What Investing in Fixing Challenging Relationships with Family is Costing You

People are uncertain about investing time & money into fixing a relationship with family because it might not work. Here's the thing, you are already investing and it is only giving you frustration.

What you don’t realize is you are already investing your time and emotions, and yes, even money into trying to make a dysfunctional, challenging, and/or toxic relationship with a parent/inlaw, sibling, or adult child work in hopes it will become a healthier relationship.

• You set time aside to spend with them because they tell you the problem is you never have time for them, or you always have time for your friends but never us.

• You spend hours working through tears and frustration after a simple text or phone call and you think you have it figured out only to have another text or phone call knock you out emotionally.

• You select a meaningful gift or take your family member on a spa day or vacation only to hear critique after critique of what could be better about the gift or experience.

You ARE investing in what you think will improve the relationship AND it’s not improving!

Here’s the problem…

Your investment isn’t working.

In fact, your investment seems to be increasing the dysfunction and frustration and stress. Why does your investment seem to be backfiring?

You desire the healthiest relationship possible and when you set aside time to spend with your friends and answer their texts/phone calls and give meaningful gifts, your friendship deepens and you feel closer. That’s what you desire with family too and instead it feels like doing those things opens you up to attack and more frustration.

• peace

• connection

• mutual investment

• positive communication

• feeling good and “filled up” after spending time together

This is what you long for with the people who are your family.

How do you get that?

Let me insert a bit of a disclaimer here: I cannot promise you those things because you only have the power to change how you show up to the relationship. What I can promise you is you will no longer be overwhelmed by emotion and frustration while questioning your own sanity when you do interact with a family member caught up in dysfunctional ways of relating.

What you need to do is shift your investment.

Yes, invest differently in the relationship.

You are already investing time, energy, and money in trying to make the relationship work. Why not try investing that same time, energy, and money into solutions and strategies that will bring you the peace, connection, and positive communication you desire?

There are two powerful ways to start shifting where you invest your time, energy, and money in family relationships.

Photo by Precondo CA on Unsplash

One, release the relationship you long for and accept the relationship you have right now.

This is not easy because it requires you to dive deep into your heart and go through a grief and release process of letting go of the relationship you were striving to have with your parent/inlaw, sibling, or adult child. I have seen this process work again and again with my clients. They go into it kicking and screaming, “But, Jill, the goal is a good relationship with my family member!” Yes, that is the goal, AND it also is NOT the goal.

The goal is THE BEST CONNECTION POSSIBLE, and if that produces a good relationship, that’s a bonus.

A key to remember as you release the relationship you long for and accept the relationship you have is understanding what your family member is giving you is what they can give right now to the relationship. When you accept that, you open up the possibility for creating the healthiest connection possible.

The healthiest connection possible is one where you don’t need to process encounters with them for hours and days and weeks afterwards.

The healthiest connection possible is being in a conversation with them and feeling peace no matter what they choose to say.

The healthiest connection possible is no longer taking the bait and getting pulled into circular arguments and/or defending yourself, your choices, your children, your spouse.

When my clients trust me with guiding them through this process, they feel a lightness and hope they have not felt in years. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. For some, it takes just a session to make this shift. For others, it takes much longer. It all depends on your willingness to get real with yourself.

Two, you need to throw out all your boundaries and start over with boundaries.

Boundaries are the skill we get wrong all of the time because dysfunctional family systems and cultural systems will never be able to give you a clean and connective boundaries method.

What do I mean by that?

Most of the ways you are taught to set and honor boundaries are all about telling others what you do and do not want them to say or do in your presence.

This is messy and it promotes division and conflict because you are trying to control others with your boundaries. Humans are each gifted with free-will so if you attempt to violate the free-will of another through your boundaries, you will create a bigger mess and more conflict.

I teach my clients a boundaries method that puts both you and others first because everyone gets to choose what words they say and actions they take. Now, before you say, like most of my new clients say, “That won’t work,” consider this example.

My client wanted her mother-in-law to stop criticizing her every move. Whether it was her parenting, her choice in clothes, how she spent her money…her mother-in-law always had an “opinion”.

My client handled these moments in a very logical way. She explained her choices until she felt overwhelmed and then she would snap at her mother-in-law only to receive a “Well, you don’t have to be so sensitive! It was just a suggestion.”

But it wasn’t a suggestion. It was a judgement and it was affecting the way my client felt about herself as a mother, wife, and person.

I asked my client to set a boundary and she told me she already set boundaries by telling her mother-in-law she doesn’t want to hear criticism and she just wants to enjoy their time together.

The problem is this boundary wasn’t working and it wasn’t working because it’s based on the formula: recognizing how I am being treated + I tell you to step treating me this way=I wait to see what you do.

This isn’t an effective formula.

Instead I had my client dive deep into exploring what it was she was willing to do when her mother-in-law offered her “opinions” and that is where my client began to see possibilities for change.

My client decided she was willing to use what I call “stop phrases” and grey rock responses when her mother-in-law criticized her.

A stop phrase does just that. It stops someone in their tracks, or mid-sentence, as they realize something has shifted. One of the stop phrases my client put into rotation with her mother-in-law is: Thank you for your perspective.

Full stop. Not defending herself. Not inviting an argument. Not giving her mother-in-law an emotional reaction of any kind.

Grey rock responses go one step further to disengage. A grey rock response can be everything from a “Okay” to walking out of the room and returning later as if nothing happened or was said. Grey rock responses are boring and do not give the person trying to connect in a dysfunctional way anything to hook onto and run with. It’s literally cutting the emotion out of it so there is nothing for the other person to react to or judge or manipulate.

As my client practiced these responses and stop phrases, her relationship with her mother-in-law shifted. Her mother-in-law still criticized and offered her “opinions”, but it no longer left my client doubting herself, her parenting, or her choices. She also felt so good about herself because she no longer was getting emotional and feeling like she had to accept what her mother-in-law was saying as truth. She felt free and at peace which meant she was experiencing the best connection possible with her mother-in-law without her mother-in-law ever changing.

This can happen for you too.

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