What Are Hang-ups - Part 2

calls of a codependency and this is part two of my series about hangups what they are where they come from and what we can do about it if you saw the first video I talked about that hang ups come from the pain that we've experienced in the past or that we've caused in the past and the thoughts and beliefs that we form as a result to make sense of those things if you haven't watched the first video yet I would actually suggest you pause this video go back and watch the last one this will make a lot more sense again to define what a hang up is a hang up is their thoughts or belief systems we have about ourselves other people God or the world in which we live they're not true and this is a huge important part of it we have to identify that our hang ups are not true I'll talk more about that later a hang up about a belief that we have about God that's true is not a hang up I believe we have about ourselves that's true is not a hang up it's these things that we believe and we we set our lives by them but we've never expect we've never looked at them we've never explored them and we just believed that they're true they feel so true but their lies now we've been told these lies by other people or we've tried to make sense out of our pain and our emotions and come up with them on our own but they can also come from our enemy Satan he is the father of lies he speaks in lies and he loves that we have these hang ups and so when we find that we have these hang ups they can come from a number of different places but these lies become consistent thoughts they become the the soundtrack of our life because we hear them so often in our own internal voice most of the time they begin to feel true and they are constant companions that prove themselves over and over because when we think something often enough we begin to look for evidence we look for the things that support the claim the hang up is making about us the more often we think a thought the more likely we are to believe it and the way that a hang up be a thought becomes a hang up is pretty predictable first something happens that we have to make sense of like I said it's usually a painful experience it doesn't have to be abuse or neglect or even what we would think of as traumatic can just be something that triggers an emotion and yes it can be big things too

I think part of the problem is that we often think of comma with a capital T we think of them as the big life events that we all would agree are traumatic but what if I asked you to change and think of trauma with a lowercase T so often we like to minimize the things that we went through we compare our lives to others and we tell ourselves that they had it much worse than we did now it's often true that other people had it worse than us but we have to be careful that we don't use that as a way to not feel the things that we need to feel so we feel we experience pain and emotion comes along with it like I said it could be anger or sadness frustration loneliness or fear the the list is long that emotional is biological and it's a biological unbidden response to the action and there's a myth that we should control our emotions we've been told not to trust our emotions or at best to give them secondary importance in our lives in the decision-making we say things like facts don't care about your feelings or often in Christian settings we'll say things like faith over feelings it's as if our feelings can't be trusted or are evil now Jenny's done a whole talk on this topic and I would suggest you go watch it it's in another section of Mighty Networks but I want to point it out because our feelings happen automatically and then we begin to make sense of it we either do this internally or we get messages about our emotion from those around us and like I said in video one a lot of this happens when we're children so painful experience leads to an emotional response and then we try to make sense of the emotion and this is where thoughts and feelings come into play like I said emotions are the biological chemical automatic responses feelings are an effort to parse that response and make sense of it followed up by our thoughts to continue to make sense of it and really to drive the message home then we begin collecting evidence now we're remarkably effective at collecting evidence to back up our budding hang-ups we begin to see proof of our to prove to us that our hangup is true. The more we think it, the more evidence we collect, and the easier it gets to believe. It becomes so clear to us that we no longer see the evidence against it. We only see the evidence that backs it up. Over and over again, it stands

up to scrutiny. Every repeated thought, every piece of evidence makes it easier to accept these thoughts as truth. Now, here are some common hang-ups. Thereby, no means all of the hang-ups, but I want you to see if any of these resonate with you. So, some common hang-ups, I am responsible for the feelings and emotions of those around me. People cannot be trusted. So, I need to be on guard against people trying to take advantage of me. No one is willing to help me. If I want to get something done, I have to do it. I am fundamentally unlovable. I am just way too much for people. The only way to be safe is to be in control. People will hurt you if you give them a chance. At my core, there's just something wrong with me, or my feelings are just too much for people. The list goes on. Now, maybe I called out one of your hang-ups, and maybe when you heard it, you got defensive or felt called out. Maybe you thought something like, "That's not a hang-up. That's just true." Our hang-ups run deep, and we can oddly find comfort with them, even if they make them feel bad. So, to see them as hang-ups, we have to admit that they're lies. If they're lies, that means the truth is often the exact opposite. But we've lived with these thoughts for so long that to see them as lies can be painful, because the other part of this is we also act out of our hang-ups. It begins to affect and change our behavior. So, hurt leads to hang-ups and hang-ups lead to habits. Like I said in video one, I think of hang-ups as sticky and leaky. They're sticky because they're so hard to identify and then do something about to find freedom from them, and they're leaky because they leak out in our behavior. This is why it's crucial to identify our hang-ups, because you and I do what we think of ourselves. I do what I think of me. You do what you think of you. You begin to act out in these ways that then reinforce your hang-ups. So, if you feel fundamentally unlovable, you will begin to act in a way that makes it hard for people to love you. Then, when they show that they don't love you, you will say, "Like I said, I'm fundamentally unlovable." We play these thoughts in our minds so often that they begin to run our lives. We play them so often that they feel automatic, and we make decisions on them, but the problem is they're faulty guides. Now, I love using my phone for GPS. I'm an Apple Maps guy. Some of you people use Google Maps. I don't understand you at all. In fact, if I get in a car with you and you put in the address and I realize you're using Google Maps, I will fire a Apple Maps, and I will put the same destination in there just to make sure you're going the

right way. I love Apple Maps. I use it all the time. Once I put in my destination, you know what I never do? I never doubt that it's going to get me where I want to go, but I didn't make this decision the day it came out. No, no, no. I tested it. I put in my home address, so when I left the office, I would make sure it was taking me the right way. When I went to the grocery store from my house, which is about a mile and a half away, I would put in Apple Maps to the grocery store. I began testing it on further drives. To now, if I am not sure it's taking me the right place, I often assume that I put in the wrong address, not that the GPS is wrong. I use it so often that my family makes fun of me. I used to take my son to a basketball practice before he could drive, and it was at the same place every time, but we had to get on the freeway. I would use Apple Maps to get me there every time. He was about 12. At one point, he said, "Dad, don't you know how to get there by now?" I said, "No, I know how to get there, but I like to see the traffic." I was trusting and I trust Apple Maps as my guide. Like I said, though, I didn't trust it the first few times I used it. Now, imagine with me if I had put in my home address from my office, and it took me miles and miles away. Let's say I put in that grocery store, instead of going to the grocery store, I ended up at the mountains. I would now walk dependable. If I put in Fastest Route and it took me a long time to get there, I would stop trusting it. But our hang-ups, they are these broken guides that we use, but we keep using them over and over and over again. We're using a faulty guide. But until we know it's broken, we'll keep using it and we keep getting results we don't like. Unlike my maps example though, we will start to collect those results as evidence that the hang-up is actually true. So instead of looking at the evidence and saying, "Oh, this didn't get me where I wanted to go," for some reason, we collect that evidence and we begin saying, "See, I was right." And we need in order to overcome these, we need to identify our hang-ups. So like I said, maybe in that list, I read one or two that resonated with you, maybe none of them. So how do you and I identify our hang-ups? Well, we do it in our inventory. Recently, we released an updated version of the participant guides. And in this version, we actually changed the columns. Now, we changed the names of the columns. What they do actually has the same function. We just changed the names to make them a little bit more easy to understand. This worksheet that we work through in volume two of the participant guide is what often many of us refer to as the fourth step or the inventory

worksheet. Now, this worksheet has been so powerful at helping so many of us over the year. So that year. So that's why we didn't want to reinvent the worksheet. We just wanted to make a couple tweaks to make it even easier to understand. We did that in a couple places. One in the column header and then two in the questions that we ask. So in the new worksheet, we name the columns. Column one is who hurt me. Because remember, it starts with the hurt. This column gets us to name the person or people who hurt us. And this is a major starting point, especially for those of us who have had a hard time admitting that they have been hurt. Now, here we're simply writing a name. I would ask you to get specific and not put, you know, parents but put mom and dad if they hurt you to put coach and put their name and put whoever it is that hurt you. But it's simply just writing down their name. Column two is what happened. And this is where we list the specific actions that person took that hurt us. Again, it's just the list. It helps us see in writing how that person has hurt us over the years. And again, this is important because many of people have been told that they weren't hurt or that they didn't have it as bad as others. This then gets us to column three. Column three says, how did you feel? Now, the person hurt us and then as best as we can, we list how they hurt us. And then we begin to list how we felt when that action took place. This might be hard because you're going to have to go back in time and try to remember how you felt. But for many of us, give it a little practice, we can get there pretty quickly. Remember, we had that thing in column two happened. And then we had that automatic biological response. Many of us have learned to push this away or to not trust our emotions. But like I said in the first video, these are God given emotions. Now, some of us have a hard time noticing or labeling our emotions. And so a good tool here would have an emotions list. I find this to be a very helpful tool for me when I'm trying to name my emotions. But then we get to the column that this whole video series is about. This is what I think is the secret sauce to this process. It's column four. And there we write what was the damage. And the question that we ask in this column is what did this action make me believe is true about myself, God, or others. And remember, we talked about a hangup is something a thought or belief system we have about ourselves, God, or others. So when we answer that question, we begin to see our hangups. But remember, they're sneaky. They sound like us, and they've been with us for so long that they feel true, but they're lies. They are lies built on the pain and emotions that we felt. We needed to make sense of that emotion. So we told ourselves or other people told us stories that started to make sense.

When we clearly see our hangups, we can begin to question their validity. Simply put, we can question if they're true. They will feel true but that's Just like we gather evidence to support our hang-ups, we now need to start collecting evidence to disprove them. So, how do we begin? Well, first, we bring it to God. You knew that would be the first step, right? Second Corinthians 10.5 says, "We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." Now, I don't know about you, but I've heard this verse taught a lot of times. But whenever I've heard it taught, or most of the times I've heard it taught, when it talks about taking those thoughts captive, it's always the bad thoughts, the lustful thoughts, the sinful thoughts, but it doesn't say that here. It says, "We take captive every thought." So, the things that we think are true about ourselves, God, or others, we need to take captive. We bring them to Him, and we say, "Is this true?" And He will begin to tell us. He will begin to help us to demolish these arguments because they're in conflict with what God says is true. So, you say, "There's something fundamentally wrong with me." God says, in Genesis 1.26, "No, I made you in my image." You say, "I'm unlovable." But in John 3.16, God says, "I love you so much. I sent Jesus for you."

You'll say, "I'll never get it together." But in Philippians 1.6, God says, "I'm not done with you yet." Over and over again, we can bring our hang-ups to God, and He will begin to change our thoughts. Romans 12.1 says, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. What can renewing our mind mean if not, exchanging our hang-ups for God's truth? We allow Jesus to renew our minds, to change the things we think, and then we align with what He says. When we do this, our hang-ups begin to lose their power because we finally see them. The first step in defeating our hang-ups is to acknowledge them. Now, I'm not saying judge them, or shame yourself for having them, but to see them. Our hang-ups developed as coping mechanisms to help us when we were in pain. You were trying to protect you. Now, stick with me here because this is going to sound weird, but sometimes when an old hang-up pops up, I'll just say stop, and I'll say thank you to that thought. It's like I'm thanking myself for that thought. I try to picture it as something that I created to help me in a time of pain, but then I tell it, I've got it from here. Judging to hang-up or really judging myself or having it

isn't helpful to anything, that will reinforce an old hang-up, or it will create a new one. So instead, see the hang-up, but remind yourself you no longer trust it. You don't need it. It's an old coping mechanism that no longer serves you. Another way to gather evidence about it is to talk to other people. This could be your sponsor, your accountability partner, it could be a counselor, a pastor, or it could be a friend. The key is to make it someone you trust. Now, pro-tit, don't expect the person who hurt you to help you gather evidence against the hang-up. Your hang-up might actually work in their favor in the past, and they might have no desire to help you break it. I'm not saying they're bad people, but hang-ups have a way of defining us, not only to ourselves, but to the other people around us too. And there are power structures and roles that encourage us to keep living out of our hang-ups, so you need people around you who want to see you change. That's why it's so often why groups in recovery are so powerful and why we say don't try to do this alone. We're surrounded by people who want to break free from their hurt hang-ups and habits, and they're motivated to help us break free from us as well. Now, this can be pretty vulnerable. I wouldn't suggest this as an icebreaker question for our first date, but we need to begin by exposing our hang-ups to someone else.

And when we do this, they can help us see the truth instead. It allows people to challenge these hang-ups or to tell them that they don't see that in us or that they're not true. And this will often be uncomfortable because you're gonna feel like they're lying. That's what happens when somebody challenges a long-believed hang-up, but it's powerful. Like I said, don't open every conversation with this, but when you're talking to someone you're trust, you might want to let them know of one of your hang-ups. What we have to do is to look for evidence, one, to show the hang-up as a lie, and then two, to start believing the truth. Do you know it takes five positive interactions to make up for one negative one? I didn't make that up. interactions to make up for one negative one to balance it out. That's why it can take so long to let go of one negative comment on social media or one unkind word from a loved one or even one bad experience at a restaurant or a business. It takes five positive ones to overcome it. So when it comes to our hang ups, think of how much evidence you've collected over the years. Even if you did it subconsciously, you were gathering evidence to back it up. This moved from short-term memory to long-term memory and made it seem even more true. So we have to look for five pieces of evidence to support the truth because the truth is going to be more positive. When we go to God, when we read the word, we're given truth. What we need to do is to begin to see that this is being said about you. When Jesus talks about his love, he's talking to you. When Jesus talks about your value, he means you. It will take some time, but when you read scripture, try to get into the mindset that this isn't just something that God has said over time about all believers, but he is saying it about you. Listen to these words of Jesus. And in fact, I know this is weird because it's a video, but you may even close your eyes. This is from John 15, 9,

through 17. Jesus said, "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you." Now, remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this, so my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command, I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I have learned from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you might go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask for in my name, the Father will give you. This is my command, love each other. I want you to catch a few things and you can open your eyes if you close them, but I want you to catch a few things. First, he loves you. Jesus loves you. Not all of us. Yes, he loves all of us, but he loves you, the person watching this video. He says he chooses you. He says he'll give you his joy. He calls you friend. He says he appointed you to do good things. And he says you're loved. Now, that's one piece of evidence. I would encourage you. No, I challenge you to go out and find more. Open the word and read it as though it's just for you. Talk to your friends and people you trust and allow them to speak truth over you. Sometimes it will feel amazing. Sometimes you'll be tempted to think that they're lying. Sometimes you'll accept it and others you're going to try to brush off. And the next time that someone does something that feels like it's evidence for your hangup, don't trust it. Take it captive. Pray about it. Ask if there are other ways to interpret this behavior or this action that it isn't always the story that you've told yourself. And talk to people about it. I don't mean complain to your spouse or family or members or co-workers, but fill in the people around you on the story you tell yourself. Their job isn't to tell you how great everyone else is. It's to be a safe place for you to say how you feel. When they tell you that you matter to them, that you're important. Challenge yourself to believe it. Let me show you with you something that's been really helpful for me. When I operate out of my hang-ups, I try to remember everyone I come across is doing the same thing. Everyone we see has pain we'll never know about. Everyone is carrying balloons. Even the healthiest person you know or can think of will occasionally revert back to an old hang-up. They're so internal, so sticky, and they feel so true. They will sometimes act like a reflex. When that happens or when we notice

it happen, we have a choice. We can act out of that reflex or we can do something different. And so it's so important to identify and call out our hang-ups for this reason. Because once we do, we can move from reaction to. on it. It doesn't mean we'll always do the right thing but we begin to make sense out of the things that have always confused us. We begin to see ourselves more clearly and a cool byproduct of this is that we begin to see other people more clearly. We might not ever know their pain or even know exactly what their hang up is but when we see them acting out of it we can see them as people have been hurt and have hang ups and act out of those things. It begins to explain their behavior too. Like I said we might not ever know what their hang up is but even just saying oh that person is telling them so stories that aren't true that helps us begin to take things less personally. One last thing and I'll wrap up this very long video but I really want you to hear this. In no way am I saying that any of this keeps us from being accountable for our own actions. Going back and finding the hurt that was caused to us isn't about going back to blame anyone for the pain or the hang up or especially the habits as a result. It's just about explaining them. You and I are responsible for our own actions. We can explain our actions when we understand how we were hurt and then what we began to believe out of that hurt. We can go to God for healing. When we tell them our hurts we can find healing. When we tell them our hang ups we can replace them with his truth and we tell them about our habits he gives us the power to change. The truth is Celebrate Recovery is not a behavioral modification program. I've sat in too many circles over the last 22 years and heard people say that they're just broken messed up people who made bad choices but this is only part of the picture. Yes those things are true but it isn't like they came out fully formed and then made bad choices. They endured pain. They began to believe things about themselves and they acted out of that belief. They're still responsible for their actions and I'm still responsible for my actions but their actions have explanations. What I want for you what I want for me is a clear picture of yourself. I want you to see I want to see myself as who I truly am not as my hang ups have identified me. I have no interest in blaming anyone. I want freedom. Not the freedom to make any choice that I want but the freedom to live a life in a new way set free from the pain of the past living in truth about who God says I am and free of the destructive habits that hurt me and others and I want the same for you. Now I know that these two videos have been long. I hope maybe broke them up or maybe we're doing something while you're listening to them but anytime you have a

hang up that pops up after watching this video go back and watch it again because our hang ups are sticky and they're leaky but we can overcome them. Thanks for being with me everybody. Have a great rest of your day.