Tag: empathy

The small, gentle moments in couples counseling

Communication skills and conflict resolution strategies.

I statements.

Parenting strategies.

Talking about sex.

Checking in about chores and who does what.

Coordinating schedules.

Clarifying expectations.

Bravely asking for what you want and need.

Those are some things in marriage counseling can help with.

Sometimes the biggest thing is feeling just a little softer and just a little safer with each other.

I see it when a couple stops talking about their spouse to me and they turn to them and look them gently in the eyes.

Or when they move toward the middle of the couch instead of hugging the edges.

Or when they really hear what’s been said and say, “I’m sorry.”

In those little moments how far you have to go and how much you have to forgive don’t seem so overwhelming.

And you can begin to trust, hope and heal.

How To Not Raise Entitled and Enabled Kids: The E’s of Excellent Parenting

Had a fun break with the family for Spring Break.  On the five-hour trip back home, we had a good conversation about parenting.  It started out with the ideas of Entitlement and Enabling vs. Empowering and Equipping your kids. And we ended up thinking of a bunch of different ideas that started with the letter E.  We hope you enjoy it too.

Entitlement.  As parents, we don’t set out to raise entitled kids but it’s easy to justify giving your kids privileged or special treatment by saying you love them and want whats best for them.

Enabled. One of my professors on parenting explained enabling your kids as doing something for them that they could do themselves. Another aspect of enabling your kids is letting them get away with not suffering the consequences of their behavior.  Again, it’s easy to justify this by telling yourself that you want to love and protect your kids.  You want them to know that you always have their back or that you want to show them God’s grace or faithfulness to them.

The problem with this is you as the parent can end up feeling responsible for everything. Raising entitled kids can be exhausting, excruciating and embarrassing.  How does it feel when you are at work or working on a group project and someone on the team doesn’t pull their weight, do their share?
It’s exhausting.  You can end up resenting the other person. Well, it’s the same when your kids don’t pull their weight around the house.  You can end up feeling like you are doing everything (because you are), feeling unappreciated and bitter.

Empowering.  It’s not unloving to require and train your kids to work hard, give their best effort, be diligent and finish what they start.  It’s not cruel to ask them to do things with excellence.  To do chores.  To work for what they get.  To set goals.  To delay gratification.  It’s actually empowering to your kids to give them freedom and responsibility around the house and gradually more as they get older.  A child 8-10 years old could start to help out with laundry.  They certainly could be doing their own laundry by middle school and especially in high school.  It’s actually honoring to them to not give them special privileges, just because.  It’s fine to give them gifts and to show you love them in special ways.  But when they start to expect or feel entitled to have things, or always have things their way, it’s no longer special.  It becomes common.  And it actually sets them up for disappointment and failure later in life because you aren’t teaching them how the real world works.  Their teachers and professors aren’t going to give them special treatment.  Their boss at their work place is going to expect them to work, to problem solve, to take responsibility.

Equipping.  Not enabling or entitling your kids doesn’t mean you don’t love them, it’s doesn’t mean you won’t protect them, that you are leaving them to fend for themselves in the cruel, harsh realities of the world.  Parenting with excellence means you take a coaching and equipping mindset to working with them.  You provide the tools, resources they need and you also train them on how to use those tools.  You explore, process, experiment, debrief and work through things together.  You still have their back and at the same time, you are equipping them to stand on their own, to risk and put themselves out there in different areas, to be brave.

Expectations.  Having healthy expectations is a part of growing and stretching your kids to reach their potential.  As parents, we don’t want to put too high expectations on our kids but what I’ve seen a lot of parents with too low expectations.  Often, parents in the interest of protecting their kids from failure, disappointment or rejection, set the bar low.  Kids are often capable of so much more than we think.  I was watching a jiu jitsu video that talked about the metaphor of a “Goldilocks tension” and I think it applies to expectations.  We don’t want expectations that are “too cold”, too low, and we don’t want expectations that are “too hot”, too high.  We want to set expectations that are “just right”.  Expectations that are too low, lead to boredom and missed potential and growth.  Expectations that are too high, put an adverse amount of stress and pressure on your kids and that can stunt their growth as well.

Empathy.  So, how do you know if your expectations are too high, too low or just right?  You do that by listening and listening well with empathy.  One key to empathy as a parent, is focusing more on what your child may be experiencing and less on what they are doing, on their performance.  And you’re not the only one who needs empathy, your kids do too.

Emotional Intelligence.  Empathy is one of the pillars of emotional and relational intelligence.  EQ has been shown to be more of predictor of a person’s success than intelligence. Delayed gratification is another pillar.

Endurance vs. Expedient.  It’s hard to empower and equip your kids, it requires a lot of trust and courage. On both your parts.  It requires patience because it will be messy.  Things won’t go smoothly at first, things won’t get done as well and as quickly as you would just doing it for them.  But you won’t always be there for them, they will have to grow up and do things on their own someday.

It’s sad, very sad when I’ve seen teenagers treat their single mother with contempt.  Their mother did/does everything for them and these kids had no gratitude for the sacrifices their mom made (or at least they didn’t express it).  It was sad for the kid but also the mom.  She poured out herself, bent over backwards, to love and provide for her child and her child barely could stand her.  They had no respect for her.  They either struggle with selfishness or self-hatred or both.  I’ve seen entitled young adults who struggled with anger and resentment at their parents because they feel ill-equipped for life.  They haven’t had to problem-solve or bear the weight of responsibility and get overwhelmed by the demands of adulthood.  And they struggle with imposter syndrome and feeling behind in life.

So, don’t just give into what’s expedient, what’s easy.  As the kids get older, don’t continue in the habit of taking the path of least resistance.  Learn to be mindful and intentional about your long-term goals with them. And be patient, consistent.  Get help and support if you have to.

Enforce.  One way to be patient and consistent is with enforcing consequences and discipline.  It’s easy to justify being lax with discipline and consequences by telling yourself you are being caring and compassionate and loving.  But often being exhausted and wanting to avoid the stress and upset of conflict is the main reason for not enforcing consequences.  It really isn’t about what’s best for the kids, it’s often what will feel best, for you, in the moment.

Expose and Eliminate the Elephants. Instead of avoiding conflict, instead of building resentment or emotionally manipulating your kids with passive-aggressive indirect behavior, it will benefit you and them to expose and eliminate elephants, to call out entitlement, laziness, disrespect, and other behaviors and attitudes that may be poisoning your relationship and family life.  It’s easier to do this when those negatives are baby elephant size, not full grown elephants.  But even if they are huge, be brave and start to work on it. Sometimes, just the act of exposing them, shrinks them.  If you call it out, then everyone has a chance to be aware and take ownership of making it better instead of it being your solo project.

Example.  Might daughter suggested this one, besides enforcing consequences and making rules and throwing your weight around, she recommends parents need to be good examples of what you are trying to teach and require of your kids.

Energizing.  If you start to be more intentional about equip and empower your kids you will replace exhaustion with energy because you will no longer have to bear all the weight of responsibility for how your kids and home are doing. You will not have to wrestle so much with resentment, bitterness, worry and hurt feelings.

Encouragement.  This is hard work. Remember, your kids aren’t bad.  They may need some maturity, course correction, training and equipping, but they need encouragement and acceptance most of all.  You will need encouragement when they changes you are attempting don’t seem to be working, when you have a bad day, when it seems to be getting worse instead of better.

Enjoyment.  Lastly, implementing and being more intentional about the positive E’s for parenting will not just allow you to experience excellence in parenting.  It will allow you to enjoy the experience of being a parent, of being in a healthy mutual relationship with your kids.

Seven Ways Pixar’s Inside Out Can Help Your Parenting

 

I’ve blogged some takeways from Pixar’s Inside Out before.

Here’s a Periscope video I did a bit ago when the DVD was released that expands a bit on that post to look at 7 ways Inside Out can help your parenting.

 

Update (11/14/15)

Here’s the 7 points briefly outlined:

1) The movie helps us identify and name our emotions.  It helps makes emotions less overwhelming and scary.  Being able to identify our emotions helps us to be able to recognize and understand the emotions in others, to have empathy.  When we are able to identify our emotions we are better able to communicate what we want and what we need in relationships.

2) The trailer scene.  The emotions and noise in our heads make communication challenging.  This is hard enough when it’s just you as a couple, adding a child adds another handful of emotions; the more you add the greater the complexity.

3) Change makes us vulnerable to our emotions.  As parents, it helps to be especially attentive to your kids, and yourselves, when they go through transitions and change.  Even small ones can trigger big emotions.

4) Our emotions affect our memories.  Often what we “take away”, what we bring into the present and future, when we go through stuff is not just the facts of the experience, often our emotional experience is the most real and powerful thing.  What we focus on, how we frame the experience, what we tell ourselves, the meaning we make are tied together with our emotions.  So, as parents we can coach and help our kids cope and reframe their experience.  And, our examples of resilience and hopefulness – or despair – when going through hard things can greatly influence how they learn to cope with struggles.

5) The Islands.  Riley had islands that formed her identity. These elements affected her self-esteem and her sense of self-worth and she was.  As parents, we can help affirm our kids’ talents, abilities, strengths and potential by giving them opportunities to express who they are and grow into themselves.  We don’t want them to believe that they are worthwhile and loved because of what they do but we do want to help them develop skills and abilities that give them a sense of self-efficacy, strength and industry.

6) Don’t take your kids’ emotions and outbursts personally.  When Riley was struggling, what her parents said and did didn’t always help.  It made an already hard transition, even harder.  It helps to remember not to withdraw from our kids when they desperately need more support, understanding and patience.

7)  The importance of all the emotions.  As parents, we may struggle with anger, fear, disgust – with “negative” emotions.  Inside Out teaches us that all emotions serve a purpose, they can each help us.  They aren’t “bad”, what can be unhealthy and destructive is how we react, what we do and say with them.  Emotions can isolate and destroy us or they can help us ask for help and be even more connected than ever before.

on Fighting in Front of Others

 

 Advice for young couples (and old) 

Have your fights in front of others when you are newly married (or even better: when you are engaged).

Why? Because the damage is extremely hard to undo. Trust me, it sucks.

Here’s just a few things that fighting badly does:

It trains you to trust each other less.

It erodes goodwill, kindness, empathy and generosity.

It reinforces bitterness and hopelessness.

(With hope, a couple can just about work anything, they can regain trust, rekindle feelings of love. Without it, they say things like I love and care for her/him but…)

It brings out your worst and turns you into someone you despise.

You feel out of control.

You become more vulnerable to addictions and sinful choices.

It steals away your fun, your best friend.

It gives you an excuse to focus all your attention on your baby/kids, which has negative connotations for *their* lives.

It makes sexual intimacy (if it is still going down, which when you’re young, a lot of you can still override your feelings to make it work), less about emotional intimacy and more just about drive and just something physical. Which ends up making one or both of you feeling used.

It brings up all your baggage and trauma from your family of origins and puts in a chaotic blender so that it seems like you’ll never get a grip on life or that any growth, healing or progress you’ve made in that area instantly becomes undone whenever you try to JUST HAVE A FREAKING CONVERSATION!

Bottom line: it makes you feel unloved, unwanted, uncared for, unimportant and alone.

I could go on. I’m sure you could add more.

Have your fights in front of others. Don’t just get advice. (Yes, I know this advice).

Don’t just retreat to your respective corners, to your respective cornermen/support people at coffee or online.

Fight to resolutions.

Fight through to agreements.

Let the real-time support of others observing and coaching you, train you that fighting is not bad.

This can transform your experience that every time you try to talk IT DOESN’T WORK! to WE CAN DO THIS!

The more agreements you work through together, the more success you experience, provides tremendous safety and security.

You learn this early on and it will provide a lot of protection and joy in your marriage.

10 Obvious-but-we’re-in-counseling-because-we-forgot Marriage Facts

Ten obvious-but-we’re-in-counseling-because-we-forgot Marriage Facts.

Fact #1 : Your spouse is different than you. They just are.

Fact #2: What you believe about those differences and how you react/respond will make or break your marriage.

Fact #3: Your spouse is an adult. You can’t control him or her. The moments you forget this you give yourself permission to weaken your marriage.

Fact #4: Spending time doing fun stuff together and having awesome uninterrupted conversations were two key things that made you say “Hey, we should, like totally, do this together for the rest of our lives!” That and the kissing. (Oh yes, the kissing! More on that later)

Fact #5: You married your spouse because of the strengths and qualities you admired in them, fixating on their weaknesses will make you doubt that decision. If you mentally tear down your spouse, because you are one, you tear yourself down. And it’s not very sexy.

Fact #6: Your spouse is your best friend. Don’t be mean to your best friend.

Fact #7: Honesty is still the best policy. Remember when finally finding someone to be completely open and honest with felt so good? Don’t go back into hiding.

Fact #8 Being adult doesn’t mean being grumpy. Have fun. Simple, obvious, not easy. Make space for it. Ruthlessly deal with stress and busyness. “Neglect” and sacrifice other things and priorities for your spouse, like you used to.

Fact #9 Sex is good. So much to say here. Don’t make excuses. Find your way back to each other, under the sheets.  Whatever takes away or has taken away the longing, desire and urgency – address it. Maturity and the kids’ schedules and getting old together doesn’t mean losing creativity, fun and playfulness. Chase each other around the house even if only metaphorically and behind closed doors and that brief window of time on your weekly calendars.

Fact #10 Marriage is not just about you and your unmet needs.  Not to discount your needs or happiness but remember your purpose, your center.  For me and Julie, it’s our faith and relationships with God. Under stress and conflict and overwhelm it’s easy to go into survival mode.
Remember that you had dreams, purpose, mission, something beyond yourself when you started your life together, something beyond just the two of you.

Remembering this humbles me, makes me feel grateful to have such an amazing spouse. It makes me feel so blessed. It reminds me I’m forgiven and I can forgive, small and big things.

When you step back and consider this, the things that divide you get smaller. And the things that brought you together, that keep you together and will see you through, come back in and empower you to continue to love each other.

Find your way back.

It’s worth it.

How to listen to your spouse at the end of a hard day

One thing I’ve learned in marriage counseling is that the desire to fix your spouse is not just a gender issue.  Deal with the incessant demands of little people vying and competing for your time and attention sucks away empathy just as much as being male.

One of the key things I help couples with is helping them choose to listen with empathy even under stress or when neglect or hurt.  It’s hard to listen with empathy or patience, to practice generosity of spirit, when you feel your emotional needs haven’t been met or doubt it will be reciprocated.  What this looks like is frustration, irritation, invalidation of feelings, arguing about details, impatience.  What is sounds like is “You’re always so negative.”, “Stop exaggerating!”, “It’s always drama with you.”

I wrote this post a year ago, after watching this video, “It’s Not About The Nail.”

It’s Not About the Nail from Jason Headley on Vimeo.

Recommended for anyone who
– Has been told their eyes glaze over when they’re supposed to be listening
– Those who “check out” when their loved one “vents”
– For anyone who’s been told “You don’t have to fix me” and anyone who thinks the “It’s Not about the nail” video is an instructional video, not satire.

Vents are stories. And active Listening is like taking notes or highlighting and underlining when you are reading the story.  You don’t have to remember all the details (in fact, It’s not about the details, It’s not about the nail.  When in doubt remember this.  Write it down somewhere. Embrodier it on your underwear).
You start by noting and highlighting key parts of the story.  You capture key story elements and repeat it back, in psychobabble counselors call this “reflection”.

Now, once you have underlining and highlight and reading back what you’ve caught. You are on well on your way to your sweetheart feeling understood.  The next level, is like writing in the margins.  Reflecting back what they may be feeling, why the situation (drama) they are in is so important to them, what it means to them, what they haven’t said.  What they are venting about is not about the details, it is about how they feel.

Vents are stories, there is a beginning, middle and end.  The person venting might be stuck in the middle of their story.  You may see the end.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT SKIP AHEAD!  You must demonstrate you understand the beginning and the middle before you get to talk about the end.  You cannot pass GO, you cannot collect $200, without this step.

Finally but perhaps most importantly: Vents are stories, there is an protagonist and an antagonist, a good guy and a bad guy.  And it should go without saying but I must,

YOUR SPOUSE IS ALWAYS THE PROTAGONIST IN THE STORY!

Even when they are wrong, they are the GOOD GUY!  NEVER GET THIS WRONG!

Never get it backwards.  If anything you say implies they are the bad guy or smacks of you being more supportive of the real bad guys in the story, you are already in deep waters.  As well intentioned as you may be, as much as you want to lend your wisdom, YOU HAVE ALREADY FAILED!  YOU HAVE FAILED IN YOUR DUTY AS AN UNDERSTANDING SPOUSE, A “SAFE” PERSON, A SOUNDING BOARD, VENT LISTENER!  Your clues are them getting louder and more frustrated.
You’re options are to back away slowly, apologize profusely, go get ice cream or wine, rewind the conversation, be quiet, review your notes 😉

Seriously though, one key idea that will just never make sense or feel right to a lot of dudes, is validating how your spouse feels, does not mean you agree with them.  You can acknowledge, affirm, support how they feel without agree with their perspective.  It will feel as comfortable as sticking a nail in your own eyeball but it is one of the main keys to a vent going well (and going faster), communicating that you caught how they felt when they were in the middle of that situation that was so hard, unfair, ridiculous, stressful, hurtful, etc.

You do this and you get to pull the nail out, you get to help write the end of the story.

The end of the story may not mean co-workers become nice, that justice gets served, that kids behave, that things get fixed – it may just mean that she knows you are with her, really with her, no matter what.
Under pressure you will forget.  So write it down somewhere: validation is not agreement, empathy is understanding even when you don’t understand.  You might even tattoo it on your palm, so it’s the last thing you see when you facepalm yourself.