Archive for ‘Communication’

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May 3, 2011

His mother gossips about me….

by Rod Smith

“I am happily married. My husband is an amazing man. We are Indian with both Western and Indian beliefs and tradition. Our problems stem from his family. His mother hates me. She constantly gossips about me and tells people I am a terrible person. She knows how much her son loves me. I think this upsets her. I cannot understand how a mother can be unhappy if her child is happy. Although I have accomplished a lot I feel inadequate. I need help to keep my sanity and feel loved and appreciated by my husband’s family. My parents have been married for many years and love their children equally. My mother is one of the most humble people I know – which makes it even more difficult to understand my mother in law.” (Edited)

Attraction is only enduringly poss

Get your focus off her

Hateful people will hate no matter what you do. Gossips attempt to fill up empty lives by trying to destroy others. Try not to feed her toxicity by allowing it to do its ugly work.

While it may be counter-cultural for you, I’d suggest you and your husband (together) lovingly confront her with your unwillingness to accommodate and ignore her damaging ways.

Confrontation is a powerful expression of love. This accomplished, get your focus off her, whether she continues or not.

Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, High maintenance relationships, In-laws, Victims, Voice, Womanhood | Leave a Comment »

May 1, 2011

I want you to speak to my group…..

by Rod Smith

I want you to speak to my group (church, school, class, retreat, company) how do I do it?

Sometimes I bring the boys, sometimes I don't.

You contact me by email (Rod@DifficultRelationships.com) and we (you and I) begin the process of finding out what you want, if I am available, and what would best serve you and your intended audience.

I do not arrive and “dump” my routine on you or try to sell you or your audience anything. I tailor every event to the perceived needs of the church, group, company, or training event.

I look forward to hearing from you. I have lectured an taught in over 30 countries to groups from 5 people to 5000. I can speak for 40 minutes or for 10 days at 6 hours a day.

My seminars (workshops) are highly interactive and usually result in participants wanting to live more powerful and complete lives.

Write to me. I look forward to hearing from you. Yes – I will travel anywhere in the world, or drive to your event if it is possible.

Rod Smith

Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Leadership, Parenting/Children, Therapeutic Process, Voice, Womanhood | Leave a Comment »

May 1, 2011

Is it okay to hate my mother

by Rod Smith

Is it okay to hate my mother? She is loud, inappropriate, pushy, and demanding. I know I can’t change her but I must be able to change how guilty I feel about not being happy to see her. She barges into our house. She talks crudely to my children. She is mocking of any attempts to talk on any meaningful level. I am a single mother of two teenagers.

Attraction is only enduringly poss

Hate is an emotional toxic spill

As an adult you can do anything you want. You may break the law, set your house on fire, and even abandon your children.

As long as you are able and willing to face the consequences, you can do anything you want.

Of course, not everything you are able to do is helpful, wise, or accompanied by helpful outcomes. This is something we are repeatedly told as children and sometimes fail to learn even as adults.

So – yes, you are free to hate your mother. The consequences of doing so are unlikely to be helpful to you. Hating anyone is usually harmful to the one who does the hating, but hating a parent, is especially personally damaging.

Hating a parent erodes essential, vital, invisible connections that help us all to remain somewhat sane.

Hating anyone allows the hate to do a number on our insides. It distorts our responses, reactions, perceptions, and attitudes to ALL other people, and not only our relationship with the person whom we have chosen to hate.

The hate may be targeted; the results are generic. Hate is an emotional toxic spill. It ruins the host more than the victim.

While your mother’s repertoire is jam packed with unattractive themes, hating her will ultimately destroy you, burn your house down (figuratively, of course) and alienate you from your own adult children.

You will move toward greater, and real love for her if you increase your capacity to be rejected by her and stand up to her and refuse to be her victim. Do not give your mother free passage to pollute your family yet, at the same time, offer her some manner in which to remain connected with you on terms that are acceptable to you.

Yes, hate is an option, but it is not an option that will result in the kind of growth (not all “growth” is helpful) within you that will be helpful.

Walking powerfully toward her (initiating, defining, declaring, welcoming, clarifying) will empower you with ALL other people.

You are no longer a child. Use your adult voice and do not allow her to manipulate, dominate, or intimidate you. Strive for an equal, mutual, respectful relationship with your mother so that she will learn how to behave herself when she is with you and your family.

I know this is a tall order, but the results, of even failed attempts on your terms, will result in the kind of empowering and growth you want, rather than lead you ever deeper into the shame you are already feeling.

Rejecting her will diminish you. It will rob you of your voice. It will enlarge her power to dominate and control you.

If you hate your mother she won’t have to barge into your house to upset you, she’ll be living in your head, even if you never see her or have nothing to do with her.

Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Manipulation, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood | Leave a Comment »

April 19, 2011

Go ahead and surprise yourself…..

by Rod Smith

Attraction is only enduringly poss

Reach for your inner strength

You are probably stronger and more resilient than you feel and think you are. I am often amazed at the latent power I have seen come to the salvation of men and women who are under great stress or experiencing great pain.

You are probably more creative, tenacious, and determined, than you have conditioned yourself to believing you are. It’s been a joy to watch men and women dig themselves out of a tight spot once they’ve allowed themselves to escape the prisons of their own thinking.

You are probably better able to negotiate tough situations and speak up for yourself than you consider yourself to be. I’ve seen clients transformed from the proverbial wallflower to a force to be reckoned with, simply because they’d had enough of some people regarding them with less than absolute respect.

You are probably wiser than you give yourself credit. When push comes to shove it’s amazing what wisdom will emerge.

You are probably funnier than you think you are. When the chips are down, it’s refreshing to see how funny people can be. To cap it all, the humor of the wise, the humor of the resilient, requires no victims.

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Family, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership | Leave a Comment »

April 14, 2011

Great weekends are made of this…..

by Rod Smith

How to have a great weekend in 7 easy steps

Clean up (apologize, clarify, tie lose ends, write thank you cards) before you leave your workplace.

Call ahead before you leave work. Inform your family that you are expecting to play your part in creating a fabulous weekend.

Unplug until Monday. Turn off all technology (cell phones, SMS ability, Internet, computers, television, and electronic games) and encourage all in your household to do the same.

Focus on the people with whom you are face-to-face. Give them your full attention. This means listening (without waiting to speak, looking into each others eyes, not multi-tasking while talking). It means loving the person, the moment, and the immediate conversation.

Avoid negative talk especially about the economy, the political atmosphere, work, your boss, and people with whom you have conflict.

Stay at home – eat at home, invite neighbors to a meal having informed them that you are have a tech-free weekend.

If you are a parent ban all talk, for the entire weekend, about children. If you cannot do this, it is a fine indication that you might be in need of a shift of focus for your own sake and especially for the sake of your children.

Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships | Leave a Comment »

April 12, 2011

Pre-school to the presidency – if you are a leader……

by Rod Smith

If you are a leader of anything – Pre-school to Presidency….

Leadership is often lonely

1. The process, understanding and identifying the underlying pressures within your organization, trumps the content, detail, and the day-to-day minutia. You can have all the details in place and be sabotaged because you failed to see, or you ignore, the hidden tensions that exist in every organization.

2. The people and an appreciation of the inestimable value of others, trumps programs, or the implementation of plans and procedures. You can have perfect plans and procedures to implement your perfect programs, only to fail because you failed to appreciate the people around you.

3. Relationships, knowing the people with whom you share life, trumps hierarchy of who is more important than whom. The “lower” down the hierarchy a leader forms authentic relationships – the more credible will be his or her leadership.

4. Openness and transparency, allowing oneself to be known and allowing oneself to get to know others, trumps covert or undisclosed agendas inhabiting all complex organizations. What’s hidden will bring greater damage to your leadership than what is revealed.

5. Negotiation and dialogue, the willingness to enter into discussion and engage in debate, trumps a dictatorial, top-down style of leadership. Top-down styles bring some heartless, temporary obedience – authentic dialogue fosters creative, long-term, relationships.

Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Listening, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Voice | 1 Comment »

April 8, 2011

Do you need therapy? Here’s a quick list to guide you……

by Rod Smith

Family meetings!

The following are pointers (two are enough) to suggest you could use therapeutic help with your family, relationships, and your faith:

1. Being part of your family feels mechanical, rigid. You feel locked in – you are an actor in someone’s play and you don’t particularly like your assigned role.
2. No matter how hard you try, things (tensions, roles, anxieties, problems) stay the same. Faces and circumstances modify over the years but the stresses and the issues remain constant.
3. At family holidays (Christmas and Thanksgiving most intensely) you feel pressure about where to be. You are the rope in a tug-of-war.
4. You feel intimidated when speaking with your parents about anything meaningful even though you are an adult. You knees get weak at the thought of engaging your parents about substantial matters.
5. Old arguments often resurface; minor disagreements seem monumental – there’s little sense of proportion and little things are blown up into huge issues.
6. You find it easy to talk about your parents but find it difficult to talk to them. You’re loaded with material about them but feel silenced when it comes to taking with them.
7. Feelings of loyalty and disloyalty can rage within and you feel pressure to compromise your integrity with your family of origin (parents, siblings, grandparents).
8. Your career and family life interfere with each other. It seems as if you can’t have both with any degree of success.
9. New relationships get intense very quickly (becoming sexual, manipulative, or controlling) despite genuine attempts to make things different “this time.”
10. You enthrone (make saints) and dethrone (make sinners) people rather rapidly. Your heroes quickly prove fallible and you are disappointed once again.

Call me / Skype me (RodESmithMSMFT) / Email me – I can probably help you or steer you to someone who can.

Posted in Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Triangles, Triggers, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice | 1 Comment »

April 7, 2011

Open your hand

by Rod Smith

Open your hand using all your strength. Stretch your fingers. Allow the lines on your palm to feel as though they might tear apart. Study the contours, colors, ridges and valleys, joints, dents and spaces. Push, pull, and rub. Move your fingers through their paces: together, apart, back, forward, curved, strained and relaxed, cooperative yet unique. Feel the texture and every curve. Touch the crevices. Spread your hand further, turn it at the wrist, examine and compare patterns from every angle. Here are pieces of yourself you might never have studied.

Your hands are your constant companions. They have met the needs of others, pioneered romantic moments and worn rings of commitment. They are the way your heart leaves fingerprints, the eyes at the end of your arms. Hands reflect a person’s being and are the front line agents of your life. If eyes are said to be the windows of a soul, hands express the soul.

Hold other people with your hand thoroughly open. Allow them to know the warmth and welcome of your hand, investigate its curves and benefit from its scars. Invite others to follow the lines into the fabric of your life and see the risks you have taken and the adventures that are yours. Allow them to wrestle and rest, search, see and speak. Let them stay; let them go, but let them find your hand always open.

The Open Hand of friendship, at its widest span, is most rewarding, most challenging and most painful, for it enduringly acknowledges the freedom others have while choosing not to close upon, turn on, coerce, or manipulate others. In such friendships, expectations and disappointments become minimal and the reward is freedom. As others determine a unique pace within your open hand, they will see freedom and possibly embrace their own with excitement and pleasure.

Openhanded people do not attempt to “fix” others, change, or control others even for their own good. Rather, each person is given freedom to learn about life in his own way. Openhanded people, instead, express kindly and truthfully what they think and feel, when asked, knowing even in the asking, others might not be interested or willing to learn.

The Open Hand is not naive. It is willing to trust, while understanding and accepting that no person is all good or all bad, and that all behavior has meaning. The Open Hand is convinced it cannot change others; it cannot see or think or feel or believe or love or see for others, but trusts people to know what is good themselves. It will not strong-arm, pursue or even attempt to convince others because it has little investment in being right, winning or competing. Here is offered a core-freedom of the deepest and most profound nature: allowing others to live without guilt, shame and expectation.

Further, the Open Hand offers oneself freedom that extends to one’s memories, ambitions, failures and successes. This allows for growth of enduring intimacy, greater personal responsibility, authentic autonomy, and the possibility of meaningful relationships with others.

In the discovery of a closed hand, even at the end of your own arm, do not try to pry it open. Be gentle. Allow it to test the risky waters of freedom. As it is accustomed to being closed and fist-like, it will not be easily or forcefully opened. So let the closed-handed do their own releasing and trusting, little by little, and in their own time and manner.

When openhanded people meet, lives connect in trust, freedom and communion. Community is set in motion. Creativity is encouraged. Mutual support is freely given. Risks are shared. Lives are wrapped in the safety of shared adventure and individual endeavor all at the same time.

Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness | Leave a Comment »

April 7, 2011

Is your family “open” or “closed” handed?

by Rod Smith

Openhanded Families are close and healthy. People feel free, unique and have a sense of community. There is enduring approval. Disapproval’s short-lived. The love does not feel overwhelming. Love is not a trap, trade, or deal. Pressures from outside the family, the opinions of others, societal trends do not significantly modify the family’s direction. The family is internally driven. Relationships are self-sustaining. Each person, to differing degrees, dependent upon level of maturity, understands that every person in the family desires, at one and the same time, both community (togetherness, intimacy), and separateness (autonomy, independence).

It is within the movement, wrestling, imbalance, and the struggle that emerges from healthy families, that each person is empowered to be a unique person.

The freedom enjoyed by healthy people, embraces the family member who, for whatever reason, chooses to be less involved with the family.

Ironically, such families can appear to be less healthy or unhealthy because diversity is welcomed and individuals can be “all over the map.”

In an openhanded family a person can look, believe, feel, and speak very differently than everyone else in the family without having to face negative consequences.

(Interested persons are encouraged to read the work of Virginia Satir).

Closedhanded Families are “close” in a different way. They believe and need uniformity and control to keep people together. Togetherness is all-important. There is often disapproval between members of the family, often discernible when someone in the family will not “stay in line,” live in the family “box” or enjoy the closeness. In such families, people are “overly” close. “Closeness” (uniformity, togetherness) is insisted upon, even demanded. People feel cornered through an intricate play of rejection, judgment, and “love.”

Here, rather than relationships being self-sustaining, they are held together by musts and shoulds and hidden rules arising from an obscure idea of what constitutes a relationship and a family. In such families there are frequent tensions often from an unidentifiable source. A person can easily get the feeling that he or she is walking a tight rope of being “in” or “out.”

These families are reactive or legalistic and bonds are not chosen and togetherness is covertly coerced or overtly forced. In these families, fusion is mistaken for love and expressing the natural and God-given desire for autonomy is regarded as betrayal.

Ironically, these families can appear healthy to outsiders because of the appearance of togetherness, while some of the people within the family might be “dying” from the pressure to conform.

In a Closed-handed family a person can only look, feel, believe and speak differently than everyone else in the family according to the guidelines. Anything else might result in overt expulsion, a subtle shunning, or covert distancing.

Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Education, Family, Family Systems Theory | 3 Comments »

April 4, 2011

Mother tells a story of ubuntu — and wins my competition

by Rod Smith

I am 51 and became a mum at 43 when I adopted a child. I often take my son to Mitchell Park.

Recently, a woman who sells sweets and chips happened to be sitting next to my bench. I bought some goodies from her and we started a conversation while my son played on the swings.

She told me she had 3 children – two of whom were unemployed. Her husband is an invalid. Despite her hardships, like waking up at 4am and leaving home at 6, this woman had an aura of peace and contentment.

She asked why I had only one child and I explained that I had had infertility problems. We continued chatting while my son played.

When it was time to leave I decided to buy 5 packets of chips to take home. As I handed over my money she gave me 6 packets- one “bonsela” for my special son.

I cannot explain how touched I was. Here was this really poor woman, eeking out a living, offering me an extra packet of chips for free.

I will never forget her generosity. This is Real UBUNTU!

Paddy

(“bonsela” – unexpected bonus – Zulu term)

Posted in Children, Communication, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace | 1 Comment »

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