Grant me the serenity...
To accept the things I cannot change, and to experience tears of futility
Resources and Reflections: Futility
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.
- Reinhold NeibuhrMy mother is one of twelve siblings. She grew up working class in a small house full of chaos, some alcoholism and abuse, and also a deep sense of bonding and love. As a child, I loved visiting my grandparents’ house. There were always aunts and uncles and cousins there, always card games to be played, conversations to be had. There was a backyard for baseball, and even alleyways to run down - a thrilling experience for me as a child who grew up in the country with no sidewalks in sight. There was my grandmother, who stood in the kitchen on hot summer days, attempting to get all three flavors of neapolitan ice cream with one scoop into each grandchild’s bowl. There was my grandfather, who had a collection of clocks - none of which showed the right time. And on the wall, there was the serenity prayer.
About two years ago, my wife and I started to say prayers at bedtime with our sons. We say the Our Father, as this is what my wife’s grandmother said with her growing up. And when she puts the kids to bed, they also say the serenity prayer.
I love this prayer, and as I began to learn about Dr. Neufeld’s concept of futility, I deepened my understanding of its wisdom. While the idea of “accepting what I cannot change” used to stay in the intellectual realm for me, now I understand that the promise of futility is that it is an experience of acceptance sinking in at the emotional level. It is not heady or detached, but tender and bittersweet, and at times wrenching. When, as children or adults, we face the wall of impossibility, of loss and lack, and futility registers in our emotions, we feel sadness, disappointment, grief. Our sadness can be held inside, felt only to us. It can trickle out as a solitary tear, barely seen by others. Or it can be a rush of anguish so big that the flood waters can feel as if they are tearing our hearts in two. But yet, the experience of futility is the key to the doorway of adaptation, and with it, one of the critical processes of maturation.
The Adaptive Process: Fruits
In Season 2 Episode 4 of Attachment Matters, we explore the second aspect of maturation called the “adaptive process.” This is the process through which a person becomes an “adaptive being.” Here are some of the fruits of adaptation:
Resiliency and the ability to “bounce back” from difficult experiences
Learn from mistakes and failure
Benefit from correction and feedback
Rise above disabilities
Accept limits and restrictions, and accept not getting one’s way
Able to let go of futile demands
Able to not erupt into aggression when frustrated
Able to recover from loss or trauma
Insights
The key to the adaptive process is experiencing “futility” when up against something that we cannot change. When futility sets in at the emotional level, we often feel a sense of sadness or disappointment, wetness in the eyes, or we may cry. When this happens, we can feel the “energy shift,” as we move from the parasympathetic nervous system to the sympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic is the “problem solving” mode, while the sympathetic is the “rest” mode. When we make this shift, we soften. We are able to rest and digest, and move back into relationship with others.
It is important to note that tears of futility are different than tears of upset. While tears of futility bring a sense of softness and surrender on the other side, tears of upset are often a doubling down, a resisting or a pushing away of letting futility set in. For those with sensitive child, we can often see the intensity of tears of upset, as the brain kicks in defenses against the vulnerable feeling of futility.
What we see…shapes what we do
For a child to experience futility, there must be a sense of safety, and a soft heart. All too often, if a child has experienced wounding that is too much to bear, the brain kicks in defenses that defend a child from feeling. In this state of “defendedness,” a child (or adult) is still “moved” by emotions, but does not “feel” the emotion. The defenses do not allow for the vulnerability of the soft heart. In other words, a child experiencing frustration will be “moved” by this primal emotion - but if defended against vulnerability, frustration can’t move to futility. Mad can’t surrender to sad. With no other “off ramp,” often times the frustration will move the child into eruptions of aggression and attack - towards themselves or others. This can be very difficult for highly sensitive children, who feel so much more intensely, and therefore, are more likely to be defended.
Once we have this insight, what we see changes. We can now see a child in an outburst of aggression as being moved by frustration. And we can remember that frustration is a primal emotion that comes from “something that is not working.” The child, unable to enact change, and unable to feel futility, is being moved to attack. Once we can “see” this, we can focus on changing our role in the dance. Even if we don’t know what isn’t working for our child, we know that there is something that is not working underneath. We can come alongside the frustration, even if we have had to be the agents of futility by setting a limit or saying “no.” We can tell them that we know they are upset, that we can see that things are not working for them, and how they wanted things to be different. We can do our best to be the angels of comfort.
Remember the Aesop’s Fable of the Sun and North Wind. When the defenses are locked in, we cannot rip them off directly by force or will. We must soften ourselves so that we can be the warmth of that sun that surrounds our child, even when it feels futile. We must have our own tears of futility for all that isn’t working, and remember that winter comes before spring. In our own softness and surrender, we can wake up the next morning, remembering the serenity prayer, and have the courage to change the things we can - in ourselves.
Further Resources
Neufeld’s Traffic Circle of Frustration (23 minutes). A free resource from the Neufeld Institute, this video provides an overview of frustration, aggression and adaptation. Highly recommended!