The Many Sides of Mental Health: Relationships & Self-differentiation

It doesn’t take too much time clicking around my website to figure out that I believe in relationships.

I believe in the power of genuine relationships to transform our lives — inside and out.

I believe in the impact of true community to ease isolation and change our mental and physical health for the better.

I believe in putting effort into people, because people matter more than stuff, or achievement, or any of those other things we spend so very much time on.

I don’t have to convince most of you that there is exponential value in relationship. But you also likely know people are exhausting. Relationships are work and effort. Introvert or extravert, we need time to take a step back, readjust, and do some self-care.

To keep our relationships healthy, though, we need more than self-care.

We also need the & in relationships.

The other side of relationship isn’t my me to your you. It’s a more intimate place, where I give myself wholeheartedly to my relationships, I process and understand myself through my relationships, but I also have the ability to see myself as a unique and distinct individual.

The & of relationship is self-differentiation.

We need relationships. Our mental health needs relationships.

Our mental health also needs us to distinguish ourselves from those relationships.

For our relationships to truly be healthy we need to both: to fully engage in being a part of community, partnerships, a shared purpose, the work of the hive, a family structure of some kind, surrounded by our people, but also exist and identify our place as distinct individuals with our own set of ideas, opinions, values, and goals. Otherwise, what happens?

We become enmeshed, tangled up in other people’s anxiety and emotions.

We become driven by the heat of someone’s words.

We root ourselves subjectively to someone else’s stability.

Knowing God makes self-differentiation easier. I have an impartial third party, if you will, to tell me who I am, why I matter, and where my purpose lies. It takes the pressure off those around me to hold me together. That is the work of God: holding the pieces together, giving value and worth. We can serve and care for one another, offer accountability and mercy to one another, even form a healthy dependence on one another, building trust and continued community, while our expectations lie firmly with God to fulfill us, God to provide for us, God to soothe us, and God to mend us when we break.

When we have both relationships and self-differentiation, people become helpers and collaborators and contributors.

Jesus remains the Savior.

Can you imagine relationships without the weight of salvation, without the gravity of fixing all the world’s broken parts, all of my broken parts?

You likely have a few of these relationships in your own life, those in which the person across from you knows themselves enough to love you, absolutely, without needing you. Sit for a moment and consider five of the strongest relationships in your life. Which ones can you rely on for help in times of need? Which ones are reciprocal—I give, you give, we are in it together? Which ones follow through, but also hold boundaries and enough grace for “no” to be an acceptable response? Now, which ones take far more than they give? Which ones ask you to hold their emotions like a hand off, rather than share them like the comfortable passing of the plate at family dinner?

This is a good start to processing the health of our relationships. It also helps to contextualize our relationships as both the individuals involved, as well as the relationship itself.

I am not you, and you are not me. But … there is another person called “we” and that person is also worth our time and energy.

This is true in friendship and in marriage, in the Body of Christ, and in our geographical communities. We need to value one another as individuals (self-differentiation) and also recognize the value of this life together, the path we have chosen to walk on with one another (relationship).

Life together & Christ alone. Relationships & self-differentiation. This is one of the many sides of mental health.