At the heart of many reader questions is this: “How do I get my family member(s) to do ‘X’ or stop doing ‘Y’?” Among the most painful of these cases (especially during the holidays) are family members who have curtailed or cut off contact. This week we take a look at how it happens that those we were closest to can have stories about us — and what has happened between us — that are so bewilderingly different from our own. And we have three strategies that just might let the healing begin. (...)
Few things are as emotionally upsetting as having a family member who has severed ties with you (or with the whole family). Most of us work especially hard not to cut off ties with family, precisely because they are family. And so when someone does, it is often experienced by those cut off as being cavalier, petty, or the result of a failure to try hard enough.
In short, he or she is holding a grudge. A grudge, by definition, is a thing that should notbe held. It’s not a legitimate or healthy reaction and the resulting choices are bad ones. A more stable person would not have taken offense in the first place and a bigger person would surely have let go of it by now.
But that’s not how it’s experienced by the people holding the grudge. They know that what they are doing is protecting themselves, drawing essential boundaries, doing the only thing left to them to do. When we cut ties with others it’s not because we don’t care; it’s because the friction or pain or dysfunction have finally overpowered even the special pull of family.
None of this tells us whether those who withdraw from families are right or wrong, justified or not. It only says that that their reasons make sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us.
Why we have such different versions of history
Before thinking about what to do, it’s useful to understand a few reasons why people on each side of a conflict can experience it so differently.
1. Emotional math. Everyone gets frustrated, resentful, disappointed, or even enraged with others on occasion. It may come out as shouting, sarcasm, snippiness, or simply a put-upon silence. In those moments, we don’t see our emotional behavior as a big deal. They’re the ones who were being unusually annoying, it was a tense situation, you were tired. You know that your anger in that moment is not who you “really are.”
But to the other person, your anger is exactly who you are. Your emotional display is not incidental – it’s at the heart of the story they tell of what happened between you. From their point of view, your anger is the threat – the very thing they were coping with in that moment.
So you will tend to subtract your own emotions from the story, while the other person counts your emotions, say, double. And the same is true in reverse: You count their emotional reactions double, while they subtract them.
Few things are as emotionally upsetting as having a family member who has severed ties with you (or with the whole family). Most of us work especially hard not to cut off ties with family, precisely because they are family. And so when someone does, it is often experienced by those cut off as being cavalier, petty, or the result of a failure to try hard enough.In short, he or she is holding a grudge. A grudge, by definition, is a thing that should notbe held. It’s not a legitimate or healthy reaction and the resulting choices are bad ones. A more stable person would not have taken offense in the first place and a bigger person would surely have let go of it by now.
But that’s not how it’s experienced by the people holding the grudge. They know that what they are doing is protecting themselves, drawing essential boundaries, doing the only thing left to them to do. When we cut ties with others it’s not because we don’t care; it’s because the friction or pain or dysfunction have finally overpowered even the special pull of family.
None of this tells us whether those who withdraw from families are right or wrong, justified or not. It only says that that their reasons make sense to them, even if they don’t make sense to us.
Why we have such different versions of history
Before thinking about what to do, it’s useful to understand a few reasons why people on each side of a conflict can experience it so differently.
1. Emotional math. Everyone gets frustrated, resentful, disappointed, or even enraged with others on occasion. It may come out as shouting, sarcasm, snippiness, or simply a put-upon silence. In those moments, we don’t see our emotional behavior as a big deal. They’re the ones who were being unusually annoying, it was a tense situation, you were tired. You know that your anger in that moment is not who you “really are.”
But to the other person, your anger is exactly who you are. Your emotional display is not incidental – it’s at the heart of the story they tell of what happened between you. From their point of view, your anger is the threat – the very thing they were coping with in that moment.
So you will tend to subtract your own emotions from the story, while the other person counts your emotions, say, double. And the same is true in reverse: You count their emotional reactions double, while they subtract them.
by Sheila Heen, NY Times | Read more:
Image: NY Times
