It is my pleasure and joy to near Geneva in Switzerland this week where I will teach Family Systems theory and practice. Over our five days together I hope to:
Cover the history and the development of The Genogram. This is a drawing of any client’s family relationships covering at least three generations. The genogram is a predictive tool revealing what’s likely to occur within a family by seeing what’s set in motion by preceding generations. Each student will complete his or her Genogram.
Demonstrate how all family members are deeply connected to all other family members and how the connections either nourish or drain individuals and the entire network.
Demonstrate how assuming personal responsibility for one’s life lessens the power of the negative (unwanted) themes driving our lives. Assuming an active healthy and engaged stance about our lives increases the likelihood of a healthier future if the past has offered tough and debilitating challenges.
While every class is unique and the material is designed for each group, my focus is always to encourage deep engagement from every person. As insights are shared the way opens for the group process to be at least as powerful as the content.
If we had a chance to talk and listen to each other, here are a few things I would enjoy talking about:
I’d like to talk about what each of us is really good at and hear and tell a few stories to demonstrate our identified strengths.
I’d like to hear about three or four defining moments in your life – when things shifted or directions changed – and tell you about a few of mine.
I would like each of us to hear about the people who love us or have loved us and for us to tell a few stories about how the love is (or was) expressed.
I would like to hear about how you see your future – no matter what your age – and have an opportunity to tell how I see mine.
I would like to hear of occasions when you have been misunderstood and what others tend to misunderstand about you. I’ll be more than ready to let you in on my experiences of being misunderstood.
I would like to hear about what you want and tell you about what I want. If we get this far in our talking I hope we are both ready for the most spiritual discussion possible which is deciding and declaring what we really want.
The Art of Adulthood demands the practiced skill of knowing when to remain silent, when to speak, and to hold onto the tongue when do speak.
Self-monitoring, self-awareness, an appreciation for the impact we each have on ourselves and others – are crucial gateways to adult emotional health.
I have left a gathering knowing I have talked too much, over-shared, made unnecessary comments, even, and this pains me to write, hurt another, someone present or absent.
Have you done this, too?
You got a little thrill the moment the words came out of your mouth, a brief high of apparent inclusion. The tid-bit shared became a window or door or crack to the “inside” of who knows what. But, given time, which could be seconds or hours, there was regret.
You let yourself down.
Said too much, hogged the floor, or bruised another with an unnecessary comment or story. Yet, at the time and in the context it felt real, important, or playful enough to get a giggle.
Then you were hit with a feeling you’d rather not have had.
I know about this. In a desire for some weird or momentary high or sense of importance I added content to a conversation that was unnecessary, even harmful.
Silence would have been wiser.
Live. Learn. Decide.
Apologize if necessary and possible (it is not always possible).
Do better next time.
I am now finally available for Zoom consultations – email me if you are interested.
A poem I rather love —- by Dennis and Matthew Linn — from their book “Healing Life’s Hurts”
The “outside world” can be a dangerous place for children.
Another exceedingly dangerous environment for children can also be their own homes. While medicine cabinets, cleaning materials and unlocked swimming pool gates are a legitimate threat to the child-safety, the unguarded mouth of an angry adult can inflict grievous harm to a child.
A vigilant parent might install childproof locks yet leave a totally exposed web of anger in every room of the house. Unresolved anger in a parent, expressed through unpredictable displays of frustration and annoyance or rage, can quite effectively sabotage a childhood and even pass a baton of anxiety and rage to unborn generations. It is in their own homes that children might be at most in danger. At home they learn about trust, and exercise the most trust. It is at home they will learn, or fail to learn, by watching and experiencing, almost everything they will ever know about love.
It is at home they will make the most mistakes and receive the most affirmation and correction. It is at home that children will learn about fear and hurt and rejection and empathy and love and acceptance.
Children are constantly seeing, feeling, learning, trying, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing, watching, waiting and taking it all in.
Monitoring diets is a crucial aspect of childhood health. Another “diet” is the calm, security, predictability and warmth healthy parents can provide.
If you have the opportunity to see “The King of Broken Things” run at it.
I hear it from you, whoever you are, and, yes, I can detect it in a nanosecond, it usually bores me.
When I hear it from preachers, teachers, public speakers – and I am one of them – it really annoys me. It annoys me because it reveals a lack of preparation and the assumption that you can waste an audience’s time.
But, I try to be patient.
I’m referring to auto-speak.
Auto-speak is the gear people (we) go into where people repeat things they’ve said a hundred times.
Schtick.
It’s preachers as rehearsed comedians who stop at the same laugh-points, rely on the same cliched puns, retell the same decades old “miracle” and “small-world” stories.
I invited a well-known yesteryear sports star and public speaker to address a group of athletes.
“Fresh,” I said, “I want you to speak from your heart, a practiced script. I want the men to meet you, now, not the ‘when we’ person.”
He declined.
When we (you and I) resort to auto-speak we stop communicating, connecting with our audience, be it 1 or 5000 people.
Say it to me.
I am willing to hear it.
‘I am as tired of your schtick as you are. Let’s really talk.”
———-
Unrelated —- it’s my sons birthday today….. I love you, Nate:
22 today….. you have transformed my life and I thank you.
My recent South African trip led to many conversations during which I tripped over some glorious new-to-me one-liners. Perhaps they’re old hat to many South Africans, grafted into common usage, but I found each rather refreshing.
“Keep your head out of that noose,” said a woman to a friend on hearing of a complex domestic issue and an invitation to comment. A rather graphic picture I thought, an ear-catching way to alert others to being trapped in toxic triangles and a rather hard image to forget.
“My mother would always encourage us to be a ‘rainbow in someone’s cloud’,” said an avid Mercury reader I bumped into at the mall.
I chuckled, asked her to repeat it and, when she did, she said, “please use it in a column soon.”
“That’s a wave you don’t want to ride,” said the seasoned surfer who confessed he’d almost forgotten Mothers Day was just around the corner.
While I did enjoy multiple cups of tea in both homes and restaurants and repeatedly heard that tea makes everything feel better — and I affirm it often does — I also heard a man say in passing and in competition with the inherited British belief in a good cup of tea that “there’s nothing like a good bunny* with lots of gravy to make everything feel better.”
*Durban and surrounding areas “bunny chow” — an Indian Curry served in a half-loaf of white bread.
Join me as I continue my journey toward being a low-maintenance person:
Take care of yourself as best as you are able. If possible, pay your own way. Live in your own head, but more important, get out of the heads of others. Others want — or don’t — want to do their own thinking.
Offer information as needed and only to those who need it. Listen to yourself. Filter content. Negative talk about others reveals nothing about others but everything about you.
Delete “you should, – ought, – must,” from your vocabulary even if you do think you know better or are more experienced.
Take others at their word unless you have solid reasons not to. Believe people when they tell you who they are. People constantly communicate who they are but if you are already convinced you already know you will miss what they are telling you and only hear and see what fits with your already-made-up-notions. Observe without prejudice.
Chase no one for anything.
Resist the urge to convince others of what you think, believe, support, and desire to defend and know it is impossible to persuade the already convinced.
People are always communicating. There is no such thing as “no communication.” This is a cop-out catchphrase used when a person prefers to avoid or deny what is being communicated.
I am grateful to the hundreds of new and old friends I encountered, the devoted newspaper readers I met both randomly and at events. I loved teaching at Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and University of The Nations in both Namibia and in the Western Cape. Any smidgen of hopelessness I may briefly entertain about the future was quickly dismissed while in dialogue with hopeful and faithful and motivated students.
I loved attending a family wedding in the Howick area of KZN.
The family wedding – as all weddings do – demanded I re-enter the full sway of family dynamics – none of us escapes such dynamics despite distance and time – and to do so was invigorating, inspiring. It was a beautiful event reflecting the love and commitment of generations of moms and dads and aunts and uncles and family and friends from who came from near and afar.
I seldom travel away from home for a full month and now, before I board my homebound flight, I am feeling some of the expected stresses of being away. It is indeed time for me to return to my sons and to our community in Indiana, USA.
What thoughts keep you awake or greet you first on waking?
What thoughts can you not shake?
I will let you in on what’s on my mind if you are interested.
If you are not, I understand.
I often sigh and move on when I receive a parallel invitation.
In November 2023 had the joy of teaching young adults near Lome, Togo.
I noticed groups of children walking to and from school. The chatter (in French) caught my ears; the neat and proudly worn uniforms, my eyes. The shared joy and delight of the children touched and warmed my soul.
I asked questions here and there to find that the school is indeed on the same property where I was teaching and run by the same organization.
I requested a visit.
It’s a bamboo L shaped structure. In one corner of a sandy play area there is a single netball hoop with no net. The student body of about 250 children, Kindergarten to about Grade 6, under the tutelage of about 10 faculty, using merger supplies, are heads down and studying, reading, or writing notes off more-than-used chalkboards.
In one room there was beautiful singing.
As I walked through each bamboo room I saw joy and serious study occurring.
I found out that when the weather changes all are sent home to safety until bad weather passes.
Contact me if you’d like to assist – and build a classroom or two.
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When engaging those of advanced age, approach with deep respect, kindness, openness.
Expect to be enthralled, to learn.
Besides, in a flash of time — yes, 30, 40, even 60 years, is a flash of time — and it’ll be you.
Listen rather than speak.
Learn, rather than try to teach.
Wait, hold onto yourself.
Offer time for a reflective exchange.
Imagine how you’ll want to be treated in a few years — and do that.
The life experience embodied in the person before you, if you’ll take the time to hear, will astound you. But, it requires necessary time to hear and the power to resist the urge to do all the talking.
Be aware of chasing away an elderly person’s desire to engage you because you talk too much. I’ve seen Elderly People resort to silence rather than compete with the know-it-all nature that often comes with youth.
Ask questions and be willing to listen. Ask about former careers and accomplishments. Ask about love and loss and grief and recovery and you may learn more about love and commitment than you imagined. Remind yourself, as you listen, that being elderly is not a liability but an invaluable asset to adult sons and daughters and grandchildren and great grandchildren and to society at large.
Engage exactly how you will hope to be engaged a few years from now.
difficultrelationships.com 