{"id":8006,"date":"2018-11-23T03:57:13","date_gmt":"2018-11-23T08:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/coping-with-a-critical-family\/"},"modified":"2018-11-23T03:57:13","modified_gmt":"2018-11-23T08:57:13","slug":"coping-with-a-critical-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/coping-with-a-critical-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Coping with a Critical Family"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/div>

Therapist: \u201cYou say you want a relationship with your mother. Well, you\u2019ve got one, but it\u2019s destructive. You cannot begin a constructive relationship with her until you put an end to this negative one. It sounds like you are feeling helpless and discouraged. I\u2019m willing to guess she expects you to give up on her and confirm her feelings of worthlessness.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cThat\u2019s what I feel like, all right. I\u2019ve had it with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cBut if you give up on her you will feel guilty, irresponsible, negligent and worthless.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cShe tells me I\u2019m selfish \u2013 I only think of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cThat is a confession, not an accusation. She is entirely preoccupied with her own distress, her own anger. She is in no position to tell you what you are and are not. That accusation keeps you proving to her over and over that you are not selfish! But no matter how much you try it\u2019s never enough to satisfy her.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cExactly!, Its never enough for her. What can I do? I feel so guilty for disappointing her!\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cNo, you aren\u2019t guilty. But you plead your case to defend yourself against your mother\u2019s false accusations. You take her accusations literally, personally, and serious. When you do, you make the mistake of choosing to plead your case in an imaginary court of law with a judge and jury of one. You defend your innocence to avoid being convicted as guilty and deserving punishment.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t work. Your mother hasn\u2019t change her mind and your pleas are disregarded. Thus, you feel like you failed to make your case, which only compounds the guilt and escalates the miscommunication as you retaliate with your own blaming accusations.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cBut if I stop trying, I\u2019ll lose her altogether.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cOne thing you can do is disengage from your mother\u2019s antagonism and do the unexpected. For instance, she expects you to defend yourself against her accusations of failure.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cCan you stop defending yourself against your poor irrational mother? Her accusations don\u2019t make sense. As you replace your childhood beliefs of \u201ccontrol\u201d with mature ones in the present, your anxiety level comes down. You are freeing yourself to override your own inappropriate attitudes as they rise up, and choose to operate out of your civilized judgment. You are freeing yourself to do the last thing he expects you to do. This includes agreeing that she feels the way she feels: \u201cI don\u2019t blame you for being angry.\u201d She can\u2019t fight that. You are not agreeing that she is \u201cright\u201d in her facts, merely that she feels the way she feels at the time. By agreeing with feelings, not the facts your doing the unexpected. Can you say, `It seems that way, doesn\u2019t it,\u2019 or `You must be very angry,\u2019 or `I\u2019m sorry that you are so unhappy\u2019.\u201d
\nBarb: \u201cIt will sound like sarcasm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Therapist: \u201cNot if you say with the right tone, one of compassion for a person in terrible pain. If she accuses you of sarcasm, you can disengage from that too, `I\u2019m sorry you feel that way,\u2019 or `It sounds like sarcasm sometimes, doesn\u2019t it?\u2019 In other words, you are refusing to be drawn into a fight with her, a fight that you will both lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>

Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/span><\/div>

Therapist: \u201cYou say you want a relationship with your mother. Well, you\u2019ve got one, but it\u2019s destructive. You cannot begin a constructive relationship with her until you put an end to this negative one. It sounds like you are feeling helpless and discouraged. I\u2019m willing to guess she expects you <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a>
Shared by Aaron Karmin, LCPC, Contributing Blogger<\/a> November 23, 2018<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5630],"tags":[4140,10105],"class_list":["post-8006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinicians-blog","tag-anger-management","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}