Healing Relationships is an Inside Job

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

Better Tomorrows is a program for healing strained and broken relationships that comes out of a struggle I had for many years in dealing with a son who had difficulties navigating through life. When he was a teenager and young adult some twenty years ago, he was forced to leave the house because of clashes with our family rules. Even though I was a family therapist, at the time I had little idea of how to deal with him, or the effect our strained relationship had on the rest of the family.

Of course, as almost any mother who has problems with how her children have “turned out” will tell you, I had a great deal of guilt in believing everything would have been fine if only I had done a better job of raising him. As those same mothers will tell you, my heart was filled with pain. And when the strained relationship broke, and we sometimes didn’t know where he was, the pain intensified, although almost no one except my therapist could see the depth of my distress.

Then one day, in the middle of crying once more in her office because of the latest conflict between me and my son, I saw a pattern I hadn’t seen before. It was as though a light had gone on over my head, like those light bulbs in cartoons when a character gets an idea. It was clear that what was happening to me was the same thing I was seeing in my clients who struggled with their own children, or with other family members.

I realized my tears were no longer of guilt, but of great sadness in watching a child who had so much potential choose to live a life that was unlikely to reach that potential. I had lost my ideal of having a perfect family, but I was entering a new stage in my healing. What I realized that day was that there were five stages to healing a strained or broken family relationship and, in 1994, wrote Letting Go of Our Adult Children: When What We Do Is Never Enough to explain what I had learned.

Do you recognize yourself in any of these stages?

STAGE ONE: Realizing that the expectations for your relationship with someone have not been met.

STAGE TWO: Trying to get the other person to change through manipulation, anger, blame, and confessions of guilt; and finding none of these tactics work.

STAGE THREE: Looking closely at what you may be doing to perpetuate the situation and at the steps you can take to approach your relationship from a more positive perspective.

STAGE FOUR: If working on yourself does not change the other person, or help you find a solution past the issues that divide you, then this is time for grieving for what is not possible and releasing the past.

STAGE FIVE: Resolving to accept life as it unfolds without demanding the other person, and your relationship with him or her, turn out the way you want things to turn out.

Most of us get stuck in stage two. We are convinced that if we try harder, if we say the right thing, if we give him or her enough money, if we expend enough energy, if we wait long enough, if we can get someone else to force the person to change, or any other method that might change another person, then things will improve. They don’t. We simply don’t have that much power. Oh, things may change temporarily, but they will almost always go back to where they were before we realized life wasn’t proceeding the way we expected.

This pattern runs true for every client I know who struggles with a strained or broken family relationship. Some may take longer in Stage Two to recognize that they aren’t getting anywhere, but eventually they realize they are spinning their wheels, repeating the same old arguments day after day. They can’t get off the old family merry-go-round, and they are getting tired of feeling dizzy.

That is where Better Tomorrows can enter the picture. It gives tools to those who are ready for Stage Three and helps them move beyond the conflicts and pain of their relationship to accept the reality that the only person they can change is themselves. When they do this, they discover a great relief in their heart, even if they don’t yet know what to do about their particular situation. But they are on their way to healing their own pain and, in the process, are frequently able to heal the relationship as well.

What I primarily had to learn in my personal growth was that I needed to become a “recovering perfectionist” before I could move on. I needed to abandon the idea that our children all have to turn out the way I think they should before I can have a healthy relationship with them.

Incidentally, I’ve noticed one of the major problems with perfectionists who have difficulty with a relationship: they have an illusion that if they only find the “right” self-help program that they can perfectly repair their relationship. I make no such promise with Better Tomorrows. However, I do promise that if you complete all nine chapters in the book, Healing Relationships is an Inside Job, listen to the audio components, complete the exercises, and talk with me for two half-hour consultations, that you will approach your relationship with a lighter heart and an expanded ability to accept—with love, joy and peace—the way things turn out. In fact, I am so sure that I will return your money if you don't see any improvement.

Even more, I believe you will find that not only will you improve your relationship with the family member with whom you are having difficulty, your relationships with others will deepen and become richer. That has certainly been the case with me. I have not changed my son, but I now understand why he is the way he is and accept him just as he is, as well as I can. Now when we talk on the phone or see one another, there is an ease and comfort I would not have imagined possible when my healing journey began.

Because I know the pleasure of resolving such a difficult relationship, I have a passion to help others move beyond their own difficult family relationships. In Better Tomorrows I hope I can help you approach your relationship in a more satisfying way;without taking as long to heal as I have.

Learn more at the introductory page
to the Better Tomorrows Program