I devised a list of how to participate in the healing of men and women who have been hurt:
Be willing to listen, even if what is being said is what you’d prefer to not hear. Try not to re-engineer (re-frame, recast) what you have heard so it is more fitting with what you’d really like to hear.
Resist understandable attempts to short-circuit growth by trying to ease necessary pain, by offering false affirmations, and by accepting empty excuses for irresponsible behavior. Pain is a very good motivator for change. Resist the urge to remove it when it appears to be helpful.
Offer your presence, not your answers. “I am with you” is more helpful than “let me help you fix it.”
Welcome silence. There are ways to communicate that do not include words. Resist the understandable urge to chase healing and learning away with the incessant use of words and stories.
Avoid minimizing (“it’s not so bad!”) or rationalizing (“What else did you expect?”) or normalizing (“Anyone would have done that!”) the issues that resulted in pain. Do not rob necessary pain of its usefulness.
Promote “future thinking.” Ask questions focused on future wellness and success.
Try to avoid searching for the genesis (the cause) of what has led to pain. Where something comes from is not nearly as important living your way out of it.
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
Finding the opportunity to seek forgiveness, participate in repair or restitution with people whom I have hurt may result in their expressing forgiveness. While hearing such comforting words warms me, self-forgiveness remains difficult.
Do you have similar battles?
I know this is a particular struggle because having known what is right, good, wholesome, I have not always done what is right and good and wholesome. I find this painful to admit and address. Knowing better was hardly helpful.
While it is no excuse, I am aware that I am not too different from many.
When I am feeling down it feels as if my failures speak louder than any successes. Despite the knowledge that “people are more than their actions” shame seeps and runs deep and makes me feel vulnerable and fragile. It can be a physical sensation.
Again, I must ask, do you ever feel this way?
When I am at my best, I can humble myself, accept my imperfections and that I am a forgiven person.
Admitting I am flawed is key to my freedom which leads me to self forgiveness at which point freedom fills my soul.
The capacity to FORGIVE is a divine gift. It can precipitate healing within people and among groups of people. The person who initiates acts of forgiveness is usually (but not always) the one who reveals greater strength. He or she may be the one carrying the deeper burden. It is the stronger person (usually) who is first to forgive, and both parties – the forgiver and the forgiven – benefit from the act if apologies are expressed and accepted. When I choose to forgive I seldom have anything to lose, and usually much to gain.
I know I harbor resentment when I am uncomfortable being around a particular person and would rather avoid him or her. I know I am holding onto hurt when I have little or nothing positive to say to or about someone and when I find it hard to think positive thoughts about someone. I will forgive as efficiently as I find it possible and can muster the strength from within to do so.
I will forgive when someone’s actions toward me (real or perceived) seem sealed into my consciousness and I can’t let them out of the prison within my head. I know it’s time for me to forgive when I feel haunted by someone whose acts against me will not let me go. Forgiveness links me with the divine, heals fragile families, calms hurting communities and restores hope within broken people – and – sets the forgiver free.
Our daily walk takes us through this forest — a 5 minute walk from our home
No matter how good or qualified your therapist — therapy will be of no help:
If you’re seeking help with your intimate relationship but you’re living with your mind made up, bags packed, and a heart full of blame and complaints.
It’s therapy, not arm-wrestling.
If you’re having an extramarital affair and you want to improve your relationship with your spouse so your divorce can be cordial.
It’s therapy, not help with deception and manipulation.
If you’re coming to change or influence a relationship you’re not directly a part of, for instance, you want to fix your son’s marriage or you want you husband to call his mom more often.
It’s therapy, not human chess.
If you’re committed to treating your adult sons and daughters as if they’re children and wonder why they resist visiting or phoning you.
It’s therapy, not guilt-tripping.
If you’re hoping for help to change the political views of people with whom you do not agree.
It’s therapy, not magic.
If you want the lazy to be hardworking, the harsh to be gentle, the stingy to be generous, and the unforgiving to find mercy.
Men and women who discover such radical transformation do so because they grow tired of their selfish, rigid, alienating and arrogant ways, and, in humility, find the courage for change.
It’s not therapy, it’s when desperation meets the Divine.
A man or woman who is a survivor of a difficult or traumatic childhood will often go to unusual extremes in several of life’s arenas.
“Make it perfect,” becomes the mantra.
The extremes are intense attempts at perfection to put right the past or stop it intruding on the present.
This may be particularly obvious when parenting.
The survivor of a difficult childhood whom you love will go to endless lengths to please you once he or she has broken through the trust barrier with you.
Once you are trusted it will be in ways he or she has never trusted before.
Be gentle as it could be very fragile.
When suspicious questions arise, answer as honestly as you know how you realize that it is not about your behavior, it’s about history repeating itself.
The man or woman whom you may love who is a survivor of a difficult childhood will often feel heavily let down if well made plans go awry. He or she may suddenly become completely disillusioned when discovering he or she was unable to create something perfect for you to experience together.
If you ever want a beautiful picture of mercy the Biblical account of the life of Joseph is the place to go.
His response to his desperate, begging brothers embodies the quality of mercy I have often received.
While in Genesis, you will encounter with Joseph moments of extraordinary grace and healing, on top of surely being bombarded with the impulse to burst out in songs from the musical that bears his name.
Following a rather violent and involuntary departure and after decades of separation from his family, Joseph abounds in kindness and mercy towards his brothers. This same band of brothers found young Joseph so threatening they discarded him into a well, as a kinder option to killing him, and then sold him to a traveling caravan.
As a result of their jealousy and violence Joseph spent years in isolation and torment.
When, decades later and faced with his brothers, Joseph would be justified if he chose to have nothing to do with them or exercised his extraordinary powers in the pharaoh’s domain to have them arrested and held accountable for their crimes.
But no, recognizing who they are, knowing his brothers have come in search of help, he discloses his identity.
“I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”
His first question is about their father’s wellbeing.
I cannot imagine being cut-off from my extended family, all of whom live in distant countries.
I cannot imagine not knowing if one of my closest relatives is living or dead.
Joseph’s retribution quotient rests firmly at zero. When legitimately, there could be anger, Joseph expresses none. He fosters no desire for pay-back.
“Come closer,” he says and weeps with relief and gratitude for the opportunity for reconciliation.
“I will provide for you,” he tells them and there are hugs and kisses and weeping all round.
What a reunion!
Many families long for such a reunion.
Do you?
“Something got in the way,” I hear a woman say revealing she has not spoken to her sister in decades.
“I will never talk to that woman again. She got mom’s dining room table she knew I wanted.”
A table got in the way.
A dining room table was enough to sever a family tie?
“Ah, it is not about the table,” may be a legitimate retort.
I concede it may well not be about a table. Give me a few moments and I could suggest a variety of possible explanations for the schism a table may conveniently represent.
Family estrangements can be horribly painful but, even sadder, we grow accustomed to them. We live with them. It becomes how life is.
“Something got in the way,” would have been a gross understatement had Joseph chosen victimhood.
May we each do our parts in getting whatever got in the way, out of the way.
Joseph embodied mercy when he had the choice to extract vengeance.
Joseph chose humility, when he indeed could have demanded his brothers bow before him and beg for their lives.
If you fall in love (or are friends) with a man or a woman who reveals having had a very difficult childhood there are a few things of which you may want to be aware.
Keep in mind that I am only one voice in a vastly explored arena. It is usually a good idea to get lots of insights from several sources.
Sad thing is that if you have already fallen in love you probably won’t be looking for help.
If you are, it’s because you’ve already begun to see how tough it is to love tough-historied people. (I rather like my euphemism).
“Troubled” or “unsettled” are pejorative terms.
Avoid them.
People from tough backgrounds can be very exciting, motivated and “world-changing” people.
If you are going to be partners you have to learn and understand what kind of music is playing in their heads and hearts and how they dance to it or turn it up or turn it down or turn it off (if they ever can).
They will often be way ahead of most people in terms of being street wise. They have had to be. They have been watching, negotiating, recruiting, debating and have had to have an eye for undercurrents for so long such behaviors are a way of life for them.
They will usually be cunningly intelligent but also possess zero desire to bring harm to you or others.
More about this sometime….
Artist: Trevor Beach – google him or find him on Facebook and buy his art. The above and another hangs in my office. I enjoy the idea that an artist named Beach seems only to paint Ocean Scenes.
When I was a child there were days when every finger on both my hands would bleed from my biting and ripping my nails. I’d bite and rip until shiny puddles of blood and spit would pool in what was left of my fingertips. I’d make fists to hide the damage or tuck the wounded digits into my school pants pockets where the blood and spit would stain the pockets. If I pulled the pockets from the trousers they’d be a dull red or a darkened brown on the white cloth depending on the stain’s age. They’d look like a handkerchief applied to a bleeding nose. It was a painful habit and I was ashamed of my fingers and I hid my hands. The shame and pain did not stop this incessant indulgence which persisted well into my adulthood. My dad”s only and repeated remedy, which was never acted upon, was the threat to apply some bitter substance he’d known as a child. Mother never referred to my nail-biting but to sometimes say, “Don’t bite your nails,” and, “If you swallow a nail you’ll puncture your lungs.” Despite the graphic image of me exploding like a punctured balloon her exhortations were unsuccessful.
difficultrelationships.com 