How to Change…And Make it Stick! Debra Fileta

Hey, before we get started today, let's talk small groups. Yes, because everyone at this time of year starts thinking, what small group material should I use? Yeah, we've led hundreds of groups and you got to have great material and Family Life has you covered. We have great, great material.

The art of marriage, vertical marriage, you name it, we got it. And it's on sale the month of August. You go to familylife.com slash shop and it's 25% off. And let me just say thank you to all the small group leaders. You are making a difference. Keep going.

Again, that's familylife.com slash shop and get 25% off right now. We have all these behaviors we want to change. We have all these places where we say we're stuck. But then what we're just doing is putting Band-Aids on the peripheral. We're doing external work without doing internal healing. And guess what?

That doesn't take you very far. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. I would guess every person that's ever lived has asked this question. Do you know what question it is?

No. How can I change? I want to change my life or I want to change this area of my life. I want to stop doing.

I want to start doing. At some point, I think 100% of us have asked that question. I want to change. Does the narcissist think it? I hope you're not saying I'm a narcissist. No, I'm not saying you at all. But I think you're right. I don't know if it's 100%, but most of us at least... You're supposed to agree with me. I'm sorry. I'm your partner.

Sorry. But we do think like, oh, I'm so frustrated. I want to change this, but I can't get out of it. So I think that this is definitely an area that we want to change. Well, the good news is today we're going to find out how we change. We've got the woman in the studio. Don't you think Deborah is the person?

Deborah Faleta is with us. And Deborah, we love you. I love you.

I love you too. I feel like what you're writing, what you're doing is resonating with so many people. And as we've had you on before, everything that you're talking about and writing is what we need to hear, especially today. Because you're really getting into these areas that we need healing in. Yeah, we're going into deep territory. Yeah.

We're going to make it easy. Well, I mean, this is what you do. You're a counselor. You're a podcaster. You're a speaker. You're an author.

You're a homeschool mom of four kids. I mean, seriously, how do you do all what you do? I pace myself. I don't do it all at the same time. Try to set a lot of boundaries. I honestly have to work to practice what I preach. Can you imagine if I was living unhealthy behind the scenes and trying to get people healthy? I think a lot of people do that, but you don't. You have a lot of character.

And I think it's the same when we do so much marriage, conversation, and conferences, and speaking. It changes us. You have to walk it. You do.

You absolutely do. Day in, day out. And I have to get to the roots for my own life. Why do I do what I do? And how do I change?

How do I change? Big things and small things. And, you know, the journey of healing and sanctification is ongoing, but thank God for that. He just continually wants us to get holier, to get better, and to become more like Him. Debra, do you ever have people that push back on that?

Like, what are we on, Oprah? Why do we have to go back into our past? We just need to move on to the present. Do you ever get that push back? I would say the older generation sometimes struggles to understand why does the past have to impact who we are today. But to be honest, the people that struggle with that are the ones that end up stuck in the cycle because the work speaks for itself. And not only that, but some people are like, well, the work of healing is so hard. You want us to do the work of healing?

Yeah. But living unhealed is so much harder because you're carrying that burden through life. It's so much easier just to stop and do the work. And then when you actually engage in the work, you realize it wasn't as hard as you thought.

And living unhealed has been so much more work. Let me ask you, I mean, this is just a random question. As you have been counseling and you have a practice, what does it look like when you see certain things as a person comes in as a client? What are some of the things that people generally, especially in today, what are we carrying?

Yeah. Well, it usually manifests itself through what we're doing, right? Our external behaviors where we're struggling. So the typical things that people are walking in to deal with are anxiety, depression, rage, relationship conflict, parenting difficulties, feeling stuck, feeling unmotivated, stuck in sin, addictions, sexual sin, sexual struggles, whether you're married or not. And so all of these things, it's like, I feel stuck. I feel stuck in this area.

How do I get unstuck? And thank God we serve a savior who came to help us get unstuck. Yeah, that's good. Well, here's the question. I mean, where do you start? We're going to talk a little bit about Reset, your book. I'm guessing that title, I'd love to know how you even came up with that title, but the subtitle, Powerful Habits to Own Your Thoughts, Understand Your Feelings, and Change Your Life.

So there it is, Change Your Life. I'm picking this book up. Right. Seriously, if I'm in an airport bookstore and I see this, I'm going to be like, I need to reset. Is that what the whole idea of the title was? It's time to reset? Absolutely. Hit the reset button. It's time to do things differently and to do them better.

So it's funny. I would say it kind of started with this story of my car in college, okay? I had this lemon of a car. I laughed out loud when I read this story. Me too. I did too. It was a Jetta, a Volkswagen Jetta. It was green. I gave her a name.

Okay. I loved this car. My first car when I turned 16, but then I take it to college and things start going crazy. The car starts breaking down on me. The windows roll down. Suddenly the alarm would just start to blare or the windshield wipers would just go on a sunny day. Like it was just like a possessed car. It was a lemon. Okay.

It was possessed. And one day before finals, I'm running out to my car. I'm kind of late. I'm putting in the key and I pull out the key and the whole entire lock cylinder comes out and I'm holding it on my key. Like, what am I going to do with this? The windows roll down, the alarm starts to blare and I'm like, I got to get to my final. So I just jump in the car. It's really cold outside because it's winter. And I'm literally driving in a winter coat with the windows rolled down and the alarm blaring in Virginia.

Just alarm blaring. And I drive to my final and I'm like, what am I going to do here? But, but you know, think about that hot mess and how many times we feel like a hot mess in life.

How many people listening have gotten to that point? Some of us are a little bit more type A and we, we shove it all inside and we're a hot mess on the inside, but a lot of us are a hot mess on the outside. You just see it, you know, and you're like, what do I do with this? Well, we try to fix the hot mess exterior. You know, I could have muffled the alarm. I could have taped the windows with duct tape, right? Pulled off the windshield wipers, just kind of done the external work to get the car to a better place. But you didn't actually fix it unless you go under the hood, unless you see what's going on underneath the surface of your life. And that's truly the whole point of reset is we have all these behaviors we want to change. We have all these places where we say we're stuck, but then what we're just doing is putting band-aids on the peripheral.

We're doing external work without doing internal healing. And guess what? That doesn't take you very far. What was wrong with the car? Well, I had this friend of mine, um, this guy, you know, when you bring a guy in and it's like someone that you have interest in, you just let them do whatever.

I let this guy work on my car. He put in a stereo and crossed the wires. So there was all kinds of wires crossed underneath the surface there. Ooh.

And that's a great metaphor too. Yeah. Because things happen in our past that maybe cross the wires and now we're having some external trauma or crisis that we don't know where it came from.

No. Or people come into our life like that guy who doesn't know what he's doing and they cross our wires. Trauma can often begin to become our template that we live out of instead of truth. Did you have any in your life that you had some wires crossed and you thought, oh, look, I like it. Now you're being my counselor. I'm like, ooh, I'm not used to this. The tables have turned. You've done this with us a lot. I know. I always just like payback time.

Yeah, definitely. Because nobody goes through life uninterrupted on your journey with God. Nobody. The enemy is constantly trying to come in and cross our wires using very traumatic experiences, big T trauma, but also little T trauma. Beliefs that you hold onto without even realizing it. I grew up, my grandfather was an evangelist, an incredible man of God, worked really hard, traveled Egypt, sharing the gospel in a Muslim country.

Wow. So my dad is very gospel focused, but also a hard worker. My parents were immigrants.

They came to the United States and you know what they did when they came? They worked really hard because they had to, but watching that as a child, you start to download messages that weren't intended to be there. And the message was, if you work really hard, you will be loved. You will succeed. You have to work really hard for God.

And so do you see how these subtle things can cause our wires to get crossed? And all of a sudden now I'm an eight, nine, 10 year old who thinks like so much of my value comes from what I do. Your performance. My performance. Working really hard.

And guess what? Eventually in grad school, I hit a place of burnout, depression, waking up struggling, unmotivated, not realizing that my crossed wires underneath the surface. And if I'm frank, some of it was chemical crossed wires from hormones and changes in hormones underneath the surface.

I think that's legitimate and we have to understand that part of it too. But also crossed wires and my belief systems. And when you put them all together, what's going on inside of your body, what's going on outside of you, you put them all together, you can find yourself stuck. And then what happens is that affects every other area of your life. If you never look into that, it affects your marriage. It affects the way you parent. Exactly. It affects everything. That's why I love that you're passionate about this because you're wanting to fix the crossed wires or I should say Jesus can help us fix those crossed wires to bring healing and that healing can go into every area of our lives.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the problem in our world and even in our churches, we often talk about the exterior more than the interior. Break free from sin. Stop looking at porn. Okay, but how? How do I do that if I'm so drawn to it?

You're drawn to it because of your internal trauma, your inability to regulate your emotions. Stop smoking. Stop getting drunk. Stop getting angry at your children.

Stop eating so much. Okay, but how? And so this is why these conversations are so important because so many Christians are stuck and they have Jesus.

They are filled with the Spirit of God, but they have never learned how to allow the Spirit of God to bring healing into their inner world. And that's where transformation begins. You just hit all those hot topics.

Everybody's like, Oh, you hit me in one of those. So you start out with this whole pause idea. Talk about that. I would say the first chapter. So Reset is 31 small bite-sized chapters. You probably noticed they're like two to three pages. What did you think of that, Dave?

Two to three pages? Oh, I loved it. You prefer that, don't you? I think everybody does. Are you thinking men? Is that what you asked me? Yeah. Men in general.

Young people in general. And I'm the kind of guy maybe all guys do even before I start the chapter, I see how long it is. Yeah, exactly. From what I know of you, I had a feeling that you would enjoy that. We'll talk about that at lunch. Okay. Okay.

So really small things, small things. It's not an overwhelming thing, but it's kind of annoying. I think that you open the book, you're ready. The introduction kind of pumps you up. It's time to change. It's time to heal.

And then chapter one is like, pause. Let's stop for a moment. Wait a second. I'm ready to go. I'm in a car. Let's drive.

Yeah. Why didn't you start there? Well, because this is a book that is going to establish habits that help you heal, not just quick fixes. So let's actually look at our life and find out, do I have the space to heal?

Do I have the bandwidth to heal? Because if you don't have the space to do the work, then how do you expect anything to change? You know, we live in such a noise saturated world. We don't actually have time to sit and think. This is why counseling is so beneficial for some people. It's the first time they've ever given themselves an hour to process what's going on in their inner world. And so think about that. If you don't have time to stop and hear what God is saying to you, not only that, you might think you want to change something and then you meet with God and He's like, I want you to start there first. You know, there's something I'm doing that's different. And you can relate to that as a mom with four.

I think about moms that are working, they're homeschooling maybe, they've got four, two, however many kids. You feel like you don't have time for anything for yourself, let alone going into this inner healing kind of idea or reset. Yeah, absolutely.

So should they wait? Well, we can make excuses. I'm a mom of four, but my priority needs to be my health because if I am not healthy, I am parenting out of that place.

So you do better by making yourself a priority in the sense of I need to be healthy, I need to be healed so that I don't parent out of that place. Well, it's interesting. I studied in your book this week and before we came in this morning, I picked it up and I don't know why I ended up on this page. And it's just what you're saying.

It's actually chapter 30. And I read this this morning, there's something I need you to hear. Sometimes we do more to feel less. And I went, this is my life.

I really did. You know, you've had us on and you put me on the couch and said, hey, Dave, let's talk about your trauma. But sometimes we do more to feel less. And, you know, even talking this chapter about distractions and cell phones and how much we're distracted and we're not focused. Guess what? I don't think in my entire adult life, since the cell phone has been a part of my life, I've gone a day without a cell phone. I drove in today and I forgot my cell phone. Today?

Literally? Where's my phone? Where's my phone?

This is prophetic. Oh, my goodness. It's back in the house. I'm like, I can't function without my phone. We got to go back.

I'm like, I'm going to do a day without a phone. I was kind of amazed that he didn't turn around. I thought, oh, we're going to turn around.

I'm so impressed. And I feel like this goes so well with this idea. What does it look like to stop and pause for a moment and be more in tune to your inner world? Because we do. Why are we so busy? Because oftentimes we want to be busy because the second we stop, we feel things that we don't want to feel. But what we're not realizing is those feelings are not a punishment. Those feelings are a signal. God is saying, pay attention to what you feel and respond to it. It's like warning, warning, warning. That's what the feeling is. And if we don't ever quiet ourselves to feel the feelings and then underneath that to get to the root of some of those thoughts. The formula I want you to keep in your mind, if the question is, how do I change? How do I get unstuck? Here's the answer.

OK, one sentence. Realize that your thoughts lead to your feelings and your feelings lead to your behavior. If there's a behavior you want to change, you back up and you start to isolate. When do I feel that feeling? What feeling is it that causes me to do that behavior? OK, when I'm stressed, I go to the fridge, I go to the pantry. OK, and back up a little.

What causes me to be stressed? It's a belief. It's a thought that this is too much. I can't do this. I'm overwhelmed. I'm not enough. I'm not good enough for this. If you don't isolate those thoughts and begin unpacking them and aligning them with the template of truth versus the template of trauma.

You're going to continue to feel stuck. I think every listener right now should just take a minute and just pause right now and consider what is the area. I feel like it's a hiding place. Where do you go to hide? Mine tends to be food. When I get stressed, I go straight to the refrigerator and I think we all have our little areas that we go to.

So what is yours? Could resentment be one? Do we get stuck on a person?

Do you think that could happen? I would say resentment is the feeling. I feel resentful.

OK, that makes sense. And then what do you do when you feel resentful? Do you withdraw and isolate?

That would be the behavior. I'm going to just be done. I'm done. I'm going to go to my room. I'm going to walk out of this house. I'm going to hop in the car and drive around and who knows when I'm going to come back because I feel resentful.

So the behavior would be isolation and withdrawal. When you were saying that, Deborah, I was thinking one of the things I do is I do activity. You just do more. I just run. I go play a game. I go work out. I go ride the motorcycle, whatever. It's just like I'm going to go do something, usually productive stuff.

When I sat down with a counselor a few years ago, I was going through a hard time in our vocational life, leaving our church. It didn't go as easy as you thought and pretty messy. He said to me at the end of our first session, this is your homework assignment. He answered this question, what are you running from?

I literally laughed out loud. I go, what do you mean what am I running from? He goes, you don't see this?

I go, see what? He's got my whole life on the board. He just said, look at your life.

You're so busy. He goes, you're running. I said to him, Deborah, you love this. I go, well, you're the counselor. You know, just tell me.

And I know he knew. He goes, no, you have to find this out. And I come home and tell Ann, cause you know, she's waiting at the door. I go, I go.

And I go, he wants me to figure out what am I running from? She's like, duh. I'm going to try to tell you different stuff. I didn't say duh. Well, it was just like, I've, you know, we've had this conversation for decades. And it was what you're saying.

It was, I don't want to pause. I want to do more to feel less. I don't have to feel the feelings. I'll just keep getting productive and people will go, Hey, way to go. And I don't have to go to that dark place where I go, okay, I'm not dealing with this trauma.

Okay. Today's not about me, but I think a lot of people can relate to what I do and they may do something different, but they're running from that feeling. And that's why it can be tricky to figure this stuff out because some of the outworking doesn't look bad. Doesn't look toxic. It looks successful. It looks successful.

You're a workaholic. You have a massive ministry and you're running on all cylinders, but what's going on inside? People applaud it. They don't know what's going on on the inside. So I think the key here is what is this rooted in? What is this rooted in?

How do you get to the root? Well, wait, wait, that's going too far. I want to hear the beginning. Like first step, give us the first step right now.

You already said it. Repeat it again so that we can think, okay, here's what I'm going to do. The formula is thoughts, thoughts lead to feelings, which then leads to your behaviors.

So what is the underlying feeling and then what's the thought that's before that? So for you, for example, here we go. I knew it. You're the easy one though, Dave. You are courageous.

You are direct. What is the underlying feeling when you're ready to go, when you're ready to launch, let me go do something productive. Let me go make something happen. It's, what is usually the feeling that you're uncomfortable with feeling? I want to be valuable. So you're feeling, um, you're not feeling valued, not feeling unworthy, unseen, not productive.

And I know I can go do things I'm good at and whether, usually it's a sport I can go play something and be competitive. So let's say Ann says something. It's like, Dave, why didn't you do this when you were supposed to do it? And all of a sudden.

Why didn't you squeeze the water out of the sponge this morning? Yeah, she said that this morning. And all of a sudden you're like, I feel invaluable and unseen. I said, let's go work. I feel unappreciated. And then you tell her, Oh, here's why I did it. And then instead of like really coming to her and saying, Hey, I'm starting to feel these feelings. I could use some appreciation, some validation, some of this stuff may be coming from my past, you know, sitting down and having that conversation would lead to deeper intimacy, but then it's like, you know what? I won't do it again, Ann.

Thanks for mentioning it. I'm out. I'm going to go bike a couple miles. Right? So it's like the underlying feeling was not comfortable. And then if we back up, what's the thought that was there. I'm not good enough.

I'll never be good enough. Right. And where does that come from? That comes from trauma. Now a three mile bike ride in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with that.

Right. But you see, and I hope people who are listening start to see, wait a second. I can actually do good things out of an unhealthy place. And what's the problem with that? The problem is that you will eventually break. You will not be able to do these good things for a long time. If they're rooted in unhealthy things, you're not going to be able to sustain that pace. That's why pastors of gigantic successful churches burn out, break down moral failure. That's why people up and leave with what you thought was a happy marriage on the outside.

Right? That's why things happen and people finally break because external behavior is not going to sustain you if it's not rooted in the internal. I mean, how do you convince, I'm thinking there's guys that, and maybe women think the same way, but I know, uh, for me, I grew up as an athlete in locker rooms where they just tell you, tough it out. I now push through the military.

I was, I had a lot of vets that come in. Here's the thing. You don't have to convince them. Life will. That's the unfortunate part. You will get to a point where you break down and then you've got to face, okay, how do I prevent this from happening?

How do I get healthy so that I can move forward into a healthy place? You know, some people might feel convicted right away and say, okay, I want to heal. But other people, their sign, their signal has to get so loud that they break. Because we're, we're dealing with this, we're coming off of really busy ministry season. The thing that's happened now that our kids are gone, where is that Dave, Dave grabs me to go with him on all of these things.

And so I told him, I feel like he's running as fast as he can and I have a hold of his belt loop and my feet are off the ground as he's pulling me alongside. So see, we're have to talk to Deborah at lunch about how do we get off of that cycle? Because I don't know what that looks like. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah. And I just wonder if we should talk on air. Cause I bet you there's people feel the same way in, in one either backwards or one of the spouses is running harder, maybe even parenting in a different way. And the other feels like I'm not with you on this and I'm feeling drugged. Or I can't keep up with you at this pace. Can we talk about that tomorrow? Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. You're smiling like, I got a lot to tell you.

Is that what you're thinking? No, I just love how willing the two of you always are to like, okay, let's figure this out on air. Let's just do it.

I had you guys on air on my podcast recently for a full blown counseling session. So I think this is going to be part two. I like to dig in a little bit deeper. Wow. Okay. I'm looking forward to tomorrow where we get to hear more from both the Wilsons and Deborah Faleta. So make sure you join us then.

I know you're looking forward to it as much as I am. And in the meantime, I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with, yes, that's right, Deborah Faleta on Family Life Today. Deborah has written a book called Reset, powerful habits to own your thoughts, understand your feelings and change your life.

Sound like something you want to pick up? It sounds like something I'd love to read. Well, you can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com in the show notes, or you can feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800 F as in family L as in life.

And then the word today. And as you're getting ready for small groups coming up in the fall, I know it's kind of hard to think about that being that it's August, but the fall is just around the corner. Well, we wanted to let you know that all of our family life workbooks are 25% off this month.

You can go to the show notes at familylifetoday.com to look around and pick out what will be best for you, because all our workbooks, again, are 25% off during this month. Now, coming up tomorrow, Deborah Faleta is back to talk about the necessity of ongoing support, practical steps and community engagement in order to see lasting change. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.