July 5, 2009
by Rod Smith
Children want boundaries...
The Greatest Gift We Can Give Our Children
Parents are bestowed the utmost honor and responsibility.
Raising a child is both extremely rewarding and very challenging. It has the potential to drive one “batty” and the potential to produce much growth and maturity in the parents. Children have innate qualities, but are molded by the emotional environment. Children are born with the ability to create their individual slate of experiences. Significant people in their lives, with the environment, write and draw upon the slates.
Here are three ways that you can love your children deeply and teach them well:
1. Lovingly define yourself to your own parents, making sure they know who you are. This could involve some conflict- all of which has the potential to produce growth and healing. By growing up yourself, you become free to allow your children to do the same. Children rarely go beyond the maturity level of their parents. Thus, this becomes one of the more priceless gifts that you can offer.
2. Be present without worrying about the future. Pay attention to what they are saying, and you may learn something. Children don’t need the latest and greatest educational tools or toys. They need you, your time, your encouragement and input in their lives. They will learn how to do relationships from you, not by what you say, but by what you do.
3. Set consistent boundaries in your home that you are prepared to enforce. Discipline is what children need and want. Guidance is how you teach your child to treat people, that your child is not the center of the universe, and to respect all people.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Friendship |
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July 3, 2009
by Rod Smith
You can love and NOT worry...
Easy-to-make
fundamental (primordial) errors of belief humans often make in relationships can unsettle (challenge) the strongest of commitments. These “emotional fault-lines” can require intensive understanding on behalf of the one so inflicted, and, when not embraced and accepted by others (I do not mean appeased) these troubled foundations can result in consequential ramifications in day-to-day loving, living, and parenting:
1. Attention equals love and the amount of attention reflects the amount of love. To mistake attention with love and the lack of attention with the lack of love. “If you love me then I will be the focus of much (hopefully all) of your attention,” and,”If you give your attention to someone else it means you love them and not me or you love them more than you love me.”
2. Worry (anxiety) equals love. To think (or feel) that the presence of anxiety or worry or concern is a sign of love and commitment. “If I love you then I must worry about you,” or “If you love me then how can you be so seemingly worry-free about me?” or “When you love someone you think about that person and worry about what they are doing all day, or you don’t love them.”
3. Togetherness, unity, and being “on the same page” are signs of love and commitment. “How can we possibly love each other if we don’t think and feel and see things in as much the same way as possible? There, look at Jack and Jill across the street, they are so in love she even thinks for him, they dress the same, and he calls her 15 times a day at work to let her know he’s concerned about her safety. Now that – that is love.”
Posted in Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Listening, Long distance relationships, Love, Parenting/Children, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Violence, Voice |
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July 2, 2009
by Rod Smith
“My three children live with my partner of 9 months and me. His children visit regularly. His son (12) pushes the boundaries and my partner allows him get away with a lot more than the other kids, including his daughter. My partner, who is brilliant with my children, will comment on bad behavior from my children, yet will not judge his son for the same behavior. His son lies to get the other kids into trouble and when I am near his father he makes sure that I cannot get too near. I refuse to compete with a 12-year-old for the affections of his father. My issue is the unfairness. It drives me up the wall. His father feels his son is sensitive and because he sees him so little that he will be less harsh with him. I understand this and am not sure if I am being unfair. I am starting to dislike the boy more and more. Please help.”
Get out of the middle...
Rod:
You are already competing and the boy is winning! Get off the “life is fair” gig and out of the middle. Leave EVERYTHING about his children UP TO HIM. While you are 12-year-old-focused, dad doesn’t have to be, – and you will always, always, end up looking like the enemy!
Kathryn
Kathryn:
Ignoring the behavior is not loving to anyone. The boy’s “sensitivity” is never a good reason for parents not to discipline a child. Consistently setting good boundaries with children is very loving. Spend intentional time together and perhaps your partner’s own guilt may dissipate bringing change into the dynamic. Be honest.
Posted in Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Friendship, Leadership, Living together, Parenting/Children, Single parenting, Step parenting, Stepfather, Stepmother, Teenagers |
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June 29, 2009
by Rod Smith
Rod@TakeUpYourLife.com
Occasionally I like to recommend a book I have found inspiring. Anyone in any form of leadership will benefit from Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s
Failure of Nerve, Leadership in the age of the quick fix. While no light reading, it is so very good it ought to be banned!
That said, here’s Tuesday’s MERCURY column:
You want greater emotional health?
1. No blaming. Take full responsibility for you life. It’s impossible to create the future you want while you are convinced you are a victim.
2. Try to separate feeling and thinking. Lead with your head, not with your heart. Thinking (deliberating, discussing) yourself into your future, rather than “feeling” your way, will at least gives you some opportunity for objectivity. “Feelings” will make you feel as if you only have extreme choices – usually all or nothing, fight or flight. Thinking will show you there are more options than you feel.
3. So-called “burnout” is not from working too hard but from living a meddling lifestyle. Remove yourself from the middle. Get out of the way of issues that are none of your business and you will be surprised at how much of a load will be lifted from your shoulders and how much more energy you will have.
4. Forgive everyone, everything, always. (I am not sure commas are necessary – what do you think?)
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Leadership, Listening |
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June 16, 2009
by Rod Smith
You frequently write: “steel yourself” and “hold onto yourself” and “take up your life.” What do you mean?
Take up your life
by reading this or any column. In fact, they will not be “fixed” even if you read this column, watch Dr. Phil daily and visit a therapist on a weekly basis. These would be, at best, helpful catalysts. At worst, you’d be wasting a lot of time and using yet another means to avoid facing your issues.
The “answer” to your life’s issues (if there is one – you might have to go with an approximation), no matter how large they may appear to you, or how trivial they may appear to others, always rests first with you. Healing begins when you gather up your metal, brace yourself for change, and decide to “take a hold of yourself” and address head-on the problems and complexities you face. “Steeling yourself” is gathering your strength (even if it is minimal) to do what you must do to begin your own process of recovery, healing, or untangling from unhelpful entanglements.*
Even if you have been a victim, grew up in severely adverse circumstances, and both your parents were alcoholics while you were destitute and hungry, your healing and maturity pivots, not on more sympathy, more empathy, or more understanding. it is not “out there” in some book you are yet to read, or on some website you are yet to discover, some guru you are yet to run into, or on some lover you are looking to meet. It is ALWAYS dependent on your acknowledgment of your role in how your life has unfolded (your response to whatever has happened, is currently happening, and will happen to you) and will continue to unfold. It is dependent on you shedding yourself of ALL “victim thinking” and of ALL blame. It is ALWAYS dependent on you taking personal responsibility for your decisions as much as you are able at THIS time (now, today!). This is what I mean by “take up your life.”
I am very aware of this being an unpopular message in an age and a time when “quick-fixes” are offered at every click of the mouse, pointing of the remote, and book shelves abound with every Tom, Dick, and Sally’s offer to deliver you into a perfectly fulfilling life. Sorry, it just doesn’t work like that. Until you become your own “Knight in shining armor” you might always remain a “damsel in distress,” albeit an insightful one!
* For me, a helpful metaphor is to imagine a diver on the edge of a high diving board. He or she STEELS him or herself before taking the leap.
Posted in Attraction, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Domination, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Manipulation, Marriage, Pornography, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Responsive people, Schnarch |
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June 9, 2009
by Rod Smith
Take up your life
unpredictable and free. They readily forgive. They do not dominate, manipulate, or intimidate others. True (authentic) listening occurs. No one pretends they are “okay” when they are not. Healthy people do not spend a lot of time analyzing their relationships. Friends and lovers have individual goals and shared goals. People speak for themselves, plan and make choices for themselves. They honor community but are not trapped by it. Healthy people have complete freedom within the constrictions of their commitments and obligations. They understand it is more important to love than it is to be right or to win. They laugh a lot.
When people are emotionally and psychologically healthy they can be in close relationships because they choose to be. Nothing feels forced, obligated, manufactured, or pretended. Sarcasm, using words to intentionally hurt someone, is avoided.
Conflict is not considered as necessarily negative. They know people can love and enjoy each other and disagree at the same time. Hurt, fear and loneliness can be talked about freely. Winning and losing are not as important as honoring, loving, and respecting each other. They do not “corner” each other in order to feel love. Healthy people expand each others options, they love spontaneity, and embrace and encourage diversity.
Posted in Attraction, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, High maintenance relationships |
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June 3, 2009
by Rod Smith
Let's talk
(a non-sexual inordinate attachment with someone other than the spouse) will be very tough on a committed spouse. If this affair is full-blown you will probably feel as if you are living with someone who is absent in every manner but physically. He or she would really rather be elsewhere.
Calling attention to this hurtful inordinate attachment will probably result in flaring tempers and/or in further distancing which are designed to silence you. Consequently you will find yourself watching every word you say lest every encounter results in a flare up and/or in your spouse walking out the door.
Suggestions:
1. “Steel” yourself. Remind yourself that you are strong, deserving of the very best in all your relationships, that you are unwilling to tolerate “sharing” your spouse. This is a reasonable position to hold.
2. Do not keep it a secret. Draw attention to the emotional affair even if it disrupts the peace in your home.
3. Be prepared to take radical stands. Be willing to ask your spouse to move out and do not cooperate with the affair any more than you would were it fully sexual in nature. That the affair is non-sexual does not make it acceptable.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Divorce, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grief, High maintenance relationships, Living together, Long distance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Reactivity, Recovery, Schnarch, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles |
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June 2, 2009
by Rod Smith
“I have a son (7) who is a lovely child who can be manipulative. He gets his own way most of the time which my husband allows and which I find hard to accept. I think my husband spoils the boy because he’s our only child. My son ‘takes’ to my husband more and if I discipline my son my husband gets offended and screams and shouts at me in presence of the child. At the moment I am much stressed and haven’t a clue what to do. My son’s behavior is becoming intolerable and beginning to irritate me. It’s like I’m heading for a nervous breakdown.” (Edited)
Take up your life....
– one person is trapped by the collusion of at least two others. This common set-up can be particularly painful for the marginalized parent. Screaming at each other will only make the triangle more rigid. While speaking up (no screaming or shouting!) is unlikely to get your husband’s attention I’d suggest you continue to try. Address the issues when the environment is less “charged” or emotionally neutral. If this fails, plan something benign yet radical to amplify or to expose the triangle. If it is clever, even humorous, it might get your husband’s attention.
Posted in Boundaries, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Friendship, High maintenance relationships |
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May 5, 2009
by Rod Smith
May you grow and grow...
1. You are less dependent on others yet have a growing awareness of how you fit into the bigger picture of your immediate family and community.
2. You genuinely regret past errors and are vigilant not to repeat them.
3. You possess the foresight to know that moving on with your life is a necessary part of growth no matter how grievous your past mistakes may have been.
4. You want success in every area of your life but not at the cost of your integrity.
5. Within reason you resist saving, rescuing, or protecting others (even those whom you love) from the natural consequences of their own behaviors.
6. You are comfortable with your many and varied roles in life and are unafraid to play your part to the full.
7. As far as it is within your realm of influence and power, you are at peace with all people.
8. You forgive everyone, everything, all the time, even when it is not requested and when forgiveness is undeserved – and yet, despite this, you are not the proverbial doormat.
9. You know when and how to express your voice and when it is necessary to remain silent.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Leadership, Listening |
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May 2, 2009
by Rod Smith
“I live with my parents and tough grandmother. With little effort she makes my blood boil and hate her. She is a strong, judgmental, and used to telling everyone what to do. We were never close. She hurts me by constantly criticizing, belittling, and offending me. For years I have tried to ignore it. I tell myself that I don’t care but it only lead to me becoming emotionally numb or dead. My biggest fear is that she is going to die before I can find out who she really is and before I can share myself with her. Then we would never then get to have a genuine, intimate relationship. The thought is unbearable. I don’t know how to change things around or if I can. Please help.” (Edited)
Write: I am listening
and caring friendships with peers outside of your home – this will provoke your numb emotions back to life and declare the end of your grandmother’s inappropriate rule. (Perhaps then, she’ll want to get to know you!) While this woman remains so powerful to you, and your desire to know her remains so strong, you are willingly under her rule and are therefore unable to freely create your own fulfilling future. If, having stated your wants, you are rebuffed persistently, I’d suggest you modify your expectations.
Posted in Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace |
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