football while on my phone, and my son is in front of me, and he's playing with the volleyball, and he's throwing it up in the air and bicycle kicking it back behind him. And there were three or four times where he's like, dad, look. And I looked up, and I'm like, that's cool, buddy. And went right back to my phone. And then it was probably. And praise the Lord, that he told my kid to tell me the fourth time. Because the fourth time was like, you know what? I see it now. I'm isolating. And I, at this moment, can't tell you exactly what it was. I think it was kind of an emotional day at church and some different things, like I mentioned already, the conversation with a friend. And so I think that I was kind of withdrawing into that and just trying to numb out. And what I saw was that even though I'm out in the open and even though I am communicating with my kid, I still am isolating. Almost like in public, I'm isolating in community. My wife was around. I wasn't secluded in the corner of my room playing Xbox or listening to music with my eyes closed or taking a nap or whatever. I was out in public around my kids, still engaging him. Just isolating, really, in a different way.

Yeah. Yeah. It comes down to just being willing to ask that why question. So it's easy to start with if you're by yourself, that. When you're by yourself saying, why am I by myself right now? Is there an intentional reason to it that is valid and healthy? So if. If I'm on a run, it's like, well, this was my time of the day to exercise. It fits our family schedule, and it contributes to the health I can have for my family the rest of the day because I'm staying healthy, or if I'm working on a project knowing or Even watching a football game. If it's knowing this is a time of rest. Yeah, it's, it's. Even if I'm in a family understood that I'm not trying to engage a whole lot of other things, well then we could say maybe that's appropriate aloneness.

Yep.

And it's one of the things we've talked about on the podcast before too, that, that isolation and solitude can look very similar. Yeah, they could be the exact same activities. But if I'm avoiding something I'm isolating versus if I'm intentionally choosing something to create a new sense of health or peace or wellbeing or just to, to have. There is legitimate need for downtime that solitude is appropriate. So it's just asking that why question. If you're alone and then if you're with people it may be a little harder to discern. But I think in those cases it's asking the question am I engaged? And if you realize you're not engaged, again, why is it something legitimate like I really do have a work responsibility at this moment that I need to be focused on. And if that's the case, you know, you need to be communicating that to people around you. Like, hey, I've. I need five minutes to accomplish this task. That's why I'm on my computer or my phone versus I just don't feel like interacting with the people around me and getting at that. Why question is so important? Because when you develop the self awareness it can really help you see just like you were saying, there are moments and opportunities I'm missing. And the other thing I feel like is it can also help you recapture solitude. I talk to so many guys that go through group that really what their addiction has done in their lives is it's given them the inability to be alone because they don't know how to be alone without running to their addiction. And so much that is the fear and the avoidance of now I'm alone and I've been avoiding things and even though I'm alone, I can't avoid the things I'm feeling. So I end up running back to pornography or unhealthy behaviors so they don't know how to sit and have a 30 minute devotional time because that, that ability to be alone has been robbed from them. But when we really begin to understand isolation, see what's driving it, and in community address it and deal with it, I think we recapture solitude, that we can be alone and be trusted, we can be alone and use it for productive purposes. And that's really when life can get good, when you're moving towards people, even when you're in solitude because you see how solitude is equipping you for the rest of your life.

So when we get to this place where we like. So in my example of yesterday, when I'm with my kid, when we realize that we're isolating, what are some ways for you that have helped for you to break free of that isolation?

You know, it's definitely an ongoing process. It's not like you go from novice to mastery in a couple of days, but just the word I used a minute ago, that awareness. And really looking for early signs of isolation. You know, you've got to know what your patterns are and begin to address them. And so for me, it's when I'm picking up my phone right away, just thinking, okay, do I have a legitimate reason that I need to call someone, text someone, send an email? Or is it just, I feel like doing that and maybe I'm in the middle of a conversation like, oh, let's not do that. If I know that some of my pattern is to isolate by just disappearing and going for a run, I've got to address that early on and be able to have a conversation with my spouse, say, is this a good time of day? Am I leaving you in the lurch by taking care of my own physical needs and getting some exercise? That awareness really can create then health over the long run. The other thing that comes to mind or that's helpful for me is let me put it this way, it's not wrong to avoid unpleasant things. It's just knowing that you're doing it and maybe having an alternative. So if I know, boy, right now I am, I'm trying to avoid dealing with this conversation. Maybe a better alternative is saying to that person, hey, I know we need to talk, but would it be okay if we got to that this evening, or would it be okay if we.

Scheduled that for a little bit, making plans for it.

Yeah. So that we know. Okay. Rather than running to this, here's what I can do instead.

Right.

And the other thing, honestly, with isolation, sometimes it's hard to identify if we don't have a pattern of relationship. So that's why in groups we make such a big deal of phone calls, that the more you're in a pattern of making a regular phone call because you're staying in relationship, the easier it is to identify when you start to isolate.

Yeah.

Now if I never make phone calls to begin with, I'm gonna have a Harder time seeing that pattern. And I've said this before on the podcast, too, but the thing with phone calls is the more we need them, the less we feel like making them.

Sure.

So the further we get towards our addiction, or the further we get into isolation, the harder it is to break out and make a call.

Yeah.

So if I just stay in a place where I'm routinely interacting with others, I'm in a group, I'm making phone calls, I'm having a date night with my spouse, I'm hanging out with my kids. If I'm intentional about that, then I just. I feel isolation so much sooner because now it starts to feel like the foreign language and relationships feel like my native tongue.

Yeah.

So if you can develop relationships as your native tongue, you'll sense the isolation coming a lot sooner, for sure.

I think for me, some of the things that I tend to do are around this idea of changing the environment or changing the context. So if I know my pattern and it tends to be with my phone, what has worked wonders for me is when I get home from work, put my phone in my room and leave it there. Like, maybe I need to put it on silent. If I'm wearing my smartwatch or something like that and get notifications. Like, if I know that the opposite of addiction or isolation is connection to people, then try to create that environment, change it to where I am engaged in what's going on. And maybe that is instead of going right back to the room at first, maybe I walk in the door, and instead of dropping my stuff off right away, I go say hi to my family, and I engage that way and then go set things down. So that idea of just trying to change it. There are times when I am on the road and I'm listening to a podcast or a book or music or something like that, and I can just feel myself withdrawing. What I've done, again, is just try to change the environment. I reach out, whether it's using, like, Marco Polo is the app we continue to use, you know, with my group, my ongoing group is just that idea of reaching out. It's basically a video version of a phone call. Or make that phone call, change the environment, and just allow connection to pull me back out of that isolation. Because what's interesting is when you make that connection, it's almost like you've forgotten what it feels like to be known and to be loved in that connection. And when you get that little bit of taste of it, it's like, oh, yeah, I remember how good this is. And how great this is for me and my health. And you never walk away from breaking out of isolation. Very rarely have I broken isolation and been like, man, that was a mistake. Like, even if it is a hard conversation, knowing I'm breaking out of it, trying to pursue health, I don't regret those decisions. And so for me, just change. Change the environment, change the context, and understand that doing those things are for my benefit.

Yeah.

Reminding myself.

Well. And it's kind of like we talk about when we're breaking out of a destructive behavior. We've got to be able to look ahead at our week and see what tends to be our struggles. Is it, you know, Saturdays when we're off work, we don't have much going on. Is it Sunday nights because we're heavily involved in our church and we're just. We're low. Is it Monday morning when we're starting a week and the pressures of all the jobs and tasks and emails falls on us? And where do you see that happening? And if you can identify when that tends to happen? Being proactive to see, okay, what does that look like? How do I need to engage in community? And if it is a time where I actually need rest to be intentional, what will solitude look like for me on that day? And if that becomes your new pattern, if your pattern's health, then isolation just won't have room to grow.

I think, too, with that, like, if you need that solitude, there's something too about telling somebody, hey, I need to go do this. You're being like, so with my wife, if I need to go take a nap or if I'm feeling like I need to recharge some way, isolation might look like me not communicating that and just going to do it, but. But me looking for that solitude is communicating, hey, I feel like this is something I need. Is that, okay, are we good if I do this? And maybe it doesn't happen right at that moment, but she's like, actually, on Thursday, you can go see a movie by yourself at this point, because we'll have this. And it's like, okay, what I've done is just taken a step toward health and then realizing this is something I'm doing in conjunction with community, that then is for my health. And so I think that that's something that has helped me kind of make the distinction between the two.

Yeah. Yeah. That even if we're choosing some solitude, we usually need the support of others in our lives to help make that effective or to make it work. Otherwise they maybe will feel like we're still isolating.

Yeah.

So you're touching on those relationships a little bit, but how would we answer that question? That if. What if we see someone around us that we care about, spouse, kids, a close friend, and we feel like they're isolating, do we have a role to play or how can we help when we see someone else is isolating?

I will answer this question as if someone were asking this question about me. Calling me out right in the moment that I'm isolating probably is not the best thing. So here's what I would say. This is just my perspective. I would say I've realized that when I'm able to share about my own, like I did now, I mean, that's the first time I've shared it, because it just happened yesterday with my son. If I'm willing to share that sort of stuff about how I'm isolating and done in a way that that's not trying to manipulate someone else. I've seen that that basically invites people into identifying where they're isolating. So basically sharing my story. And again, not in a manipulative way. I think there are some ways, depending on the type of relationship you have with somebody, that you can be like, hey, I really feel like you're drawn away right now. Like, what's going on? Like, I've done that with friends on staff or friends that I have in my life where it's like, man, I don't feel like you're here. Like, where are you? What happened? But that's also built upon a foundation of relationship and friendship where we're willing to go to those places if it's somebody that you don't know very well or maybe you're in, like, kind of a rough patch in that relationship, I would not go in guns blazing saying, hey, you're isolating and you need to stop. It's always got to be done in relationship. So I don't know. What do you think?

Yeah, I think what you're saying is the stronger of a relationship bridge you have with someone, the more weight it can hold.

Totally.

So if it's a close friend, if it's your spouse, if it's kids, like, you can be more direct and honest, but I think even then, it's really key to make sure you avoid shaming. Because, like, you were talking about, we're already being driven by shame or fear or a sense of, we're not good enough, we're insufficient. And so if. If you come across to someone like, well, what's wrong with you? Why Are you doing this? What's. Don't you know you should be with your kids? Don't you know you should be? Because the truth is they probably do know and they're feeling some shame.

Right.

And so if we can avoid shame and instead come with a helpful kind of serving tone of, hey, it feels to me like you might be avoiding something here. Could. How can I help? Or could we talk? Or could I support you in this and. And allowing that person to process with you or even just saying, hey, I. You don't need to answer me right now, but it seems like you're really battling with some stuff and maybe trying to isolate from it. And if you'd like to talk, I'm here, or if I can help, let me know. But, you know, if not, no big deal. I just want you to know I care. So coming across with that caring attitude versus the shaming of man, get your gear together and what's wrong with you? That's the voice I'm already hearing. I am.

In my case, I am so bad at that. I just am thinking about all the examples just in the last two days of how I'm terrible at that.

Yeah. So just having that soft approach of how can I help? You know, using the I statements of I feel like I'm observing. Here's what I'm observing. Could you help me understand if you're avoiding. I know those things might sound a little bit like, oh, that's just psychotherapy or counseling mumbo jumbo. But there's reasons those approaches are effective because it helps a person not to be on guard and defensive, but to let the wall down a little bit and in the environment of care and of a relationship, to share what's going on.

Yeah, for sure. So, as we've established, isolation is not healthy, and it just breeds more isolation and is usually motivated by shame, fear. And so if we want to truly find freedom from really any harmful or compulsive behavior, we have to first identify where isolation is in our life and then how to break free from it and walk out of it. And I think it's important, too, to say this, that at any moment you have the ability to walk out of isolation and pursue community and connection. So again, as Nick mentioned, toward the beginning, God didn't create us to live this life alone. So let's work together to include each other in each other's story and life as we move forward.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think remembering that, you know, the God that we serve, that loves us, that's our heavenly father, he is willing to find us in our isolation. Yeah, you know, that's Adam and eve in Genesis 3 as he comes into the garden saying, where are you? That it wasn't a shaming, condemning, but I think to really draw them back into relationship. And so even if you've listened to this podcast and feel like, you know, like Trevor kind of said, man, I suck at that, or I've. That's all I do is isolate, you know, know that God's not angry. God's not shaming you, but he's inviting you into relationship. And so are others in your life. And so take courage in that and take steps today towards community and relationship.

Yeah, this has been good, man. Thanks.

Yeah, good time. Thanks, Trevor.

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We'll see you next time, Sam.