April 9, 2017
by Rod Smith
- Embrace people who believe in you. Seek out the men and women who are in your unofficial support group and spend your effort in their direction. It is necessary and acceptable that you define your boundaries with men and women who pull you down and who try to minimize or ridicule your contribution to your family, your work-place, or your broader community. Be cordial, be kind, to such people but limit the power you give to people who denigrate you.
- Embrace people who have a vision for their own lives. The more you can rub shoulders with people who are “going places” and are invested in building their futures, the greater the likelihood that you will get caught up in similar healthy habits. Drainers and downers and doubters are easy to spot but often harder to avoid. Disillusioned people love a target and are especially attracted to bringing happy and motivated people into their fold.
- Invest or reinvest in a cause bigger and more meaningful than simply enhancing your family and yourself. There is so much need and suffering everywhere and you are fully capable of reducing some of both for people in your immediate environment.
Posted in Attraction, Blended families, Boundaries, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Love, Recovery, Responsive people, Space, Triangles, Voice, Womanhood |
Leave a Comment »
April 2, 2017
by Rod Smith
Mondays – celebrating the first workday of the week:
I love Mondays although I have not always done so. I especially enjoy the first Monday of the month.
Mondays are a reset button. They are an opportunity to set new goals and to reset goals that have lapsed. They are a new beginning, a fresh start and an internal blank slate, a new baseline. Whatever metaphor you employ, I’d suggest we reject the term “blue-Monday” from here on out and switch it for “Magnificent Monday.”
Mondays are an opportunity to love life and to love the lives of those around you and I don’t only mean family and loved ones. Mondays are an opportunity to see the miracle within all people and to affirm human resilience.
Mondays are an opportunity to affirm the spiritual nature of all things, from the most mundane, like getting up and getting ready for the commute to work to the most glorious, like the opportunity to pay debts, thank coworkers, and be part of a vibrant, even conflicted community.
Mondays are a wonderful opportunity to be generous, to be forgiving, and to encourage. They are an opportunity to set the stage for the change you’d like to see in your own life and to measure and assess progress 50-plus times a year.
Posted in Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Responsive people, Trust, Voice |
Leave a Comment »
February 27, 2017
by Rod Smith
Ten signs of the presence of spiritual abuse, manipulation, domination, or intimidation.
Spiritual Abuse (always on a continuum) is occurring when a pastor, leader, or even a friend:
- “Hears” God for you. God apparently “goes through” him/her to speak to you. This requires a sense of superiority – from him or her and is often framed as being “more mature,” and a sense of being “less” from you.
- Alienates (shuns, ignores) you if you do not adhere to his/her guidance, leadership, or authority. This is usually VERY subtle – so it is easy to deny.
- Suggests that rejection of his/her “higher understanding” is done so at your spiritual or even physical peril. You will hear things like, “Be careful. You will move yourself from the covering and protection of God if you don’t listen to me.”
- Rewards your obedience with inclusion, and punishes your questioning or resistance with withdrawal. Compliance gets stroked; resistance gets struck.
- Demands “cathartic” honesty. Unless you spew out every detail of your life you must be hiding or withholding something and that “something” will, of course, impede your spiritual development.
- Lavishes you with praise, acceptance, and understanding when you are “good” and “pushes” you away when you are “bad.”
- Is apparently fixated on the use of titles like reverend, pastor, elder and cannot appear to relax in the company of “ordinary” mortals. The issue is not in the use of legitimate titles (or robes or religious garb) – it is that identity seems impossible without the titles or the trappings.
- Leaves a trail of cut-off relationships. Usually in the trail are those who refuse to bow, to submit, to stand in awe of, to be thoroughly entranced by, the will of the pastor, the leader or the friend. Always regard with suspicion or caution leaders who are cut off or alienated from members of their family, especially their parents.
- Lives from a “for me/or against me,” “black/white,” “all/or nothing” platform of “relationships.”
- Genuinely sees God’s Call so zealously, so fervently that any signs of resistance are seen as the expressions of The Enemy or an enemy – thus, relationships are expedient (disposable) in the light of getting on with God’s work.
The perpetrators of abuse apparently fail to see that reconciliation, and forgiveness, “space,” and room to move, and room to respectfully disagree (boundaries, morality) are all part of the glorious work of the Gospel.
Freedom begins with recognition. Recognition must result in action.
Stand up to those who misuse their positions of leadership. Spiritual abuse serves the welfare or neither the perpetrator nor the victim – quite apart from the disservice it does to the church.
All authentic holiness, spirituality, Godliness, is LOCAL. If it’s not present and respectful in the most immediate one-to-one relationships (spouse, child, secretary, mail-carrier, in the traffic, at the airline check-in, with the dog) it will not be authentic in the one-to-many relationships, no matter how many thousands or tens of thousands make up the many.
Posted in Addictions, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Manipulation, Recovery, Responsive people, Sexual abuse, Spousal abuse, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Violence |
Leave a Comment »
February 26, 2017
by Rod Smith
A conversation means we both speak. You speak, I listen; I speak, you listen. We take turns. We build on what each of us has said. We ask questions related to content already shared. It’s really quite simple.
Appearing to listen while you are really waiting to speak is not listening.
The split-second you decide you know what I am going to say or think you have heard it all before is when you stopped hearing.
When I am talking and your eye contact is with your phone you are not listening. And, no, this is not the new form of multitasking. Listening takes focus and respect.
When I tell you something, respond to what I have said. Following what I’ve said with your bigger, better story, related or unrelated, reduces conversations to competitions.
Unless you are genuinely affirming people we both know I’d suggest we leave all others out of our conversation.
Our routine one-liners and well-worn war stories serve as shields. If we are really going to talk we either have to get them out of the way early on in our dialogue or we have to agree to focus on content neither of us has shared with each other before.
Posted in Boundaries, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, Forgiveness, Friendship, High maintenance relationships, Listening, Responsive people, Triangles, Trust, Voice |
Leave a Comment »
July 17, 2012
by Rod Smith
Is found in our connection with others (a connection sufficiently powerful so that we are not alone) and can therefore give and receive strength to and from each other. It is yet separate enough so that we not drain each other of the adventure of being unique and distinct beings. This is one of the greatest blessings accompanying our humanity and, when it fails, it becomes the source of exceedingly powerful pain.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Blended families, Children, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Faith, Family, Forgiveness, Friendship, Grace, Leadership, Living together, Parenting/Children, Responsive people, Single parenting, Space, Therapeutic Process, Trust, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
1 Comment »
July 14, 2012
by Rod Smith
1. You experience greater OBJECTIVITY and can “see” your most important relationships as if looking at them through someone else’s eyes.
2. Despite any pain, any trauma, any uncertainty, you can see some HUMOUR in what you are experiencing even if it is short lived.
3. You are progressively gathering a small community of friends who know everything (or almost everything) about you and their SUPPORT is becoming easier to trust.
4. You are seeing with greater and greater CLARITY what are and what are not your responsibilities within your most important relationships.
5.”No” comes easier and it is not accompanied by guilt. “Yes” is your response when you really want what you agree to. You begin to BELIEVE the words you say. Your words reflect you, your desires, and are not said from guilt or the impulse to keep the peace or make others happy.
Posted in Anxiety, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Leadership, Listening, Love, Marriage, Past relationships, Re-marriage, Responsive people, Schnarch, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
Leave a Comment »
July 13, 2012
by Rod Smith
Love and control cannot co-exist in the same relationship anymore than light and dark can exist together in the same space at the same time.
Posted in Affairs, Anger, Anxiety, Attraction, Betrayal, Boundaries, Communication, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Domination, Family Systems Theory, Grace, High maintenance relationships, Long distance relationships, Love, Manipulation, Past relationships, Pornography, Responsive people, Sexual abuse, Sexual compatibility, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Triggers, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
Leave a Comment »
July 1, 2011
by Rod Smith
1. Enriched is the woman who does not lose herself to her marriage or motherhood. She has a strong spirit of independence while being a loving wife and mother.
2. Enriched is the woman who does not accommodate poor manners (being taken for granted or being victimized) from anyone (not husband, children, in-laws, siblings, or her parents).
3. Enriched is the woman who lives above manipulation, domination, and intimidation. Her relationships are pure and open; her boundaries are defined, secure, and strong.
4. Enriched is the woman who does not participate in unwanted sexual activity. She honors her body as her private temple and shares it, even in marriage, only by her own deliberate choice.
5. Enriched is the woman who has developed a strong, clear, identity. She regularly articulates who she is, what she wants, and what she will and will not do. She is unafraid of defining herself.
6. Enriched is the woman who knows that pursuing her dreams to be educated, to work, to accomplish much, to expect much from her life, are profound acts of partnership in marriage and profound acts of mothering. She knows that the woman who “takes up her life” does more for herself, her husband, and her children than the one who surrenders it.
Posted in Adolescence, Anxiety, Boundaries, Children, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Education, Faith, Family, Family Systems Theory, Leadership, Listening, Living together, Love, Parenting/Children, Re-marriage, Responsive people, Sex matters, Sexual compatibility, Single parenting, Therapeutic Process, Victims, Violence, Voice, Womanhood |
4 Comments »
June 19, 2011
by Rod Smith
I will assess your committed relationship and give it a grade: A+ through to a B-.
A “C” is for cut and run if it is at all possible.
You will receive a GRADE, my written response (NOTHING AUTOMATED), a list of challenges, and a list of suggestions (again, nothing automated).
All you need:
(1) To be is in a committed relationship that is in some turmoil
(2) Have an hour to spend WRITING about it in response to a set of questions I will send you
(3) Be willing to receive a GRADE with an assessment of strengths / weaknesses.
BE WARNED — the questions lead to much soul searching. You may be anonymous (of course) but you must be willing to write quite a lot in order to get the best out of the experience. I will not use anything you write in any column.
Privacy insured. Send me a message and we’ll take it from there.
There is a cost of $29.95 (USD) for this service. You will have my complete and undivided attention for 1 hour as I read and respond to all you have written. You will be billed via PAYPLAY via your email address.
I am you offering my opinion regarding the sustainability of your primary and committed relationship based on the information you send to me.
I’d suggest you consult with a face-to-face professional before you take any radical action based on the advice or guidance I give you in response to your submission.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Posted in Affairs, Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family Systems Theory, High maintenance relationships, Living together, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Responsive people, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
1 Comment »
June 17, 2011
by Rod Smith
I will assess your committed relationship and give it a grade: A+ through to a B-.
A “C” is for cut and run if it is at all possible.
You will receive a GRADE, my written response (NOTHING AUTOMATED), a list of challenges, and a list of suggestions (again, nothing automated).
All you need:
(1) To be is in a committed relationship that is in some turmoil
(2) Have an hour to spend WRITING about it in response to a set of questions I will send you
(3) Be willing to receive a GRADE with an assessment of strengths / weaknesses.
BE WARNED — the questions lead to much soul searching. You may be anonymous (of course) but you must be willing to write quite a lot in order to get the best out of the experience. I will not use anything you write in any column.
Privacy insured. Send me a message and we’ll take it from there.
There is a cost of $49.95 (USD) for this service. You will have my complete and undivided attention for 1 hour as I read and respond to all you have written. You will be billed via PAYPLAY and via your email address.
I am you offering my opinion regarding the sustainability of your primary and committed relationship based on the information you send to me.
I’d suggest you consult with a face-to-face professional before you take any radical action based on the advice or guidance I give you in response to your submission.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Posted in Affairs, Attraction, Betrayal, Blended families, Boundaries, Differentiation, Difficult Relationships, Family Systems Theory, High maintenance relationships, Living together, Manipulation, Marriage, Past relationships, Responsive people, Triangles, Trust, Victims, Violence, Voice |
5 Comments »
difficultrelationships.com 