How to Deal with Difficult Relationships — Kara Payton
This could be your boss, sister, husband, next door neighbor, anyone you interact with in a not-so-great way.
Whether they are codependent, narcissistic, toxic, triggering, combustible, difficult. There are a lot of factors we have to navigate and I am sharing the keys to these types of interactions.
1. Accept where they are fully.
- Don’t make it better than it is, or worse than it is. We tend to credit them with massive breakthroughs out of one simple conversation and also condemn them with labels of toxic/narcissist for one unflattering moment.
- Are you being realistic with your expectations? Are you expecting them to be anything else? If you are, that is a conflict you created with you-not them with you. If your mom is dramatic, don’t act disappointed when she’s being dramatic.
- Take the meaning away, say the same dramatic mom is being dramatic. She’s operating totally normal-the only thing that causes the upset or conflict in the reality is your expectation. When you release her of that unrealistic expectation-she’s just mom again. When you release her of that, you do you both a favor. A crossroads that doesn’t have a stop sign doesn’t ever fault anyone for not stopping there.
- 2. Create boundaries out of a healthy place-not just healthy boundaries. Boundaries are not for the other person. This misconception is a new inversion in the mindset/relationship/life coaching world that you hear and it does you a total disservice. There is a whole narrative around boundaries out there that is so backwards its causing as much damage than a lack of boundaries does. Boundaries are a set of rules set by yourself FOR yourself. How you will operate and govern yourself in all situations. WHY does it screw us over to set them for others? Because we can’t control others-what they do and say is entirely out of your control. Trying to construct boundaries for anyone else outside of yourself would be like trying to go into someone else’s yard, build a fence and tell them not to cross it. Decide your boundaries, make them support you, let them govern and keep you aligned with you-follow them to the letter. If you do, even though you cant control others-you will likely find yourself in a lot less situations where you are battling at the fence.
- 3. Don’t get hooked in their story. Everyone has a different perspective, outlook, lens, life experience. There is zero chance you will ever get anyone to understand you 100% fully, at the granular level. The most we can ever hope for is creating understanding and common ground by choosing to focus on where you do agree, what unites you rather than divides you, what can move you forward rather than apart, etc. Both are available, your focus will determine their availability.
- Where is your focus? Where is their focus? This will determine the temperature of the interaction. If focused solely on what’s not working, what the other did wrong, how hurt you are-it will be defense, volley, verbal chess, volley, win, lose, etc. No one wins this.
- 4. Stop analyzing the situation. There is a growing momentum in today’s world behind trying to locate, understand, determine the source or reasoning behind all behaviors. Trying to dissect the situation and mentally navigate. This is one of the most unhelpful things to engage in because it does multiple things that disempower you from being able to move past it.
- 1. You’re looking from your place/perspective-you’re only going to see the limited view of it. Your likelihood of discovering some magical unturned stone that reveals the reason the whole thing doesn’t make sense and explains why everything doesn’t match your expectations is zero-but you will still find it-its called confirmation bias.
- You’re only capable of affecting your own experience. You can only control you. No matter what you find, determine or see, you cannot make someone else change, learn or go beyond themselves unless they choose to. You’re wasting valuable time spending time in someone else’s yard, If they’re not going to mow it, you can’t make them see its too long.
- What you seek you will find, no matter what it is. It will still not be what the other one sees. Don’t waste your time trying to shape shift your view enough to where they can’t detect its opposing, appeal your perspective to them enough to make it palatable or tailor it beyond recognition. Mutual understanding is mutual, not made by one person trying to fit both.
- 5. Recognize the behavior is separate from the person. We are all affected by our life experience. This causes us ALL to create lenses that define, label, discern and give meaning to everything that happens. None of us can be totally neutral in our life, our brains have to give finite form to anything it receives as input. That is what the brain’s job is. To help us learn our environment through observation and use that information to stay safe by turning into applicable action steps or reference. When we know this, we can appreciate how different our path may have been paved by our brain’s repertoire and another. Different environment, different outcome. Plant a flower in a parking garage and another in a greenhouse, the flower will be different.
- This is the hard one, we do often forget that the person choosing to be a certain way, is doing so, outside of who they are. See the behavior separately. You manage this, you can garnish a higher insight to their perspective, see their wounds over their flaws, understand why they may choose it and still maintain a healthy discernment that it’s not going to align with what is conducive for a relationship-but do so with out judgment or personal offense. Most times we get crossways of being able to see someone’s behavior has nothing to do with us and so we take offense when a relationship fails because we get hooked into the story that it means we weren’t enough, didn’t try sufficiently or that we are inherently flawed. Separating the behavior and person frees everyone to accept reality without needing to compensate, make excuse, defend, prove or fight.
- 6. Be frugal with labels. You not only draw someone into a corner by calling them toxic, you draw yourself into a corner. Not all things that are painful are toxic, not all unhealthy tactics are a sign of a personality disorder, not all manipulation is narcissism, not all victims are blameless empaths, and not all needs someone asks you to meet is codependency. We’ve gotten into a dangerous trend of labeling everyone that comes out of alignment with their highest self with condemning finality. Without our attention and presence, we are all susceptible to critical error, judgment foul ups, patterns of sabotage and fear derailment. It’s a matter of what you do to consistently grow out of them into a better way.
Originally published at https://www.karapayton.com on February 27, 2022.
