Transcription
Hi everyone, and welcome to a webinar on the topic of handling disrespect and abuse from your alienated or estranged adult child. And I think this is one of the really tricky, uh, things for parents to handle, particularly these days, because so many of the parents that I work with, um, were really loving, involved, dedicated, committed parents who, in many ways, were, um, much better parents than were their own. And if they weren't better, they were probably as good, uh, as parents as were their own.
So when their child, um, starts talking to them or behaving towards them in a disrespectful or abusive way, it's very confusing to them, particularly because, um, older parents, of which I would consider myself in that camp of being a, being a boomer, but also the next generation below me, youthwise, Gen X, uh, parents were still raised in an era where the idea of honoring thy mother and thy father, respecting your elders, um, and that kind of a, a moral framework was still considered reasonable and and popular and common. And all of that has largely given way to a much more psychological, individualistic idea of family.
So, there's no longer the feeling that the child owes the parent anything. They don't owe them respect. They don't, uh, have to honor them because they're older. Um, so what, what that does is that it opens up an enormous opportunity for adult children and their spouses to treat the parent in ways that none of us would have treated our parents in all likelihood. I guess some, some of us might have, um, but it would have been far, far less common in our generation to have spoken to our parents once we were adults, or for our spouses to have spoken to their in-laws in the ways that so many commonly do.
So, one of the reasons that I think this is an important topic for, for parents to, uh, who are going through estrangement and alienation to, to get informed about is that a lot of parents today are very confused about this topic. So, um, you know, if you're like most of us, you may have made mistakes with your kids when they were growing up or since they've been an adult. And you may be confused about how much of your children's anger, uh, you know, or hurtful comments you deserve or, or don't deserve.
Some parents have a difficult time, particularly these days, distinguishing abuse from appropriate anger. You know, as being humans, we sometimes do things that may feel provocative or disrespectful to our kids. And they may feel like they have a right to be angry at us, or it's appropriate for them to be angry. And we may be confused about, well, what is an appropriate amount of anger versus what is an inappropriate amount of anger?
Um, I think many, if not most parents who are going through an estrangement or alienation don't know how to set limits without shutting down the conversation. And if you've been following my work at all, you know that one of the most important things to be practiced at when you're going through this kind of an experience is to learn how to keep the conversation open and going forward. I once took an improvisational, uh, a class on improv. And one of the key techniques of improv is that if somebody says something to you, you say, um, "Yes, and." And the idea is that you're, you're constantly finding ways to keep the conversation or the interaction going. So you might not, somebody says something, you don't just say no or correct or whatever. You have to kind of find a way to keep the conversation going.
So, m, so, so much of what is required of parents when they're going through estrangement and alienation is finding the tools to keep, to not shut down the conversation. And we're probably the most challenged when our kids are being disrespectful or abusive because we feel so hurt and misunderstood and activated and, uh, particularly if it's a case of alienation and we think that the other parent is involved and that our child is just parroting or mimicking back something that they've heard before, uh, in the past.
So part of the task is to allow these feelings to be expressed, but to not support the child being contemptuous or, uh, to communicate their feelings in a way where we're just kind of giving them, uh, an open door to be abusive or more abusive or more, more contemptuous of the parent. Again, these are, these are not small tasks psychologically. They require a lot of, uh, calm and centeredness and the ability to be in touch with your own emotions and in control of your own emotions and not come from a very activated, reactive, um, place.
Many parents are confused, particularly if they feel not only that their ex is, um, causing the disrespect or abuse, but sometimes it's who our children are married to. If they're, our children are married to what I call a cult of one son-in-law or daughter-in-law, or a gatekeeper son-in-law or daughter-in-law, somebody who's very troubled, who is really encouraging your kid to be disrespectful or abusive as an expression of kind of loyalty to them or a way to show them that, you know, they're going to protect, uh, them from the parents so-called abusive, intrusive behavior.
This is something I see a lot, uh, with daughters-in-law, where they kind of threaten the son's, the now estranged son's, um, uh, attachment to the parent by criticizing their masculinity, by saying things like, "Oh, well, you're, you're a mama's boy," uh, you know, or you're, you know, you need to protect our family now that we have children, and it's, and protect my mental health, and it's stressful for me to be around your parents, and you need to, you know, to show them that when they talk to me that way, they can't do that." And so sometimes these perfectly nice, sweet, you know, kids who have never had a fight with their parents in their life, and probably wouldn't have if they'd married somebody different, suddenly become very aggressive and contemptuous of the parent, uh, not because they necessarily have some big complaint about the parent. They're doing it in a kind of a performative way. They're doing it to sort of show their wife that they, you know, they're going to protect her and her honor, and they're not going to be pushed around themselves.
So that could be a point that's also incredibly, uh, confusing to parents, parents who have low self-esteem, who, who have confusion about how they're supposed to be treated by anybody. So let's say you came from a family where abuse was, was very common from your, your parents or other family members, where there was trauma or rejection or shame, uh, or other kinds of experiences where you've come into adulthood not really knowing what you're entitled to expect from anybody. So when your adult child is disrespectful or abusive, it almost feels like your fate. You almost feel like it's, it's how you're supposed to be treated in life. And so you may feel scared about how you're being treated, or you may react way too aggressively. But it all comes because those more longstanding feelings of hurt and trauma and feeling misunderstood by your own family are getting stirred up again.
And nothing is so provocative or so hurtful or so rejecting or so humiliating or so shaming than to be, uh, told by our own children that we're terrible parents or terrible people, or that, or when they behave in ways that cause us to feel like we've done something so terrible that we should or could be treated in such a hurtful, disrespectful manner.
So, I think it's worthwhile to spend a little bit of time talking about what is abuse and what isn't abuse, because there are parents sometimes today who say that behavior is abusive in ways that I would, I might consider to be obnoxious or difficult or stressful to have to listen to or engage in, or, uh, shaming or rejecting. It doesn't really mean it's abusive, though. Just because when our children tell us these things, it makes us feel like a truck just backed up on us, doesn't necessarily mean that their intention is to be abusive or even to be hurtful. Sometimes, our children tell us things that make us feel terrible about ourselves as people and as parents because they're actually trying to have a closer relationship with us. They're trying to communicate something they don't know any other way to communicate. Uh, or we've made it so difficult for them to say what they need to say that they're just getting louder and louder and louder to try to break through our defenses.
So just because it feels bad doesn't necessarily make it abusive. It might, but it's not the only sign. Uh, and also, if you intervene too quickly against your child's negativity or anger, particularly if you've been estranged and you're, if they're coming back into contact with you, um, it can backfire because sometimes you have to give them more room to really spell out how they think and feel. So they know that you can tolerate that before you intervene and begin to set limits. And this is something I'm going to talk about a little bit later, uh, in the, in the webinar.
So, um, so, but on the other hand, some adult children are really out of control. They're out of control in their contempt for the parent and their rejection of the parent and their double standards. So many of, of adult children today talk about the parents' abuse, and the adult child is incredibly abusive. They're abused in their neglect of the parent, in preventing the parent from seeing the grandchildren when the grandparents were, were loving and involved and and caring. They're abusive in the way that they don't aren't forgiving of the, the mistakes that the parent made, when they're not really acknowledging the, the trials that the parent had to go through in raising the child. How much the child themselves might have, uh, created challenges, how much their person that maybe it's your, your ex, or the person your child is married to, or the child's mental illness, etc. How all of those things really affect the parenting environment.
So parents genuinely do the best that they can given who they're married to at the time they're raising their children, who their kid eventually marries, what the child's mental health or illness is like, what the child's other challenges are, the parents' socioeconomic class, who the other siblings are, what the other kind of social or environmental challenges, um, that the parent had. And so for adult children to just feel like, well, I didn't like how you treated me, so I can be as obnoxious and critical and cruel and rejecting and shaming and humiliating to you as I like to be. Well, no, that's not a sign of a mature person.
So, it's reasonable that you would want to set limits on that behavior, but you can't shut it down in the way that you might other kinds of abusive behavior. You can't do what I call return fire with fire, because your goal is to find the kernel of truth, even in the obnoxious behavior, and find a way to keep the conversation going.
All right. Well, so what is, what is abuse? So I gave you some examples. Other is what I would consider to be the willful or reckless infliction of emotional or mental suffering of another person that involves any of the following: shame, humiliation, ridicule, name-calling. While any of those could be tolerated if they occur rarely or only on rare occasion, they shouldn't be tolerated if they become part of the ongoing, um, interaction between the parent and the adult child. I mean, it's obvious the ways that it's harmful to the parent. For the parent, it makes them feel, um, ashamed, guilty, regretful, angry, misunderstood, hurt, scared. But it's also bad for the adult child who's doing it as well.
Well, why would it be bad for them? I mean, they're getting it off their chest, aren't they? I mean, don't we talk so much in our society about the importance of calling it like it is and saying what you feel and, you know, being direct? Well, no. There, there's responsible ways to communicate and there's irresponsible ways to communicate. So when we allow the adult child to consistently communicate in an irresponsible way, in a clearly abusive way, it's harmful to them. It's harmful because even the most, uh, self-righteous kid knows at some level, typically, that they're behaving in an abusive way, and that can induce feelings of guilt or regret in them. And that becomes kind of a, um, a feedback loop where they criticize the parent, they're abusive of them, they see that it wounds the parent, then they feel guilty about it, then they have to justify why they did it. And they justify it by basically cycling through all the reasons they estranged themselves in the first place, and they work themselves up. So they're kind of in a constant state, um, of agitation. So it creates a cycle of anger, guilt, regret, justifying the anger. Um, but it can also create a certain degree of contempt for the parent if they tolerate too much of it.
If you've heard other of my webinars, uh, one of my webinars is called, uh, "Should I Keep Trying or Just Give Up?" And in that webinar, one of the things that I say is that, uh, one of the clear signs that you should give up is if you're getting letters returned, you know, to, to them or to the grandchildren unopened, or gifts. If you're having restraining orders sent out after you, as some parents are. If you're being told to only communicate through their attorney. If you're having the police called on you or the threat of it, or every time that you do reach out to the adult child, you get threats of, um, of, um, you know, or they just get so, so unraveled and aggressive and and and difficult that, um, you, it makes you just feel like, um, that's really not, not a worthwhile thing to do. Those are clear signs that you need to stop and stop right now.
And often that can work for the following reasons. One is that it goes to what I was saying about it can create contempt for you if you talk, if you keep trying despite the fact that your child has made it clear that you shouldn't be trying. So they may actually respect you more if you, the same way that setting limits may cause them to respect you more. It may also cause them to respect you more if you don't keep trying, uh, no matter what. So that could be a really important point. It may invite more self-reflection in the same way that setting limits can. So your child may, may feel more like they have to look at themselves than if we just tolerate all the abuse. It may cause them to miss the parent more. It may change the dynamic, uh, in some kind of way.
Now, um, a child is disrespectful of the parent. I, I often see this dynamic occur with mothers and daughters, particularly, um, um, single mothers or formerly single mothers and their daughters. And I think it has to do with the way that daughters in particular can feel more responsible for their mother's feelings, more guilty if the mother is unhappy, more worried about them. But the way that they defend against that is to be more critical, uh, and negative. Now, that sounds kind of paradoxical, doesn't it? You, you might think, well, if they're so worried about the parent, why would they behave in a, in a nice way? Well, they're behaving in a not nice way because for whatever reason, they feel the need to be separate from the parent. But the more wounded that the parent acts, particularly the mother in this particular scenario that I'm talking about, the more wounded she acts, uh, the more upset, the more kind of helpless before the daughter's, uh, more aggressive communication, the more guilt that induces in the daughter and causes her to feel like, oh, I'm just this terrible person to make my poor mother cry. Well, you deserve it because of X, Y, or Z, or when I was growing up, you didn't do A, B, or C, or whatever it is. It invites them to justify, uh, their, their behavior in ways that if the parent does, uh, uh, set limits on it and shows that they aren't going to tolerate that abuse of a disrespectful behavior, actually can be kind of relieving to that kid because sometimes kids are, you know, adult children, they're out of control, and they know they're out of control, but they kind of can't help themselves.
So for those setting limits on the disrespectful and abusive behavior can be kind of relieving in the same way with our toddlers when, when they were toddlers, you know, they don't necessarily want reign of the house, they want to know where the line is. Or adult children similarly, they want to know where the line is. Okay. Well, so what are some of the most common reasons that a child might, uh, behave [snorts] in a disrespectful or abusive way? Well, one is that, uh, certainly the parents' mental illness, but, but equally commonly, the adult child's mental illness or their drug or alcohol abuse, or the effect of, of their, who that kid is married to, the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law, or the effect of your ex, or unresolved anger about, uh, about the past behavior that has never really been addressed or amended or worked through.
So let's look at all these in a little more detail. Let's start with mental illness. When I did, uh, one of my studies with a colleague at Ohio State, one of the things we found in working with estranged mothers was that a pretty high, pretty significant number of the mothers, and we interviewed a thousand of them, um, who were estranged from the adult child or alienated. A significant percentage said that they believe that their child's mental illness was part and parcel of the, of the estrangement and, um, and inclusive of that would be the disrespectful and abusive behavior.
Now, how or why could mental illness increase the probability of a child communicating in a way that's disrespectful or abusive? Well, one is that the mental illness can, might interfere with their ability to regulate their thoughts, their feelings, or their affect. You know, somebody, the, the key, uh, diagnostic sign of somebody who we call borderline is the symptom of dysregulation. And dysregulation is when, um, once a feeling gets triggered or a thought gets triggered, the person has a very hard time kind of getting the genie back in the bottle. It just sort of spins more and more out of control. So what might be irritating to one person or might be upsetting to one person that has like a half-life of maybe an hour or two, for somebody who's borderline or has some other form of mental illness, it could last for days or hours. And with people with borderline personality disorder, some of the worst, most difficult, most provocative behaviors are all attempts to try to get the genie back in the bottle, to try to feel better. So sometimes people have that diagnosis, they self-harm, or they may be very black and white in their thinking because the gray zone is where anxiety lives. So if you think of people as all good or all bad, you don't have to think about, you know, what their intentions were. They, they really great intentions, or they were terrible, um, intentions.
So, so mental illness may cause somebody to, um, treat the parent in an abusive, disrespectful way because they just, their feelings are so overwhelming to them. Now, one of the things that I found is it's not just kids who have more, and when I say kids, I mean adult kids, your kid. Um, it's not just those who have really serious forms of mental illness that can cause this kind of dysregulation. Somebody who has a mild or moderate anxiety or depressive disorder may be easily triggered by the parent and cause them to react or to overreact because it doesn't take much to set them off, in part because they're chronically feeling somewhat psychologically underwater. So, that doesn't take much for the parent to make them feel guilty or bad about themselves. And so when they're reacting in an abusive or disrespectful way, it's in part in reaction to how bad it makes them feel if the parent says, whatever the parent's saying, things which [clears throat] are might be totally benign to one of their other adult children or to an objective bystander. So sometimes mental illness can just cause some adult children to be like they're walking around with a third-degree burn, and it doesn't take very much for them to feel really triggered and upset by the parent for them to respond in this very aggressive way.
Another way that mental illness can cause that is that it may interfere with their ability to make correct attributions of causality from the parents' behavior to how they feel. It may cause them to rewrite their history in lines with something that makes their present-day experience feel more, more aligned. You know, we live in a culture and a society that's obsessed with traumas, and where we assume that if a child comes into adulthood and they have significant anxiety or depression or problems with their confidence or their self-esteem or other forms of of success, that if they have significant challenges, well, it can all be dialed back to mom or dad. Well, you know, yeah, sometimes it can be, but sometimes it's just genetics, or it's random good luck or bad luck, or it's relationships with siblings or with other people or other life circumstances. So, this idea that it all boils down to mom or dad really heats up relationships between parents and adult children because so many adult children are blaming their parents for things that the parent either didn't do or isn't the cause of their adult child suffering, no matter what their therapist is saying. But we live at a time when, uh, that idea that parents are the primary cause of, of adult outcome, it's such a powerful idea that a lot of adult children, particularly those who have moderate to severe mental illness, feel justified in criticizing the parent and being abusive to them and treating them in a really hurtful way.
So the other side of that is that somebody who has subtle or overt mental illness may feel very defective. Probably does feel somewhat or a lot, uh, uh, uh, defective or shamed as a person. And so blaming the parent is a way to say, well, it's not my fault I feel this way. It's your fault. So from that perspective, the anger, the aggression, the contempt, the self-righteousness, the blame, the disrespect is fueled by this desire or this need to get those feelings, those feelings of self-criticism and shame and defectiveness, um, off of them.
Mental illness in your adult child may make it harder for them to just manage the normal, expectable slings and arrows of family conflict, of adult child conflict. So it may mean that they can't just sort of do the basic things that maybe your other adult children can do if you have adult children that you're not estranged from. So they may just, um, you know, find that the normal things like, whatever, asking them to repay a loan, or if they've moved back in for a while, to do their share of their housework, or be responsible, or any of the other millions of things that constitute adult, uh, parent-child relationships. They experience it as some huge, um, huge disruption to them and overreact from that perspective. Similarly, it may cause them to have very unrealistic expectations about what they're entitled to receive from the parent by way of emotional support or financial support. Their, their mental illness may cause them to feel like the parent owes them something completely out of line with what the parent really does owe the adult child. So, it may cause them to, um, to make demands of the parent for money or other forms of emotional restitution that are completely unreasonable, um, and impossible for the parent to deliver.
Um, drugs and alcohol are another common reason why an adult child might be disrespectful or abusive. The effect of the drugs may create mood swings, and when they're coming down from the drugs, that may cause them to be more irritable, more withdrawn, more reactive, more sensitive. Um, the, uh, drugs may also cause, that may trigger, uh, major depression or anxiety disorders, or even bipolar, uh, if they're taking hallucinogens for, for example, and if they have some kind of a vulnerability to that, uh, it may trigger a bipolar, uh, episode.
Uh, addicts and alcoholics famously are much more likely to externalize through, through blaming others. That's why AA and other 12-step programs really emphasize taking responsibility, looking at your own character flaws, making amends. Um, that, you know, those are such key components of 12-step programs because they really work, and they actually invite much more responsible communication to for the adult child to look at their own behavior and not just blame and shame the parent and say, "Well, it's your fault that I have all these things." No. In 12-step programs, they encourage people to say, "Well, these are my character flaws, and let me make amends to you for how they impacted you." That's part of the brilliance of 12-step, uh, programs.
Finally, somebody who's an addict or alcoholic may develop a peer group of people who were similarly estranged or similarly contemptuous of parents and who invite estrangement and no contact and treating parents in these kind of contemptible ways where the parent is, uh, treated like a terrible person. And the, the peer group, which may be an online peer group, uh, become cheerleaders, is kind of an unhinged kin kind of kind of a way.
So, so far I've talked about the role of mental illness and the role of alcohol and drugs in increasing disrespect and abuse. But another common one that I was just touching on earlier is the effect of your son-in-law or your daughter-in-law, which is very common. And that typically happens when the son-in-law or daughter-in-law needs your adult child to fight with you as a way to reassure him or her of the unique place in your child's life. Uh, they may also place your child in a loyalty bind where they can only feel secure if your, if your child is rejecting of you, not only through estrangement but through criticism and abuse, uh, and disrespect.
Your adult, your daughter-in-law or son-in-law may be abusive themselves, and they may encourage your child to do that. Um, and your child may have to do it as a way to prove to that very troubled son-in-law or daughter-in-law that they're not going to be pushed around in the same way that the son-in-law or daughter-in-law is saying that they're not going to be pushed around. So the, the daughter-in-law or son-in-law can be a very common problem, and it is not at all unusual that a kid prior to marriage was really nice to the parents, and after marriage, they start taking on the behavior and the personality of the person that they're married to in ways that make them somewhat unrecognizable to the parents and the extended family. They went from being a nice, respectful person to a hostile, contemptuous, uh, disrespectful, even abusive person. And typically, when that's the case, uh, it's because the, they're sort of performing for the son-in-law or the daughter-in-law. They're proving to them their, their primacy in the, uh, adult child's life. They're showing them that they're the most important person. And in identifying with them, they're also showing them that they like that behavior and they're not going to, to challenge it or push it aside in any way.
Okay. Well, what about the effect of your ex? So, from a parental alienation perspective, we know that not only young children are vulnerable to parental alienation, but really children of any age are vulnerable to, um, alienation once there's been a divorce. So sometimes the abusive and disrespectful behavior from the adult child, uh, could, could be a carryover from childhood, long-standing parental alienation, but it may also be more of a, of a recent thing where the parents are divorced and the, uh, the, um, alienating parent blames the other parent for the divorce. They raise things, topics that they know that the adult child will feel upset about. Maybe they lie about things that the parent did when they were married, like they had affairs or they were abusive or that kind of thing. So, in some ways, they set the, um, the adult child on the other parent in a very aggressive way as a way to prove their loyalty.
In the same way that this might occur with a, with a troubled son-in-law or, or daughter-in-law, they may also have an unconscious loyalty to your ex, even if your ex isn't really trying to fan the flames of them. So, they may feel protective of the ex in ways that are completely unfair to you, but for whatever reason, they feel like that ex has to be protected. And so they take on this role of, well, I'm going to, you know, tell dad or mom, you know, how screwed up they are, and you know, what, why, why I can't have a relationship with them. I'm going to really stick it to them. And in their mind, they're sort of defending the other parent. Uh, I mean, particularly if that parent likes that, uh, but even if that other parent isn't, isn't acting like, um, like that, uh, that they need that per se, that can, that can still, uh, occur.
So, so the ex can be a very powerful form or influence of, um, of aggressive behavior, particularly if they're acting very victimized or wounded by the divorce, or they're revealing things that happened during the marriage that caused the adult child to be contemptuous of that, uh, other parent, uh, or they indicate in some way that they, uh, like, like that, or the other parent has misrepresented who you are, what you did, or they've lied about you. Such as, or they haven't corrected things that your, uh, child is saying. So let's say your child goes to therapy and the therapist says, "Well, maybe you were sexually molested." And the child, the adult child takes that back to the, um, um, parent, and the parent who doesn't have any reason to believe that they were says, "Well, yeah, maybe you were." Even though if they were put to a lie detector test, they would say that they weren't. So, they don't correct misperceptions of the other parent and in that way fuel and exacerbate the disrespect and abuse.
Finally, some children are disrespectful or what feels like abusive because the parent just isn't really doing the work. They're not really making amends. They're not acknowledging the legitimate complaints of the adult child. They're not seeing the, they're not, you know, being respectful to the adult child's boundaries in ways that are reasonable for the adult child to ask them to be. So, they feel ignored by the parent, um, and they feel like they're responding in some ways to the parents' disrespectful, uh, or abusive behavior. So what I see sometimes happen is that the adult child starts out kind of trying to have that conversation, but if the parent is only defensive or critical or rejecting, or won't really find the kernel of truth, or won't show any kind of, um, temperament towards really self-examination or self-reflection, then things do start to escalate, and then they get worse. You know, then instead of sometimes you were critical, then it's like you were always critical. And maybe it starts out calm, but now it's getting to be to be aggressive. So, they may need to exaggerate their claims as a way to make them seem more legitimate.
Um, but a, but an ironic, um, cause of disrespect and abuse may actually, this goes back to what I was saying earlier about what I commonly see with, with, um, do adult daughters and single mothers, where they actually feel guilty towards the parent or worried about them, their unhappiness, how their lives are, are going or not going, the ways that they feel overly enmeshed with her, the way that they feel too responsible for making her happy or giving her companionship, uh, and that kind of thing, and that the anger or the disrespect or the abuse is actually a way to have a boundary. And that's why for those children, when the parent, when the mom in particular can set limits and show that she's strong enough to push back and set limits and not be mistreated, that creates its own boundary for the adult child in ways that are very, very useful. They're very relieving to the adult child. You know, I don't think that most of these kids really want to behave in the abusive, disrespectful way that they are, even though it may look like that. So a certain percentage of them are actually relieved when the parent, uh, does begin to set limits.
Okay. So that's sort of a theory of, uh, why these this can happen and some of the common pathways to that. Let's talk from a practical perspective about, um, what, what are sort of the best practices if you do have an abusive or disrespectful child? Well, the first thing is that if you know you're going to have an interaction with your adult child, I know a lot of you have have had no interaction or, you know, it's been years, so you probably wouldn't even mind a disrespectful interaction at this point. Um, but, um, you know, what I often find is that once people start practicing some of my techniques, you know, not everybody, but many do end up, uh, having some contact. So you want to have the right principles in mind so that when the door does open back up, you know how to, how to respond, because sometimes the kids come back swinging. And I don't mean that in a musical sense. They come back, you know, come back angry, but they're open to talking about it, but they come back, you know, loaded for bear. So you want to have the right orientation so that you can respond to them in a way that's, um, that's productive. Again, your goal is to respond in a way that keeps the conversation moving forward.
So, so let's say you are anticipating some kind of interaction. You want to decide what you want to say before the interaction. What are your goals? Are there particular points that you want to make sure that you, that you're going to make? You may want to write out two to three of the most important things that you want to say. If you're particularly nervous, practice saying them out loud. There's no harm in that. On the other hand, have an exit plan. How are you going to get off the phone or away from the interaction if and when it starts to head south? It can be useful to consider prefacing the conversation with some ground rules. Um, if, uh, things haven't gone well in the past, you might say something like, um, you know, "Seems like the past few times we've talked hasn't gone very well. Um, you want to sort of talk about it from, uh, what you see their dilemma as being and kind of give them a graceful way of, uh, showing that you understand or may understand why they communicate in the way that they do. So, you might say something like, "Well, you know, I get that maybe you feel like I haven't done a good job listening in the past." And you may feel like, um, you kind of need to hit me over the head with it for me to, to, to get through to me. And maybe that's, maybe that was true historically. Um, but I want to see if you and I can have a different, more productive conversation. So, um, you know, maybe you could just try to tell me what you want to say in a low-key way. I promise to listen, um, and respond in a respectful way. So, you know, while I want to understand what you're saying, it is hard for me to focus on what you're saying when you raise your voice, when you get really mad at me, when you start calling me names. I don't know. Just some part of my brain starts to shut down. So, if you could just try to say whatever it is, um, you know, in a calm, respectful way, I promise you I will try to respond, uh, in a way, uh, that is going to feel productive to you as well."
And you can sort of model it. You could say to them something like, well, you could say to me, you know, "I think you're a terrible dad," or "I think you really, it was your fault the family split up," you know, or, um, you know, whatever. Um, but, you know, as long as you say it, call me, I'm happy to listen to it. Not happy, but I'm willing to listen to it. Um, but you can't call me names. Can't yell at me. You know, let's just have some kind of, uh, basic ground rules.
So, um, um, now, so let's say that you, you set those ground rules, but then pretty quickly, uh, it starts to devolve into something much more chaotic and disrespectful and hurtful and and problematic. So, um, um, you probably at that point need to set limits. You might say, "Look, why don't we take a timeout and, you know, both of us just get off the phone or remove ourselves from the situation for an hour or so, and once we're both calm, uh, get back, get back on the call, or maybe we should just resume it tomorrow." And the goal of a timeout is really just to calm down. It's not to prove yourself right.
If a kid refuses to do that and they continue to escalate, you could say, "Well, this actually isn't feeling productive to me, so I'm gonna either hang up or I'm gonna leave. If you want to talk about it more tomorrow, um, I, I'm, I'm happy to do that. Um, but I, this doesn't feel very good to me. It can't feel that good to you."
Now, then you want to, um, follow up within 24 hours and just say, "Checking back in with you. Wanted to see if you wanted to, to try again, see if we could do a better job this time than the last time. I know I got kind of triggered. I think you might have as well. I don't know. You can say, say what you felt. Uh, but I know it wasn't probably wasn't as productive as either one of us would like it to be."
Um, now, if you don't feel like it can be productive, you might suggest that you continue it over email, but just suggest that it's very short. You don't want to read one of these freaking long diatribes that I often see from these adult children to their parents telling them they're narcissists or borderlines or gaslighters or whatever it is. You know, you want to just say, "Why don't you and I each, um, write a paragraph back and forth and try to respectfully respond, uh, to what the other said. Let's see if we can really get somewhere, uh, doing, doing that."
Okay. Now, what about after the fight? Because typically, if you're like most parents, after you've had these kind of interactions, you're probably going to feel miserable. You're not only going to still be angry, um, but you, you are probably going to feel really hurt and scared that things are going in the wrong direction, or your kid may never talk to you again. You may regret what you did. You could think, you know, you'll probably be thinking, what could I have done differently? What should I have done differently? Do I deserve to be treated like this? Where did I go wrong? Is this my fault? Um, that my kid feels like they have the right to, to talk to me in this way, or, or treat me, uh, in this way. And so, so how do you counter that?
Well, there's a number of different things that you, uh, you can do. One is to remind yourself of your own good intentions. You might say to yourself, or you write it out, "Look, my goal was to have a closer relationship with my child, and it continues to be my goal." Second of all, if you did blow it, if you did lose your temper, if you did say all the things that parents want to say to their kids, but hopefully don't, you forgive yourself if you blew it. You know, you should say to yourself, "Look, I probably shouldn't have told them that they're a selfish jerk. Uh, but I got really provoked, and I understand why I did it. Hopefully, next time I'll be able to, uh, do a better job than I did on this call. I guess I got kind of caught up in the moment and in the quicksand, and it's understandable why I did. I'm willing to make amends." And that's the gold standard. I'm not going to punish myself or shame myself or ridicule myself or torment myself about this. I'm already doing way too much of that.
Can also be useful after a fight to engage in it, some kind of a self-soothing activity, um, because after a fight, our nervous systems are probably still very activated in a kind of a fight or flight mode. So, uh, for me, that's probably going to mean going for a run or turning on really loud music. But for you, it might be meditating or sitting in a quiet room or going for a drive or doing something to really calm down. There's a technique that I teach in my, uh, workshop about healing the pain, uh, that I borrowed from Marshall Lahan, who's the founder of dialectical behavior therapy, where she invites you, if you're feeling really upset and you can't calm yourself down, to get a, a big bowl of ice water or a baggie and fill it with ice and water, and then if it's in the bowl, you put your face in it for like 30 seconds and hold your breath. And what it does is it activates the mammalian dive reflex, which which causes your body to go in this much more relaxed state. You can also do that by putting a bag of, uh, ice, uh, water on your face and lying back and holding it there for 30 seconds and doing that a couple of times. You might want to try it, uh, because, because it really, did, really does work.
So, so in all these, uh, situations that, that I'm advising in terms of how to respond, you want to, um, do something that's going to basically change the neural network that's been activated through the fight. So, through the argument, right? So, you want to get out of the fight-flight mode into something that's much more regulating. So that's why, you know, exercise, forms of distraction, ice water, call a friend, vent to somebody, write it out in a journal. Writing out can be, um, enormously therapeutic. There's something about writing things out, just feels like you're getting it one step away from yourself, which can be, uh, incredibly therapeutic, and it can help you to, to analyze, um, what happened.
Finally, it can be useful to, in my book, "When Parents Hurt," I have an exercise called, um, "My My Value as a Parent." And in that, I would want you to write out 10 things that are valuable about you as a parent. Now, if you're in, in the midst of, uh, an estrangement or alienation, you may be more filled with self-criticism and self-loathing and regret and shame and guilt. Well, screw all that. There. You, you have to own your own narrative of who you are as a person and as a parent, and you cannot seed that precious territory to your child. I don't care how great your kid was or is, they don't deserve to ruin your life. Nobody deserves to ruin your life. And so, one of the ways to reclaim your, your definition of your parent is not to buy into whatever your kid's saying. I mean, that's why I have parents write amends letters. It's kind of like, yeah, these are mistakes I made. I'm really sorry. I could see why you'd be upset about that. That's very different than saying, "Yes, but I deserve to hate myself or shame myself or have this ruin my life, rather be this black cloud that follows me everywhere I go." No, your kid does not deserve to, to ruin your life like that. You have to take control of the narrative.
And one of the ways to take control over the narrative is to, to write out 10 things that you did right as a parent. And so I think, uh, at the end of this call, that's what you should do. You should get a piece of paper and write it out by hand, and just 10 things. I was a better parent than my parents were, or I was as good a parent as my parents were, or I left an unhappy marriage to protect my children, or I stayed married to protect my children from a divorce, or I got into my own therapy, or I got my kid into their own therapy, or I made sacrifices for my kid. Nobody made for me, or I spent a lot of money on them, or I took classes, or I'm doing this workshop. I mean, you should be able to come up with 10, 10 things that, that are valuable about you as a parent. And whatever your mistakes were, I don't care. That's not the purpose of this exercise. The purpose of this exercise is you're reclaiming your value as a parent.
Okay. Well, that concludes today's webinar. I hope this was helpful to you.