Rebuilding Relationships
This time of year, many people make resolutions to rebuild broken relationships in their lives, or to reconnect as a family. Ryan LaRue of Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services has some thoughts on where to begin.
Relationships
Code of Secrecy
I talked about secrets in my last blog and received a specific question about how to address the issue of secrets with teenagers. What is a parent to do when it is discovered that your teen, or a teen you know, is keeping a secret about the behavior of a friend or peer from you? How do you get your teen or your tween to share this information with you? This is such a tough call—to report what is going on to someone who can be helpful (think police, school officials, parents of the teen in question) or to keep quiet so that you don’t jeopardize the trust relationship you have with your own child telling you this type of information. I’m sure we all have reference points for this challenge—either we remember when we were teens ourselves, not sharing with mom and dad how friends were drinking over the weekend in fear of being found out as a tattletale, or have encountered this type of scenario with our own children.
Relationship Questions Answers
Whether it’s with a spouse, a child or grandchild, most people are looking for ways to strengthen their family relationships. We went to the experts at Pine Rest Christian Services to answer questions our Facebook Fans submitted.
Tough Talks
Ugh. Have you ever felt a pit deep inside of your stomach as you’ve thought about having a difficult conversation? Thinking about asking your boss for a raise but know how she gets irritated easily? Wanting to talk with your child’s teacher about concerns over how your child has been treated in class? Knowing that things are not the same between you and your best friend and you probably need to talk about that elephant in the room? Enter nausea, right? Mustering up the courage to have these types of conversations is really tough. And feeling confident about how to have them can be even harder. Sometimes it’s easier to think about avoiding the person, place, or thing for a while, hoping it all blows over. But you know it probably won’t.
Here’s a simple little rule that I use and recommend when thinking about whether to avoid or confront a difficult issue. A while back, one of my friends introduced me to her “three day rule” for friendships. In a friendship, if something in a friendship or important relationship is bothering her or nagging at her for more than three days, she knows it needs to be addressed. I think that in a marriage, a “24 hour rule” is a healthy barometer of letting something go or addressing it with your spouse. After you decide if the issue or concern is something you can truly let go of (or not), then it is time to figure out how to have the conversation.
Often, when we have a tough talk with someone, we want to prove something, we want to send a very clear message. This backfires when the person we are talking with feels attacked and gets defensive. The conversation often ends with both people feeling misunderstood and frustrated, even angry. The key to approaching a hard conversation in a way that sets it up for success is to invite the other person in to the conversation with us—to move away from blame. Sharing your point of view and feelings is important and so is understanding that how we view the problem could change if we truly seek to understand the other’s point of view. Realizing that each person brings different realities and understandings of the same event to the conversation can help in figuring out solutions together.
In coming blogs, I’ll talk more about the elements of having that tough talk. In the meantime, think about the challenging conversations that you’ve had or think you might need to have. What has worked? What hasn’t worked? What are questions you have when thinking about how to bring up something difficult with someone in your life?
For more details on this, check out this book.
And, for more information on behavioral health issues, or to seek assistance, go to www.pinerest.org.
Being present
Have you noticed that Christmas comes earlier and earlier every year? I noticed this over the weekend. I was doing some shopping at my daughters’ favorite craft store and observed the employees, all decked out in their Halloween costumes, assembling Christmas displays. Thanksgiving décor was on sale, even before this holiday has passed! A couple of weeks ago, I was walking into Costco, when one of my children exclaimed, upon seeing lighted trees and reindeer, “Mommy! It’s Christmas—I didn’t even know it was time!”
I have to admit that I’ve been slightly bothered by these experiences—there is so much pressure from culture around us, which includes all the marketing efforts of retailers, to look toward the future and be distracted from the present. Going beyond this holiday phenomena, this reality shows up in other areas too—there is a tendency to feel unsatisfied with what we have and feel pressure to move on to the next thing, whatever that might be.
Listening: A fine art
When have you felt most understood by another person?
What about this experience helped you feel this way? I’m hoping that you’ve experienced this lately because it can be a very valuable quality in our relationships.
In my line of work, I get to spend time with quite a few couples. And so often the focus of our work together turns to the importance of listening. Usually there are complaints in this area—either a partner not feeling heard or understood, or feeling disconnected and unknown by the other. So much of feeling understood and connected in our relationships can begin with working on our own abilities to truly listen to another person. Listening actually requires effort and it’s something that we can develop more with practice.
Two tips
Two tips that I discovered a while back have really been helpful for me in my own relationships and in my work with individuals and families. Since we’ve started this conversation about communication, it’s timely for me to pass these tips along to you!
Some of the latest information by a leading researcher on relationships suggests that there are two factors that influence the success of conversations in relationships. His research focused on marriages, but these concepts are ones you can also keep in mind when you are communicating with family members and friends. This is how change and growth can happen in your relationships, starting with you.
1. Soft start up- How do you bring up a concern, a feeling, or a question to others? Do you blindside them with anger? Do you get so frustrated that it leaks out of you at the worst times? Are you sarcastic or critical? If so, a soft start up is something you might want to consider. A soft start up simply means that you bring your requests, needs, desires, and concerns to others in a way that is not full of criticism and blaming, but of respectfulness and honesty. Think—calm, cool, collected.
2. Allow yourself to be influenced- If we were honest with ourselves, I think most of us would admit that we want to be right most of the time. It’s tough to recognize that we each have a lot to learn, and there are times when we develop an opinion or reach a conclusion without having the full story. To allow yourself to be influenced means to work on our tendency to be defensive in our conversations, to recognize we each have our ‘blind spots.’ This also means that there could be something we could learn from another person’s perspective on the situation—a perspective that might even have the potential to change our own. Try it sometime!
It’s my hope that these tips will be helpful to you—I’d love to hear your thoughts and efforts with them!
For more information on behavioral health issues, or to seek assistance, go to www.pinerest.org
Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yendieu/645622700/
Relationships & Responsibility
I saw a client a while back who came to see me because she felt constantly misunderstood—by her partner, her children, her boss. She felt frustrated, sad, and even angry about this. It was really affecting her life and she was wondering how she could change some of these relationships.
We worked together to recognize how she could begin making some of these changes. I want to pass along where we started together, what I consider to be one of the keys in making any changes that involve relationships (which are most changes!). It can be a very difficult concept to integrate into your life, even though the idea is very simple., but once you do, it can bring a sense of freedom to your relationships. Before we have a conversation about communication, I think it’s important to share…
The key is: You are only responsible for…YOU.
That’s it. Easy, right? Simple to take this and run with it? Well, it doesn’t always work out that way, at least from my experience.
CARE About Your Relationships
One of the best ways to “clean up” your relationships is to CARE about them. This week therapist, Michael Reiffer, broke down the acronym and how it can help you.
C – Choose
Love is an act of will
Forgiveness is a choice
Choose your time, money and resources wisely
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