February 6, 2018
by Rod Smith
Love leads to listening, freedom, warmth, care, and mutual support. It’s sharing dreams; it’s facing challenges together. It’s pooling resources for mutual benefit. It’s providing a safe place for each other and for any children with whom you share your life.
Love is not love when:
- Coercion is threatened or used
- There are attempts to seclude or cut off from family and friends
- Betrayal is threatened or used
- Love is used to trap, manipulate, or possess
- Confinement is threatened or used – car keys hidden, doors locked, plans cancelled without consultation or knowledge
- Privacy is denied (rooms, cupboards, purses, phone, computer, email, conversations)
- Traps are set to test fidelity
- Stalking, watching, tracking of any manner is threatened or used
- Attempt at important talk repeatedly escalate to shouting matches
- Violence of any kind (physical, sexual, emotional, psychological) of any degree of severity is used
- Warmth, kindness expressed to others (old friends, family, former colleagues) is given as the reason for jealousy and conflict
- When the use of alcohol or legal or illegal substances deplete mutual resources and lead to aberrant behavior or conflict
Posted in Addictions, Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness |
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January 18, 2018
by Rod Smith
Teaching children “yes” and “no” is, in my mind, as important as teaching a child how to read, write, and to count.
I want my sons, according to their respective ages, to…
- Say YES to opportunities even if they involve risk or if they involve venturing into the unknown, learning new things, and breaking unhelpful habits.
- I want them to say YES especially if the opportunities involve meeting new people and people other than those with whom they’d usually mix.
- Say YES to opportunities to travel, to serve, and to build and to assist in mending broken places.
- Say YES to reading new ideas and to writing responses to them.
- Say YES when they encounter opportunities to offer hospitality.
- Say NO to toxic secrets, to behavior that judges or excludes others.
- Say NO to religious teachings that limit their capacities for generosity and for freedom.
- Say NO to anything that will potentially delay their formal education no matter how appealing or adventurous the idea may be.
- Say NO to those who disrespect them or encourage them to treat the adults around them with anything less than utmost respect and close-to-perfectly good manners.
- Say NO to those who dismiss their ideas and who treat them as a means toward their disclosed or undisclosed ends.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Friendship, Grace |
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January 2, 2018
by Rod Smith
If you want a more spiritual 2018 do the following….
- Tell the truth with love and with kindness. Truth may be brutal but you don’t have to be.
- Pay your debts and pledges. If you cannot be honest about why declare your plan about how you will.
- Be kind to everyone, especially those who serve you, annoy you, and those you have somehow misunderstood as being “below” you. None of us is above or below anyone.
- Seek mutuality, equality, and respect in every relationship. If any of these qualities is missing from any relationships delve into why it is so and fix it. Fixing it may involve humility and courage. Be assured, both are good for you.
- Define yourself before someone else does. This does not necessitate confrontation, but it may.
- Take hold of your life, finances, and habits before someone else has to. Remember spiritualty is measured in how you handle money and what you do with it.
- Join or create a community of equals. Stay with it even when, and especially when, it may become uncomfortable.
- If your faith or religion has made you hard and certain and rigid find a new church.
Please, dear reader, know that I am my first reader, my first audience. I write what I need to hear.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Love |
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December 26, 2017
by Rod Smith
I call these few days between Christmas and New Year the doldrums. They’re a breather: a time to drift between calendar high points. I get nostalgic. I experience strong elements of necessary regret as I wait for the promise of the new calendar year to kick in.
I am always reminded:
- Integrity, honesty, kindness, forgiveness, and reconciliation – all captured by the word holiness, is local. By “local” I mean immediate and with the people with whom I share every day life.
- If it (idea, principle, program) doesn’t work right here, now and with this family member, neighbor, colleague, it’s worthless.
- All worthwhile positive change is first internal – the outward follows the inward. It may be convenient to switch this – thinking the inward follows the outward – but doing so is a waste of time.
- It is possible for people to regard each other with deep, authentic respect but it is impossible without commitment to profound listening. All love begins and is demonstrated with listening and listening takes commitment and time.
- Things are not fair or reasonable or kind while one party is gaining or advancing at the expense of another.
Please, let me know the things you think about as you prepare for your year ahead. I know we can learn from each other – it just takes a commitment to listening.
Posted in Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Listening, Love, Meditation, Recovery, Responsive people, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Womanhood |
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December 17, 2017
by Rod Smith
“I’m 28. I will marry a wonderful woman in August. My mother brainwashed me with venom about my father for 24 years. He lives nearby. I hardly know him. I think I want him at my wedding. She is threatening to boycott if he is invited or there.”
It’s your wedding. Except for your mother’s friends whom you want included, the invitation list (under these toxic conditions) is none of her business. Allow your mother hostage power now means you can expect her to try to wield similar threatening power over other matters in your married life.
The good news is you have several months to complete important work with both parents.
Contact dad. Invite him into the slow, deliberate process of deeper, appropriate, father-son intimacy. (Use your own words). Suggest a bi-weekly breakfast and tell him there will be no talk whatsoever about your mother. After a few breakfasts include the “wonderful woman.”
Stand up to your mother. Tell her you want her at the wedding but it is an invitation she may always decline. Include her on other plans – the challenge is to not alienate your mother but to clearly define your response to her controlling ways.
Defining yourself to both your parents will do more for your long-term fulfillment than anything else you do.
Posted in Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Marriage, Sabotage, Trust |
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December 6, 2017
by Rod Smith
Enabling is rampant in many families.
It can involve:
- Covering for someone so outsiders do not notice or find out about his or her undesirable behavior (drinking, gambling, addictive habits).
- Relaying lies to a workplace – calling in to say he or she is ill when he or she is unable to work because of the addiction.
- Permitting, turning a blind-eye, cooperating, letting things go unnoticed to keep the peace or because it feel easier.
Enabling behaviors are often subtle way of disguising who it is in a family who is in need of help. The enabler often appears to be the strong or the healthy one. Control is the name of the game – and family life can feel like one.
Empowering is common in healthy families.
It can involve:
- Getting out of each other’s way so people can learn from errors and get credit for their successes.
- Allowing natural consequences to follow choices so people can learn just how powerful really are.
- Trusting and believing in each other even when things do not go to plan or appear to be falling apart.
Empowered people require the company of other empowered people and all require a strong sense of self. Freedom to discover and to learn are the hallmark of the empowered.
Posted in Addictions, Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Manipulation, Pornography, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Sex education, Sex matters, Shame, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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December 3, 2017
by Rod Smith
You’ve heard about an adrenalin rush. I’ve seen ego rush. I see it in in groups, teams, and in classrooms. I detect it rumbling in me. Perhaps it’s natural and part of survival.
Symptoms of an ego rush occurring:
- Authentic conversation – the give and take and the sharing and building on ideas of others – seems impossible. It’s verbal arm-wrestling or nothing.
- Perceived insults, rebuffs, refusals, or dismissals are stored. They lurk in awareness, crouched for attack when the timing is right.
- What a person knows must be known and he or she will nudge and provoke until you share his or her belief in his or her superiority.
- The ego will win by winning or it will win by losing but humility and backing down are not options.
- Actual loss, perceived as humiliation, is temporary – a matter of perception. The “loser” will circle around and get even.
- Everything spins around hierarchy and real engagement, the wrangling, is delayed until the hierarchy is figured out.
- Conversations are calculated and are a means to advance an undisclosed agenda.
- The presence of authentic humility escapes or confuses those caught up in the ego rush as much as witnessing or trying to engage in a conversation using a totally foreign language.
Posted in Anxiety, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Long distance relationships, Manipulation, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Shame, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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November 30, 2017
by Rod Smith
When referring to my brother’s generosity I wrote that I believe generosity is among several of the most powerful human abilities. I’ve seen it time and again do its fabulous work.
Here are more of what I believe to be innate human capacities.
Exercised, they make us “more human.” Neglected or ignored, I believe they render us rather cold, even inhuman:
- The capacity to forgive even the most grievous offenses – yes, of course it’s hard, but NOT doing so may be even harder.
- The capacity for empathy – to see and understand, but of course, not necessarily agree with, the perspective of another, even that of an enemy.
- The capacity to influence for good (and, to influence for ill is bundled within the same set of human strengths). We have the power to influence – let’s hope it is used for good.
- The capacity to learn from mistakes and errors, and to learn that it is possible to not repeat them.
- The capacity to move up the brain and therefore allow ones self to think more objectively, engage in better long-term planning, and form the habit of responding rather than reacting.
- The capacity to listen more than to speak. If we listen we may actually learn something – when we speak we are usually repeating what we think we already know.
- The capacity to calm the ego rush – or the ability to see and understand that being right or recognized or winning doesn’t come close to the joy of learning to be loving.
Posted in Addictions, Anger, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Grief |
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November 28, 2017
by Rod Smith
- If plans derailed they were quick to listen in order to understand rather than to blame.
- They searched for solutions not problems.
- They understood their weaknesses and did not try to conceal or deny them.
- They wanted to learn and were open to learn from anybody.
- They were often not the installed or appointed leader of the business or community.
- They were not easily fazed or frazzled. They understood that few immediate crises possess the power to topple a healthy organization.
- They regularly outlined the big picture, the long-term goals – they set the direction.
- They knew people by name and used names.
- They authentically and publicly praised good work. They said “please” and “thank you” a lot.
- They looked for ways to serve and did so when it was necessary and not to make a show or make a statement.
- They held confidences. If they talked about others behind their backs it was only to offer praise for work well done.
- They micro-managed themselves, only. They trusted themselves and could therefore trust others.
Posted in Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family Systems Theory, Leadership |
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November 26, 2017
by Rod Smith
The Mercury / Tuesday
I’ve seen women and men painstakingly pick up pieces of their lives after a broken marriage.
This is necessary, natural, and understandable. Deep love, when it ends, at least for one party, is scarily disorientating.
Some never recover. A broken heart can really cause a slow (or a quick) death.
Perhaps you are you tripping over evidence of a terminated relationship. Letters, photographs, or books seem to appear from nowhere and evoke fresh pains or salt for the wounds.
A purge may be necessary, but it’s not for all.
The loot may be all you have. It can become a crucial stepping-stone to greater health. Or it can be a debilitating anchor.
I’ve been confused about why some friendships have ended. I examine memories for clues to what, how, and why things went wrong.
There are times this is unnecessary.
My damaging role is painfully clear.
The pain I caused is deep for others and obvious to me. And, my own and deserved pain is utterly near.
What do we do with our pain – deserved or not?
Options are unlimited once confession occurs.
Confession, of course, does not mean mutual forgiveness is inevitable. It’s not.
Options broaden with confession and commitment to learn from the past.
Posted in Addictions, Affairs, Anger, Anxiety, Betrayal, Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Education, Faith, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Grief, Listening, Manipulation, Meditation, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Responsive people, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Spousal abuse, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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