Today I’m answering the last of the subscriber questions we collected a while ago.
As I said at the time, I was going to answer the questions that were most likely to sting and bother everyone, and whose answers would be the most useful.
Well, this is a question that goes straight to a pain point we all share.
It speaks precisely to that moment when we feel a huge injustice, and we also feel that someone is taking advantage, either of you or of other people you care about.
But injustice, as so often happens, occurs in a context where one has to be extremely sophisticated when setting boundaries and changing the tone of the atmosphere.
Because otherwise…
Everything goes to hell.
Which is exactly what happens when you have to set boundaries (saying yes up to here, no from here, or yes up to this point but no any further) in a family situation.
There’s a lot at stake.
And, of course, you won’t want to hurt anyone, right?
But it is precisely in family contexts where the most power abuse, blackmail, manipulation, coercion, and a long list of other dynamics that produce great dissatisfaction happen.
S.’s message was the following:
[ I find myself ruminating endlessly over the things that have happened in my relationship with my sister. And there’s something that makes me incredibly angry, which is that she comes to family celebration meals empty-handed and straight to a laid table. And it really winds me up because I see it as very unfair and I see that she’s behaving like a little girl, you know?
And then it’s not just me noticing the unfairness, my mother notices it too, and that’s why she’s started saying things like next year she’ll go away on holiday so she doesn’t have to be the one making the meals. But of course, that reaction comes from noticing that no one helps, not because she actually wants to go away.
So I do my bit, I help prepare things, I set the table, I clean some things up, etc. Maybe I could do more, but I don’t just sit there doing nothing.
Then there was one occasion when it was said to her, my mother said it to her, that she couldn’t just turn up to a laid table, and she asked her to come earlier to help, and she turns up at the time the food is served when everything is already ready, and she’s been doing this for years.
And at the last family meal she was asked the same thing and then she gets to the house angry and annoyed because she’s being told off, and she acts as if she’s throwing a tantrum…
Well, this situation causes me a lot of inner tension because it seems unfair to me and it makes me angry, and then I start to ruminate a lot, thinking and imagining future situations in which I might be forced to pull her up on it.
So I’d like to know how I can regulate myself, and reduce this rumination that comes over me and this dysregulation with such intense anger towards her.]
Ufff.
I’m sure something like this has happened to you too. Change the name, change the context, same dynamic.
Oh, no?
Are you not from this planet?
My bad.
Well then, for everyone else, here I’ll explain how you can, from where you are and with the resources you have, come through this situation well, change the frame, change the way you behave, so that harmony can prevail, accept what is, change what can be changed, and above all, feel much better about yourself without it affecting your mood so much and ending up having an impact on your relationship with your family.
Here we go:
This is where the public version ends. The full newsletter is for subscribers only.
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