From Steven Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People/Families:

[blockquote_left] Habit #2: Begin with the end in mind.

Avoid emotional cancers from toxic society: complaining, criticizing, comparing, competing.

Mission statements should be timeless, addressing both ends and means.

Covey’s personal mission statement: Live, love, learn, and leave a legacy.

Families need to create their mission statement together, not have it handed down. [/blockquote_left]

Examples:

1. To teach ourselves to get a good education and become financially responsible, we will treat misbehavior and crises as learning opportunities.

2. To stick together always, we will be loyal to each other and the family, making sure those we bring into the family don’t divide it.

3. To show respect to older family members, all children will be taught to listen to, care for, and honor their elders in the family.

4. To teach each of us a sense of identity and self-worth, we will show acceptance of each other and encourage kind and honest communication.

5. So that each of us will make our own peace with God our creator, we will go to church, study the Bible, and pray together as a family.

6. To become ambassadors of peace in a strife-torn world, we will settle our differences politely, agreeing to disagree agreeably whenever we can’t compromise.

7. To learn to give and receive love, respect, and understanding in all our relationships, we will start by working to do this with each other.

8. To keep the children happy, older family members will give children what they want unless it’s obviously unsafe, bad for them, or too expensive. (Older family members for and through their children and grandchildren.)

Steven Covey’s best-selling book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People made a great case for individuals and families to draw up mission statements. He suggested the mission be timeless (ongoing), and that the statement include both the means and ends (the hows and whys) for the mission.

Different families have different top priorities. I’ve seen families that were dedicated to such goals as staying together, getting educated, making money, respecting family elders, teaching self-worth and identity, serving God, and keeping the peace.

I believe the most common mission is seldom stated or even admitted, but actions speak louder than words. The typical American family seems to me bent on this mission: "To keep the children happy, older family members will give children what they want unless it’s obviously unsafe, bad for them, or too expensive."

A better mission might be this one: "To give and receive love, respect and understanding in all our relationships and activities, we will start by doing this with each other." Whatever mission your family adopts, it can’t just be dictated by the parents. It has to come out of much discussion by the whole family, as in the kind of family meeting described in last week’s column.

Once a mission is established, families need to consider using family meetings to draw up some rules or guidelines for achieving their mission. Here are some guidelines I’ve found helpful in creating healthy, happy families:

Each of us needs privacy, and the freedom to be one’s own unique person.

Yet we do not lie to each other, or cover up what others need to know.

We may not tell the whole truth, but we’ll tell nothing but the truth.

Criticism should say "You’re a better person than that," not "You’re a bad/lazy/stupid person."

If it will help a child or spouse grow or learn, we can tell them the truth politely, even if it hurts their feelings or wounds their ego.

Discipline teaches better when it comes with expressions of love.

Parents avoid giving to others the time, money or attention needed by their marriage or children.

Children need their parents to give as much to their marriage as to any of their children.

Parents should put their children’s needs ahead of their own until they are of age (18-25).

Children need to lose for a short, set time those privileges and activities which they abuse.

Discipline should not take away from children an activity they need for their well-being.

Discipline should not take away from children a privilege they have not abused.

Children need to be given a way to earn back lost privileges and activities.

Parents need to be a united front so children cannot play one against the other.

Parents need to avoid disrespecting or disagreeing with other authorities (teachers, grandparents, etc.) in front of their children.

Parents should not criticize a child in front of others.

Families and individuals should remain open to guidance and support from outside sources.

Though trust must be both earned and given, forgiveness can only be given, and it benefits everyone involved.

Finally, apply all guidelines in light of other guidelines, and the family mission statement.

Now and then in the life of every family, parents need to call a family meeting. Some common purposes include solving a problem, making a decision, planning family outings or activities, or understanding and getting along with a rebelling family member.

Some families hold meetings once a week, but regular meetings work better once a month or every other week to keep them special. Others are held whenever the need arises. They should last no more than an hour. Here are some guidelines I have found helpful for making family meetings run smoother and get the job done:

1. Parents facilitate the meeting, to make sure the other rules get followed and the purpose is met. They don’t hog the floor or the power, but make sure everyone gets a chance to speak briefly without being interrupted.

2. Parents call the meeting, and explain the time and agenda in advance. Because often their sense of timing is better than the parents’, a child can suggest a meeting, but it shouldn’t be called until the parents have their heads together on the agenda. The agenda should be a proposal, with a list of pros and cons for the idea, to get everyone thinking.

3. Keep things positive. Divert negative energy into time-out breaks. Encourage children to talk out resistance in advance, with one or both parents, to help the parents shape the proposal before the meeting starts. Everyone who might be defensive would have time to collect and vent their thoughts in advance. Once they’ve been heard, they will be able to listen better to others.

4. Encourage everyone to express their ideas and feelings in the family meeting, briefly, in a risk-free environment. Parents need to assure children their ideas won’t be criticized or ridiculed by anybody, especially the parents. If children don’t feel safe, they won’t express themselves, and if they haven’t had much input, they won’t be much invested in the outcome.

5. Make decisions by consensus, not majority vote. This promotes harmony, not division. Parents and older children might sum up the discussion like this: "From what I’m hearing, the plan that suits most people would be. . . ." Parents listen for consensus, and declare when it’s been reached.

6. Close the meeting on a positive note. Praise each child for the best of their contributions. Say what you’ve learned to help you understand each family member. Let others follow this lead, with all these closing comments being positive.

In my next column, I’ll talk about how useful it is for more mature families to adopt a mission statement, which can be especially helpful to start a new season or year. I’ll also give families some rules or guidelines that other families have found helpful in working to fulfill their missions.

We learned last week twelve ways that emotional bullies and master manipulators dump their pressures and problems onto us. Assuming now that you can identify these stress-inducing behaviors that will trigger your bogus pressure alarm, how can you keep people from throwing you under the busload of stress that they carry around? How do you avoid absorbing someone’s second-hand stress?

Here are some ways that are polite, and respectful of the stressor, but these remarks also respect your own right to refuse a problem, pressure, an expectation or feeling that has been laid out there for you to absorb.

The first thing is to ask them what they have already done about their issue. "What have you done to solve this problem yourself? Have you spoken to Joe directly? Why not? You might be wrong about him. If you feel you can’t approach him, is there someone you can take with you to help you communicate with Joe?"

The next three responses you could make would offer limited help:

∙ Buy yourself some time. "I’ll think about it and get back to you." "I don’t make commitments like this under time pressure."

∙ Refer the problem on to someone else, someone who can draw healthier boundaries and teach the stressor a thing or two about his or her own role in creating and solving the problem: "I really can’t help. The person you need here is Jack."

∙ Offer to do what you think is fair, what you can afford to do, and leave it at that. "I will mention it to Jane, but I don’t know what you should do with your husband."

The next set of responses are when it’s not your problem at all, and you sense the stressor not only hasn’t done all they should do to solve it, but isn’t ready to hear that from you either. You could say, "Hey, you’re pressuring me. Calm down. Go get some fresh air, say a prayer, count to ten, and then start over in calm voice and try to own that this is your problem, not mine."

Another way would be to exit entirely. Use any one, two or three of these sentences, followed by a quick and firm change of the subject by you: "Wow, you’ve got a tough problem there. I just don’t know. I don’t see it that way. It’s not my problem. I didn’t cause it, and I can’t fix it. I’m sorry you feel the way you do. My plate is full too—I don’t have time for this."

When you refuse help, or offer only limited help, often the stressor will react by just intensifying the pressure on you. This requires a firm answer like: "I really don’t appreciate your tone. I don’t need your pressure. Apparently you’re so overloaded you are caring only about yourself right now, which is fine, but this shows me exactly why I don’t want to get involved in this. I’m not going to be your chump here."

Whatever response you make, the key point is before you say anything, you have to realize YOU ARE HELPING stressors own and solve their own problems. If they sense any guilt or weakness on your part, the game is still on, and you’re going to lose this round. To take away the feelings, expectations, pressures or problems you are being offered would only serve to overprotect them. You’re giving the truth that will set them free, free of their illusions that they can always get somebody else to solve their problems for them.

As a follow-up for my recent columns on Coping with Difficult People, here is some assertiveness training for dealing with emotional bullies or master manipulators. The key is to see the invisible force they hit you with--stress.

When somebody "stresses" you, according to the dictionary, they are subjecting you to pressure or strain. The verb "subject" literally means to throw somebody under something, like the proverbial bus, or in this case, a busload of stress. Only if you see the bus coming can you step aside.

Research has repeatedly shown that chronic high levels of stress weaken the immune system and lead to sickness and death. So stressing works a lot like smoking: people take in something that isn’t good for them, and exhale it out of their mouths for others to absorb. Like second-hand smoke, second-hand stress sickens and speeds the death of healthy bodies and relationships. And like with smoke, if you stand there and don’t say anything, it gets to you. You’ve got to say or do something to protect yourself.

The first thing is to recognize when you are being put in harm’s way. Here are a dozen common examples of how emotional bullies and master manipulators stress (or dis-stress) others:

1. Playing helpless: with a deep sigh, "I just can’t. I tried, but. . ."

2. Playing victim: exaggerating harm done to them: "I was totally blindsided!"

3. Bogus praise: mentioning or glorifying the help of others, so you’ll feel guilty by comparison: "Bill and Joe have helped me." "Sue was my savior."

4. Disapproval: with a frown, "I thought you were my friend. I thought you cared. A big help you are!"

5. Shoulding on you: appointing themselves as an expert or authority over you, "You ought to/need to/got to . . ."

6. Going Commando: demanding instead of asking you, "Tell your mother. . ."

7. Chronic complaints: like a chain smoker, a chain-stressor is always complaining

8. Megaphoning: ramping up the volume, pace or tone of the voice

9. Intimidating: predicting regret or misfortune for you somehow if you don’t aid the stressor.

10. Interrupting: not listening to you, and interrupting when you try to back off

11. Catastrophizing: ramping up a problem’s danger: "That’d be TERRIBLE! I’d just die!"

12. Beat the clock: ramping up a problem’s urgency; "This has to be done NOW!"

Study this list, thinking of stress-dumping people in your life, and you will train yourself to identify the smell of second-hand stress, and hear the bus coming. But we all know that when you start getting out of the way, the most skillful bus drivers will steer toward you to clip you when you’re leaving the street.

So next week I’ll tell you lots of good ways to respond so you can protect yourself from second-hand stress.

This column and the previous one are for people who are deeply frustrated with someone at home or at work. If most other people have the same problems getting along with this difficult person, your first step to making your peace is to understand your enemy.

Last week I explained how during hard times growing up, we all develop a character style. That’s the characteristic ways we’ve developed to handle feelings and relationships, to keep us safe from rejection and abuse. Extreme and inflexible character styles are known to us shrinks as "Axis Two", "personality disorders", or simply "PD’s".

Last week we looked at four pairings I often see when opposite disorders attract. With FEAR, POWER, ANGER, and RIGIDITY, those with too little are often attracted to those with too much, and the attraction works both ways.

This pattern of opposite extremes attracting is seen at all levels of life—human, animal, plant, cellular chemistry, and even way out there with astrological physics. Human relationships pair weak and strong, rich and poor, high IQ and emotional IQ, drunks and teetotalers, shy and outgoing, even healthy and sick.

The second step in making peace with difficult people is to realize you can’t change them. Accept your powerlessness over them. Stop beating your head against their walls by trying to rescue, appease, punish, or reform the difficult people.

The next mantra to repeat is accepting them: "I can accept them without approving of their behavior." "They have a right to act that way if they want to." If this is hard, it’s likely because you’re trying to skip to step four, which won’t work without the first three.

Now step four: choose a moderate emotional distance for your relationship. You can’t afford to get too close to PD’s, and if you want to get along with them, you can’t scoot too far back either. Stay close enough to where you both still need each other, but far enough back where you don’t need each other too much.

Step 5 is the most important, with the most potential for your coming to actually enjoy difficult people. It requires a good grasp on the first four. Hold them responsible for their selfish behavior by making your responses to their actions realistic, an accurate portrayal of how any normal person would react.

Imagine how a future roommate, coworker, boss, spouse, or neighbor would treat them. Look at how the healthy people you know deal with them, and you follow suit. The idea is to teach difficult people that in dealing with you, they will get exactly what they pay for.

I said this step of changing your reaction to hold them accountable is important, but anyone who’s tried it can tell you it’s by far the most difficult challenge in making peace with these people. (If you want to know more about particular strategies for "Coping with Difficult People", I wrote a book by that title a generation ago, and though it’s out of print, you can get a used copy on Amazon.com. for next to nothing.)

When PD’s show us too much or too little of a certain behavior, our natural tendency is often to counterbalance: If they are irresponsible or unkind, we tend to be overly responsible or kind. But this only makes it easier for them to justify being difficult, so I’m saying counter your tendency to counterbalance (to go to the opposite extreme. Don’t go to any extreme.

Look for your tendencies to do too much of a good thing and cut back. This will round off your own rough edges of too much helping, analyzing, excusing, coddling, lecturing or punishing. If taking care of them keeps backfiring, take better care of the caretaker (that’s you!).

Do you see how this rounds off both your rough edges and theirs? It reduces friction between the two of you, and puts the rub where it belongs. The friction is felt inside each one of you, challenging you to be a more well-balanced person with smoother relationships.

When you become a more well-rounded person, you will soon discover a wonderful exception to opposites attracting. Well-rounded people attract other well-rounded people. The fellowship of the embittered losers will back away from you, and you will get more support from upbeat people. Take it and enjoy!

In conclusion, research has shown that opposites attract: unbalanced people with bad habits draw and are drawn to other losers at the opposite extreme. And winners attract: well adjusted folks are attracted to other healthy people. As many times as I’ve seen this work out in the lives of folks I work with, you can’t tell me there’s not a higher power somewhere trying to inspire us to grow up and get along with each other better!

Perhaps you’ve got someone in your life that year after year you just can’t get along with. Let’s call this person "Pat". You might want to ask yourself these questions:

1. Do other people have the same problems with Pat? If some people do not, find out how they get along with Pat, and imitate their approach. If you’re related to Pat as a spouse, a former spouse, a parent, a child, or a business partner, you have special needs of Pat. Your problems are probably more complicated than this column can address, but the insights here may well apply.

2. Do most people who try to get close to Pat (boss, coworkers, customers, parents, spouse, children, friends) have the same type of relationship troubles with Pat? If so, Pat has some kind of psychiatric disorder.

If Pat doesn’t have the symptoms of another type of psychiatric problem such as a psychosis, brain damage, mood or anxiety disorder, or behavioral addiction, he likely is the one person in five who has a "personality disorder." Like the term implies, folks with personality disorders have "an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture."

We keep expecting them to feel, think or act the way most other people do, but they are different somehow. What makes them different is their "character style", their habitual way of relating to people and emotions. They began to use these coping styles earlier in life to protect them from the full and to them very painful experience of human emotions and close relationships.

They don’t want to get close or feel vulnerable, and they are better at this game than we are.

The first key to getting along with them is God’s answer to our first request in the Serenity Prayer: we learn to accept these character styles that we cannot change.

One type of character style is the Addictive Personality. Folks with this way of relating to life will tend to overdo something, some chemical or activity that gives them a rush. If they shut down or enter recovery for one addiction, they are likely to soon pick up another.

A close relative is the Narcissistic Personality. Like addicts, these folks have an image of themselves as a special person, with some deep expectation or feeling of entitlement to special favors and privileges, like being the center of attention, or getting what they want at others’ expense. They use or manipulate people to get what they feel entitled to.

These addictive and narcissistic types tend to attract and produce another type of personality disorder, the Dependent (or "Codependent") Personality. These folks tend to play the roles of chumps and suckers who are so preoccupied with the feelings and needs of their significant others that they neglect their own. They draw way too much of their identity, purpose and direction from those they take care of. We keep expecting them to "get a life," but they don’t feel they can or should until first their significant other feels totally fine.

Three other pairs of personality disorders tend to attract and produce each other. (I won’t define them all here, but you can Google them.) Paranoid, Asocial and Avoidant Personalities (too much fear of closeness) tend to attract and be attracted to Histrionic (hyperdramatic, hypercheerful) Personalities, who have too little.

Aggressive, Defensive, Explosive and Anti-social Personalities (too much anger and too little guilt) tend to attract and be attracted to those with character styles that are Self-defeating (too much guilt, too easily scape-goated) and Passive-aggressive (too little anger and assertiveness).

Overly rigid Obsessive-Compulsive Personalities (too much structure and deliberation) attract and are attracted to folks with too little: Impulsive Personalities who are not motivated to outgrow lifestyles which mimic the symptoms of ADD or ADHD.

Next week I’ll write about ways to get along with these people that don’t aim at changing them but rather at just holding them more responsible for being the way they are. I’ll show you how to keep their personality or character style from getting you down, and avoid the all too natural habit of beating your head against their walls.

If you’re feeling bad about yourself, you might as well do it up right. Make something good come out of it. You can do it three different ways, and though they all feel pretty much the same at the time, the way you think and talk to yourself determines whether you end up feeling better or worse in the end. Let’s look at three ways to do guilt and shame, each with its own self-talk approaches.

Shame

"I’m a bad person. I always seem to do bad." People who think this way were usually raised by parents who put them down: "Bad boy!" "Bad girl!" "You’re a spoiled brat!" "You stupid, lazy, good-for-nothing kid!" Kids who hear these remarks usually come to believe these words, and so they acted accordingly as children, and often still do as adults.

Bogus Guilt

"My (spouse, child, loved one) has been unhappy and has messed up. This situation must be my fault. I must think and try harder now to help them feel better and do better." These are the thoughts of people whose parents were not very responsible for themselves. Some of these irresponsible parents may have been addicts, lazy bums, habitually helpless, or maybe they just never had to grow up. Often such people manage to get their parents (and later in life their spouse or children too) to be overly responsible, too conscientious. These enablers overcompensate and overprotect the irresponsible person by making excuses for them, lying for them, or cleaning up their messes.

If one of your parents was an overly responsible enabler who overprotected or overindulged, chances are that irresponsible people in your life today sometimes get you to feel and take responsibility for their feelings and choices. So when they feel bad or make bad choices, you somehow feel and believe these must be something more you can do to help them. That feeling is bogus guilt.

The more you trust that feeling and act on it, the less self-esteem, self-discipline, and wisdom your loved ones will show. That’s why I call this guilt bogus, because problems just don’t get solved this way.

Healthy Guilt

"I’m a good person, smart enough to make good choices. I messed up there, but this will teach me to do better." You hang onto the guilt feeling as motivation to help you figure out where you went wrong, what you did wrong, what you should have done (and hope to do in the future) Once you’ve said all this to those you’ve harmed or disappointed, and taken actions to earn back their trust and make up for what you did wrong, you have no more need for the guilt as a teacher.

Your new motivation is love for others, love for yourself, and if you’re a believer, love for God. You don’t need to feel the guilt anymore. Save it for later, to motivate more character-building repair behaviors the next time you goof up.

In a nutshell, shame says "I’m messed up," bogus guilt says "Because you messed up, I’m messed up," and healthy guilt says "I messed up but I’m cleaning up my mess." Only the last one solves problems and leaves the world a better place.

This article is for readers who have a loved one who refuses to follow doctor’s orders for recovery from a medical problem.  It assumes you have read first the article I wrote for your loved one, “Are You in Defiance of Medical Compliance?”  And like the first piece, if you read the rest of this article and get turned off, I hope you will at least have the courage and wisdom to ask yourself the two questions in the last paragraph.

Anyway, let’s call your loved one “Pat” (short for patient, and for standing pat).  You can initiate solution number one in the first article, by asking Pat to read it, and answer for you the questions it poses.  With or without Pat’s help, you can learn a lot, and find some new peace of mind in both these articles.

If your efforts to help Pat have been going on for years, you are probably doing Pat more harm than good.  If you are starting most of the conversations with Pat about unhealthy behavior, if you seem to be trying harder than Pat to produce healthy behavior in Pat, or if you are showing stronger feelings about Pat's unhealthy behavior then Pat is, these are clear signs that you are actually doing more harm than good. Your efforts to help encourage Pat’s healthy behavior are backfiring, because without your knowing it, Pat is likely to be using them to excuse or even provoke unhealthy behavior.

If your helping behavior is backfiring, and if you are a part of the problem and instead of the solution, the most accurate way to describe your help is to say that it is enabling Pat’s unhealthy habits.  Here are twelve of the most common enabling behaviors to avoid:

Just imagine the time and energy you will be saving by not doing these things anymore!  So what would work to help Pat learn to stop unhealthy behavior and start making healthier choices?

What if Pat doesn’t do anything, or worse still, gets worse?  Remember that like surgery or remodeling, things often have to get worse before they get better.  Give it time.  Tell Pat that by treating Pat as someone who could change, you are showing that you respect and care about Pat more now.  Pat can use this same approach with the unhealthy friends in Pat’s life, by telling them, “I am giving you more of myself, now that I am taking better care of myself and inviting you to do the same.”

No matter what happens between you and Pat, one thing will be the same for both of your experiences.  If you change and make healthier choices, you will find that your social circles shift.  Imagine those who care about you as sitting in circular rows of seats around you, with the rows closest to you giving you the most time, communication and respect.  You will soon notice that people will start standing up and shuffling around to find more comfortable seats.  Some close supporters won’t like your new choices and will take seats further away from you.  But others will move in closer and take those seats, and your circle of closest friends and family will have some new faces before long.  They will help you see very soon that all of your efforts are worthwhile.

Two last questions for you:  if you have trouble making any of these changes, if you are scared to risk rejection by Pat, perhaps you have some unhealthy habits in your own life, and you need to read the first article.  If not, perhaps you have an unhealthy dependency on Pat.  If so, admit to your other family and friends that before creating a better life for Pat, you first need to get one for yourself.

Questions?

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Dr. Paul F. Schmidt