A Nurturing Family

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.  ~Virginia Satir

I've known only a few people who lived, day in and day out, in this kind of family.  More often, the people I have known have experienced some nurturing punctuated by a more or less steady steam of indifference, impatience, capricious demands, contempt and violence.  So they carry their wounds forward with them to their friends, lovers and children.

And often, we are mystified wondering why our lives and loves are chaotic and full of conflict.  When we are ready to finally fix what is broken, we will go deep enough to repair the damage from long ago.  We will learn to become the nurturing person we needed way back when.  In the process we will also learn our true worth and teach others how valuable they are today.

Love and Appreciation

When I tell you that I love I am also telling you that I also appreciate you.  Appreciation isn't everything love is, but it is necessary.  Love without appreciation isn't love at all.

Love is full of appreciation.  It is full of thankfulness and gratitude.  It recognizes the value of another and expresses the joy of experiencing that value.  It celebrates the place of another.  Love prizes the other person.  Love delights in the other person.  Love celebrates the other person.  Love holds dear the mystery of another person.

Love cherishes the unconditional worth of another person.  Appreciation is an expression of admiration.  It is an expression of respect.  Appreciation is an act of thankfulness.   It recognizes the contribution of the unique qualities only the other person brings.  It knows the other as being individual, irreplaceable.  

Appreciation sets the stage for fulfilling potential.  It is the environment of success, growth and healing.  It is the landscape of recovery.  People who live within a sphere of appreciation more readily fulfill the potential they hold.  Appreciation becomes faith and leads to self-confidence and accomplishment and validation.

In time appreciation sets people free from dependence and leads them to independence and then further to interdependence.  Appreciation fosters intimacy and closeness and releases fear and clinging.  Appreciation sets us free from desperation and self-protection.

Without appreciation love is reduced to possessiveness or envy.  But true love includes appreciation.

The Most Common and Least Effective Ways to Manage Stress

There are times in our lives when our needs, desires and expectations do not match up with our available resources.  It is this gap between needs and resources that we call stress.  It is common to all people.

Stress that is ongoing and unresolved will have long term consequences for our health.  Physically it will increase our susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, autoimmune disease, diabetes, asthma and Alzheimer's.  Oh the whole, people whole learn to manage their stress live longer than those who don't.

Three of the most common, and least effective, approaches for managing stress, increase the likelihood that stress will make us sick.  The first common and ineffective approach for managing stress is comforting ourselves with food.  We eat more and more often because it soothes us for a few moments.    We eat bigger portions and sugary, fatty and salty foods because they have the most impact on how we are feeling.  With a little food, we are able to push aside the feelings of stress for a while.  In a very stressful world, full of demands that are difficult to meet, it is not surprising that two thirds of us are overweight or obese.

We can balance our need for food and the comfort it brings with the harmful effects of over indulging.  If we are inclined to eat to manage stress, then we need to find ways to eat that will not harm us.  Focusing on satisfying, celebratory, nutrition filled foods will help.  Becoming aware, even becoming experts at understanding the balance of calories in/calories out in our own lives will be essential.  Finally, learning to combine the pleasures of eating with the pleasures of burning calories will change everything for you.  With burning calories you will add strength, personal power, positive biochemicals throughout your body, problem solving, optimism and increased neuroplasticity and more resources throughout your life.

The second most common and ineffective approach to managing stress is the use of drugs and alcohol.  The desire to escape or cope with the challenges at hand leads many to use alcohol or other drugs.  Sometimes the strategy is to blow off steam, let loose and forget all worries.  Other time the hope is to maintain function while cutting the feelings of stress.  Neither approach is effective long term.  Both approaches lead to more difficulties and then to more stress.

Alcohol and other drugs have been proven to be high risk stress management approaches.  Reliance upon drugs and alcohol can lead to dependence, addiction, relationship issues, legal problems and health issues.   It is often difficult for people relying on alcohol and other drugs to manage their stress, to be fully aware of the actual impact their use is having on their lives.  It is also easy for them to consider themselves to be the exception to the rule of standard usage.  But, of course, they are not the exception to the rule.

Here are the standards for healthy, safe use of alcohol and other drugs:

• Zero alcohol if you are sick, using medications or other drugs, pregnant, under 21, chemically dependent, driving, or have a strong family history of alcoholism.
• Up to one drink for women and two drinks for men daily.
• Never more than three drinks in a day.
• Never three drinks daily.
• Prescription drugs only under the supervision of a qualified physician.
• There are no safe amounts of other drugs and no way to manage the risks of use.

The third common and ineffective approach to managing stress is smoking.  Smokers will tell you about the calming, soothing, energizing and satisfying experience of smoking.  At the same time, every smoker knows about the long term and destructive consequences of smoking.  Smoking can help you feral better for a few moments until you have your next. 10 times a day, or 20, or 40 or even 50 times a day you feel better.  With each smoke you mortgage your future, push off stress and allow it to grow.  One day the payment will come due in medical treatment, disability or death.  It's a hard way to live.

There are no safe amount that you can smoke.

There are healthier ways to manage stress that add years to your life, add happiness to your days and resolve stress.   Exercise, time with friends, family and those you love, meditation are all highly effective alternatives the ineffective approaches to stress management.

Love and Acceptance

When I tell you I love you I am also telling you that I accept you.  Acceptance alone isn't enough.  Acceptance alone isn't love.  But without acceptance there is no love.

Acceptance is a welcoming of who you are, as you are.  This includes you thoughts, your choices, you history, your feelings and your personal traits.  My acceptance frees me and you of my pre-packaged plans for you.  It frees us both of my agendas for you.

Acceptance will mean I will embrace our differences.  I will accept you limitations and potentials.  I will not try to contain your differences.  I will not try to diminish your differences.  I will not try to erase your differences.  I will overcome my inclination to be disappointed that you are not just like me.

Acceptance will mean I will notice you and I will listen.  Acceptance will mean I approve of you.  That I trust you.  I will encourage you to act in your own power.  I will support you on your path.  I will accept your strengths even when they are greater than my own.  I will accept your weaknesses even when I find them irritating or difficult.  And your weakness and strengths are not just tolerated.  I will honor them, celebrate them and cherish them.

Acceptance isn't all that love is, but without acceptance, there will be no love.

Love and Attention

When I tell you that I love you, I am also telling you that I will give you my attention.  Attention isn't the whole of love, but is it is an essential, vital part.  Without my attention, my love will be inadequate, incomplete.

Giving attention means that we give our focus to another.  It means noticing accurately your feelings and thoughts.  It means noticing your needs, desires and expectations. It means that this attention comes without judgment and correction.  Attention is consistent and doesn't only exist when times are good or when there are problems.  Attention seeks to really know the other person as they are.

Giving attention does not mean controlling, protecting or intruding on their life. It doesn't mean we are to scrutinize them.  We don't need to undermine their power to make their own choices in life, even if we would make different choices.  I don't keep you under lock and key.  I don't try to direct your every thought or act.

Loving you will lead me to hear your words, notice your feelings and take in your experience.  I will know if you are acting freely or if you feel pressured.  I will know your true thoughts and feelings.  I will respect your intuitions.  Loving you will build trust and security.

And for you, loving me, it is the same.

Learning this skill of loving will begin to change me.  By learning to give my attention to another I practice letting go of my own self importance.  Loving you allows me to become the person that love you even more.

Blame, Responsibility and Power

When we are unhappy with a situation we, wisely, look for the cause.  What's wrong and what's not working and whose fault us it?  And all too often we lose our power to make things better.

For most of us, our search for what is wrong leads us to examine the actions of other people.  Not surprisingly, we find plenty that we disapprove of, would do differently ourselves and want them to change.  We conclude from our little research project that when they change, stop doing the wrong, inconvenient, silly things they are doing, then everything will work out as it should and we will feel better.   And our power starts to slip away.

Now that we have identified the problem as the other person and their thoughts, choices, or actions, we get to work trying to change them.  We tell them to change.  We ask them.  We threaten them.  We play mind games.  We manipulate. We beg.  We cry.  We threaten.  We demand.  We huff and puff.  We scream and yell.  And still they don't make the change we want.

We start to feel like they don't care.  Like they don't love us.  Like they don't respect us.  Like we don't even exist.  Our opinion of them begins to change.  Maybe they aren't so nice after all.  Maybe they care about anyone but themselves.  Maybe they are really bad people deep down.  Maybe they aren't good and decent people like we are.  Maybe they are narcissists.  Maybe they will never change.

Without our noticing the focus has shifted.  The problem is no longer the problem.  The person has become the problem.  And we can't fix people.   In the process we have become someone we don't want to be.  We have become demanding, controlling and judgmental.  We are still experiencing the original problem with no end in sight.  It is at this point we begin to start considering how we will end the relationship because we feel powerless to impact it and make it work.

Our natural inclination to look outside of ourselves to find the solutions to our situations undermines our power to make powerful, positive changes.  When we rely on others to make the changes, we give up our own power to make a positive impact.  Our power slips away.

We fear being wrong.  We fear being blamed.  So we look for others to blame.  We fight tooth and nail to force others to accept that they are wrong and the problem.  They resist us because they fear being wrong and so we fight some more. Eventually the fight is about who is wrong and who is to blame and nothing gets better.

A stronger approach and one that takes more courage is to identify every way you are contributing to the situation that you don't care for.  Make a list if you want.  Be clear and specific.  Be detailed.  The longer the list is, the more opportunity you have to make positive changes.  The power to make a difference is in your hands.  You don't have to wait for others.  You can start making positive changes as soon as you identify opportunities.

It is ironic that our desire to blame others and shift responsibility to others for what is not working drains our power from us.  While, at the same time, being able to accept that we are contributing to the situation, even in the smallest ways, gives us enormous power to make positive and lasting change.

The Emotional Costs of High Conflict People

Engaging high conflict people extracts a price from us.  Though we may not notice at first, we feel the drain.  When we engage certain people we may experience a wide range of unpleasant emotions.  Some of the emotions you may be feeling when you are dealing with a high conflict person in your life may include:

• stress
• anger
• anxiety
• guilt
• depression
• loneliness
• helplessness
• frustration
• emptiness
• hopelessness
• ineffectiveness
• worthlessness
• the need to blame yourself

One man I know feels most of the things most of the time.  It wasn’t until we began working through the traits of high conflict people that he came to understand that both of his parents have significant high conflict traits.  From his earliest days he was trained to feel these feelings.   Though few know it, least of all his parents, this “training” has resulted in a great deal of personal and private suffering.

Perhaps it is an encouragement to know that when others engage these same people they often experience similar feelings.  This is even true of therapists and others who have been specifically trained to work with high conflict people.   If you find the experience unpleasant or difficult, you are not alone.

We can use this experience to our advantage if we like.  First, we can become aware of how we feel when we are with different people.  This will allow us to engage more constructively in all of our relationships, especially the wonderful, loving and pleasant relations we often take for granted while we defend ourselves from the other, that are more dangerous, destructive and unpleasant.

Take the time to remind yourself that this isn’t about you.  They blame, complain, manipulate, distort, lie and criticize because they are already miserable.  Inside they are in real pain and don’t know the way out.  When people treat you this way they are telling you more about themselves than they are 
describing you.

In addition, we can use this information to become aware of the people in our lives that are not so safe and need special attention.   We can engage them as they are and address their real needs with our eyes wide open.  We can serve them well because we see them truly.

Finally, we can use this information as a reminder to take good care of ourselves.  When we are caught in their distortions, fears and dramas, we can be of little help to high conflict people.  We need to learn to empathize with their perspectives and pain, but without sacrificing our own integrity.  We maintain our integrity when we love them while still caring for ourselves.   A full, well lived life demands both tasks.