Photo: voronaman
Special to United Methodist Insight | July 8, 2026
There’s a strange tension built into adulthood. You have to be serious enough to meet the basic demands of life—show up on time, pay the bills, keep the household running. Neglect those responsibilities and life becomes unnecessarily chaotic. But lean too far in the other direction and seriousness becomes its own burden. It tightens the system, narrows your field of vision, and turns ordinary challenges into chronic problems.
The issue isn’t responsibility. It’s the anxious seriousness that creeps in when you feel threatened, overwhelmed, or overly invested in controlling outcomes. That seriousness is what transforms a solvable challenge into something that feels immovable. And the more reactive you become, the more entrenched the problem becomes.
A useful starting point is remembering that responsibility begins and ends with self. You can show up fully, act with integrity, and take ownership of your part. But you can’t manage the emotional life of others or control their choices. When seriousness pushes you into overfunctioning—trying to fix, persuade, or contain—you’re already drifting away from responsibility for self and into reactivity.
Reactivity shows up in two primary forms.
The first is the obvious one: unleashing your anxiety. That might look like defensiveness, arguing, or escalating a conflict. The second is more subtle: giving in. In family systems terms, this is adaptivity—going along to keep the peace, suppressing your own perspective, or absorbing someone else’s anxiety without taking a clear stand. Both responses are reactive because both are driven by anxiety in the system (and in you) rather than by thoughtful choice.
Reactivity is fueled by either the anxiety of others or a perceived threat. The anxiety of others is easy to spot—anger, blame, pressure, urgency. Perceived threats are trickier because they originate inside you. A tone of voice, a familiar pattern, or an unresolved family‑of‑origin issue can activate anxiety even when no real threat exists. The body reacts before the mind has time to evaluate. The more serious you are, the more likely reactivity will result.
This is how chronic conditions form. A chronic condition is simply a pattern of reactivity that repeats. It might be an ongoing dynamic with a family member, or a recurring conflict that always follows the same script. The pattern is sustained by feedback—your reaction to their anxiety, or your adaptivity in the face of it. Remove the feedback and the pattern dissolves. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen.
The counterintuitive part is that seriousness rarely helps you interrupt these patterns. What helps is paradox and playfulness.
Paradox is doing the opposite of what your anxiety tells you to do. When you feel pulled into a tug‑of‑war, paradox means stepping toward the tension instead of pulling harder. When you fear someone’s reaction, paradox means giving them space to make their own choice instead of trying to steer them. Paradox reduces the emotional intensity in the system because it breaks the predictable pattern. It creates room for others to act differently without being pushed or pulled.
Playfulness works in a similar way. It’s not sarcasm or clever one‑liners. It’s the ability to stay grounded enough to lighten the emotional tone without getting hooked by the content. Playfulness frees you from the seriousness of the moment and often frees others as well. It’s a way of signaling, “I’m not getting swept into this,” without withdrawing or becoming rigid. It keeps you connected while keeping you clear.
I’m told that when my clergy supervisor, the district superintendent, was introducing me to the personnel team of the church that I was to serve, she said, “Your new pastor has an earring.”
Apparently, one person was not on board with this and threatened to leave the church if she had to tolerate a pastor with an earring. The woman sitting next to her turned, looked at her and said, “Well, we’ll miss you.”
This is paradox. Instead of begging the woman not to leave, the non-anxious, paradoxical reply gave her the responsibility to choose to stay or go. It also communicated emotional connection by essentially saying, “We care about you. We’ll miss you if you go, but that’s your choice.”
It was also a bit playful. Playfulness is a form of paradox that can bring down the anxiety level in the room. It requires the ability to recognize emotional process so you can avoid getting into the content. It’s another way to avoid a conflict of wills. The primary effect of playfulness is that it frees us from the seriousness of the situation. The secondary effect is it does the same for others.
Both paradox and playfulness require self‑regulation. You can’t access either when you’re reactive. And stress, fatigue, hunger, and unresolved issues all affect your ability to self-regulate. Some days you’ll manage yourself well; other days you’ll fall short. The goal isn’t perfection. It’s awareness of self, others and the systems in which you function.
When you can recognize the early signs of reactivity—tightness, urgency, defensiveness, overfunctioning—you can pause long enough to choose a different response. That pause is what keeps seriousness from taking over. It’s what allows you to stay responsible without becoming rigid. And it’s what makes space for chronic patterns to shift.
Seriousness isn’t the enemy. But seriousness driven by anxiety can get you stuck. When you can hold responsibility lightly, respond intentionally, and stay connected without getting swept away, you create the conditions for healthier patterns—both in yourself and in the systems you lead.
Jack Shitama
The Rev. Jack Shitama is an ordained minister in The United Methodist Church and currently serves as the Director of the Center for Vital Leadership for UMC churches in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Delaware.