In the news, Inside Track, December 2010
Surviving the silly season
What techniques can you use to avoid falling into the family dynamic trap? By that I mean, for the first few hours/days everything’s fine with parents and siblings, your identity is intact, but soon after, somehow, you’re all playing the same parts you always played.
Perhaps you feel intimidated by your older brother, oddly belittled by your younger sister, or ignored by your parents.
This year how about enjoying your Christmas without the family dynamics mess?
- Make up a script for the scenarios that scare you most, and stick to it if you get confused. Pick one sentence, and have it ready. Whenever you get the typical behaviour, use the sentence. Even if you have to say it 20 times. Pretend you are at a press conference and your lawyer has told you to follow one script and not to veer off of it. If they start to try and get a rise out of you with something they say, your reply is simply “OK”, said in a very plain, slightly disinterested tone. It baffles the hell out of them and is very hard to argue with.
- Take some time for yourself during your visit. Even a walk can help clear the air.
- We fall into our old roles when we have nothing else to do but fall into them. If you can do something (alone or with siblings) that is new or out of the ordinary, you won’t have as much chance to revert to when you were a teenager.
- The real trick is to maintain that awareness in the moment (easier said than done). When you catch a sibling falling into one of those stereotypical roles you’d prefer to avoid, react with your head instead of your gut (again, easier said than done) and say something like “you know, now that we’re adults, I’d really like to get past the way we related to each other as kids, and have a grown-up friendship with you”
- Self escalating mutually reinforced feedback loops of undesirable behaviour leave everyone feeling bad.
To interrupt the cycle, decide what it is that you DO want, and respond not to the behaviour of the other, but the content of what they talk about. A non-sequitor at the right moment can interrupt a bad cycle, and you can even prepare an amusing or entertaining one beforehand. Focus not on what it is you don’t like, but rather what you want from the situation (and, also, what they want, which may be something other than “make you feel like c**p”).
Oh – and you can use the same techniques if you find your leadership team at work has fallen into repeated patterns of behaviour too!
