What we want to do here is stop the courtroom behavior, the tit-for-tat, help them change the pattern so that it is less destructive, and by doing so begin to change the emotional climate at home. So what might that be for Ann? What she is doing is what a lot of folks in abusive relationships understandably tend to do, that is, walking on eggshells, scrambling to solve the Rubik’s cube of Tom’s anger. If she can just figure out the precise combination of saying the right thing in the right way at exactly the right time, she believes that she will break the code and finally have a way of nullifying his rage. Likely this is old news – she grew up with parents or perhaps a sib who were like Tom – and her tolerance for this bullying behavior and her response are part of her mental and emotional wiring. The belief that she can keep doing what she is doing and somehow get it right is magical thinking and ain’t going to happen.
Rather than trying to be the better dog in the doghouse, rather than worrying about Tom or even her marriage, she can at her problem in a more fundamental and simple way – the Zen approach, the notion that her life is trying to teach her what she needs to learn. Instead of spending her energy unraveling the Rubik’s cube of Tom’s anger, she can focus on the unraveling the lesson hidden within the problem – the koan of the problem itself. Once she does, this problem will go away. She has an opportunity to do it now, or she can do later after she gets divorced, remarries, and potentially finds herself in the same boat.
The koan for her is not about doing the same better, but doing different. The problem’s core isn’t decoding Tom, but her moving herself out of the one-down position – stop being the dog. She needs to learn to run her life differently especially when faced with others’ anger and criticism. She needs to skip the eggshell dance and be assertive with Tom that he needs to stop with anger and criticism, and not stick around when he ramps up.Â
Thinking this way keeps it simple. She doesn’t need to get lost in the heap of facts about whether she is right or wrong, or whether Tom does have the right to get angry, etc, etc. Instead she needs to only do one thing and nothing else – stop the eggshell dance, stop taking abuse. Treatment becomes deciding what support she needs to be successful.Â
Tom has a similar challenge with his anger and treatment of others. If he wants to have any close relationships, he needs to learn to be responsible for his anger. He can do it now or do it later, but the old big-and-bad approach that he somehow learned has to be different or people close to him will either always be afraid and seem incompetent, or more likely leave him. Like Ann his problems are his koan to solve; he too needs to learn the lesson they contain.Â
What this means for the relationship is that they see it as the current palate for their own internal challenges. The focus needs to be only on themselves. Ann’s doing it different may or may not change Tom right now, but at least she is out of the Rubik’s-cube business. Tom’s controlling his anger may or may not allow him to receive what he needs from Ann, but at least he is not continually bullying or pushing her away.Â
So what do the problems in your life tell you about what it is that you need to learn most?
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Tags:
abusive relationships, anger, belief that, bully, couch, courtroom, emotional climate, emotions, instincts, magi, nbsp, old news, precise combination, rage, ramps, right time, rubik s cube, sib, tolerance, walking on eggshells
