May 8, 2025 • 26 mins
Maybe it’s YOU!
When we feel attacked our brains slip into enemy mode. In other words, when we feel that someone is not for us, we assume that they are against us, and it’s game on!
Longtime author and neuropsychologist, Dr. Jim Wilder, says we can be in enemy mode for a moment, a longer period of time, or allof the time. He joins us to talk about Escaping Enemy Mode: How Our Brains Unite or Divide Us.
In this brain state of “enemy mode” we fight to win but we were created to be in relationship – to love. The way out of enemy mode is to remember that we actually want to be in relationship with one another. And to be reminded of who we are in Christ.
Jim gives solid advice for loving others well by helping them get out of enemy mode, even if they can’t see initially that you are acting in love.
Relationships are hard and messy. Understanding how to escape enemy mode will help us to stay connected with one another and ultimately to be who God created us to be.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:03):
It's the Perry and Shawna podcast on the real life
journey with you, reminding you that you are ABBA's beloved
child and that Jesus has called you into his massive
mission to heal the world.
S2 (00:17):
Relationships matter. You were created for relationship first with God
and then with other people. I mean, love God, love people.
That's what life is all about. But how do we
remember that our goal is to be in relationship with
one another when we see one another as the enemy? Well,
let's ask the expert. We've got Doctor Jim Wilder. He's
(00:38):
a clinical psychologist and a neuro theologian. That's a mouthful.
A neuro theologian at Life Modelworks. And he applies brain
science to relationships to one another. He's authored a lot
of books, but today we're just going to focus on
this one book. It's called Escaping Enemy Mode. Owed. It
(00:59):
is a core motivation of mine to connect with people
in a meaningful way, and I used to actually think
this was like my Kryptonite because I thought, oh, I'm
just so needy of relationship with one another. And it
can be it can be my Kryptonite if I'm not
operating in a healthy way. But more recently, God has
revealed to me that's actually part of how I'm like him.
(01:21):
I'm made in his image with a desire to connect
because he's a relational God. I long for harmony with
one another, but I can't make that happen because relationships
don't don't happen all by ourselves, right? So I'm curious,
how can we help nurture meaningful, healthy connections with one another?
S3 (01:43):
Well, the joyful part is when we're just getting to
know somebody, you know, everything's going well. That happens with
just smiles and looking at each other and and being warm,
you know. But what keeps relationships going is what happens
after something goes wrong. The repair side of the cycle.
When we start feeling like, hey, you're not on my side,
(02:04):
which from a brain perspective is enemy mode. It's like,
I feel like you're not with me. So I somehow
now have to contest with you as opposed to draw
close to you. And when we get into that mode,
then we start doing things that we look back later
and go like that didn't really help our relationships any.
So how do we remember when we're upset? You might
(02:25):
say that our initial goal was to get closer to
each other. And this is something that, uh, I think
Jesus referred to as loving our enemies. And, you know,
he said our enemies are those of our own household.
You know, they're really the people that are close to us,
which at the moment when we're upset with them, we
feel like, hey, you're not on my side. So instead
(02:46):
of drawing close, I, you know, vent myself and my
feelings on you.
S2 (02:52):
Is this a conversation about reconciliation? Because we're all going
to have hardships, right? So we need to win. The
bubble happens or the bump happens, if you will. We
need to find a way to connect once again.
S3 (03:06):
Well, you know, I was talking with Dallas Willard and
he was talking about the the benchmark, he said of
what makes a good, mature Christian. And that's a spontaneous
love for your enemies. And so, you know, using that
as a benchmark, we found very, very few people that
did it, except in places where people actually identified that
they had enemies. And then they realized, oh, I've got
(03:28):
to get better at this. So reconciliation is sort of
the bigger picture, because there's an awful lot of, uh,
young people right now disowning their parents and their friends
and everything else over some conversation or something went wrong. Uh,
you know, they don't go call anymore. They don't, you know,
they block each other's numbers and stuff like that. Yeah,
(03:50):
it's that, but the short term is you said something
that upset me. How do I come back to you
and go like, wait a minute. This isn't the way
I want a relationship to be. I actually want to
be close to you. And as you mentioned, if our
motivation to get close to somebody else is out of fear,
we start doing some things that, you know, either try
(04:11):
to control them or manipulate them and turn them into
enemy mode as well. When I started studying the brain science,
it was like, it seems like there's a number of
different patterns going on, and all of them turned off
the brain's attachment center, so I no longer felt connected
to you while I'm continuing to talk. So the first
(04:31):
one was sort of a simple like, I just don't
want to connect with you. The second one was, I
get really mad and I'm so upset that I forget.
I want to connect with you. And the third one
was kind of like a cold one, like, I just
want to win, you know? And all I want to
do is see you lose. And those under those three conditions,
the brain stops remembering basically shuts off. It's information that
(04:55):
you and I have a relationship that matters. And that's,
you know, when we start treating others as enemies. I mean,
most Americans are so nice, you know, they go, well,
I've got no enemies. And so we never actually know
when to practice it. But if we think, do I
have times when people don't feel on my side, like
when my kid won't put his jacket on and the
(05:16):
school bus is coming, or all those things that turn
into church splits and my ex-wife or husband or the friends,
we don't talk. Those are all the times when we're
actually relating to other people, like enemies. And now the
question is, how do we get back to remembering that
we want a relationship when we don't feel like we
want one, right?
S2 (05:36):
Yeah. So how do we remember when we have forgotten
whether it's a temporary forgotten or a long term forgotten?
How do we remember that we're all in this thing together?
S3 (05:50):
For Christians, that's a little easier path forward to figure out,
because we all started out as God's enemies and he
loved us and cared for us. He had an attachment
to us. He connected with us while we were still enemies,
and we're supposed to grow up to be like him.
And that means that we have to see whatever God
values in another person and say, you know when you've
(06:14):
forgotten why God loves you, when you've forgotten about our relationship,
I want to remind you who you really are. I
want to really connect with that part. And actually, the
more upset I am with somebody, the more I actually
want to find that good part of them inside that
God created. Right? You know, when your child won't put
(06:35):
his jacket on, that's when you want to find that obedient,
loving child that looks at you and says, yes, mommy. Okay,
I get my jacket. And it's simply because that part
is hidden that we're getting aggravated, you see. And so
to look at other people the way God does is
actually always the path back to escaping enemy mode. Like,
I've got to find the person in you that God
(06:57):
looks for, and I'm going to be like him and
go looking for that part. Even when you're being obnoxious
right now.
S2 (07:04):
Oh, I had a situation where, you know, by the
grace of God, I was able to do this, but
there was a situation with a relationship that just man,
it was just an aggravating kind of salt in the
wound kind of a relationship. And I was like, Lord,
I want to love the way that you love. And
I'm struggling right now. Will you show me how this
(07:24):
person is made in your image? And I began to
see specifically as we were in the same place at
the same time, and I would hear this person pray.
I could see what mattered to them as they prayed.
And I was like, oh, that looks like you, father,
and I love you so much. And if I love
you so much and they're made like you, then I
can find a place in that to love them.
S3 (07:46):
Exactly. It's like we're borrowing God's attachment with them, sort of,
you know, if you have a friend and they bring
somebody over to, I'd like you to meet this person
because and you realize, you know, here's an important person
to them. Like, you think of your you're a little
bit older now. Your kids are bringing home somebody that,
you know, they think maybe you'd be a good spouse,
(08:07):
you know. So I'd like you to meet so and
so you know already that you're, you're disposed to have
an attachment to this person to be more interested. Go
like I wonder what it is that means something and
to go looking for that. And that's really what we
do with God. Now, God must have seen something in
this person. And that's exactly what you were doing. Like,
(08:27):
I'm going to go find out what he was that
he was looking for. Why would he be willing to
die for this person just to have a relationship with
them when, you know, I can't see it, but it's
a spiritual connection that only works if we have an
attachment with God. Otherwise our brains attachment centre doesn't come on.
So you have to you have to connect to somebody
(08:50):
you know. From a practical point of view, I remember
with my wife and I when the kids were little,
and we'd get into enemy mode with one of the
kids and we would go, you know, take them to
the other parent and say, you take over, you've got
an attachment with them, and I'll let your attachment work
for a little while here till I can get mine
back on again, you know, and we're borrowing an attachment
(09:13):
during those times, you know, like, well, I'm sure your
mother must love you. So let's find out.
S4 (09:19):
Until I can get back there. Let's let mom.
S3 (09:22):
Find that spot again.
S4 (09:24):
Right. That's great. That's so good. We've got three.
S2 (09:30):
Main areas in our life, right? We've got our home life.
We've got our work life. We've got our social life.
In one of those main areas, I was being mistreated,
and I didn't like it. Of course I didn't. Right.
And so I didn't like it at the time that
I was being mistreated, and I would be very defensive,
and that made sense. But I also found that I
was defensive even when I wasn't being mistreated, because I
(09:53):
feared that it was going to happen. And so I
found myself in a very defensive state 24 over seven.
So it was kind of like you mentioned, like long
term enemy mode as one of the modes. How do
we remember that we were made for connection when we
find ourselves long term feeling defensive?
S3 (10:17):
Well, if the brain is good at anything, it's guessing
what's going to happen next. You know, anticipating stuff. And
so anything that might have led to us feeling attacked,
the brain is going to go like, I see this
happening again. You know, there are people around. I must
be about to get attacked. You know, there are you know,
there are women around. There's men around. There's people in
(10:39):
the store. There's whatever it is that we look at
And we're like, oh, that's happening again. I better get
ready for an attack. And so a fear based brain
will always be trying to be ready for an attack,
which means anticipatory enemy mode. I just go through life
waiting for the next attack to happen, and that will
(11:00):
go on forever. It's very, very self-contained, you know. But
if we decide we don't want to be an enemy mode,
and that's what we need, is one reason to not
want to be an enemy mode. And people don't usually
provide that. But let me ask you this question. Is
there any problem that's so bad you don't want God
(11:20):
to be with you in it?
S4 (11:21):
No.
S2 (11:22):
Heavens no! I need.
S4 (11:23):
Him.
S3 (11:24):
Right? And if your brain is an enemy mode, it
won't feel like God is with you. That's one of
the things we've found over 40 years of counseling. You
go into enemy mode, you doesn't feel like God's there.
You can't connect with them. You don't care what he's thinking.
You know someone just quote the Bible to you. You'd
tell them where to shove it. That kind of a thing, right?
(11:45):
Because it doesn't sound like somebody that's on your side.
So if you don't want to be alone in a problem,
you have to be connected with God. That means you
have to get quickly back to some connection with God.
And when you're connected with God, your brain comes out
of enemy mode. There's one other little detail about enemy
mode worth mentioning. When I am an enemy mode and
(12:07):
I've shut off my attachment system, I don't know whether
you're an enemy mode or not. The system that would
tell me whether you're my enemy or you're helping me
goes offline. So I have no idea. If you quote God,
is he attacking me or is he on my side?
If if I come to help you, it feels like
you're attacking me. You ever you ever had that happen
(12:29):
with anybody that you went to help them and and
they turned around and all but you because they figured
you were attacking. But now their sensors are out. so
we don't want to operate in that condition. We stay
connected with God, then we can pull ourselves out of it.
And so the question is, how fast can you get
back to reconnecting with God so that you can share
(12:50):
his perspective on life? And the worse the problem, the
harder it is to do, but the more we want
to to have that result. And so that's really the
practice we want to have. Let's reconnect with God. Let's
remember a time when he was close to us, a
time that he loved us. You know, that is what
gets us out of enemy mode. Uh, it doesn't necessarily
(13:11):
make the person we're dealing with any easier to deal with,
but we've got God on our side while we're doing it,
and that is rather worth having.
S2 (13:19):
It makes me think of when, you know, Jesus was
leaving the disciples and he said, I have really good news.
I'm leaving. And they're like, what? That's horrible news. And
he goes, no, no, no, I'm leaving. But I'm sending
you my Holy Spirit, who's going to counsel you and
be with you? The father will send the Holy Spirit.
And so we have the presence of God with us
right now. When situations get combative, when relationships get hard.
(13:44):
We can ask God for real time counsel. We can
ask the Spirit of God, who is in us, to
give us the wisdom that we don't have on our
own for the circumstances and the capacity to love the
person in front of us. I literally have had situations
in my life where real time, I feel like I
(14:07):
am being attacked by the person in front of me
and I will say, God, I know you're here right now.
You are with me. You're in the room. And simply
by praying that prayer and having that acknowledgement, I feel safe. Yeah, that's.
S3 (14:22):
What we're all is safe. Yeah. That's it.
S2 (14:26):
It protects me from. I don't feel the need to attack.
So here's where it goes for me, Jim. I go,
all right. You are hearing what's being said here in
the room with me. And you know everything that's true.
And I love you. And I trust you. So will
you show me what the truth is? Because I want
to know the truth, and I want to deal with
the truth.
S3 (14:45):
But I'm and sets you free.
S2 (14:47):
Yeah, I'm feeling prickly right now because I'm getting poked at.
And I don't want to miss the truth. Even though
it's being maybe delivered poorly. Um, and to be able.
S4 (14:59):
To.
S3 (14:59):
Usually from an enemy mode brain that's, you know, it's
not building a connection with the true you. It's telling
you what's wrong with you. I mean, remember when Paul
wrote to Titus and he said, teach the older women
not to be devils?
S4 (15:14):
Mhm, mhm.
S3 (15:16):
Well, a devil is someone that says that the things
that are wrong with you are the true you. And
he says the old women, older women need to learn
because their culture told them that's how it was. He says,
you know, you have to undo the cultural effects so
that the, the older women can look at you like
a mother would and say, well, you've forgotten who you
really are. And I'm going to call back the real you.
(15:37):
And this is the atmosphere that churches and families need
where we say, yeah, you're prickly right now and you've
forgotten who you are and our relationship. But let me
call you back to that. You know, it doesn't mean
what they're doing is excusable, but it does mean we're
not going to help them do it.
S5 (16:01):
So when somebody is drowning.
S2 (16:03):
They're not going to be able to rescue themselves from
the situation that they're in. And so we want to
go and we want to rescue. But oftentimes the person
who's drowning will fight the rescuer because they're in survival
mode and they will beat you up and drown you,
even though you're the one who's who's there to bring
them to safety. So that's what I picture when you
(16:26):
talk about enemy mode. But when somebody is drowning, the
person who's going to save them. Has a strategy to
approach them from behind and bring them to safety when
someone's in enemy mode in life relationally. Is there a
strategy that we can safely rescue them?
S3 (16:49):
There's a beautiful question. Shauna reminded me of all my
lifeguard training. I was a lifeguard for a while, and yes,
they said, as soon as you grab a hold of
a person who's drowning, they will try to climb up
on you and they'll put you under the water and
you'll drown, and it's guaranteed. So you dive from behind
(17:10):
the person if you can. As you come up to
them from below, you lift them so you continue lifting
them as you're going up their body. Now, this is
actually extremely close to enemy mode, because most enemy mode
is caused by somebody trying to lower my status and
my self esteem Self-esteem make me feel worse about myself.
(17:32):
So if I approach them and I lift their status
and I said, yes, your beloved child of God, and
you are somebody that God cares about and you're somebody
that means something to me and you're somebody that has
many good things to offer. And in fact, the way
I would like this conversation to turn out is a
way that you'll feel proud of yourself and I'll feel
(17:52):
proud of myself. Those are all ways of lifting somebody
into their better self, the person that God has created
them to be. Uh, reminding them who they could be
under those conditions. And as someone is lifting you, you
have less and less need to push them down. Now,
there's some people who are are malicious. They decided somewhere
(18:14):
in their adult life that they are going to make
sure everybody else loses, and they're always going to win.
Those people can't be lifted by a person like that.
They will just maliciously think, yeah, well, you're done with that.
Now let me just chop you up. So I'm not
saying this will always work, but within families, with people
we have relationships with and there's some kind of a
(18:36):
healthy attachment somewhere we can do that. And even when
we're dealing with people that are totally unknown to us,
like the store clerk, if we approach them with respect
and honor and lift them, the chances of them popping
out of enemy mode go way up. And so that's
that's the strategy. You think of it as lifting their
(18:58):
status to the status of, you know, you're a child
of God. And I want you to remember that and
find it. That's the status that God offers everybody. And
if we try to lower someone's status, they just go
more and more into enemy mode and fight harder. And again,
their their career enemy mode people are sociopaths is in
(19:19):
that category. So sociopaths don't care about anything other than winning.
And there's really quite a few of them around. So
just because there's a good strategy doesn't mean it'll work
for everybody. And, you know, some people really are out
to harm you. And by the way, it doesn't lift
their status to help them harm you.
S4 (19:38):
Mhm.
S2 (19:38):
Okay. Speak more about that.
S3 (19:41):
Yeah. When they get to stand in front of God
and judgment. Uh, are they going to be glad that
we helped them help harm other people, including us, or
will they wish that we had done something to stop
them if we could? And so actually lifting someone's status
may mean we're not going to let you get away
(20:03):
with hurting people. It's not just a matter of we
become passive and let them just be wonderful. They're not. Yeah. What?
We're going to help them, if possible, have less judgment
to face when it comes along. And we're not going
to participate in their, uh, enemy mode. And that's, I think,
very important to keep in mind. Otherwise people go like,
(20:24):
how am I supposed to be friendly? Or just whatever
with these people who are out to harm me? Like, no,
that's not, that's not it. We're not going to let
them get away with being successful enemies if we can.
That's not God's plan for any. Peter says a lot
about that in first and second Peter, but we probably
don't have time to talk about that right at the moment.
S2 (20:47):
I'm reading a book in this analogy was used and
it just made so much sense. But she said, you know,
if your neighbor's house was burning down, you wouldn't say, well,
I'm not going to go over there and knock on
the door in the middle of the night. You wouldn't
go over there and say, I'm not going to knock
on the door in the middle of the night because
they'll be mad that I woke them up. No. You
(21:08):
don't care about waking them up, because if you don't,
they're going to burn in the fire.
S3 (21:14):
Mhm.
S2 (21:15):
That's that seems to apply to what you're saying.
S3 (21:18):
Yeah. There's a sort of a simple sort of touching
story for me. My mother developed dementia before she died,
and so she was doing some things that were not
in her or anyone's really best interest. She, you know,
got a little enemy modish around the place, you know,
got agitated and stuff like that. And I regularly did
(21:39):
things that she didn't like. But as I was thinking
about it, I said, you know, in 50 years, or
actually whenever it is she dies, which isn't going to
be 50 years, will she thank me that I let
her and her demented mind get away with that? Or
will she say, I wish Jim had stopped me from
doing that? Uh, she'll get mad at me now, and
(22:01):
she won't like it. But as soon as she's got
clarity before God, she'll go like, I'm sure glad he
didn't go along. With what? You know, my upset mind was.
And I think that's sort of a metaphor for dealing
with all of humankind. You know, we really don't see
things from God's perspective. And and people will get upset
with us, um, you know, we're not talking about just
(22:23):
keeping everybody happy. We're talking about that reality. That means
I'm helping you find the person God created you to be.
And I'm helping me be the person I was created
to be. The Ephesians 210 said to do those good
works that God prepared ahead of time, that you should
walk in them. And this is what we do for
(22:43):
each other.
S2 (22:48):
My daughter is visiting from the Czech Republic and she
brought a new game with her. It's a card game
and she was teaching us to play. And the goal
of the game is to work together to accomplish the
specific goal that you're given. So I have certain cards,
you have certain cards, and if we work with what
we have, can we accomplish the task in this round?
(23:08):
So she's explaining the rules. And of course, you know,
family members are trying to wrap their mind around it
and they're like, ah, okay, how do I win? And
she said, we win if we accomplish the goal. And
it just was. So I thought, man, take a snapshot
of this moment, Shauna, because this is bigger than this
(23:30):
card game. That's so often our orientation. Okay, here I am.
Here we are. How do I win? Instead of orienting
towards working together to accomplish a goal, is that what
you're talking about when you refer to third element of
the enemy mode?
S3 (23:51):
Yes, exactly. We win when we become the people of God,
the people that God created us to be. That was
his goal from the beginning of the story to the
end of the story. He's creating a people. We're supposed
to help each other become that. And when we do,
we win by developing the identity God had in mind
for us. Uh, if you take attachment out of the brain,
(24:14):
the only thing it wants to do is win. And
oddly enough, the human brain calculates whether I win by
making you lose. So think of two brothers are wrestling
with each other. When do you win? You win when
your brother loses, you think about Congress. When do you win?
You win when the other party loses. And so very often,
(24:36):
the very thing you want, you give up in order
to make the other person lose. And so this idea
of winning is actually inside the brain. It's calculated based
on making other people lose. So here's a game that
makes you think of, well, what if we actually look
at what it meant to win, which is we all
end up where we want to be. And that's a
(24:58):
very different way of thinking of winning than the competitive mind.
When it's an enemy mode, it just makes you want
to lose. And so this will eliminate a lot of
different situations in the world, I think.
S4 (25:12):
Yeah, that is so good.
S2 (25:13):
And this is just coming to me real time. But
as we were playing the game, the whole game is
in check. And so my daughter had to translate for us.
So even as we have the cards, we we weren't
always necessarily sure of what that card meant. And so
we had to rely very heavily on her to translate
for us. And I just think, man, isn't that just
(25:33):
like the Holy Spirit, right? Like, this is this way
of living and loving the way that God created us to.
We need the help of the Holy Spirit. We need
a translator to help us to.
S4 (25:45):
See this.
S2 (25:45):
Is a very different way to live.
S3 (25:48):
Mhm. That's what it's all about. You got it Shauna.
S1 (25:53):
Thanks for letting Barry and Shauna walk the real life
journey with you. The content from the Period Shauna podcast
comes from their live show Barry and Shalom Mornings on
89.3 Moody Radio, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reach out to us
by texting 809 68 8930 and please subscribe.
It's the Perry and Shawna podcast on the real life
journey with you, reminding you that you are ABBA's beloved
child and that Jesus has called you into his massive
mission to heal the world.
S2 (00:17):
Relationships matter. You were created for relationship first with God
and then with other people. I mean, love God, love people.
That's what life is all about. But how do we
remember that our goal is to be in relationship with
one another when we see one another as the enemy? Well,
let's ask the expert. We've got Doctor Jim Wilder. He's
(00:38):
a clinical psychologist and a neuro theologian. That's a mouthful.
A neuro theologian at Life Modelworks. And he applies brain
science to relationships to one another. He's authored a lot
of books, but today we're just going to focus on
this one book. It's called Escaping Enemy Mode. Owed. It
(00:59):
is a core motivation of mine to connect with people
in a meaningful way, and I used to actually think
this was like my Kryptonite because I thought, oh, I'm
just so needy of relationship with one another. And it
can be it can be my Kryptonite if I'm not
operating in a healthy way. But more recently, God has
revealed to me that's actually part of how I'm like him.
(01:21):
I'm made in his image with a desire to connect
because he's a relational God. I long for harmony with
one another, but I can't make that happen because relationships
don't don't happen all by ourselves, right? So I'm curious,
how can we help nurture meaningful, healthy connections with one another?
S3 (01:43):
Well, the joyful part is when we're just getting to
know somebody, you know, everything's going well. That happens with
just smiles and looking at each other and and being warm,
you know. But what keeps relationships going is what happens
after something goes wrong. The repair side of the cycle.
When we start feeling like, hey, you're not on my side,
(02:04):
which from a brain perspective is enemy mode. It's like,
I feel like you're not with me. So I somehow
now have to contest with you as opposed to draw
close to you. And when we get into that mode,
then we start doing things that we look back later
and go like that didn't really help our relationships any.
So how do we remember when we're upset? You might
(02:25):
say that our initial goal was to get closer to
each other. And this is something that, uh, I think
Jesus referred to as loving our enemies. And, you know,
he said our enemies are those of our own household.
You know, they're really the people that are close to us,
which at the moment when we're upset with them, we
feel like, hey, you're not on my side. So instead
(02:46):
of drawing close, I, you know, vent myself and my
feelings on you.
S2 (02:52):
Is this a conversation about reconciliation? Because we're all going
to have hardships, right? So we need to win. The
bubble happens or the bump happens, if you will. We
need to find a way to connect once again.
S3 (03:06):
Well, you know, I was talking with Dallas Willard and
he was talking about the the benchmark, he said of
what makes a good, mature Christian. And that's a spontaneous
love for your enemies. And so, you know, using that
as a benchmark, we found very, very few people that
did it, except in places where people actually identified that
they had enemies. And then they realized, oh, I've got
(03:28):
to get better at this. So reconciliation is sort of
the bigger picture, because there's an awful lot of, uh,
young people right now disowning their parents and their friends
and everything else over some conversation or something went wrong. Uh,
you know, they don't go call anymore. They don't, you know,
they block each other's numbers and stuff like that. Yeah,
(03:50):
it's that, but the short term is you said something
that upset me. How do I come back to you
and go like, wait a minute. This isn't the way
I want a relationship to be. I actually want to
be close to you. And as you mentioned, if our
motivation to get close to somebody else is out of fear,
we start doing some things that, you know, either try
(04:11):
to control them or manipulate them and turn them into
enemy mode as well. When I started studying the brain science,
it was like, it seems like there's a number of
different patterns going on, and all of them turned off
the brain's attachment center, so I no longer felt connected
to you while I'm continuing to talk. So the first
(04:31):
one was sort of a simple like, I just don't
want to connect with you. The second one was, I
get really mad and I'm so upset that I forget.
I want to connect with you. And the third one
was kind of like a cold one, like, I just
want to win, you know? And all I want to
do is see you lose. And those under those three conditions,
the brain stops remembering basically shuts off. It's information that
(04:55):
you and I have a relationship that matters. And that's,
you know, when we start treating others as enemies. I mean,
most Americans are so nice, you know, they go, well,
I've got no enemies. And so we never actually know
when to practice it. But if we think, do I
have times when people don't feel on my side, like
when my kid won't put his jacket on and the
(05:16):
school bus is coming, or all those things that turn
into church splits and my ex-wife or husband or the friends,
we don't talk. Those are all the times when we're
actually relating to other people, like enemies. And now the
question is, how do we get back to remembering that
we want a relationship when we don't feel like we
want one, right?
S2 (05:36):
Yeah. So how do we remember when we have forgotten
whether it's a temporary forgotten or a long term forgotten?
How do we remember that we're all in this thing together?
S3 (05:50):
For Christians, that's a little easier path forward to figure out,
because we all started out as God's enemies and he
loved us and cared for us. He had an attachment
to us. He connected with us while we were still enemies,
and we're supposed to grow up to be like him.
And that means that we have to see whatever God
values in another person and say, you know when you've
(06:14):
forgotten why God loves you, when you've forgotten about our relationship,
I want to remind you who you really are. I
want to really connect with that part. And actually, the
more upset I am with somebody, the more I actually
want to find that good part of them inside that
God created. Right? You know, when your child won't put
(06:35):
his jacket on, that's when you want to find that obedient,
loving child that looks at you and says, yes, mommy. Okay,
I get my jacket. And it's simply because that part
is hidden that we're getting aggravated, you see. And so
to look at other people the way God does is
actually always the path back to escaping enemy mode. Like,
I've got to find the person in you that God
(06:57):
looks for, and I'm going to be like him and
go looking for that part. Even when you're being obnoxious
right now.
S2 (07:04):
Oh, I had a situation where, you know, by the
grace of God, I was able to do this, but
there was a situation with a relationship that just man,
it was just an aggravating kind of salt in the
wound kind of a relationship. And I was like, Lord,
I want to love the way that you love. And
I'm struggling right now. Will you show me how this
(07:24):
person is made in your image? And I began to
see specifically as we were in the same place at
the same time, and I would hear this person pray.
I could see what mattered to them as they prayed.
And I was like, oh, that looks like you, father,
and I love you so much. And if I love
you so much and they're made like you, then I
can find a place in that to love them.
S3 (07:46):
Exactly. It's like we're borrowing God's attachment with them, sort of,
you know, if you have a friend and they bring
somebody over to, I'd like you to meet this person
because and you realize, you know, here's an important person
to them. Like, you think of your you're a little
bit older now. Your kids are bringing home somebody that,
you know, they think maybe you'd be a good spouse,
(08:07):
you know. So I'd like you to meet so and
so you know already that you're, you're disposed to have
an attachment to this person to be more interested. Go
like I wonder what it is that means something and
to go looking for that. And that's really what we
do with God. Now, God must have seen something in
this person. And that's exactly what you were doing. Like,
(08:27):
I'm going to go find out what he was that
he was looking for. Why would he be willing to
die for this person just to have a relationship with
them when, you know, I can't see it, but it's
a spiritual connection that only works if we have an
attachment with God. Otherwise our brains attachment centre doesn't come on.
So you have to you have to connect to somebody
(08:50):
you know. From a practical point of view, I remember
with my wife and I when the kids were little,
and we'd get into enemy mode with one of the
kids and we would go, you know, take them to
the other parent and say, you take over, you've got
an attachment with them, and I'll let your attachment work
for a little while here till I can get mine
back on again, you know, and we're borrowing an attachment
(09:13):
during those times, you know, like, well, I'm sure your
mother must love you. So let's find out.
S4 (09:19):
Until I can get back there. Let's let mom.
S3 (09:22):
Find that spot again.
S4 (09:24):
Right. That's great. That's so good. We've got three.
S2 (09:30):
Main areas in our life, right? We've got our home life.
We've got our work life. We've got our social life.
In one of those main areas, I was being mistreated,
and I didn't like it. Of course I didn't. Right.
And so I didn't like it at the time that
I was being mistreated, and I would be very defensive,
and that made sense. But I also found that I
was defensive even when I wasn't being mistreated, because I
(09:53):
feared that it was going to happen. And so I
found myself in a very defensive state 24 over seven.
So it was kind of like you mentioned, like long
term enemy mode as one of the modes. How do
we remember that we were made for connection when we
find ourselves long term feeling defensive?
S3 (10:17):
Well, if the brain is good at anything, it's guessing
what's going to happen next. You know, anticipating stuff. And
so anything that might have led to us feeling attacked,
the brain is going to go like, I see this
happening again. You know, there are people around. I must
be about to get attacked. You know, there are you know,
there are women around. There's men around. There's people in
(10:39):
the store. There's whatever it is that we look at
And we're like, oh, that's happening again. I better get
ready for an attack. And so a fear based brain
will always be trying to be ready for an attack,
which means anticipatory enemy mode. I just go through life
waiting for the next attack to happen, and that will
(11:00):
go on forever. It's very, very self-contained, you know. But
if we decide we don't want to be an enemy mode,
and that's what we need, is one reason to not
want to be an enemy mode. And people don't usually
provide that. But let me ask you this question. Is
there any problem that's so bad you don't want God
(11:20):
to be with you in it?
S4 (11:21):
No.
S2 (11:22):
Heavens no! I need.
S4 (11:23):
Him.
S3 (11:24):
Right? And if your brain is an enemy mode, it
won't feel like God is with you. That's one of
the things we've found over 40 years of counseling. You
go into enemy mode, you doesn't feel like God's there.
You can't connect with them. You don't care what he's thinking.
You know someone just quote the Bible to you. You'd
tell them where to shove it. That kind of a thing, right?
(11:45):
Because it doesn't sound like somebody that's on your side.
So if you don't want to be alone in a problem,
you have to be connected with God. That means you
have to get quickly back to some connection with God.
And when you're connected with God, your brain comes out
of enemy mode. There's one other little detail about enemy
mode worth mentioning. When I am an enemy mode and
(12:07):
I've shut off my attachment system, I don't know whether
you're an enemy mode or not. The system that would
tell me whether you're my enemy or you're helping me
goes offline. So I have no idea. If you quote God,
is he attacking me or is he on my side?
If if I come to help you, it feels like
you're attacking me. You ever you ever had that happen
(12:29):
with anybody that you went to help them and and
they turned around and all but you because they figured
you were attacking. But now their sensors are out. so
we don't want to operate in that condition. We stay
connected with God, then we can pull ourselves out of it.
And so the question is, how fast can you get
back to reconnecting with God so that you can share
(12:50):
his perspective on life? And the worse the problem, the
harder it is to do, but the more we want
to to have that result. And so that's really the
practice we want to have. Let's reconnect with God. Let's
remember a time when he was close to us, a
time that he loved us. You know, that is what
gets us out of enemy mode. Uh, it doesn't necessarily
(13:11):
make the person we're dealing with any easier to deal with,
but we've got God on our side while we're doing it,
and that is rather worth having.
S2 (13:19):
It makes me think of when, you know, Jesus was
leaving the disciples and he said, I have really good news.
I'm leaving. And they're like, what? That's horrible news. And
he goes, no, no, no, I'm leaving. But I'm sending
you my Holy Spirit, who's going to counsel you and
be with you? The father will send the Holy Spirit.
And so we have the presence of God with us
right now. When situations get combative, when relationships get hard.
(13:44):
We can ask God for real time counsel. We can
ask the Spirit of God, who is in us, to
give us the wisdom that we don't have on our
own for the circumstances and the capacity to love the
person in front of us. I literally have had situations
in my life where real time, I feel like I
(14:07):
am being attacked by the person in front of me
and I will say, God, I know you're here right now.
You are with me. You're in the room. And simply
by praying that prayer and having that acknowledgement, I feel safe. Yeah, that's.
S3 (14:22):
What we're all is safe. Yeah. That's it.
S2 (14:26):
It protects me from. I don't feel the need to attack.
So here's where it goes for me, Jim. I go,
all right. You are hearing what's being said here in
the room with me. And you know everything that's true.
And I love you. And I trust you. So will
you show me what the truth is? Because I want
to know the truth, and I want to deal with
the truth.
S3 (14:45):
But I'm and sets you free.
S2 (14:47):
Yeah, I'm feeling prickly right now because I'm getting poked at.
And I don't want to miss the truth. Even though
it's being maybe delivered poorly. Um, and to be able.
S4 (14:59):
To.
S3 (14:59):
Usually from an enemy mode brain that's, you know, it's
not building a connection with the true you. It's telling
you what's wrong with you. I mean, remember when Paul
wrote to Titus and he said, teach the older women
not to be devils?
S4 (15:14):
Mhm, mhm.
S3 (15:16):
Well, a devil is someone that says that the things
that are wrong with you are the true you. And
he says the old women, older women need to learn
because their culture told them that's how it was. He says,
you know, you have to undo the cultural effects so
that the, the older women can look at you like
a mother would and say, well, you've forgotten who you
really are. And I'm going to call back the real you.
(15:37):
And this is the atmosphere that churches and families need
where we say, yeah, you're prickly right now and you've
forgotten who you are and our relationship. But let me
call you back to that. You know, it doesn't mean
what they're doing is excusable, but it does mean we're
not going to help them do it.
S5 (16:01):
So when somebody is drowning.
S2 (16:03):
They're not going to be able to rescue themselves from
the situation that they're in. And so we want to
go and we want to rescue. But oftentimes the person
who's drowning will fight the rescuer because they're in survival
mode and they will beat you up and drown you,
even though you're the one who's who's there to bring
them to safety. So that's what I picture when you
(16:26):
talk about enemy mode. But when somebody is drowning, the
person who's going to save them. Has a strategy to
approach them from behind and bring them to safety when
someone's in enemy mode in life relationally. Is there a
strategy that we can safely rescue them?
S3 (16:49):
There's a beautiful question. Shauna reminded me of all my
lifeguard training. I was a lifeguard for a while, and yes,
they said, as soon as you grab a hold of
a person who's drowning, they will try to climb up
on you and they'll put you under the water and
you'll drown, and it's guaranteed. So you dive from behind
(17:10):
the person if you can. As you come up to
them from below, you lift them so you continue lifting
them as you're going up their body. Now, this is
actually extremely close to enemy mode, because most enemy mode
is caused by somebody trying to lower my status and
my self esteem Self-esteem make me feel worse about myself.
(17:32):
So if I approach them and I lift their status
and I said, yes, your beloved child of God, and
you are somebody that God cares about and you're somebody
that means something to me and you're somebody that has
many good things to offer. And in fact, the way
I would like this conversation to turn out is a
way that you'll feel proud of yourself and I'll feel
(17:52):
proud of myself. Those are all ways of lifting somebody
into their better self, the person that God has created
them to be. Uh, reminding them who they could be
under those conditions. And as someone is lifting you, you
have less and less need to push them down. Now,
there's some people who are are malicious. They decided somewhere
(18:14):
in their adult life that they are going to make
sure everybody else loses, and they're always going to win.
Those people can't be lifted by a person like that.
They will just maliciously think, yeah, well, you're done with that.
Now let me just chop you up. So I'm not
saying this will always work, but within families, with people
we have relationships with and there's some kind of a
(18:36):
healthy attachment somewhere we can do that. And even when
we're dealing with people that are totally unknown to us,
like the store clerk, if we approach them with respect
and honor and lift them, the chances of them popping
out of enemy mode go way up. And so that's
that's the strategy. You think of it as lifting their
(18:58):
status to the status of, you know, you're a child
of God. And I want you to remember that and
find it. That's the status that God offers everybody. And
if we try to lower someone's status, they just go
more and more into enemy mode and fight harder. And again,
their their career enemy mode people are sociopaths is in
(19:19):
that category. So sociopaths don't care about anything other than winning.
And there's really quite a few of them around. So
just because there's a good strategy doesn't mean it'll work
for everybody. And, you know, some people really are out
to harm you. And by the way, it doesn't lift
their status to help them harm you.
S4 (19:38):
Mhm.
S2 (19:38):
Okay. Speak more about that.
S3 (19:41):
Yeah. When they get to stand in front of God
and judgment. Uh, are they going to be glad that
we helped them help harm other people, including us, or
will they wish that we had done something to stop
them if we could? And so actually lifting someone's status
may mean we're not going to let you get away
(20:03):
with hurting people. It's not just a matter of we
become passive and let them just be wonderful. They're not. Yeah. What?
We're going to help them, if possible, have less judgment
to face when it comes along. And we're not going
to participate in their, uh, enemy mode. And that's, I think,
very important to keep in mind. Otherwise people go like,
(20:24):
how am I supposed to be friendly? Or just whatever
with these people who are out to harm me? Like, no,
that's not, that's not it. We're not going to let
them get away with being successful enemies if we can.
That's not God's plan for any. Peter says a lot
about that in first and second Peter, but we probably
don't have time to talk about that right at the moment.
S2 (20:47):
I'm reading a book in this analogy was used and
it just made so much sense. But she said, you know,
if your neighbor's house was burning down, you wouldn't say, well,
I'm not going to go over there and knock on
the door in the middle of the night. You wouldn't
go over there and say, I'm not going to knock
on the door in the middle of the night because
they'll be mad that I woke them up. No. You
(21:08):
don't care about waking them up, because if you don't,
they're going to burn in the fire.
S3 (21:14):
Mhm.
S2 (21:15):
That's that seems to apply to what you're saying.
S3 (21:18):
Yeah. There's a sort of a simple sort of touching
story for me. My mother developed dementia before she died,
and so she was doing some things that were not
in her or anyone's really best interest. She, you know,
got a little enemy modish around the place, you know,
got agitated and stuff like that. And I regularly did
(21:39):
things that she didn't like. But as I was thinking
about it, I said, you know, in 50 years, or
actually whenever it is she dies, which isn't going to
be 50 years, will she thank me that I let
her and her demented mind get away with that? Or
will she say, I wish Jim had stopped me from
doing that? Uh, she'll get mad at me now, and
(22:01):
she won't like it. But as soon as she's got
clarity before God, she'll go like, I'm sure glad he
didn't go along. With what? You know, my upset mind was.
And I think that's sort of a metaphor for dealing
with all of humankind. You know, we really don't see
things from God's perspective. And and people will get upset
with us, um, you know, we're not talking about just
(22:23):
keeping everybody happy. We're talking about that reality. That means
I'm helping you find the person God created you to be.
And I'm helping me be the person I was created
to be. The Ephesians 210 said to do those good
works that God prepared ahead of time, that you should
walk in them. And this is what we do for
(22:43):
each other.
S2 (22:48):
My daughter is visiting from the Czech Republic and she
brought a new game with her. It's a card game
and she was teaching us to play. And the goal
of the game is to work together to accomplish the
specific goal that you're given. So I have certain cards,
you have certain cards, and if we work with what
we have, can we accomplish the task in this round?
(23:08):
So she's explaining the rules. And of course, you know,
family members are trying to wrap their mind around it
and they're like, ah, okay, how do I win? And
she said, we win if we accomplish the goal. And
it just was. So I thought, man, take a snapshot
of this moment, Shauna, because this is bigger than this
(23:30):
card game. That's so often our orientation. Okay, here I am.
Here we are. How do I win? Instead of orienting
towards working together to accomplish a goal, is that what
you're talking about when you refer to third element of
the enemy mode?
S3 (23:51):
Yes, exactly. We win when we become the people of God,
the people that God created us to be. That was
his goal from the beginning of the story to the
end of the story. He's creating a people. We're supposed
to help each other become that. And when we do,
we win by developing the identity God had in mind
for us. Uh, if you take attachment out of the brain,
(24:14):
the only thing it wants to do is win. And
oddly enough, the human brain calculates whether I win by
making you lose. So think of two brothers are wrestling
with each other. When do you win? You win when
your brother loses, you think about Congress. When do you win?
You win when the other party loses. And so very often,
(24:36):
the very thing you want, you give up in order
to make the other person lose. And so this idea
of winning is actually inside the brain. It's calculated based
on making other people lose. So here's a game that
makes you think of, well, what if we actually look
at what it meant to win, which is we all
end up where we want to be. And that's a
(24:58):
very different way of thinking of winning than the competitive mind.
When it's an enemy mode, it just makes you want
to lose. And so this will eliminate a lot of
different situations in the world, I think.
S4 (25:12):
Yeah, that is so good.
S2 (25:13):
And this is just coming to me real time. But
as we were playing the game, the whole game is
in check. And so my daughter had to translate for us.
So even as we have the cards, we we weren't
always necessarily sure of what that card meant. And so
we had to rely very heavily on her to translate
for us. And I just think, man, isn't that just
(25:33):
like the Holy Spirit, right? Like, this is this way
of living and loving the way that God created us to.
We need the help of the Holy Spirit. We need
a translator to help us to.
S4 (25:45):
See this.
S2 (25:45):
Is a very different way to live.
S3 (25:48):
Mhm. That's what it's all about. You got it Shauna.
S1 (25:53):
Thanks for letting Barry and Shauna walk the real life
journey with you. The content from the Period Shauna podcast
comes from their live show Barry and Shalom Mornings on
89.3 Moody Radio, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Reach out to us
by texting 809 68 8930 and please subscribe.
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