As well-intentioned as we may be in desiring to avoid conflict and “keep the peace,” we create more problems we must face later by running or playing hide and seek. Then, when we do face matters, we’re not the people we once were.
Avoidance is a quick-change artist! It changes us in ways we are likely to regret.
We cannot solve or improve what we will not face. Denial gets us no place worthy of the journey or the unintended, unwanted destination. Until we gather the courage to look difficult situations directly in the eye and expedite what is necessary to face the difficulties, conflicts will stay as they are and they’re likely to deteriorate.
What we avoid shapes us in ways we may never notice. We modify our habits in order to sustain our denial and avoidance. We change our friendships in order to sustain our patterns. We go out of our way to keep the peace but the new path is one to further avoidance. Our defensive habits defend us in unhealthy and unhelpful ways and make us into people we’d rather not be.
Avoidance of necessary battles creates unintended distance from others — even those we truly love.
There is no worthwhile substitute for early honest approaches to family or business conflicts.
Avoidance makes the heart grow harder.
Ours.
I enjoyed this side-walk art…… 49th and Penn in Meridian Kessler, Indianapolis
I shall strive to speak and teach as one who has indeed much to learn.
In every classroom we are all learners.
I shall strive to listen to people in the class (and out of it) as if I were listening to the mountains.
Mountains reveal their real beauty to the dedicated observer, beauty that’s easily missed by those who offer casual hurried glances or who are themselves caught up in how they look or are dressed or what the student may think of them.
Can there be a greater privilege than jetting to Penang to teach Family Systems?
What is office or church or family gossip really about?
Why do people do it?
I am not referring to the content, the messy details.
Some people “enjoy” or feel the need and cannot resist speaking about others in degrading terms.
The gossiper does this because he or she feels uncomfortable with you – yes, the one to whom he or she unloads the gossip.
Sharing juicy details about an absent person gives the speaker a sense of importance, a feel of being in on something with you, closer to you than you really are, a false sense of intimacy. You have been verbally trapped in a toxic, harmful manner.
You are “in the middle” and the gossiper has the sense that you two are close and the victim is on the “outside.”
Gossip is never glue. Gossip never leads to deeper friendships.
Want out?
Try:
“Have you talked directly to him about what you are telling me?”
“Why are you talking to me about someone who is not here to speak for herself?”
“What’s wrong with our friendship that you think I will join you in gossip?”
“If you can talk this way about her when she’s not here, I wonder how you talk about me when I am not around?”
Do you have a pencil and paper and an hour or two to do yourself a huge favor?
Mental health, getting healthier, than you already may be will require determined effort. Here are some questions to consider and things worth doing to stimulate yourself toward greater or higher functioning than you currently enjoy….
What do you want? What kind of person do you want to be? What are you going to do with your life?
Take a few months to answer the 3 above questions in written form.
Review your responses and update it regularly. Things change, we change, life has quite a different look as we go from stage to stage and age to age.
Become an expert in your behavior – not your wife’s or husband’s or children’s, or in-laws’ – and focus solely upon improving your level of functioning within your many areas of involvement and influence.
Try to get “above” all of your important networks and entanglements in order to think them through.
Try to act upon your insights so you have greater freedom in each of your relationships.
As you are thinking things through, take no sides with or against anyone. Have no victims to blame and create no heroes.
If you do all this with a few pieces of lined paper you will ultimately participate in writing yourself towards greater wellness.
A note to single or solo parents OR things i am still learning…..
Your children, from babies and all the way up to off to university or marriage, want you to be fearless or at least honest about not being fearless at times when you are not.
Your children have little or no interest in what brought you to this joyful privilege of single or solo parenting and certainly will reap no benefit if you are carrying guilt or shame for what brought you to this honored place.
Your children are going to regard what you have as normal, as the way life is supposed to be, so get comfortable with your family as it is and play it to the full.
Your children are capable of much but not of meeting your needs for adult companionship or easing your loneliness and to expect that from your children is more than unfair.
You children want to feel safe and have fun and engage in story-telling and lots of play and lots of eye contact with you. Hold off on all manner of screen-sitting for as long as possible.
Your children are not a means to complete your unfinished or unhappy childhood. This is their turn and parenting is the ultimate adult challenge.
difficultrelationships.com 