Theme of the Week: Bullying

“A Warrior knows that the ends do not justify the means. Because there are no ends, there are only means. “
― Paulo Coelho

I have been doing some writing lately about toxic family relationships; that is to say, relationships that place enormous drain on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual resources to remain in them or to manage them.

Toxic relationships can be overtly abusive , but they can also be relationships which consistently and however subtly, across time,  undermine our health, happiness and well being.

We often think that one of the fundamental differences between toxic relationships with family and with others, is there seems to be some sort of cultural imperative which encourages us to stay put in family relationships and try to “work things out”. We may believe that there is more  tolerance for us to leave or end dysfunctional relationships when they are not with our family.

The truth is there are all sorts of toxic relationships and people , and generally speaking, we are not taught to protect ourselves very well and we are not encouraged to leave these relationships. We have a strong tendency to focus on the victims as the problem, and very often fail to put the blame and the responsibility for bullying squarely where it belongs – on the perpetrator.

Bullying is rampant in our society, more so now than ever. We have a tendency to think that bullying is something that children do, and that it is a school problem, and indeed bullying in schools is a growing and terrible problem. However bullying can happen anywhere; not only in our schools but also in our work places and in our families. When bullying happens in families, we often refer to it as “domestic abuse”. We make a mistake when we believe that domestic abuse happens only between spouses or only between adults.

Research is telling us that families have a significant role in incubating and tolerating bullying and abuse.

“Children who experience hostility, abuse, physical discipline and other aggressive behaviors by their parents are more likely to model that behavior in their peer relationships,” Sweeney wrote. “Children learn from their parents how to behave and interact with others. So if they’re learning about aggression and angry words at home, they will tend to use these behaviors as coping mechanisms when they interact with their peers.” – Elizabeth Sweeny

However bullying is not limited to parent bullies and as I mentioned above, is not limited to adults abusing adults. Bulling also occurs between siblings, parents can be abused by their children (elder abuse being one example) and extended family members can be perpetrators as well. We can be bullied by our work colleagues, by our bosses, by our organizational culture. We can even be bullied by the systems we believe exist to protect and support us.

We know now that the tolerance of bullying serves as one of the primary contributors to its persistence and severity in our families as well as in broader society. We often see other people being harmed by bullying behaviours, and fail to take a stand – far too often we leave the victims to stand alone. Sometimes we even blame them. This is a social problem as well as a personal/interpersonal problem.

Many of us have been the victim of bullying and can testify to the overwhelming sense of alienation, isolation and betrayal when those who we expect to love, value and care for us, do not act in a protective fashion – or worse, participate or condone the bullying.

We know that people who grow up in, or live with chronic bullying are more susceptible to be bullied in other places and other relationships. We also know that they are more like to attribute the poor behaviour of other people to some sort of personal character flaw or misdeed that “causes it”… “what am I doing that makes this person behave so terribly” or “what can I do so that this person doesn’t continue to target, harass and hurt me?”

The cost of bullying is incalculable. Victims may experience:

• Fear
• Loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities
• Isolation and withdrawal
• Powerlessness and sense of helplessness
• Loss of confidence and self-esteem
• Increased stress
• Symptoms of anxiety
• Inability to focus or concentrate
• Depression
• Nightmares or panic attacks
• Loss of physical health
• Loss of income and professional opportunity

And not surprisingly, victims of family bullying, often end up estranged.

As the Paulo Cohelo quote above says, the means never justifies the ends. We don’t need to twist ourselves into pretzel-like shapes to try to figure out why bullies bully. There is NO excuse for abuse. We need to get a whole lot more open about bullying; the perpetrators, the behaviours, the cost to victims, to families, to communities. We need to break the silence – and not carry the burden or shame of bullying alone. We need to learn to act in a protective way on our own behalf and on behalf of others. We must do better.

It is a wise proverb that says, those who lay with snakes will be bit. Time to out the snakes!

What Does Estrangement Look Like?

It’s Your Party, And I’ll Come If I Want To …

“My invite must have gotten lost in the mail,” she said venomously. “But I don’t mind crashing this party. 
— James Patterson

Last week, in my post, You’re Uninvited, I started writing about family events and estrangement. I wrote this in part, to a number of emails speaking about the inevitable tensions of knowing an important family event is about to occur and trying to make the decision about whether we should be involved (attend or invite).

In the follow up comments there was a fair bit of confusion about why we even worry about this issue when we are estranged. I mean, estrangement in and of itself should make this issue a no brainer, right? We’re estranged, that means we’re not in relationship and that means that we not only shouldn’t want to attend these sorts of events or invite estranged members to them – it also should mean we have no emotional conundrums about them.

Other people found this position offensive and short sighted. They spoke about the tension of wanting family and to belong, or wanting connection with some people in their family, even tho they were disinterested in other relationships within their family. They wrote, often very eloquently, about the way such dilemmas took up a substantial amount of emotional and thinking energy and how they struggled within the confines of estrangement to be “good” people, making considered and fair choices.

It’s not easy. It’s not simple. Sometimes it’s down right messy!  One off solutions will never cover the range of complexity inherent in these situations.

Two pieces of information came my way this week that I thought might be worth sharing. The first is from a reader who shared a bit of her story with me about attending her father’s funeral, even tho she had been estranged from him for many years, and consequently with many other people in her family too. She wrote about her vast ambivalence about attending the funeral, and also about her fear that she would not be able to find any closure with her relationship to her father if she did not attend the funeral. The story did not have a positive ending. The family event was marked by vehement in-fighting, blaming and anger. In her own words, “I didn’t find the closure I was looking for, but I found enough hurt to fuel even more estrangement.”

The other bit of information I stumbled upon was from an advice column, Ask Annie wherein a reader asks how she should manage family events where people she did not want to be in relationship with, would be present. Dear Annie’s solution? Attend but follow “etiquette”and feel free to snub the offending family members, whilst building on the other relationships in her family. This is a tricky one as it involves “snubbing” the spouses of certain people, while having “nice” interactions with their partners. It goes without saying, I did not agree with Dear Annie’s advice.

Clearly the business of attending family events or inviting others to your family events where estrangement issues are alive and well, is fraught. I’d like to propose some things you can think about in these situations. They aren’t advice per se, just points for your consideration. Remember, your estrangement situation is yours, and no one, including me, will have the answers for you.

1. Check your motives. Think about why you want to attend the family event or invite an estranged family member. Often we are triggered around family events to reach out and connect with family members, even though it may not be in our (or the other person’s) best interests. Consider whether by sending an invite or choosing to attend, if you are opening a door that you’d really rather stayed shut. Consider what you feel.Consider how the other person might feel. Is attending/inviting informed by guilt? By shame? By obligation?

2. Consider your resilience. Think of the best/worst case scenarios. Consider whether you have the reserves and resilience to deal with them. If you extend yourself and make an overture and it is rejected, how are you going to feel? Can you attend or invite without having any expectations? This is not about being negative or thinking of the worst, it’s about choosing from the heart and ensuring you can look after yourself if it goes sideways.

3. Yes, do think of the children! Family estrangement is grown up business. If it is possible to leave children out of it – please do. Something as simple as a card can make the difference between another generation learning to cope through distance and one which understands that difficulty in one relationship is not an excuse to obliterate all other connections too. Think really carefully about this one.

4. Don’t fake it. If your family is not inviting or attending you or your children to important family events, it hurts. It hurts them and it hurts you too. This is a BIG family estrangement owie – as the implications are enormous. We can live with knowing we will not have access to family, but it may break our hearts that our kids will grow up marinating in disconnection and distance.

Any time there is a special occasion involving children, we can find ourselves feeling very badly indeed for our kids, as well as for ourselves. This extends outward to extended family who do not feel able to connect with children or young people whom they love and care about, because they are estranged from their adults.

Despite all the pain and anger this may stir up, we need to be honest with our kids. Age appropriate honest. We don’t make excuses and lie for people. We also don’t demonize them. We need to let kids know that they may not get acknowledgment or invites from certain people ie. grandparents, the way that their friends do, but that it doesn’t meanthey aren’t important or loved. That’s right, we take the high moral ground around our children. We explain that there is pain, hurt feelings and disconnection AND that it doesn’t mean the missing family members don’t love and care for them. We give them an alternate story, that is capacity building and life enhancing. We give them a chance to break the legacy of estrangement.

5. Graciousness and gratitude. If someone you are estranged from sends you an invitation, consider the spirit it is offered in. Even if you do not desire any connection whatsoever, think about whether refusing the invitation is a means of self-care, or a  means of punishing the other person? Do the right thing. You’ll feel better for it.

6. Consider speaking to the person who is holding the event before you attend. Try to be even handed and honest about your concerns. Use the conversation to inform the decision you are making. If you let the person know you are worried about attending and don’t want to escalate existing family hurts or dramas, yet would also like to be present, you give an opportunity to brainstorm and discuss the best way to be present, or conversely to make a better informed decision about not attending. Consider doing the same before you invite someone who is estranged to attend one of your events. Don’t be naive. People who are estranged from their families have feelings about it, regardless of the importance of the occasion.

When Reconciliation Isn’t The Goal

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.  Delicious Ambiguity.”
— Gilda Radner

As often seems to happen during and after a major holiday, there has been a small flurry of estrangement activity and writing which, for the most is centered on reconciling with the person you are estranged from. Most recently, Mother’s Day has come and gone and a number of posts and articles appeared about how to reconcile with mom, with the occasional ” happy ending” story thrown in for good measure. For instance, have a look at this NY Times Daily News article, Estranged From My Mother No More; A Mother’s Day Remembrance.

Articles about reconciliation can be very reassuring for people who long for or are committed to potential reconciliation, but many people either don’t know if they want reconciliation, or are quite clear that they do not. It can be difficult enough to find anything written about estrangement, but it can be very frustrating and isolating when what is written has that reconciliation focus. As a reader wrote to me yesterday,

“I can’t ever imagine reconciling with my mother. In my heart I know it would not be healthy for me. But I can’t help but feel like I am the worst daughter in the world to know this. I could never say it out loud. I don’t want to reconcile.”

When I consider my own circumstances with my mother and I think about the many clients, research participants and reader’s stories I listen to, it becomes really clear to me that we need to make safe space for those who choose not to reconcile. If you don’t think that reconciliation is in the cards for you now, or in the future, that’s okay. If you don’t know if it is possible and feel unable to make a decision about reconciliation, that’s okay too. Some of us will not have a choice about whether reconciliation is desirable. It should be said for many of us, the decision to estrange completely was never ours.

We need to take the reconciliation pressure off of ourselves and each other. We need to stop thinking that reconciliation is the only choice, the “happy ending”, the “best” choice or the task we should be most preoccupied with.  Relationships are unique, as are the circumstances of reconciliation. A one size fits all solution (reconciliation) is unlikely to fit or be appropriate for us all. While there are lots of good reasons to seek reconciliation, there are plenty of not so good reasons to do so too. If reconciliation does not fit for you at this time, let that be okay.

Inter-Generational Estrangement

“For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.’ Really,’ I said. We’re passive-aggressive people,’ she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. ‘Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I’m not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother… At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.’

….’I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, just as you’re getting pissed off at another.’
So it’s an endless cycle,’ I said.  I guess.’ She took another sip. ‘Coming together, falling apart. Isn’t that what families are all about?’

~Sarah Dessen (Lock and Key)

For people who are estranged from their families the above can feel “normal”. To begin to believe that it might be possible to be a part of a family where people don’t talk poorly about each other, don’t victimize, blame, abuse, project and then walk away — is a B-I-G leap for many of us.

For others, we have left our family precisely to ensure we don’t have to remain a party to acts of treachery, betrayal and abuse.

On either side of the normalized dysfunction we run a serious risk of setting up relational patterns we may spend a lifetime struggling with and pass down to our children. If you are a part of a family who is estranged – whether you have been left, or you were the one who needed to leave  – or whether you are just the bystander of intra-familial conflict, or even, all of the above – there is something to be learned.  The first step is the one where we consider that estrangement might not be the end of a problem, but the potential beginning of new ones.

Things to ponder …

What if you knew that family estrangement had the potential to have deep, long lasting impact on the children in your family? Would that awareness change anything for you?

Coming soon!

Watch for my new E-Book/Workbook, Estrangement Proofing Our Kids

Estrangement Proofing Our Children

“[Kids] don’t remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.”
— Jim Henson

I had a lovely email from a reader yesterday. She asked me, ” How do we appropriately handle the loss of a family member through estrangement with our 4 year old daughter?”

If we are to break the patterns of family estrangement it will begin in our own lives and with our own children. This is a very large topic so I will limit myself to a few ideas or suggestions. Here are some simple first steps we can take:

1. We acknowledge what is real. ” Granny doesn’t talk to us because she has a very hard time managing her feelings and her words. It makes it hard for her to be close to some people. Like us.” This also functions as an ongoing open door to talk about how important it is in your family to learn to talk about what we think and feel; to show our kids that it is safe to talk about what they think and feel. Make sure your kids know and feel that love is not conditional on silence, or pretending things are different than what they are.

2. ” We don’t know what granny thinks or feels, not really. We don’t need to guess about that.  The important thing is that you know how lovable and precious you are, and how glad your dad and I are to have you.” This is a door opener to invite ongoing discussion about how everyone manages their feelings, thoughts and relationships differently; sometimes more successfully than others. We can feel badly or sad that others may not be able to have a relationship with us, but its important that we acknowledge that their behavior and choices are their problem not ours and certainly not our child’s. We take responsibility for the parts of problems that belong to us, and we leave the other parts where they belong. It’s a great life lesson for kids to learn early!

This works the other way around too. “Aunty Linda and mommy have really bad disagreements about things that happened when we were children. Right now it hurts me too much to spend time or talk with Aunty Linda. Maybe sometime this will change but right now this is how things are.”  We are responsible for estrangements if we have initiated them. We don’t pretend estrangements aren’t happening and we don’t pretend they are a great way to deal with family problems. They aren’t.

3. We ensure that we take care of our own issues around attachment, communication and nurturance.  We know that families who do not maintain a connected, communicative and nurturing presence (however that looks for your family) are more at risk to breakdown under stress and emotional intensity. With our kids, especially if they are small, we start as we mean to continue. I have a client who told me she regularly tells her kids ” It’s okay for you to get angry, its okay for you to disagree, it’s okay to challenge me. It’s not okay for you to walk away or refuse to work it out.”   People who love each other stick with things, with each other, and they work problems out. It may not be easy, it may not be in your time line, but you stick with it. Demonstrate this commitment with your children. Model it. Live it.

4. Commit to connection.  There are reasons, legitimate reasons why people estrange. We try to stress proof our families from those reasons.  We decide what our intention will be with our own family and children.  For instance, you may choose as your intention to never voluntarily estrange from your children, no matter what. It doesn’t mean that you can’t set limits, put boundaries in place if necessary, or even limit or choose not to be physically connected. It does mean you don’t stop loving, caring or leaving room for the possibility that things could change, people could change and things could be different. ” I love you and I cannot be around you while you are drinking. I want you to know that if ever you are ready to make a change, I will be here for you with arms wide open.”

5. We make every effort to minimize collateral damage. We may choose not to maintain connection with a family member, or we may be disconnected without desire or choice. We need to think carefully about how to not pull others into our estrangement. It’s not good for us and its not good for them and its not good for our families. Yes it is true, dysfunctional family members may not share our commitment to act with integrity and kindness. We do it anyway.

6. Celebrate the relationships in your lives whether family, chosen family, friends or wider community that are a regular part of your life and your children’s lives. Show them positive, healthy, supportive relationships. Let them be a part of creating community and friendships with you too.

7. Love. We love and love and love our kids. It doesn’t mean that we are doormats, or we put up with bad behavior. It means that we learn the difference between the person and what the person does.  We love.

You cannot single-handedly solve estrangement in your family. Estrangement is a family problem. What you can do is take care of your bit. You may not be able to resolve what lies behind you, but you can do your level best to make room for a new journey in front of you – for you and your children.