Not Taking the Bait in Family Discussions

When adult children complain to their parents about how the parents are repetitively engaging in invalidating, hateful, critical, demanding, and or abusive behavior towards them, the elder family members have almost always developed a number of ways to get them to shut the hell up. Often these ways include dismissing the adult children's complaints by accusing their progeny of being:

A) Little snowflakes (to use the current trendy term) who are overly-sensitive, weak, selfish, unable to take a little good natured teasing, or "high maintenance."

and/or

B) Stupid - reading things into what the parents are saying that are not really there.

and/or

C) Pathological -making things up that did not even happen or twisting the meaning of everything the parents says to unfairly shift the blame for the child's problem onto the poor, put-upon parents.

Unfortunately, in many of today's psychotherapy models, many therapists seems to agree with the parents that the adult child's problems are all in their heads and are not, in fact, due to their having being traumatized or understandably upset by dysfunctional or abusive family relationships.  

And of course, as readers of my blogs know, if parents act as if they expect  their children to act in weak, stupid, or pathological ways, in response the children often do indeed start to act out exactly what they are being accused of doing. When dysfunctional family patterns include that phenomenon in addition to the problematic parental behavior mentioned at the top of the post, the situation is a bit more complicated to talk about and will not be discussed further here.

To solve the problems, the adult children have to find a way to not shut the hell up, but to constructively push the conversation forward in order to put a stop to the problematic patterns. (I'm currently under contract for and working on a self-help book for New Harbinger publishers that discusses in great detail a large number of different strategies for achieving this goal).

This post will discuss one countermove to use when you are being accused of A, B, and/or C above that is often successful in disarming the parents and pushing the conversation onward. Of course, no strategy works with all families, or even all the time within any one family. But this one increases the odds of productive conversations when adult children bring up the complaints mentioned in the first paragraph of the post.

The strategy is based on a premise that was described beautifully and concisely by my colleague Dr. Jami Woods. She said, "You can't be pulled into a game of tug-of-war if you don't pick up the rope."

In this case, the accusations by the parents are bait. They want you to take it. You are being baited into becoming angry or defensive. Once that happens, constructive conversations immediately end in fight, flight, or freeze responses. No problems get solved then. Do not take the bait!

So how to avoid doing so?

Let's say you tell your parents that their demands are getting on your nerves because no matter how much you do, it never seems to be enough for them, and that that they seem to ignore the fact that you have other things to do and cannot just drop everything at a moment's notice to do things for them. Say they respond by telling that you are grossly exaggerating how much they ask of you, and that you ought to be happy to take the time to help them out. They add that you are being ungrateful. Just think of all the sacrifices they had to make for you when you were growing up!

How not to respond:

A) Argue with them about the frequency or reasonableness of their requests, or how much they sacrificed for you as a child.

B) Attack them and tell them they are insensitive, overly-critical clods.

C) Defend yourself by pointing out that your life is busy and of course you cannot always just drop everything to come over and do something for them.

D) Explain in detail your feelings and go on and on about how those feelings are justified.

E). Scold them or lecture them about etiquette and the proper relationship between adult children and their parents.

The basic form of the recommended response:

"Well, maybe so, Dad, but I am finding this situation to be a big problem. Do you think you could help me out by checking with me first about when it would be convenient for me to come over to help you?"

This sort of response is basically a refusal to argue about the merits of your personality characteristics, but trying instead to make a relationship better. In doing this, you are neither agreeing nor disagreeing with their characterization of you. It might be accurate, partially accurate, or complete wrong. Who's to say, really? That isn't the point. The point is how you are reacting to them when they do something, not whether your reactions are justified or not. They should want to know that so that everyone can, to quote Rodney King, just get along.

Surely they'd prefer a pleasant relationships to an unpleasant one. I know that it often looks as if this is not the case, but nonetheless, I advise that you give them the benefit of the doubt. 

How to Fail at Family Problem Solving

In prior posts, I have discussed what I call the principle of opposite behaviors as it applies to repetitive behavior in personality disorders as well as in recurring dysfunctional family behavior. It is related to an idea that I call the net effect of behavior: that if someone always gets the same results from their actions, and they keep doing it anyway, then the result they get is the result they are trying to get.

The principle of opposite behaviors applies in those cases in which someone repeatedly does the exact opposite of what another person is doing, yet repeatedly gets the same results anyway. Or those cases in which a person goes from one extreme to the other, and still always ends up in the same place.  Prior examples discussed in this blog: Parents who let their kids do anything they want versus those who try to control their every move; those who never ask anyone for anything versus those who ask people for the moon.

This post is about how the principle of opposites applies to metacommunication — family members discussing both their mutual interactions and the family dynamics over several generations. As readers of this blog know, I believe that doing so is the most effective way to solve problems and put a stop to ongoing dysfunctional interactions which trigger psychological symptoms and troublesome behavior. It is the "curative" part of my psychotherapy, which I call Unified Therapy.

When I discuss this idea on either this blog or on my blog on Psychology Today, I am usually besieged with comments saying that readers have tried this and it just doesn't work, or that I cannot appreciate that their family members are totally incapable of stopping abusive, distancing, or other provocative behavior.

I always reply that I do not blame anyone for not believing what I say about how metacommunication is both possible and effective in any family in which members are not fragrantly psychotic or a victim of brain damage or Alzheimer's disease. In fact, when I first broach this ideas with my own psychotherapy patients, I frequently get this response. Patients tell me that I couldn't possibly know how impossible their particular family can be.

Oh, but I do. In fact, I've almost always seen families that are far worse. And it is true, I add, that metacommunication done poorly can make a family problem even worse. Then I go on to say that doing it well is extremely difficult and that if it were easy, the patients would have already done it. 

In order to do it well, they have to become aware of things about their family and its members that they could not possibly have known before. Last, every family is different, so I can't just tell them right off how to proceed. Therapy is a complex process by which the right interventions are devised prior to any actual attempts at implementing them.

So why do folks who have tried to talk about family issues get into trouble? Well, again, every family is different, but we can discuss some general issues. It is much easier to talk about what does not work than trying to predict what will work in a given family or with a given relative. 

For this post, I invoke the principle of opposite behaviors: talking too much about something— especially if one always goes about it in the same way—is as futile as not talking about it at all. In either event, nothing gets resolved.

Obviously, trying to ignore an issue might work for a short time, but the issue will continue to hang over the heads of the participants like the proverbial Sword of Damocles, and things will eventually blow up. Or there will be an emotional cutoff in which family members try to divorce one another. But even that does not prevent the issues from continuing to contaminate the participants' other relationships, particularly between them and their lovers and children.

So what "doesn't work?" Here is a short list: blaming, accusing, and saying some variant of "You're bad (or evil, or stupid)," "You hate me," or "You did this to me." Getting angry rather than trying to hear the other person out, and/or becoming defensive rather than being thoughtful about what might be the kernal of truth in what the other person is saying. Not giving the other person the benefit of the doubt no matter what they say.

Another big one is invalidation. There are several variants of this. One of the most obvious is denial of events such as child abuse when both parties to the conversation know very well what happened. 

Telling the other person what they are feeling rather than asking them what they are feeling is another well known example.

A less well-known pattern is when each party is so keen on making their own points that they do not address the points that the other person is making at all. They steamroll any exchange by talking over each other, by completely ignoring what the other person has said in response to something they said, or through other ways of refusing to acknowledge the other person's point of view at all as they continue to make their own additional points.

Interestingly, people talking about a family problem can move on to discuss a related issue without ever having come to any agreement on the initial issue that was broached - so that neither of the issues is addressed fully. Sometimes people make a big circle, bringing up one related or tangential issue after another without achieving any resolution of any one of them, and then at long last returning to the initial issue. And then starting the whole circle all over again from the beginning!

Last is the best illustration of how talking too much leads to the same results as talking too little. After achieving some resolution of an issue, the parties continue to bicker incessantly about it, refusing to drop it even though, if they followed up on their initial plans, the problem would have been solved. In a commonly discussed example, some members of couples are well known for repeatedly bringing up an old grievance even decades after the problematic event took place.

There are a lot of ways to fail.

Family Communication: Countering Relatives Who Go Off on Tangents

In my blogposts about family metacommunication, one issue I discussed is the tendency of people to change the subject when discussing anything touchy. When a person is afraid to or does not want to go into depth in discussing a particular repetitive interactional pattern with a family member, for whatever reason, a subtle switch from the issue under discussion to some other matter is often a successful strategy for avoiding further dialogue about it.

This is particularly easy to do if there are a whole bunch of similar issues that are all inter-related and intertwined with one another. As I wrote in the previous post: 

Another related misdirection strategy is to mix several separate but highly interconnected issues so that none of them is ever completely discussed. For example, one woman was in a complex family system in which her husband would find ways to distract her from her anger at her parents and vice versa. Whenever she expressed anger at one of her parents, the husband would do annoying things to draw away her anger from her parents towards him Similarly, when she was ready for war with hubby, one of her parents would act out and draw her wrath towards them.


The woman's genogram revealed that the problems in this system were related to gender issues (whether men should take care of women or women should pursue independence), concerns regarding the adequacy of males in the family to take care of their women (her husband felt that he was supposed to protect his wife but felt inadequate to do so and angry about "having" to shoulder the responsibility) and even class (how much money was being brought in).

The discussion would change from one of these aspects of the problem to another at the drop of a hat. Because the aspects were all so interconnected it was indeed difficult to talk about any one of them without talking about the others. For example, when the issue of the husband's adequacy came up, the issue of why he was like that would also arise. Because the subject of any conversation jumped around, however, any conversations about the issue would end up going in circles with nothing being resolved.

In this post, I want to discuss another useful strategy under these circumstances for keeping family metacommunication on track in order to get to the bottom of a single issue. Another way to look at the problem of subject changes is that the mix-up of issues allows people to go off on a tangent that is related to - yet different from - the main theme the metacommunicator is trying to clarify.

The trick here is to remember the definition of a tangent from your old geometry class in high school. Tangents are related to circles, and look like this:

If you go to the tangent line and trace it backwards, it always goes right back to the circle. Analogously in metacommunication, the "circle" is the main theme that ties all the different tangents together.

Any tangent someone goes off on can be thought of as just another example of the main theme - the circle in the diagram.

As an example, let us take a hypothetical situation in which there is a highly conflicted relationship between a mother and a daughter who come from a typical highly dysfunctional family - one characterized by many examples of major gender issues common to many members: the females getting involved with men who are drunk, abusive, and/or cheating; whether or not they should leave relationships with such men; expressing anger at such men; mothers who do not protect their children from abusive men or from witnessing domestic violence; conflicts over being tied down by children leading to neglect and invalidation of them; enabling children who don't take care of themselves; depending financially on either unreliable men or good providers who mistreat women, and so on and so forth.

There are indeed families characterized by all of the above conflicts- over several generations. If there are several sisters, aunts, great aunts and female cousins acting out several of these themes, one can see how easy it would be to subtly avoid focusing in depth on any one theme, or for that matter, on any one relationship.

So what might tie all of these gender-related themes together as they play out in metacommunication about problematic behavior patterns between a mother and her adult daughter who has children of her own?

Here we can make use of the concept described in a previous post: intrapsychic conflict leading to ambivalence leading to mixed and/or contradictory messages. Anything the mother says to her daughter regarding any of the above behaviors can be translated into a message to the daughter to either "act (or relate to the issues) like me" or "do not act (or relate to the issues) like me." Usually both within the very same conversation!

In this case, a good strategy might be for the daughter to express confusion about what the mother is trying to tell her in terms of following or not following mom's example no matter which aspect of the gender dysfunction is brought up. She might say something like, "Gee Mom, sometimes it sounds like you are criticizing me for doing the same things you do, while at other times it sounds like you are criticizing me for not doing them. I'm confused about what you think is the right strategy when, for example, my ex-husband keeps calling me on the phone several times a day."

A typical dysfunctional conversation might go something like this:

Mother: "I told you to block his phone number and stop talking to him."

Daughter: "But you let Dad keep bugging you all the time."

Mom: "Well, I do that for your sake 'cause I know you still care a lot about him, so it's better if we are civil to each other."

Daughter: "But wouldn't that also apply to my sons from my ex?"

Mother: "Well you don't seem to want to be bothered with your kids' feelings half the time anyway."

In this example, the mother has subtly changed the subject from how to handle an ex-husband to the daughter's parenting practices. If the daughter were to engage the mother on that issue, the mother might then talk about how the daughter is still financially dependent on her ex and needs to support herself better so she can get rid of him. Nothing would ever be resolved.

The counter-strategy is to take each tangent the mother goes off on and reconnect it to the circle or main theme. Any criticism the mother makes of the daughter on any of these inter-related subjects can be used as yet another example of how the mothers statements confuse the daughter in regards to whether or not she should follow her mother's example.

If the daughter starts with the statement above describing her confusion about whether or not mother thinks the daughter should emulate her, and the issue of the stalking ex comes up, the daughter would not say, "But you let Dad keep bugging you all the time." She would instead say, "I'm confused when you say that, cause that sounds like you are saying I shouldn't let my ex keep bugging me like you put up with Dad."

If mother then brings up her having put up with Dad for the patient's sake, that of course contradicts mom's initial advise for the daughter to cut off her ex when there's a child involved there. The daughter might then bring up that seemingly contradictory advice as a way to get back to the circle once again. 

The daughter would be ill-advised to come right out and accuse her mother of being hypocritical, as that would usually lead to the mother becoming defensive. Instead, she could blame her own confusion about what the mother is trying to say:

"Well I'm again kinda confused now. Are you saying I should handle it like you did for the sake of my sons, or that I should do the opposite of what you did and cut off my ex?"

Of course, this strategy could have good results, but it could also backfire.

The mother might at that point be struck by how she is giving the daughter double messages, which might then allow her to take pause and start to discuss why she herself might be confused on these issues - a good result. On the other hand, the strategy might also make her feel guilty and want to change the subject yet again. 

Mom might try the strategy of saying that her situation with the daughter's father is somehow different than the daughter's situation with her ex. Naturally, in some ways every situation is somewhat different, but in doing this she would be ignoring all the ways in which their situations are similar.

Figuring out the next move on the daughter's part would probably require the services and advice of a knowledgeable therapist. A therapist can tailor a counter-move for the daughter, using his or her knowledge of several different things: 

Knowledge of the mother and daughter's prior interactions; the therapist's own experience successfully countering the daughter's having done the very same thing to the therapist as her mother does to her within the context of psychotherapy; and information from the genogram about the source of the mother's ambivalence that can be use to empathically advance their conversations toward problem resolution.

Strategies for Initiating Discussions of Family Dysfunction, Part II

In Part I of this post, I discussed two possible initial strategies for beginning discussions about highly charged, difficult family relationship patterns with the goal of putting a stop to them (metacommunication). Here in Part II I will discuss three more.

In trying to figure out the best possible strategy for a given family member, I mentioned the process I use with my psychotherapy patients: 

In doing psychotherapy with patients, when I start to help them shape an initial approach, I usually try one or another of the five potential strategies in a role playing exercise to see what my patient is up against. I generally stick with a given strategy even if the target’s initial response is a negative one - such as evasive maneuver or a verbal invalidation of the patient. Such maneuvers can often be countered with specific responses that are employed as the conversation progresses.

However, if I seem to get in trouble with escalating negativity from the patient playing the targeted other even while employing the usual countermeasures, I know that I should stop, and try a different initial approach.

Of course, all the usual approaches may not work, so ingenuity is required. Every time I am foolish enough to think that I have heard every possible negative response, I am surprised. But where there is a will, there is definitely a way.

Here are the remaining three strategies for getting the ball rolling:

3. Initiation strategy #3 is used in cases in which someone has been sacrificing his or her idiosyncratic ambitions in order to overtly or covertly “look after” parents. Such individuals may have been “on call” to help mediate the parents’ disputes, take care of various chores or duties for one parent or the other, or to provide missing companionship for one of them. 

Alternatively in families with gender role problems, an adult may live with a widowed mother so that either the mother appears to be dependent on her adult child or vice versa. The latter situation is created by the dyad in order to avoid the violation of any family proscriptions against women being powerful enough to make it on their own. In this situation, the adult child also appears to be in some way dysfunctional, so that the mother partially discharges her repressed ambition by running the adult child’s life. In such cases, it is very difficult indeed to tell exactly who is taking care of whom.

"Who is Taking Care of Whom?" is a shell game

Metacomunicators begin strategy number three with a statement that they are worried about the parent’s well being in some way. They might say, “I’ve been really worried about you, Mom, you’ve looked so lonely and depressed.”  The patient brings this up without any suggestions or advice about how Mom should take care of this problem. The reason for doing so is that the parent will usually argue with any particular advice offered - which is usually something fairly obvious anyway - in order to avoid dealing with his or her underlying loneliness and depression. 

Any such behavioral prescriptions that are offered by the metacommunciator can be dissected and debated ad infinitum, and the conversation invariably deteriorates into a game of “why don’t you - yes but” ("Well try this."  "Yes, I could do that, but [here's why that won't work]").

The initial response of the parent to this recommended opening statement is usually something like, “You don’t have to worry about me, I’m doing fine.” Such statements are an invalidation of the metacommunicator’s worries, since in most of these cases the parent really is depressed or lonely - or may be drinking too much or behaving self-destructively in some other way as the case may be. 

The statement is also an invalidation of the metacommunicator’s caring and concern. The best response here is for the individual to reply, “I appreciate the fact that you don’t want me to trouble myself with your problems, but I really am concerned.” 

Predictably, the parent will then respond with a distancing remark such as, “No you don’t. You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”  The metacommunciator can answer this type of statement by saying: “I wish I knew of a way to convince you that I really do.” No point arguing about it, since there is really no way to prove it one way or the other.

In the case of a mother and, say, an adult son playing the game of “who is taking care of whom” as described above, the son might begin strategy number three with a statement such as, “I know that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself, but sometimes you seem to be afraid to for some reason.” With this opening gambit, the mother has an obvious comeback that she can use in order to avoid facing the dilemma that has been brought up - usually for the first time - by the metacommunicator.

She can point out that it is really the son who is the dependent one. After all, such individuals often have, up to that point, exhibited some apparent defect that has prevented them from going out and making their own life separate from Mom. In many of these cases Mom has bailed the adult child out of one financial bind after another. Who is he to be talking about the mother’s dependency problem? In this situation, the adult child should confess that he has not striven for independence thus far, but that one of the reasons for his not having done so is his continued worry about how the mother might feel if left alone and on her own.

If the metacommunicator is successful at getting the parent to talk frankly about his or her expressed areas of concern, the adult child and parent can then go on to discuss how they have been misreading one another’s intentions and about the past family history that has lead to the problem.

4. The fourth opening strategy is employed when mild to moderate distancing behavior by the parents is a primary obstacle to metacommunication. Distancing behavior is manifested when any attempt by an adult child to get close to the parent or to discuss important family issues is met with hostility, verbal abuse, or other provocative behavior. 

The metacommunicator begins strategy #4 by expressing a wish for more closeness with the parent. They say something like, “I really feel bad that we get along so poorly; I really wish that things were better between us.”

This statement often leads to an initial positive reaction by the parent for two reasons. First, many distancing parents do not like to admit that their behavior is purposely designed to drive their children away. In effect, they would have to do so if they were to blatantly reject this overture. Secondly, the statement appeals to the side of the parent’s ambivalence that really does desire a close relationship with their children. The adult child’s expressed desire for closeness in spite of the fact that the parents have been treating her or him horribly communicates such love for the parent that the parent’s hostility often seems to melt away.

Unfortunately, in more severely disturbed families this type of approach may lead to an even nastier rejection of the patient than had been the norm previously. The parent may respond with a statement that communicates the sentiment, "“Well, I do not want to be close to you; I wish you had never been born!”  If this kind of response seems likely, metacommunicators should usually not attempt to employ this strategy. 

I believe that it is highly doubtful that the parent really feels that way even if he or she says it and acts like it, but clearly some other strategy might work better. In rare cases, however, the parent’s nastiness is so transparently feigned that a metacommunicator can break through it by saying, “I don’t believe that for a second.”

If the parent responds to initiation strategy number #4 positively, adult children might then wonder aloud why they and the target are always fighting. This question can once again lead to empathic discussions of the nature and origins of mixed messages and misunderstandings within the relationship, which are in turn used as a basis for requesting concrete behavioral changes from the target.

5. The fifth opening gambit is useful in cases in which an adult child is following in a parent's footsteps in some way. Such individuals usually recreate the parent’s maladaptive behavior in order to shield the parents from feelings of envy. In these cases, the adult child usually tries but fails to achieve some goal that is desperately desired by, but forbidden to, the parent. For example, a daughter might appear to seek out nice men but, just like her mother, end up with a succession of abusive mates. This may happen after Mom has spent years trying to shield the child from this very outcome or warning her about the dangers of it.

The metacommunicator begins strategy number five by asking the target for advice on how to handle a difficulty that the patient is experiencing outside of his or her relationship with the target. The outside difficulty should parallel a difficulty that the target has also experienced within the family. For example, in a family in which a daughter’s father always gives in to the mother's unreasonable demands, the daughter may come to the mother with the following request for help: "Mom, I need your advice. My husband is following me around like a puppy dog. How do you think I should handle it?” 

The goal here is to establish a sense of commonality between the two women that allows for open discussion about how parallels in the family happened to have come about. Once again, this naturally leads to discussions of the nature and origins of mixed messages and misunderstandings within the relationship. 

In dysfunctional interactions, whenever one party brings up such parallels, the other party usually feels unjustly criticized, and therefore reacts negatively. This occurs for one of two reasons. First, the second party may feel that the first party is a hypocrite who is criticizing her for things the other party does herself. Alternately, one or the other party may feel that their situations though similar are not really the same at all.

Strategy #5 changes the valence of the interaction from negative to positive in two ways. First, it puts the daughter in the proper hierarchy with the mother. The patient is asking the mother for advice based on the mother’s experience and intelligence. Second, the mother usually will not feel criticized by the daughter for having the problem, because the daughter is admitting to having the very same or a similar problem herself.

All five initiation strategies, as well as any other creative approaches an individual is able to devise, are meant to soften up the target, so to speak, so that the family dynamics can be discussed and clarified. If an initial approach seems to work, the metacommunicator continues the conversation to the point where the goal of mutual understanding and a request for a concrete change has been achieved.

Strategies for Initiating Discussions of Family Dysfunction

In several previous posts (The series Ve have Vays of Making You Talk, and How to Disarm a Borderline), I have discussed ways in which individuals who experience ongoing and repetitive family discord can overcome the defenses and sensitivities of other targeted family members in order to change these patterns.

I have neglected one important consideration, however.  How on earth can a person get such a conversation started? For discussions of these patterns (metacommunication) to be successful, it is vitally important to get off on the right foot.  Otherwise, metacommunication can quickly provoke fight, fight, or freeze reactions in everyone concerned.  

Metacommunication will end as quickly as it started, and family behavior may actually deteriorate even further.  One’s initial approach to the targeted other is usually critical in determining one’s ultimate success or failure at any given attempt at metacommunication.

A successful start may allow ideas about the family dynamics to be discussed without encountering undue defensiveness or invalidation from the target. In turn, the discussion of family dynamics allows an individual to empathically discuss the nature and origins of difficulties in his or her own relationship with the target, and potential ways to improve it.

Unfortunately, a strategy that works wonderfully in one family may lead to disaster in another family that may superficially appear quite similar. Every family has its own unique set of variables to which they over-react! There is usually no way to know in advance what the best opening will be. Figuring out the best approach usually requires the assistance of a therapist. Nonetheless, in Part I and Part II of this post, I will discuss five possible initiating approaches.

In doing psychotherapy with patients, when I start to help them shape an initial approach, I usually try one or another of the five potential strategies in a role playing exercise to see what my patient is up against. I generally stick with a given strategy even if the target’s initial response is a negative one - such as evasive maneuver or a verbal invalidation of the patient. Such maneuvers can often be countered with specific responses that are employed as the conversation progresses. 

However, if I seem to get in trouble with escalating negativity from the patient playing the targeted other even while employing the usual countermeasures, I know that I should stop, and try a different initial approach. 

Of course, all the usual approaches may not work, so ingenuity is required. Every time I am foolish enough to think that I have heard every possible negative response, I am surprised.  But where there is a will, there is definitely a way.        

What follows are the first two of the five suggested initial strategies:

1.  The first option is to begin with a discussion of family history, using the core relationship problems as they were manifested in past generations as a metaphor for current interactional difficulties. To use this option, a potential metacommunicator should have already done a bit of research about the history of the family emotional process and the family history by constructing a genogram.  

I will not go into the complex subject of genograms here; an example of the kind of information needed can be found here.  Of crucial importance is the relationships parental figures had with their own parents, as they were affected by such historical events as ethnic and cultural values, changing circumstances, illnesses and premature deaths, immigration, mental illnesses, child abuse, and emotional cut-offs.

The metacommunicator starts with non-threatening questions about family history and then goes on to discuss more emotionally charged past family interactions that parallel the current problem. Next, the metacommicator slowly traces with the target the history of the family problem all the way into the present day, as it has come to affect the individual's current relationship with the target. 

This strategy was the first one I devised and is discussed in more detail in my first book (Allen, 1988). Current problematic roles being played out by family members stem from issues that develop over at least three generations. Therefore, any problem in the present or in one’s childhood has precedents in the interactions of the members of earlier generations. 

For families that do not produce individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD), strategy number one is often the least threatening option. It tends to be much less threatening for parents to discuss long past relationship problems with their own parents, with their siblings (the metacommunicator’s aunts and uncles), or even with the other parent than it is to discuss those very same problems as they exist with the metacommunicator in the here and now. 

The negative impact of the issues seems muted when viewed from the distant perspective of the past. However, once the analogous issues have been brought up for discussion, one can gradually demonstrate how the earlier difficulties have led to problems and miscommunication in the present. The metacommunicator can then say something like, “No wonder you reacted so strongly when I did [such and such]! I wish I had known that before.  I always thought you reacted because [whatever explanation one had thought to be true previously].” 

During this process, one receives confirmation or clarification about the family dynamics. In this scenario, the parents should feel that their adult child is really trying to understand them and not attack them.

Unfortunately, I have found that in families that produce offspring with BPD, strategy number one is often the worst option. In these families, the parents usually do not want to touch their feelings about their own families of origin with a ten foot pole. There is so much repressed rage and anguish from the past that it is in fact easier for an adult child and his or her parents to talk about the here and now first. Rather than seeming distant, the past seems more alive in the present than it ever has.  

Even getting the target to describe interactions in previous generations for purposes of gathering genogram data can be extremely difficult. The parents do not want to even think about their relationships in the past for fear of triggering an all-consuming emotional reaction. This leads us to strategy number two.

2.  The second option is the most direct of all. Metacommunicators cut to the chase and move directly into a tactful confrontation about how the target's current behavior affects them adversely.  The term “confrontation” as I am using it here means bringing up a problem for discussion, not picking a fight.  

If a direct confrontation is to succeed, there can be no sense whatever that the conversation is an adversarial proceeding. Adult children must remain absolutely empathic and say nothing that clearly suggests that their parents are to blame for their own problems, even if they had been severely abused. The best way to start such a confrontation is to employ disclaimers. The use of disclaimers was discussed in a previous post.

The opening gambit in this strategy is a statement such as “Dad, I know you always wanted me to succeed in my career, but when you did not come to my graduation, I began to wonder if somehow you might be threatened by my success.” The metacommunicator then say nothing further and awaits some kind of response by the parent.  Depending on how the target responds, the metacommunicator and the target should then go on to discuss how they have been misreading one another’s intentions because of behavior they have both manifested that was due to each person’s own internal conflicts. 

The metacommunicator must be careful to acknowledge his or her own contribution to any misunderstanding while explaining that his or her behavior was due to a misreading of the target’s motives. Such a conversation can lead to discussions of the past family history that has lead to the conflicts. If the target has a high level of emotionality about past interactions as mentioned previously, however, that part of the conversation must be approached with exceptional delicacy and tact.

In the next post of this series, I will describe three more possible strategies for initiating family metacommunication.

Disclaimers: The Good, Instead of the Bad and the Ugly

In an earlier post Words that Work, I discussed the idea from political consultant and polster Frank Luntz that “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.” This blog has also discussed in detail how talking to one’s family about dysfunctional patterns requires just the right type of wording and tone of voice. 

Disclaimers can be used to alter listeners’ perceptions about what another person is saying.  They can be very helpful in making something that otherwise might be perceived as an attack or accusation much more palatable.  

It is also true that disclaimers can be used in for more nefarious purposes, such as in deceptive propaganda. I wrote about this latter purpose in two previous posts on plausible deniability - 8/31/11 and 6/19/12.

The odious purpose is summed up very well in the cartoon below:

 

In this post I will focus on the use of disclaimers for doing good– their advantageous employment in discussions that aim to achieve solutions to ongoing problems within a family. As a psychotherapist, I find them to be very useful with my patients, and I also coach my patients on how to use then when they attempt metacommunication with family members.

 

Disclaimers are pre-statements that acknowledge the potentially unpleasant nature of an issue at hand, proclaim the lack of any ill intent on the part of the the person making the statement that follows the disclaimer, and give others the benefit of the doubt concerning their motivation for engaging in problematic behavior. Disclaimers can also be used to avoid power struggles that tend to occur when someone might be perceived as sounding like a know-it-all or like someone trying to “put one over” on the other person. 

Disclaimers can make it possible to bring up for discussion just about anything. Of course, tone of voice is extremely important.  If someone is trying to bring up problematic family behavior with other members of the family, a scolding or sarcastic tone will automatically nullify any advantage conferred through the use of disclaimers.  Usually, tone should be matter of fact as well as friendly sounding for maximum effect.

In the type of psychotherapy I do, unified therapy, I frequently need to bring up and explore a patient’s problematic or counterproductive behavior, or describe potentially unflattering hypotheses about the patient’s family relationship patterns. Patients have a natural tendency to become defensive in these situations, and a therapist runs the risk of provoking a negative reaction of some sort. The use of a disclaimer often makes the initiation of such discussions more palatable to the patient. 

When making interpretations regarding a patient or his or her family, the therapist’s use of disclaimers leads the patient to become less likely to get defensive and more likely to consider the merits of the therapist’s proposition. Later on in unified therapy, therapists teach patients to make use of disclaimers during metacommunication with their family about relationship patterns and issues. 

Disclaimers can be used in innumerable ways. A few examples will be given here of the types of situations in which disclaimers are useful. The examples are also meant to give the reader a general idea about how disclaimers should be phrased. 

First, when bringing up someone else’s seemingly provocative behavior, the metacommunicator might say something such as, “I know you’re not trying to anger me when you do that, but when you do [such and such], it would be easy for someone who did not know you so well to get the wrong idea.”  

Second, in situations where the Other has a hard time discussing a certain topic, one might say, “I know this is hard to talk about, but it sounds like it is really important.”

Third, family members often hold the belief that certain behavior from another family member is purposely meant to “ask for” or elicit a nasty response.  They may be reluctant to say so, however, for fear they will be branded as self-serving or even crazy.  The metacommunicator can often get the Other to acknowledge such thoughts by putting the burden of “craziness” on himself or herself:  “This is probably going to sound crazy, but I wonder if sometimes you get the idea that mom wants you to steal money from her. After all, she keeps leaving it in plain sight.”

Fourth, disclaimers are useful for bringing up for discussion the obvious ways that the Other’s behavior causes problems without sounding like a critical parent or insulting the Other’s intelligence. The metacommunicator might say, “At risk of sounding just like Mom, and as I’m sure you already know, attacking Dad does not seem to solve anything.”

Fifth, many times a metacommunicator has an hypothesis about what might be going on in the family, but is not sure. However, the Other may take umbrage at the implications of such a hypothesis. This happens for many reasons, including that the possibility that the hypothesis in question is flat out wrong. Giving the other an “out” so that he or she can easily reject the proposal without getting into an argument can solve this problem. One can say, “I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but I wonder if [such and such] might be happening. What do you think?

Sixth, whenever a metacommunicator brings up the behavior of family members who seem to be contributing to the speaker’s problems, others will often defend their family. They do so despite the fact that they themselves are at wit’s end with the relative that is being discussed. Defending one’s family from a perceived attack even if one is angry at them oneself is quite a natural reaction, but may preclude much useful discussion about the possible reasons for the family member’s misbehavior.  A useful disclaimer that may prevent this from happening is, “I’m not trying to turn Dad into a villain, but…”

Last, metacommunicators should also make use of disclaimers when explaining their thoughts and reactions to significant others. This is part and parcel of the important strategy of giving family members the benefit of the doubt as to their motivation when asking them to be aware of and change behavior that the metacommunicator finds problematic.

For example, they might say, "I know you wanted me to be successful, but it often appeared to me that you did not" or "I know you really do care about me but..."  If the other then says that the metacommunicator is stupid for thinking or feeling the way they do, the metacommunicator can humbly say, “Maybe so, but that’s how it looks to me, and I’m sure you don’t want me to get the wrong idea about you, so I thought it would be important to let you know how this looks to me.”

Of course, disclaimers do not always have the desired effect, but they do often enough that employing them is an excellent strategy.