The Joy Switch - Chris Coursey

Need help with your relationships? Why not flip the switch on your brain's secret circuit? Or some of us, we just shut down. We kind of just turn inward and we freeze. We're just not a good version of the person that God created me to be. And the good news is we don't have to stay there.

We can return to joy. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . If you feel connected with your spouse one day and disconnected the next, it's easy to become distant.

But what if there were a secret switch to flip to fix that distance? You'll find out more about that as we welcome Chris Corsi to the program. Chris was with us a couple of years ago talking about the four habits of joy-filled marriages. Today on this summer best of conversation, we are featuring the joy switch. How your brain's secret circuit affects your relationships and how you can activate it.

You can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Gary, did you know you had a joy switch? Well, Chris, I don't know that I do. But to be honest with you, I am joyful, so maybe I have it turned on. I hope so. Looking forward to our conversation about this. Listen, in today's world, we need joy, okay?

Yes. Amen. Well, I told Chris before we started the program that I've been to the hardware store and haven't been able to find it.

So maybe I'm looking on the wrong aisle. Let me introduce him. Chris Corsi is an ordained minister, pastoral counselor, author, and speaker. He and his wife, Jan, lead and design the Thrive training program that uses brain-based exercises to train leaders, families, and communities in the 19 relational skills and the Immanuel lifestyle. Again, our featured resource is the book, The Joy Switch.

You can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Well, Chris, welcome back to Building Relationships. Thank you.

It's great to be here. Well, tell us about The Joy Switch. Where did you discover it, and how did you discover it? Well, I started out my ministry career as a pastor, and I also worked with people coming out of a history of severe trauma and abuse. And when you come alongside of friends like that, you're very motivated to find tools and resources to help them grow and help them get on their feet. And I came across a fellow by the name of Jim Wilder, who was in the process of taking all this great brain research out of UCLA at the time that was coming out in the 90s.

And what Jim was doing was basically translating it into English, so to speak, because it was a very dense research. But this amazing pattern started to come out as we were looking at this research, which basically said on the right side of your brain, in the right hemisphere is a progressively integrated and it's a closely connected circuit, kind of like a circuit breaker. And this circuit can go on or off. And when it's on, people are going to be able to feel some joy and hold on to joy.

But when this goes off, it's just not pretty. We're not in our relational sweet spot. That's usually when strong feelings are present. And so when I started to learn this with a number of my colleagues, we started to look at, hey, if we have this switch in our brain, we've got to figure out how to help people be able to turn it on and keep it on. And that started this whole journey for me over 20 years ago of working and training people so that they can live with joy and hold on to their joy when the going gets tough. Well, does this joy switch work in all relationships, even our relationship with God? Yes.

Well, you know what? This is the good news that in many ways, this switch is like a relational engine. It has basically four components to it.

And just like a car engine, these components need to work together and the car will go. And so this is this part of the brain is basically what helps us to interact with other relational beings, both humans, but also with God. This is really exciting that we have a God who's glad to be with us.

And in a sense, the circuit is just very similar to how your eyes use the visual cortex in your brain to process visual information. Well, this relational circuit is really the the circuit breaker that helps us stay connected with people. And it helps us in our prayer times and our walk with the Lord. It really helps us to hold on to God's peace and have a sense that the God who is with us, the king of the universe is with us.

The Good Shepherd is with us in the good or the bad times. And so when this circuit is off, we basically feel disconnected from God. We feel like our prayers are bumping on the ceiling and coming back and we just feel like God is distant. Well, we know from the Bible that Jesus is always with us.

He'll never leave us nor forsake us. So as people learn to live with this, basically this circuit breaker being online, we have this sense of God, the God who is near and not far away. And we kind of see this in the Psalms where the Psalmist is in some kind of distress.

Things are going wrong. People want to hurt him. And in the midst of his distress, he's crying out to God and then something changes and he remembers being with God and worshipping God in the temple. And by the end of the Psalm, the Psalmist is praising God and thanking God for being with him right there. Now, nothing changed about the Psalmist's circumstances in that moment, but what did change is the Psalmist had a sense of the God who is with me and this God who's with us is glad to be with us. And so it does go a long way to learn how to be relational with the living God in our prayer times and our walk.

Well, for those who have read the Psalms, I'm sure we're all identifying with what you're saying because many of the Psalms are exactly like you described them. So your hope is to help people stay relational and grow in joy. What do you mean by stay relational?

Yeah. So, you know, part of this circuit is really what helps us to be the best version of ourselves. Like this is where we are able to reflect Christ in the good times and the bad times. And so when this circuit is on, we stay curious about what people are thinking or feeling. When the circuit's off, we don't really care what people are thinking or feeling.

We sometimes just wish they would stop talking. But when the relational circuit is on, we can also feel appreciation and I call appreciation package joy. So we can remember God's gifts. We can practice gratitude and we can actually feel it when we think about it. And with that circuit goes offline, we can't really feel appreciation because our brain is way too busy amplifying distress or focusing on what's wrong or why we're mad. And another quality we'll see is we're kind and we want to be kind toward one another when the circuit's working. We feel like being kind and tender with weaknesses and gentle and patient. However, when the circuit goes off, being kind is kind of the last thing we feel like doing in those moments. And the last is just we have eye contact. So when the when the relational circuit is on and working, we look people in the eyes. We care about what's going on in them. And when our circuit goes off, unfortunately, we don't really look at people in the eye.

Or if we do, it's usually to blast them or to say things we wish that we could take back. So part of being relational is is being able to stay in the moment, treat one another how we would want to be treated and have a sense also of joy and some of God's peace in a moment. Those are all qualities we'll see when we're in our relational sweet spot. As you describe that, I think all of us think, yeah, that's where I want to be. So let's define joy, because a lot of people have a different definition from what you might have on joy. So what are your thoughts?

Yeah, this is a very important question. So one of the things we now know from from brain science is the God actually put a part of the brain. He created this part of the brain where it grows in response to what I call glad to be together moments. And so when you walk into a room and someone's face lights up to see you, you hear it in their voice, you see it in their body language.

This part of the brain is called the part of the prefrontal cortex on the right side. It actually grows throughout the lifespan when there's that genuine glad to be togetherness. And now a lot of people kind of confuse joy with happiness. So happiness is basically circumstantial while joy is relational.

So we feel happy when a new movie comes out or when we purchase a new computer. That's happiness. And it is based on circumstances, whereas joy is very much relational. So if we do a fun word study in the Bible on joy, you'll see the context is often this very relational glad to be togetherness.

Whereas at one point, Jesus is praying for the for the disciples that they would have his joy in John 15 and that their joy would be full. So we can see joy as a relationship and we are glad to be together, no matter if we're going through a good time or a bad time. This joy is the sense that we're not alone in what's going on for someone is with us.

They're glad to be with us. And as far as your brain's concerned, joy is a high energy response. So when infants experience joy, when they look at look at mommy's face and daddy's face, you see their body language change. You'll see their face light up. You'll hear the sounds of joy.

You'll see there this kind of spark of energy. And when infants have had enough joy, they as a reflex will look away for a moment to kind of catch their breath. So joy is kind of a relational transaction where we're just sharing glad to be togetherness.

And that's both with the living God as well as with our family and our friends and our communities. Chris, when you were describing somebody who has a connection, a relational connection with others, I think of some people that I've known through the years who I felt like they've had a diminished relational connection. They don't look you in the eye. And this is not some clinical thing. It's just kind of the way that they are. At least I don't think it's a clinical thing.

Have you met those people? And what do you say about that situation? I like to think of joy as a teeter totter. And when joy levels go high, pain levels, my ability to handle pain and difficulty will increase so I can suffer well.

And so joy does very much give us strength. And you can see often even in my body language, you can see if someone is coming across as a joyful person or if someone's kind of poked a hole in their joy balloon. And so what I would do is just very purposefully, I would try to share appreciation with them. The good news is a little bit of joy can go a long way. So I would, you know, I wouldn't force it, but just very genuinely convey that I'm glad to be with them.

And I would maybe say some of the qualities I enjoy about them. In fact, one time I was at the grocery store and the young man working the cash register did not look me in the eye, just looked and sounded like he was having a bad day. And so as he was checking out my groceries, I said, you know what? I really appreciate your help today.

Thank you. I'm glad I'm glad to be able to be with you here. And in just a matter of moments, he looked up at me with this confused expression. He said, do I know you?

I said, no, not at all. But I'm I'm just glad to be with you here. And I really appreciate your help today. And as I walked away, I heard him greet the person behind me with this very joyful response.

He looked the person in the eyes, his face lit up. You could see the difference. Just a little bit of joy can go a long way. And it's not forced. We don't fake it till we make it. It's just very genuinely coming across authentically. I'm glad to be with you. And what can we appreciate about one another that that little bit can actually go a long way? So I hear you saying that we can actually increase the joy of another person just by being friendly to them and acknowledging them.

This is good news that, you know, in a sense, I think one of the great ways we can reflect the God that we love and that we serve is by sharing the good stuff. And as we now know about the brain, joy is the best fuel for the brain. So it's not fear.

It's not anger. It's joy. And so when neuroscientists are saying joy is foundational for the human brain, we pay attention to that because the Bible has a lot to say about joy. And so one of the best ways we share joy is visually. So how we come across to others, what am I wearing on my face? What is my voice tone conveying?

And of course, what are my words saying? So we're very purposeful about connecting with people and sharing some joy and some appreciation with them. One of the great ways to increase joy is through telling stories of joy. So when we tell stories of those moments where we were enjoying God's gifts or just those special moments where we watched a sunset together, when you share those stories of joy, your brain responds as though you relive the moment all over again. So all the feel good chemicals are released when you tell these joy stories. And what it does for your listener is it also sparks joy in them. And so joy is a gift that keeps on giving. So on the other side, on the flip side, what happens when the brain's relational circuit is turned off?

Yeah. So this is where we've kind of fallen out of our relational sweet spot, as I say in the book. And I paint a picture in the book that in these moments when our brain's relational circuit goes off, we know one thing's going to happen is joy will feel elusive. It's hard to hold on to glad to be together.

Joy. In a sense, our brain, our relational brain goes into an airplane mode. So if like you if you take your phone and put it in airplane mode, there's no sending or receiving signals.

There's no updating. And so when we're interacting with people, when our brain is in airplane mode, joy is not part of that equation. We're probably focused on pain or problems or we blast others with our anger or any other negative emotion. And my my friend Jim Wilder calls this state enemy mode because the people we normally enjoy, they actually feel like enemies. So while I normally enjoy interacting with my wife and my sons and I soak up all the joy I can from those interactions, when my brain's in enemy mode, I might be annoyed by my children. I might think, oh, I just wish they would go away or they're being too loud.

I wish they would just, you know, stop talking. So our brain goes into this kind of problem solving mode. We don't really want to listen to what others feel. Our mind is locked on to the things that's upsetting. We don't want to be connected to the people we normally enjoy or we just want to get away or we we want to fight and argue. Or some of us, we just shut down. We kind of just turn inward and we freeze. So when we're when our brain is in this enemy or airplane mode, we're just not a good version of the person that God created me to be.

And the good news is we don't have to stay there. We can return to joy. So what are some of the common reasons that the relational circuit goes offline? You know, one of the most common reasons is anything that causes a strong emotional response.

So it can be my spouse's voice tone. So I can even if it's just the wrong tone of voice that might cause my joy to leave, so to speak, and cause my brain relational circuit to turn off. Fatigue is a common reason. It's hard to keep this relational circuit on. I'm just tired. If I didn't sleep well the night before, everything feels big. Everything feels hard.

So fatigue would be a very common one. It's pretty much anything that causes my brain to respond to respond in a negative emotion. So I might be driving and having a delightful time with my family and then somebody pulls out in front of me on the road or maybe flashes a hand gesture at me. Suddenly my relational brain can turn off. And instead of enjoying the peace and the joy with my family, my brain is now in problem solving mode. So I'm focused on what's upsetting and I'm feeling those big feelings and it's in enemy mode. Your brain just kind of, in a sense, makes the upset bigger.

So I'm just stuck in being mad at other people and there's nothing fun about that. Yeah, that's for sure. Well, you alluded to this earlier, but let's talk about how this relational circuit impacts our spiritual life.

What have you found about that? Yes, this is really exciting that what we now know about the brain and particularly the relational areas in the brain is our brain is more changed by who we love than simply by the information I know. So what this means is the people that I love or the God that I love can have the most impact on my character and my identity. So staying relational with God is a sense of what the Bible says to pray without ceasing. So this is actually kind of a two way street where I'm interacting with the living God in an ongoing basis.

And now when my brain is offline or in enemy mode, I am more vulnerable to distortions or lies about myself, about God. It just feels like God might be against me rather than for me, or I might just feel like God's mad at me. And so one of the common responses I see in people who are interacting with the living God in their relational sweet spot, 90% of the responses are the sense that Jesus is glad to be with me. And it's shocking for people like, wow, why is Jesus glad to be with me?

I just feel like he is delighting in me because they expect him to be mad or angry or disappointed. So staying relational in our spiritual life means that our relationship with the Lord is alive, it's interactive, and it's filled with peace and joy that he's the Prince of Peace. And we turn to him whenever we lose that peace. So what are some of the things that we might do on a regular basis to be conscious of that relationship with God? Well, this is another exciting thing that, you know, when we come to God in our prayer time, for example, one of the best things that we can do is start out thanking God for his gifts. So the Bible says that we should enter his gates with thanksgiving and enter his courts with praise so we can be thankful to him and we can bless his name in Psalm 100 verse 4. So very simply, we can just add this crucial element into our prayer times of being able to thank God for his gifts and his presence and the good things in my life.

Now, obviously, life is not always fun and joyful. So when we start out thanking God for the good stuff, what it does is it actually helps keep our relational brain on so that now I can share my sadness or share whatever it is that I'm going through with God and have a sense that he sees me, he hears me, he understands. It's kind of that sense that Jesus is with me in this and I'm not alone. And so I often encourage people to just create an appreciation list and share some of those things with God when you talk with him or when you read the scriptures. It's a great time to just include some joy. What are we thankful for? What has been good in my life recently? And then for those things that's robbing my joy, I can now interact with him about that and find his peace in those areas where there's just not a whole lot of peace. So I hear you saying that when we may be struggling with life in any area, and consequently, a sense of being removed from God, that consciously thanking God for various and sundry things that are realities that we have every day is a way of turning the relational switch back on with God.

That's exactly right. And I'll encourage people to, you know, even within the last 24 hours as a regular habit before bed, what was good from your day? Where did you see or experience some of God's gifts? And when I'm in a lot of pain, that might be the last thing I want to do in that moment.

Right? Because my brain, if my brain is in enemy mode, I'm focused on and I'm feeling a lot of the hard stuff and a lot of negative emotions. But what we find is one, sharing that and expressing our gratitude with God helps us get in our relational sweet spot. And when we're in our relational sweet spot, that actually gives my brain the resources to better navigate whatever's going on. And in those times where I'm interacting with the Lord in my prayer time, when I'm in that relational sweet spot, I'm more likely to have a sense that He's with me, just like the psalmist, that even though I'm in this mess of a situation, I know that God is with me. I know it logically, but I also know it experientially that the living God is here with me. I'm not alone, even though I'm going through this dark and scary valley. Someone is with me. And it's a great way to really begin and even end our prayer times.

It's very practical. What I hear you saying there is perhaps what the Scriptures and Paul meant when he said, in everything, give thanks. Interesting, he didn't say for everything, but he said in the midst of everything, give thanks. And that's essentially what you're saying, right? You look for things that you can be thankful for, even though what we tend to see is all the negative things that are around us.

You're exactly right. And in a sense, it's creating some helpful habits in our prayer times and in our walk with the Good Shepherd, so that in everything, no matter what's going on, we can still give thanks. For one, I think God enjoys hearing from us on the ways that we enjoy His gifts.

But it also blesses us, ironically, because it helps us to be able to be in our relational sweet spot, so that prayer times, we feel connected with the living God who's always with us. Our program is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. You can find us online at FiveLoveLanguages.com. There you can take an easy assessment of your love language and see our featured resource today. It's a book by our guest, Chris Corsi, and it's titled The Joy Switch. How your brain's secret circuit affects your relationships and how you can activate it.

Just go to FiveLoveLanguages.com. Chris, in your book, you talk about the peace test to better understand if we are relational. What is the peace test? One of the ways that we learn to recognize whether I'm in relational mode or whether I'm in this non-relational mode, what we can call enemy mode, is to start paying attention to, am I feeling peaceful? And so the lack of peace is a clear sign that I'm usually relationally offline.

I don't feel peace and I'm focused on the negative stuff and my heart's racing and I'm worrying and basically the peace is gone. And so I use the peace test, which stands, the P stands for pay attention to my body. So I just notice how's my body right now and just, you know, is there tension in my body? Because my body is the canvas for my brain.

And so I can learn a lot about how I'm doing just by noticing for a moment my body. And then the E is for evaluate my breathing. So when I can take what I call deep belly breaths, what that does is that helps, in a sense, it resets your nervous system. Just taking deep breaths.

Some people like to lay on the floor and put a put a book on their belly and watch their belly go up and down. And so I just pause and notice, well, how's my breathing? Is it tense or relaxed? And the A in peace is for attention and focus. So I notice, you know, what am I thinking about right now? What has my attention? Am I thinking about some of the good stuff or is my brain locked on to something that's upsetting or something that's robbing my peace? And then I would go to the C in peace for calm or busy thoughts. So are my thoughts calm right now or are they busy? Like one of the worst things for me is laying in bed at night when I'm ready to go to sleep and my thoughts are just racing and focused on something that was hard or upsetting from my day. And I think we all could probably relate to that, just tossing and turning. So for me, that's a good sign. I don't have calm thoughts right now.

They're actually very busy and they're they're focused on something that's upsetting me. And the E in peace is easing muscle tension. So what I can do is I take those deep breaths.

Just try to relax your shoulders, maybe roll your neck a little bit, straighten out your back, just pausing to notice what's happening in my body. And just that little pause right there can tell us a lot of, wow, I'm I feel like I'm still relational. I'm holding on to peace. I feel relaxed. I feel anchored, so to speak.

Or if peace is absent, that's a good sign that it's time to pause and get back into relational mode where peace is present. I think all of us can identify with what you were saying about those nights when you're trying to go to sleep and a thousand things are on your mind. You're tossing and you're turning. It's the worst. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's not always because we're not in touch with God. Sometimes I'm hearing you say it's we're not in touch with our body and our and our brain.

You're exactly right. I mean, we for the most part, we don't really pay attention to our body unless we see something we don't like about our body or something's just not working properly. So I have I have a back injury, so I've learned to pay attention to just how my back is doing.

And, you know, when those aches start to happen, I grab the ice pack or the heating pack and I'll do some stretching exercises. So just we're learning to live in our body, in a sense, to hold on to God's peace and to be that reflection of Jesus to my family, to my friends and within my communities. Yeah. Now, you also talk about action steps and you use the word CARS, C-A-R-S, to turn us back to a relational mode.

Talk about those steps. Yeah. So CARS stands for Connecting, Appreciating, Resting and what I call Shalom, my body. So connecting is just where if I'm relationally offline and I realize, wow, I need to I need to get back into relational mode here because I don't I don't like being here for very long. Or maybe an interaction with my wife is just not going well and I see that I'm in enemy mode. So connecting would just be you just pause and you might reach out to a friend. You might actually in your prayer times just, you know, journal to Jesus or talk to Jesus. The goal with connecting is just where I can feel seen, heard and understood. And so when we connect with people, we all we all probably have people that we can turn to in a crisis and we know they're going to help us find peace and find some joy in the midst of the strain.

Or we might have some people if we turn to them in our crisis, we know they're going to make it worse and they're going to help us find more things that we should be afraid of. So connecting is just being able to, you know, whether it's connecting with Jesus or connecting with the with the family member or friend where we feel connected and seen and validated. And appreciation just is that packaged joy. So we're remembering God's gifts. These are the moments which make us smile.

So when we remember appreciation, that is one of the best ways to get your relational brain back online. So just again, it might be that sunset. It might be a date night that I had with my wife.

It might be a fun outing with my sons. And I just reflect back on that moment. That helps my relational brain wake up and then rest is just that relational pause. It's a chance to unwind and catch our breath. So joy, high energy joy should always lead to low energy rest. And so just as that infant will look away for a moment from mommy's face when she's had enough joy.

That's the cue. It's time to take a breather. So we all need rest and quieting. So it's a chance to take those deep breaths. We rest so that we can build more joy.

So it's a relational timeout, we might say. And that little bit of quieting can help us reset and kind of feel like we're back in the relational space. And then S is a specific set of exercises my colleagues and I call Shalom My Body, where the Shalom My Body exercises are very simple exercises that are designed to quiet my brain, quiet my body. And one of them, for example, is yawning. We tend to think of yawning as a rude thing to do in public. But yawning, we now know, has a lot of benefits. Yawning is good for your nervous system. Olympic athletes will often yawn before a big race. So just taking a few moments, yawning. What that does is that allows your relational brain to have a little reset and then you can feel more relationally anchored. Just, you know, you might want to help the people around you interpret like I'm yawning, not because I'm bored with what we're doing here.

I'm just yawning to quiet myself. Those are just some very practical ways. Some people might want to go out for a walk in nature or sit on the back deck and just read for a little while. Just whatever it is that helps you be able to get back in your relational sweet spot.

Yeah. When you talked about rest and pausing, I thought about walking because for me, you know, the idea of taking a little mini vacation, which you're in the midst of my counseling and being, you know, all the pain of talking to people and so forth. I'll just say to my assistant, I'm going to take a mini vacation, which means I'm going to walk to the other end of the building and I'm going to walk back, you know, just to get away from the pressure and the pain and all that I've been a part of. And it helps. It really helps because on the way of walking to the other end of the building, I might see other people.

I may not see other people. It just depends, you know, but just that little vacation away from the task of the moment. It's really helpful. I like that example. That's a great example of just, yeah, just having a chance to come up for air and how you can feel more refreshed after that short walk.

That's a great suggestion. I never thought about the yawning. I do yawn, but I've never done it intentionally. But I hear you. I do feel better when I yawn. I have to admit that.

That's a new one for me there. Yes, it is. It's surprisingly how much better we can feel.

Normally, we feel a little more focused and clear in our head, but you do have to let people around you know, because we've all been trained, if somebody's yawning, I'm probably boring you. Yeah. Well, what are some other of those shalom body things you can do?

Yeah. So one of the other things we do, it actually has to do with just it's called stimulating your vagal nerve. We now know that this is important nerve from the at the base of your brain, which connects many of your organs. And it actually controls how fast your heart is beating. So one of the things that also helps people is to be able to just gently knock right beneath your collarbone. If you just gently kind of knock on your that little space just beneath your collarbone, just alternate knocks about the pace of your heart beating and take some deep breaths. That's a very good quieting exercise I have.

I demonstrate these exercises on my YouTube page, which is just Chris Corsi at Thrive Today. There's there's a number of exercises that you can do, but just even just kind of tapping beneath your collarbone, that muscle muscle on each side. If you just alternate taps while you take some deep breaths, we know that that is part of stimulating that vagal nerve, which can, you know, have a very quieting, peaceful response, especially when we're maybe we're losing it or we're on the verge of losing it. That's a time to just even if you have to take a few moments to step aside and some privacy, do a little yawning, take those deep breaths and even just a little bit of knocking beneath your collarbone where that vagal nerve basically reaches to the surface of your skin. That right there can be a surprising calming effect just to help us get relational. I can hear some of our listeners thinking, what was that? What was that YouTube site again?

Yes, it's so it's Chris Corsi, just C-O-U-R-S-E-Y, Chris Corsi at Thrive Today, just Thrive Today. And you'll see a video that Shalom My Body. And it's a series of exercises.

You can do them all with me. And the key is to notice how do you feel after you do these, you know, Shalom is just Hebrew for peace, peaceful. So how do you feel after doing some peaceful exercises? And I like what you said earlier about walking.

Even walking can be a very peaceful exercise just to get up, move around a little bit, take some deep breaths. And you should feel a shift where I'm not so angry. I feel like I have a little more peace than I did before. I feel a little more anchored in this storm.

It's very practical, but a little bit goes a long way when we're trying to quiet ourselves. Chris, one of the things that we've been emphasizing throughout the whole program is this whole matter of being relational, that when we are relating to people in a positive way, we do have a sense of joy, a sense of peace. What are some of the roadblocks that prevent us from staying relational?

Yes, in my book I talk about five common roadblocks. And the roadblocks, the first roadblock is anything that feels like a threat to me. I call them threats to self.

So these are just the things that activate your brain survival circuit. So that's when that bad driver pulls out in front of you and it takes your breath away and it startles you, or somebody jumps out at you and scares you. Anything that makes you feel threatened in any way, shape or form can quickly put your brain into this non-relational enemy mode, because basically enemy mode is just there to solve a problem. It's not relational. Enemy mode is just I'm trying to make something stop.

And so the survival circuit in one tenth of a second kicks into gear. So anything that makes you feel threatened, you want to pause and take some deep breaths and calm down. But the other thing that makes you go relational offline would be unprocessed pain. So this is just unresolved pain from my past. Sometimes that unresolved pain doesn't just go away.

It actually sneaks into the present. And so some of my reactions in the moment are bigger than they might be otherwise. So this is where it's really good to just stay focused if there's anything that comes up that's something unresolved, kind of I call them a landmine from your past.

This is a good opportunity to get some help to disarm those landmines so that they don't keep robbing you. And the third roadblock is loss. Feeling alone is the worst conditions for my brain to process pain. So anything that makes me feel alone creates this really tough conditions for me to stay relational. So that might be I feel rejected. I feel abandoned.

Anything that just makes me feel isolated. So the goal is God created us for relationships. So we want to really work on those relationships. And the next roadblock is my physical needs.

So this is just with anything that involves tending to my body and my personal needs. So, for example, my wife, she can easily lose her relational circuit when her blood sugar crashes. And so we've learned on road trips, I can even tell by the tone of her voice when her blood sugar is crashing. I'll say, honey, do you need a snack? Let me get some fruit.

Let me let me grab a granola bar for you. So we're very just kind of in tune with with those kinds of things. For me, it's my back pain. So just if I if my wife sees you, she could usually tell by the look on my face when my back pain is increasing.

She'll say, honey, can I get you a nice pack? So, yeah, anything that has to do with with our bodies can really when things go wrong, can put us into enemy mode. And the last is missing relational skills. So there's important skills that we learn, especially those first three years of life. These relational skills are what help us to recover when things go wrong and it helps us to navigate the hills and the valleys of life. So one relational skill might be quieting. That's that's an important skill my brain has to learn. And if if I don't quiet, then over time it's going to be very easy for me to lose my relational circuit because I my brain's not getting that rest that I need. Or another skill will be returning to joy from my anger. And so when I get mad, if I don't know how to recover from my anger, then I can be stuck in my anger.

There's nothing fun about that. So we want we can actually purposefully learn relational skills that help us to be able to be our relational selves in the good time as well as the bad time so that we are more Christlike. You mentioned your wife a moment ago. And let's talk a little bit about how this relates in a marriage. You know, what if you are in a relational state, but your spouse is not the kind of offline?

What might we do to help them get back online? Yeah, so few things are as difficult to navigate at times in our relationships where we might be relational and our spouse is relationally offline. And I encourage couples that the first thing you want to do is what they tell you on an airplane, if there's going to be turbulence, you put on your oxygen mask. So if I'm in relational space, my wife is not.

My goal is before trying to do anything. My goal is to stay relational. It's very easy if somebody else is in enemy modus.

It could be easy to go into enemy mode with them. So just put on your oxygen mask, keep your relational circuit on. And what I find is helpful is being able to validate and comfort. So if my spouse, if my wife is just not doing well, validation is saying what you see. So I might say, well, honey, it sounds like you've had a really bad day.

I'm sorry to hear that. So I validate her and then comfort. After we validate, we say what we see.

I say, honey, I'm really sorry to know that this has been so difficult for you. Comfort is then, OK, what helps when you feel this way? Now, oftentimes we try to comfort without validating and it just feels like we're trying to fix it or we're minimizing them.

So the validation is crucial. Say what you see and then, OK, honey, what helps when you feel this way right now? Do you need some space?

Can I get you a glass of water? Do you need, will it help if I listen? And so we don't try to fix it because inadvertently we will minimize our spouse and then our spouse will not feel seen and understood. It just doesn't go well. So we stay relational and we join others by validating and comforting and being a really good listener so that they don't feel so alone in their distress. It's one of the best gifts we can give our spouse is to be relationally present and sit with them and listen while they share their hearts. And that creates this connection in the midst of the hard stuff.

I like that. And I think every married couple have experienced what you're talking about, you know, where you're relational, they're not relational. And by nature, we tend to either clam up or walk away or lash out and we make things worse. Yes, we do.

And there's nothing fun about that. Yeah. Well, what about parents? How does all this relate to parents and their response to their children and relating to their children, correcting and guiding our children? How does all of this work there?

Yes. So this is really exciting for me because I have two young sons. And so what I hope to happen with this book is basically to provide a language for people that we as parents can learn, am I in relational mode or am I in enemy mode? Because I can predict anytime I'm in enemy mode with my children, I'm probably not going to handle the situation very well.

I'm probably going to come across as impatient, rigid and even just become very snappy with my children. So in our household, we have this language and we actually have kind of code names. Whenever it appears that somebody might be relationally offline, my sons came up with the creative little idea to come up with everybody's favorite fruit. So, for example, my code word was Apple. So if they see that I'm shifting or slipping into enemy mode, they might say, Daddy, Apple or Daddy, how about a piece of apple pie? And that's the code word for me. OK, I need to pause and get relational or my sons are strawberry and blueberry. So if we see my one son is getting very hyper and normally when he gets super duper hyper, he gets himself in some kind of trouble. So we might say, hey, buddy, how about a strawberry shortcake or would you say strawberry?

And that's his cue. It's amazing. It's kind of like Pavlov's dogs. Because when we say the fruit, they will automatically reflexively just take a deep breath and quiet themselves. So I know as as a parent, I'm going to be a better version of myself with less regrets when I parent relationally with my relational circuit online. Any time I slip into enemy mode, enemy mode makes problems bigger than relationships. And so when it comes to correcting, a very helpful thing is first we get relational. So just as we don't let the sun set on our anger, we don't want to try to correct our children when we're in enemy mode. We're just not going to handle it well.

It's going to make problems worse and it's going to leave our children feeling like roadkill. So before I correct, I'll actually take pause and just get make sure I'm in a good relational place and then make sure they're in a relational place so that we can talk about consequences to whatever it was that needs to be corrected. So having a language and really practicing it will go a long way that if you or your children are in enemy mode, let's get relational. However you however it works best for each person, let's get relational and then let's correct. And for me, I even demonstrate when I am offline, I will walk them through my process like, well, daddy's really offline right now.

I better take some deep breaths here and I'm going to quiet myself and I'm glad I'm here with you guys. I can already feel that my relational circuits coming back on because I'm not alone here. So I'll sometimes just walk them through my process so that I can model it for them. And we just we pay attention. Are we in relational mode?

Are we in enemy mode? And we will have more satisfaction in our parenting when we're when we're operating from our relational place and we're helping our children return to a relational space. It's it's a win win combination. And they're far more likely to respond positively to our discipline, right?

Yes, they are. I've found it's been a night and day, night and day situation. If I if I'm interacting with them when I'm in a relational space, they yeah, I'm going to be better having their attention and being able to really mirror back what it is I'm trying to convey. It's it is just a win win when we're relational and when we help our children get back into their relational sweet spot. That's similar to what I often suggest that parents wrap the discipline in the child's love language. Yeah, that is if words of affirmation is their language before you administer the discipline, you give them a positive statement about them, then you the discipline and then you give them another positive word. So when they feel loved by you, they're far more likely to receive the discipline as being yes, this is right. I deserve this.

This should happen. Well, Chris, let me thank you for being with us today. This has been fascinating.

This is a little different type of discussion than we sometimes have on this program. But I think that our listeners can identify with a lot of what you're saying, and I think they heard enough that's going to motivate them to want to read this book, because I think they're going to find a lot of practical help here. So thanks for being with us today. Thank you. It's been an absolute joy.

I really appreciate the time. Once again, the title of our featured resource is The Joy Switch. How your brain's secret circuit affects your relationships and how you can activate it. It's written by our guest, Chris Corsi, and you can find out more at FiveLoveLanguages.com. Coming up next week, Ray Rhodes completes our summer best of series as he tells the untold love story of Charles and Susie Spurgeon. Our thanks to Janice Todd and Steve Wick for their work today. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.