#i’ve been passively suicidal and burned out since age 10

[myzbyrne-blog]

Stairway Church?  More like 'Stay-Away Church'!

Should You Call Stairway Church Home?

- 22/10/2019

Based upon my lengthy experience, Stairway Church in Vermont, VIC, Australia, has a large number of issues with it.

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1. The head pastor thinks that peoples' hearts are evil. To be fair, he thinks this of EVERYBODY - not just non-Christians. However, an implication of this is that you're not going to be respectful of people's beliefs, feelings, and experiences when you think they are evil. In turn, you'll treat people like their voice doesn't matter. This is disempowering to them and results in them learning to 'act out' to be heard.  It's unsurprising, then, that leadership have made so many avoidable mistakes.  After all, the only opinion they seem to care about is their own.  Everybody has a piece to contribute and it is also when a diverse array of perspectives is added that good outcomes can happen with longevity.

2. The head pastor thinks humanism is a big devil of this age. Unfortunately, this results in him rejecting a lot of good things that come with embracing the beauty of being human. For example, emotional intelligence, humility, and self-awareness.  A great example of this is that he was disappointed that nobody wanted to talk to him about issues.  I think it's reasonable that nobody would want to talk to him about issues if it took him more than one year to even come close to listening.  Even in my initial meetings with him, his first response was to try to diagnose me with a spiritual problem (because I was the one coming to report on a problem).

3. The head pastor was a key influence in splitting up one of the church's communities. While the reason for doing so has merit, the way it was done flew in the face of the spirit of oneness that is often preached from the pulpit. While the pastor recognises his mistakes, he is unwilling to acknowledge them and try to bring restoration. Furthermore, the leaders under him have learned this attribute from him and have said that, if they had the chance, they would do it all over again.  Meanwhile, the head pastor feels that there are greater priorities, such as reaching out to those outside the church.  This is unfortunate, because it results in the culture of the church being inhospitable to newcomers, and this has been a common experience of those that visit - the worship is great and the message is revelatory, but the feeling of being isolated is overbearing.  A leader who is constantly rushing ahead and not taking the time to learn from mistakes and clean up his/her messes is a dangerous leader.

4. The leaders do not know how to work in unity. One leader tried to run a leadership development group within the church community without telling the participants that that was his purpose (they had joined him with a vision of helping restore the community). Resultantly, nearly all the participants left the church and the leader was highly reactive when the result was explored with him. Another leader that had been recently employed by the church has a habit of running with his self-given prophetic words without any accountability. Not only that, he uses people to further his own projects. For example, I was asked to help him run some social events which were to 'help develop the sense of community'. The head pastor later told me that these events were actually being used as a springboard for the leader's 'Our Block' project (yet he wouldn't call the leader out on this inauthentic behaviour). When the leader found that the community wasn't interested in the agenda-driven connection he was offering, he ditched the project without even exploring what he may have done wrong to get such a poor result. He's later lamented that he feels like he's pushing the project all by himself (I wonder why?). I have also observed that he's roped a new person into his project. This person doesn't seem to be connecting into the church well now, and her participation with this project may be partly responsible.  

5. Some of the leaders have the arrogance to think that anybody who leaves Stairway are wrong for doing so and will regret it in the years to come. This completely discounts the possibility that some people might be leaving because it's the only way to form a healthy boundary against a church and leadership culture that has little value for the voices of its congregation.  In contrast, one of the church elders actually recommended that I leave the church two years before this blog was written.

In the many years that I've been a member of Stairway Church, I've seen many people leave the church only to find higher degrees of health and well-being elsewhere. That, too, is my story. In the first few years there, I was quite vulnerable and nearly committed suicide multiple times due to the isolation and neglect that I was feeling. I eventually got better thanks to relationships I had developed independent of the church but, since leaving, have had life go far better for me.

I have spent years working to empower people and shift the church culture from the grassroots level. I have also spent years trying to work with the leaders to help them see the effect they are having on their people. The issue isn't so much that leaders at Stairway make mistakes, everybody makes mistakes. The big issue is how poorly they were able to respond to them. After more than two years, I've been burned out by my experiences with them and a recent therapy session I've had to try to deal with the experiences from it suggests that the experience be best viewed as a traumatic event.

My belief is that your spirituality should make you a better person. It should help you become a better listener, more humble, and better able to relate to others. At Stairway, my experience is the spiritual experiences are sought out strongly and to the exclusion of growth in character and the nurturing of relationships. Unfortunately, character has the inevitable habit of revealing itself. Such as in the many times a leader would call an idea prophetic to get people to go along with it, then call it a 'trial' or 'idea' when it falls through. Or when a leader (who also teaches about relationships at the church college) explains his failings by saying that transitions are hard, when he was setting himself up to fail by being unwilling to listen to those around him who were trying to help him succeed. Unfortunately, the situation is so bad that many in the congregation seem heavily disengaged from the vision of the church. This creates a heavy passive inertia that newcomers often feel as being unwelcoming and disinterest (despite the worship being good).

[ronaldmrashid]

Mental Illness Deserves A Sick Day Just Like A Physical Illness

What’s great about America is that we’ve got a highly productive workforce that grinds like no other. We invent some of the greatest products and consistently build some of the largest companies in the world.

What’s sad about America is that we’re working ourselves to an early death. We pride ourselves on working double digit work hours a day. We pack our schedules to the brim and never give ourselves a break.

I’m guilty of adopting the “always be grinding” mentality because I landed a a dream job in New York City after college and then migrated to San Francisco, another hyper-competitive city. I didn’t want to take my luck for granted, so I tended to constantly push myself to the limit.

Even after I left full-time work in 2012 after 13 years of 60-80-hour work weeks, I still wanted to keep the intensity up with my writing on Financial Samurai. I was free to kick back and do whatever thanks to passive income, but I refused to live a life of leisure after the first six months of freedom.

Needless self-imposed pressures are why so many of us aren’t as happy as we should be. As soon as I let go of my perennial goals of outperforming the S&P and reaching ever higher website growth, I started to feel happier.

Accept Your Mental Illness

Nobody bats an eye if you tell them you’re planning on taking several days off because you’ve come down with the flu or some nasty bacteria. Falling physically ill is normal, especially if you’ve got little ones running around.

But nobody comes out and admits they have a mental illness that’s keeping them down. Yet I argue we all experience some sort of mental illness at some point in our lives.

I come down with a mental illness at least once a year.

Sometimes I get depressed about how unfair life is. My depression always focuses on why some people have so much opportunity, while other people have so little opportunity.

I go through a guilt phase where I often ask, why me? During this time period, I have no desire to hang out with anyone. I start thinking wild ideas like relocating to Virginia over Hawaii because I need a certain amount of suffering to feel more worthy.

While living in Malaysia, one of my friend’s died in a car accident at age 15. He lost control and rammed into a tree off the highway. Yes, he legally wasn’t allowed to drive, but we were irreverent in Kuala Lumpur. The passenger in the front seat didn’t survive either.

We were skateboard buddies from different schools who would hang out over the weekend. He was one of the coolest kids around and I wanted to go out with him to the club that night, but he ignored me because I was only 13.

The next day, I called Mark to ask whether he wanted to hang out. I will always remember his mother’s voice telling me he had passed away.

I have survivor’s guilt. I’ve learned that one of the best ways of overcoming this mental condition is to journal my thoughts and be useful to others. Over the years, no other activity has helps me more.

The reason why I started Financial Samurai in July 2009 was due to extreme anxiety and fear that I was going to lose everything I spent 10 years building up until the financial crisis.

I had nightmares of having to go back to work flipping burgers at McDonald’s for a tyrant manager. As a result, perhaps I am more sensitive to financial loss than the average person.

Through my posts and now through the Financial Samurai Forum, I’ve found a supportive community that acts as my supplemental mental health care system. Over the years, so many folks have reached out to share similar thoughts.

Take Sick Days For Your Mental Health

When I advised employees to take sick days instead of PTO in my post, Using Vacation Days Before A Severance Negotiation, I expected some readers to question my advice given our grinding society.

Here are a couple negative responses,

“Your suggestion of using sick days in lieu of vacation days is a gray area. Some companies have policies which theoretically forbid that. Or, if you use a certain amount of sick days in a row (say 3 or more) you have to get a doctors note. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be relaxing on the beach in Hawaii having to call my boss each day pretending to be sick.“

“Taking a sick day when I am not sick? Sorry, my moral code won’t let me go there. A day’s pay used to be worth a couple of grand, that is significant, but the price of my word, that is nonnegotiable, or priceless, if it is a Visa commercial. And if the company is being evil, well, that’s on them, I’m fine with fighting but I only fight fair regardless of how someone else fights. What anyone else does, not my problem, what I do, I have to live with that guy.“

To a manager or CEO, these responses are music to their ears. Their goal is to have employees be max loyal to the firm, while they enrich themselves with max reward.

What the commenters don’t recognize is the importance of taking sick days to improve one’s mental health. Their automatic assumption is that sick days are only for physical illnesses, which is a big blind spot.

I used to work at a firm that allowed a three-month sabbatical for every five years of work. Unfortunately, no manager ever took a sabbatical, which meant that nobody else took a sabbatical out of fear of getting a crap bonus or worse.

But after my 8th year at the firm, I decided to take a step towards living a more balanced life by taking all my vacation days. For the last three years at my old firm, I took six weeks off a year and loved it. I stopped giving a crap about what others thought.

Interestingly, while I took six weeks off a year, my production improved. Unfortunately, my firm didn’t properly compensate me for my production. But instead of complaining, I negotiated a severance.

Types Of Mental Illnesses

Perhaps you still have doubts about how common mental illness really is. Well here is an infographic that puts together many mental health issues. I’ve written most of them out since there are so many and the graph is so small.

Types Of Anxiety

Agora

PTSD

OCD

Acute Stress Disorder

Adjustment Disorder

Substance Induced

Separation Anxiety

Selective Mutism

Caffeine Induced

Androphobia (fear of men)

Panic

Social

Generalized

Types Of Schizophrenia

Schizoaffective

Paranoid

Brief Psychotic

Schizophrenium

Delusional

Shared Psychotic

Disorganized/ Hebephrenia

Cenesthopathic

Types Of Eating Disorders

Anorexia Nervosa

Bulimia Nervosa

Binge Eating

Eating Disorder Not Other Specified (EDNOS)

Atypical

Purging

Night/Nocturnal

Orthorexia

Pica

Types Of Self Harm

Cutting

Carving

Using Objects (kicking or punching a wall)

Scratching

Picking

Ripping Skin off

Promiscuity

Burning

Hair Pulling

Rubbing objects on the skin

Misusing or Abusing Alcohol or drugs

Eating Disorders

Suicide Attempt

Law Breaking

Poisoning with toxic chemicals

Excessive exercise

Multiple piercings and/or tattoos

Overspending money

Types of ADD/ADHD

Inattentive

Hyperactive-Impulsive

Classic ADD

Overfocused ADD

Temporal Lobe ADD

Limbic ADD

Ring of Fire ADD

Anxious ADD

Types of Addiction

Alcoholism

Drugs

Nicotine

Food

Gambling

Internet

Sexual

Shopping

Work

Video Games

Plastic Surgery

OTC Medications

Arson

People Pleasing

Perfectionism

Sick Days Are Built Into Your Compensation Package

Not utilizing your sick days or PTO or not taking unemployment benefits is foolish because they are part of your compensation package. Your employer pays unemployment insurance, which directly affects your compensation.

Don’t be a proud ignoramus like me who only took maybe 15 sick days after 11 years of service, when I was allotted 77 sick days. Definitely don’t be one of those people who hoard their PTO and actually lose some of their days because they exceeded the carryover limit.

Take your sick days, take your vacation days, use short-term disability and long-term disability when needed.

You don’t feel bad about your employer subsidizing most of your healthcare costs. So why should you feel bad about taking sick days?

If your employer gets around the unpaid PTO issue by offering unlimited PTO, your mission is to take more PTO, especially if you are planning to do something else. Test the the word “unlimited.” So long as you’re hitting your performance metrics, you should be fine.

We’re in a tight labor market folks. The very least you can do is take advantage of all your benefits. And for goodness sake, let’s all accept that mental illness affects us all in some way.

Once you embrace the ubiquity of mental illness, you will develop more empathy for those whom you find uncomfortable.

Related: Using The Family Medical Leave Act To Negotiate A Severance

Readers, why doesn’t society do a better job at recognizing mental illnesses? Why do some people feel embarrassed or conflicted about taking sick days or PTO? Have people been conditioned this badly to not recognize their benefits?

The post Mental Illness Deserves A Sick Day Just Like A Physical Illness appeared first on Financial Samurai.

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#Financial Samurai