How To Deal with Difficult Family Members.

Besides our family, there are plenty of relationships in our lives that we don’t choose. 

For the most part, we don’t choose our co-workers, our neighbors, our hobby-mates, our customer service representatives, our teachers, or our customers. We often don’t even choose who we hang out with during our free time, instead letting our companions be decided by proximity, shared interests or mutual obligations. 

And family members are a special sort of unchosen relationships. For the most part, they are non-negotiable. In the scenarios where we cast out a family member from our lives, they never totally disappear (even if the way they show up is only in our thoughts). There’s a special connection with family that renders them bonded--completely and utterly--to us.

Sometimes this is a harmonious match, but there’s likely to be a few relationships riddled with difficulty. And we all know it doesn’t actually matter who started it, how long it’s been going on, who is behaving more unfairly, who needs to go off (or on) their meds, or who needs to apologize to whom. 

All that matters is experiencing peace, whether we clear up our misunderstandings with our loved ones, or agree to disagree, or stop communicating with each other all together. Because experiencing peace in each moment with each other will be the only thing that matters when it’s time for one of us to call it quits (or as Shakespeare would call it: shuffle off this mortal coil). Therefor, it’s in the best interest for our current relationships and future happiness to learn how to navigate these relationships peacefully. 

But most of our relationships with difficult family members are not peaceful. Our family relationships are often deeply patterned, so much so that we often find ourselves reliving the same argument on repeat, acting out our worst behavior for them, and assuming we already know what’s going on with them which stops us from hearing what they’re saying. 

And I get it: Family is tough stuff. We all have our limits. We all need our freedom. But just because we have a few weird cards in our hand doesn’t excuse us from learning how to play them. 

This is why our family is the perfect playground to observe how we react to being triggered, how we behave in the midst of intense emotion, how we listen to someone else’s side of the story, and how well we stay committed to our intention for peace. 

Because if we can learn how to find peace with difficult family members, we can learn to find peace in all the other difficult relationships in our lives.

Find a Higher Purpose

When we’re interacting with a difficult family member, sometimes our attention becomes so narrow that we can’t even hear what they’re saying because we’re fixated on an image we’ve created about who they are. And who can blame us? We have ample memories to choose from--nights just like tonight, fights just like this fight--and we are seeing them not as they are, but as we remember them to be. Tonight becomes just one more link in the chain, connected to an entire movie-reel of related events. 

During this time, we have an idea in our heads that makes us believe that we are seeing ourselves and the other person accurately. We reduce our humanity down to an idea about who we are, and we start to believe in the enemy-image we’ve psychologically created of the other person. And neither of these beliefs are actually true. We have made an assumption and confused it as fact, and it’s likely the other person has done the same. So we find ourselves gridlocked. This is what keeps us fighting with each other about who is right in a given situation, and this is what keeps us ignoring each other so we don’t have to fight--because we aren’t willing to admit that maybe we don’t have the full picture of the situation.

But what if we stepped into these events with a higher purpose in mind? What if took this as an experiment that has the potential to reveal to us where we get thrown off course when dealing with a difficult person in life? What if we embraced the challenge to communicate with someone in a situation that we know has the potential to get emotional very quickly? 

And because we know that human beings are complicated and relationships are complicated, we aren’t asking ourselves to handle the situation particularly well. We may get upset at the same moment where we always get upset, or we may jump to the same conclusions we jumped to last time, or we may march out of the room at precisely the same-old cue. That isn’t the point. 

The point is: Even one tiny lesson learned, one moment of understanding, one admission of our own assumptions, one microsecond of different behavior will shift us onto a new path of intelligence and effective critical thinking.

It is preparing us to maintain composure in difficult situations in life, not because we’re internally coaching ourselves down from a panic attack, but because we actually, well, feel composed in that moment. And we won’t get to this point unless we progressively expose ourselves to different loads of friction. 

And just like we learn to lift weights, we don’t start with 50 lbs. We start with 5. And next week we add on more. 

Now, I’m not saying that our family members are like 5 lbs dumbbells--I very well know that often time family members are the heaviest load of them all. My suggestion of starting with 5 lbs has more to do with our involvement in the situation than the load of our family member. 

Which brings me to my next point.

Limit Your Exposure

This depends on the context of your situation. If you live in the same house as someone, it will be more difficult to limit your exposure than if you live across the country from them. If you’re committed to taking care of someone or working alongside them or helping them during a hard time, there may be times where the best course of action is to suck it up and thank God (or whoever) for the opportunity to take on a chore. 

While we may not all share the same options when it comes to limiting our exposure to a family member, we all share the same freedom. We are in control of how we participate in our interactions, even if we don’t control whether we’re in the same room with someone. And often, we can also control whether we’re in the same room as someone and we can choose more constructive environments to be in. 

Limiting our exposure to someone can happen on two levels: on the psychological level and on the physical level. 

When we have the option, limiting our exposure physically is a great exercise of our freedom. It allows us to enjoy the time we have on our own away from our family member so that we’re rested and properly prepared for the moments when we’re together. 

When we’re together, we can limit our exposure psychologically by holding fast to our higher purpose and noticing our triggers without acting on them. Part of the issue with difficult family members is that we’ve rehearsed our roles and responsibilities so many times that whatever triggers us automatically turns into behavior without us realizing it. Limiting our psychological exposure is a warrior task because it’s asking us to notice what’s happening in our experience prior to acting on it. It’s acknowledging that most of the thoughts going through our heads are not an accurate representation of reality. It’s exposing all the areas where we are assuming and being unfair, when our attention might otherwise be pointing our fingers at the other person. 

When we can accomplish this, we become open to the possibility that our family member is also just another living, breathing human being doing the very best they can in challenging circumstances. It opens us up to understanding their point of view, their behavior and the context that is driving their actions. It creates the possibility for us to see their situation from their point of view, rather than our preconceived notions. And often, all the other person is really looking for is understanding--the feeling of being heard without being judged, without being told what to do, without being coddled or ridiculed. Understanding is the healing mechanism that brings people closer together, which can facilitate lasting change in our relationships if both people are willing. 

Which brings me to my final point. 

Be Open to Change

Yes, it’s true that we can’t change other people, nor should we try or expect to. But we can change ourselves, and by doing that, create a new environment for someone else to explore other ways of being. 

We do ourselves and our family a disservice when we assume that the future will be like the past. Even if the future unveils 100x over in the same way, we still have no proof that the future will repeat the past. 

When we believe that our family member is incapable of changing or that certain things always happen like this, our family member sense this position in us. They sense that we’ve discredited them. They sense that we don’t believe in them. They sense that we don’t support them. They sense that we don’t actually care about what they’re going through--that we only care about how situations affect us. And because they sense this in us, it becomes much easier to fall back into the same patterning of communicating and behaving. The same old wine bottle. The same temper tantrum. The same drug use. The same lecture. 

This is why it’s important to always approach situations with a fresh mind and an attitude that anything is possible. Mind you, I’m not talking about wishful thinking. I’m not talking about believing that magic and fairy-dust is going to sprinkle around the room. I’m not talking about setting your expectations on outcomes you can’t control. 

I’m talking about approaching the situation with an open mind for whatever happens. To be psychologically prepared for the same old situation, but open to new ways of communicating and behaving. Because what we might find is that when we approach these situations openly, it actually frees us to break loose of our own patterns in these situations. 

Human beings are not static entities. We are software that is constantly being rewritten. When we’re open to change--both in ourselves and in others--we are acknowledging this fact and encouraging new software updates to download into our systems. 

Takeaways

We don’t choose our family, and this is a good thing. It prepares us for the challenges of dealing with other relationships we don’t choose, and teaches us to remain steady amid stormy seas. 

The next time you’re preparing to meet up with an emotionally charged loved one, consider these points: 

1. Find a higher purpose - You aren’t just surviving this time together, you are learning how to thrive in this time together by tuning up how you participate in situations like these. Use this time to observe and explore how you react. 

2. Limit your exposure - When you can, exercise your freedom to limit your exposure physically. When you can’t, limit your psychological exposure by holding onto your higher purpose and noticing what triggers you without acting on it. 

3. Be open to change - The future is not necessarily the past, so don’t treat it that way. Be open to the possibility of change, both for you and your loved one.

Human relationships are challenging. We aren’t demanding perfection of ourselves. We know there’s bound to be failure. We are simply open to the possibility that life can be enjoyed under a variety of circumstances, stresses and tensions. It’s all about how we participate. 

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