The Journey
“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild nightand the road full of fallen
branches and stone.
But little by little,as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.”
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The Responsibility Game
Lynne Namka Ed. D. © 2008
People from all over the world write to me, mostly women but
sometimes it’s a man, asking about what they can do to help
their loved one or family member “control” his or her
anger. Or how they can help “diffuse” their
partner’s anger. They say that their partner is
“such a good guy or a good woman” and the only flaw is the
“anger problem.” Or they feel so sorry for their
out-of-control child or abusive parent who hurts others. This
well-meaning intention to help is good but it is misplaced as it
enables the angry person to stay as he is. The only person who
can change their anger is the angry person.
Feelings of pity and guilt over someone else’s inability to
stop doing something harmful to themselves like drinking or drugging,
getting angry or get their homework done or anything that the rest of
the world is able to do but they can’t/won’t are a waste
of energy. Guilt and feeling sorry for someone is at the bottom
of the codependency need to fix someone else as a defensive maneuver
so that you don’t look at your own behavior.
We get the relationships we are willing to put up with. We
were not able to choose the family of our childhood, and how they
dealt with stressors. Some caring partners accept the negative
behaviors of others and never insist on change. If you have felt
helpless in your childhood with an angry parent, you may think that
angry relationships are the way life is supposed to be. Living
with anger may be familiar to you, but it is not healthy. One
fifty-two-year-old woman described the freedom she felt when she
finally learned to assertively say to her nit-picking husband,
“Don’t go there. Just don’t go
there.”
Put “checks and balances” in the areas where your
partner’s behavior gets out of control. Calmly calling your
partner on his bad behavior may work if he has some voice of reason
within and a willingness for fairness and justice. A person
whose behavior is continually disturbing to others needs feedback at a
time when he is calm as to how he hurts others so he can evaluate the
consequences of his actions. Calling a person on the
consequences of their behavior helps maintain the moral order of the
relationship. Loving firmness is the best way to talk to a
person about his unacceptable behavior. Remind him that fair is fair
and you expect him to be reasonable with his anger. There are
unspoken boundaries between couples that are played out with nonverbal
and verbal snippets of control behaviors. One man said, “I
can’t talk to her directly about her nagging as she blows up as
she’s too sensitive to hear any criticism. So when it gets
too bad, I glare and she backs off. We’ve got this
“Glare and back off contract that she isn’t even aware
of!”
One way to maintain fairness is to insist on having a correction
technique for all members of the household. Correction is a
behavioral technique where the person who messes up the environment is
required to clean it up as an offer of restitution. The
correction procedure holds people responsible for their misbehavior by
requiring them to undo, as much as possible, the damage they have
done. Correction of what has been disturbed in the environment
gives practical penalties for disturbing the home and the people who
have been affected. With correction, the person who throws
things must pick them up and return them to their proper place.
If he breaks things, he must replace them. If he yells and
screams, he must apologize to those he has disturbed. Correction
procedures should be installed with all members of the
family.
Just like two-year-olds, grownup temper tantrums last longer when
a person has an audience. You need not stay in the same room
with a raging person. Warn him that you will leave when he is
yelling and go take care of yourself. Don’t stick around
and take the barrage of ugly words. Take the children and leave
quietly, saying that you are not running away but are giving him some
space to cool off and you hope that the next time he will take his own
time out. Go to another room or get in the car and leave for a
while. If he gets angry because he is fearful of being alone,
level with him to show that his anger will create his being left alone
for awhile for both of you to cool off. You are not abandoning
him but you are removing yourself from his anger.
A common myth is that people have no control over their feelings.
That’s old thinking—now with all the techniques and anger
management classes that we have available for anger release, blowing
up in anger at others is a choice. Watch how you enable other
people’s bad behavior. Do you make excuses for him?
Do you tell the children that their dad can’t help it? It
is not your job to try to get anyone else to “diffuse” or
“control” his anger. It is the job of each angry
person to take care of his anger and find appropriate ways to express
it. An angry person may not have the motivation to do so.
If you excuse him repeatedly for his outbursts without any
consequences, why should he be expected to change?
Don’t be held hostage by other people’s
feelings. And while you are at it, take a look at your own anger
responses. You and only you are responsible for your thinking
and the way you think creates the type of life that you will
create. No other person or thing has the ability to get inside
your head and pushes a button marked anger. Nobody pulls your
chain, pulls your trigger or pushes your button. Only you make
yourself feel what you feel. The bottom line is that you are
always responsible for what you think, say and do. And you are
responsible if you have allowed another person to treat you with
disrespect!
Positive Self-Talk Affirmations:
I am responsible for my thoughts, feelings and actions.
I am responsible for deciding what I will and will not stand
for.
I am responsible for how I treat people and allow them to treat
me.
I can only feel good about myself if I live in accordance with my
positive values.
I affirm that I am healthy and whole and I am worthy of being a
happy person.
Be gentle with yourself; you are learning to be more honest with
yourself to break into habits of a lifetime. If you slip up and revert
back to a behavior you dislike, analyze what went wrong. Tell yourself
that you made a slip and you will be more careful next time. You will
get better over time. You are responsible for how you act in the
future. Forgive yourself for doing what you have learned and vow
to be different. If you do an Energy Psychology technique
about your behavior and the beliefs that lie underneath it, you will
be less likely to slip in the future.
A client recently said to me, “I am willing to do whatever
I need to do to become whole. That includes challenging my
defense mechanisms over and over.” Wow! What courage
that took to be willing to confront the unhealthy behaviors that other
threw at her.
Peace and joy,
Lynne
This article is taken from my book, Your Quick Anger
Makeover: Plus Twenty Other Cutting-edge Techniques to Release
Anger!
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My new website HappyHealthyLoving.com is up and
running thanks to my web master Bob Silverstein. It is chock full of
ideas for living in loving relationships.
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Most of all, let love guide your life.
Colossians 3:14
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