RELATIONSHIPS; WOMEN, MEN AND CHILDREN

How to have encouragement in a relationship

Use encouragement with your partner. Learn to celebrate being with a female (or male). They are different from you, just as children are. Don’t try to make them like you, compare them to you. Examples of encouraging words: (what you value), you are: considerate, giving, kind, loving, affectionate, funny, a good friend, patient, a great help, fun to be with, you enjoyed that, thanks, you are good at…, worked so hard on that, brave, honest, tackled that problem, are a thinker. Remember, you will not be able to use encouragement if you are not involved in your partner’s (child’s) life: If you don’t do things together, share experiences, have fun together, have intellectual interests, (things in common); you won’t have things to talk about and share; if you are a man, don’t expect your partner to only do “male” things: watch sports, etc. Partners need to find  things to do together that is good for both of them. You have to have something to talk about with a woman and children besides sports.  As a couple, try doing “things” together around the house: chores, cooking, anything!  Everything is a lot more fun if done with a loved one.

One of the traits of controlling people is the tendency to do the “I want to do it myself, mommy” thing. They want to do everything “themselves”; because they do it better, and the way they want it done, the best way, better than you, quicker than you. They do not do “group” activities well. They do not do “couple” activities well. They do not do tasks “with” their children. When they want something done they either do it themselves (and get mad because no one else helped, or someone else did it poorly and they have to redo it correctly), or get a child (or partner) to do it. Then when the child (partner) has finished, they criticize and tell them how they should’ve done it. These controllers are stuck in the 2 year old stage. When they tried to exert themselves as 2 year olds, do things themselves, they were thwarted. Their parent was furious when they exerted themselves. This parent continued to do everything for the 2 year old because a 2 year old does not do things well. A controller cannot tolerate how a child does things: not up to par; not like I would do it. So this parent finds it “easier” and less time consuming, less stressful, to just do it themselves. “ It is better, quicker, easier done by me”. When this 2 year old did actually do things, was allowed to do things, he was criticized for not doing it well enough. They start getting the message, “I am not good enough. I don’t do anything well. I am a failure”.  This child continues to get these messages for the rest of their childhood years. When they become adults—parents and/or partners, are in relationships— they still need to show that they are valuable and “good enough”; still have a need to “do it myself mommy”; to control their situations. And their controlling parent has instilled in them that the only way to do things is perfectly; that what you value when you do things is perfection; doing it better than others. So good parenting with a 2 year old involves letting them “do it”!; and then encourage them;  encourage them to be proud of themselves, not expecting perfection, be positive and lose the negativity and  need to control and judge, AND developing a good relationship with an adult (romantic interest/spouse) involves the same things: be positive, lose the negativity, the need to judge and control, don’t expect them to do things as you do them, encourage and respect them and how they do things, and have lots of fun together.

So, when in a relationship with a controller, you will not find someone who enjoys cooking together (being playful while cooking; having great conversation, learning new skills, trying new recipes, messing up, food fights, messing up the kitchen, making a new concoction made up of both of your strengths and weaknesses…). You will find a person who wants to do it themselves, the way that they do it, or have you do it, and them either criticize it, not eat it, or turn their nose up at it, or offer ways to do it better. You will not find a person who enjoys “couple” activities. He needs to “be” with someone, in order not to be alone, but you will often feel as if you are “alone”, “lonely”, even when you are with him. He just does not know how to “be” with someone—how to connect emotionally, mentally, intellectually, playfully.

Use encouragement with yourself: encourage yourself when you are aware of your moods, attitudes, and thoughts, when you are thinking and saying positive things, when you feel joy. Think how happy you will be when you give up the need to control.

With children, it is the parent’s job to structure a child’s life so that they do things that they enjoy and are good at: have activities that they value. (males need to have something besides sports); controllers will set children up for failure: give them tasks that they know the child may not be good at; may not know how to do; and then correct them, criticize them. Controlling fathers enjoy getting their son into sports and then pushing them, criticizing them, comparing them, emphasizing winning (being the best) etc.  Boys must also be involved in activities where they can learn to value the other things listed above. I found that discipline (using consequences) does not work if a child does not have activities that they value, enjoy doing, and are good at; BECAUSE these are the things we take away, use as consequences, when disciplining. You cannot say to a teen, (as a consequence): “You cannot go walk the streets today”. They don’t care; it is not a consequence. Teens must have activities that they value. It is the parent’s job to make sure that they do.

Effective teachers, leaders, and managers don’t play the roles of “know-it-all”, judge, critic, psychologist, moralist: the know-it–all lectures, advises, and shows how superior they are, that they know the best way; the moralist says “you should do this…”; the judge says I am right and you are wrong; the critic criticizes and uses sarcasm and ridicule; the psychologist tries to fix everything: knows all the answers. Neither should parents, and people in relationships, play these roles. Parents are really teachers, leaders, managers in their homes.

Plug in all the above as ways to be with people in a relationship; learn to use encouragement; avoid criticism; focus on your partner’s strengths and assets. Be kind.  Know that there are other ways of doing things besides your way. Adults use punishment too: withdrawing love and affection. Adults need to, instead, use communication, consequences, and express feelings about things that affect them negatively: use “I” messages, (more later).

Relationship skills versus control

We want to break the cycle of controlling people. There are two ways. One is to parent in a positive, effective way. The other is to become aware of how to be a positive, happy person, how we were parented, and to re-parent ourselves. All of the following “parenting”  techniques/attitudes can also be used in adult romantic relationships, and with yourself.

A basic: The opposite of control is operating within choices and options. An effective parent (person) gives choices and options and teaches a child (themselves) to operate within those choices. They know that there is usually more than one way to do things. A parent of an older child/teen teaches problem solving/exploring alternatives/decision making ; teaches the child to think and decide on options; children of controllers do not learn to think and make decisions because the parent makes all the decisions, does all the “thinking”; gives orders and gives no choices/options. Controller: there is only one way: my way, and you will do it; In a relationship, be open to ideas, options with your partner. Explore options, Enjoy it. Let go of, “My way is the best way; she comes up with other ideas because she doesn’t like mine; she is challenging me”.

A basic: You may have heard (you may say), “you make me so mad”. (controllers are angry/mad a lot); It is very important that you know that no one, nothing, can “make” you mad. Someone does or says something; you perceive it negatively: you “get” mad. You choose to be mad. We choose to perceive things negatively. Controllers perceive LOTS of things/people negatively. They are negative people, looking for something to criticize. Children of a controller soon develop a need to have power over you (the controller), because they see that you value power, so they learn to value power also. One way to feel powerful as a child is to “make a parent mad”. They have made you mad. They have power over you. So if you are a controller this behavior will show up in your child: they will value controlling you also (misbehaving to get power over you). So, in a discipline situation, it is actually ineffective to “get mad” at a child (yell, etc); It accomplishes nothing. If it is done a lot, the child learns that they can “make you mad”; control you. The most effective thing to do in a discipline situation is to use calm communication and consequences (more later). We must learn to act thoughtfully in situations; not react;  As adults,  we choose to either be calm and communicative, or to “get mad”, yell, lose control, (with children and with partners).

Encouragement is one of the most effective tools we can learn to use in relationships. We want to use encouragement instead of rewards and praise. Using praise and punishment builds a child who does not have a strong conscience (inner-control). Your controlling parent is your conscience. They praise you when you do well: “You are only good when I say so” . Praise is reserved for things well done, the best etc. (judged according to you). It is vague and unspecific “Good!  Great job!”  Encouragement is very specific. With praise children may come to believe that their worth depends upon your opinion.  Encouragement is used for strengths, assets, effort, qualities, attitudes, improvement, trying hard, goodness, kindness, contribution, joy, having fun, sharing, caring, learned a lot, learning a new skill, creativity, patience. Things that we can encourage (in children and in ourselves) are: the ability to control anxiety, motivate ourselves, be persistent.  Encouragement teaches values and what’s important. Encouragement motivates a child to want to do better. Praise teaches a child to try to get the parents approval. “I did not feel good about my work until someone told me I was doing good”. So controlled children fish for praise, “Did I do good?”  A child needs to be able to tell himself that he did well, was responsible.  Rewards teach a child to say “what’s in it for me?” not, “what makes me feel good and makes me worthwhile.” Reinforce positives by rewarding with non-material incentives: a celebration, an outing with the family, friends. Do not reward with food. As adults we then reward and punish ourselves with food .  Material things are easy to see and value. Non-material concepts and values are not easy to “see”; they are felt: love, kindness, happiness….The child needs to feel good about themselves, inside, not be dependent upon the parent’s ( or other’s) approval. Then the child develops self-talk:  “ I am competent; I am doing well…”.  A controlling parent gives praise only for things extremely well done (or done to their standards). Otherwise, the child gets lots of criticism while doing tasks. A child needs to develop their own standards. A controller tends to give praise with one hand and take it away with the other:  “That was good BUT…… (this is what you did wrong)”.

Be a “good-finder” in people. Find the good in people/children, and in yourself. Controllers find the “bad”, mistakes, faults in people and in beauty. This evolves back to attitude and perceptions: seeing the beauty and positives in people and things.  Positive people find positives and the good in you, in the world. If you were raised by negative parents, it takes a lot of focus, work, and awareness to change your focus to positives. During your day,  when with people: children, adults, partners,  make sure you speak, feel more positives with those people than negatives.  In the beginning, it is good to actually count how many times you say something negative, and how many times you feel/say something positive. With dates/partners notice how many times your “love” says negatives versus positives to you, about you, about others, about the world, during the day.

Quality relationships: where they come from

In past articles we have been talking about connecting with potential partners and partners and the dynamics of control in a relationship. So where does a controlling person come from? They come from their parents; how they were parented. When we talk about relationships, we should talk about all close relationships, including parenting. This is where we learn how to form relationships and what relationships look like. So as we talk about romantic relationships, keep in mind that all close relationships need the same things, (the positive things we talked about in past articles).

There is a huge number of people in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s who are control freaks, and are unhappy, and unsuccessful in relationships—both adult relationships and in parenting relationships. It is in my view an epidemic and one which needs to be curtailed. It is passed from generation to generation by parents. The easiest way to break this epidemic is to learn effective, positive parenting, but if you are past that stage and are having trouble with relationships, due to control and negativity, you can re-parent yourself by learning how to let go of negative parenting (how you were parented), and re-learn how to develop relationships and love yourself. We now know that the old way of parenting: dictatorial, negative, controlling, was not effective in producing happy, successful adults, who were/are successful in relationships. Also, this discussion will help you to identify controlling people .

As we discuss effective, positive parenting, just plug in your parents. You will realize that you either had quality parenting, or not. Awareness is step one. Then you just start using the skills, attitudes, qualities in your relationships, and with yourself: be kind to yourself. All of these parenting tips are simply good relationship skills, good management skills. Remember that control characteristics occur on a continuum: You, or a potential partner, may have very few, or no, controlling tendencies. Or you may be only moderately controlling. However, the pointers and self awareness tips in this article, and future articles, are simply positive living and loving tips that can be helpful to everyone. Take what you need and leave the rest. That is really what we should do in any situation with people, books, news shows: take what is helpful and leave the rest. It is always good to hear “other points of view”, other ideas, to expand one’s horizons. Only a controlling person is unable or unwilling to listen to, read what others have to say. Listening to all points of view is one way we tend to move to “the center”, be balanced.

So how do you know if your parents were positive/effective parents? If you ask people in counseling if they think their parents did a good job, most will say “yes”. Here are some questions to ask yourself:  the goals of parenting are to raise happy, successful people. So you can ask yourself,  “do I have the following qualities for success and happiness?” :  (does my potential partner have these qualities?):  honesty, positive mental attitude, loving, dependable, committed, persistent, loyal, responsible,  a “good-finder”, have wisdom, a good listener, thoughtful;  or as Daniel Goleman states in , Emotional Intelligence,  http://danielgoleman.info/topics/emotional-intelligence/  , do you have these qualities: optimism, hope, ability to control anxiety, motivate oneself, persist in the face of frustration, regulate one’s moods, ability to control impulse, to empathize?

Future articles will discuss how to re-parent yourself to have these qualities, (and continue to identify and stay away from super control freaks). Remember, you were a child when you were parented. Your qualities, skills, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, values, perceptions, expectations were shaped when you were an immature child. When we become adults it is our job to re-examine, re-think all these things with our adult minds, abilities, desire and wisdom. That is how we become wise. You will discover that if your parent(s) were controlling, you will need to rethink many things, and learn new attitudes, skills, ways of being with people. We should never just say, “ well, that’s how I was raised, so I will do it that way”,  or  think necessarily that the way our parents did it is a quality way. We should always be open to improvement, as adults; learning new things. Controllers are not open to learning, learning new ways; they think they already have all the answers. “You do not need to tell me that. I already knew that. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t try to change me!”

Relationships that are quality

How do we find happiness in a relationship?  We start by finding a quality partner.  Future articles will discuss what to do if you are already in a relationship, married, etc., and what to do to improve quality. But we should take the dating stage very seriously. If we think we will just get married and that things will “get better”, we are deceiving ourselves. Or if we think that love conquers all, we are not being realistic. When dating, we have to be able to focus on not only infatuation, butterflies, and all the good things, but also on the negative things. If there are too many negative things red flags should go up: negative  words, attitudes, values, behavior, lots of anger…  In the end, years later, the negatives will outweigh the positives.

What is quality? Some of the things we are looking for are love and intimacy, fun, a happy person, respect, encouragement, good communication, chemistry, acceptance, affection, attention, appreciation(focusing on your positives), love of life, good problem solving,  and a person who handles stress well. In a later article we will explore what these things really mean.  You are not going to keep dating a person if the positives are not there. But just as important is to make sure you notice and address the negatives.  When looking for a partner we will of course see people with a few bad qualities. We all have these. It is our job to figure out which bad qualities we can live with, which quirks or bad qualities might work with our own quirks, who we are compatible with. But what we need to identify is those people with lots of bad qualities.

One way to do this is to be able to identify “controlling” people. These people have many bad qualities. You do not want to be with these people long term unless you know they realize they are controlling and are willing to learn new skills, values, attitudes, behaviors. But also realize this awareness and willingness to learn and change are rare with controllers.  It is a good idea to stay away from controlling people. They usually are not happy and will make you unhappy. A few traits of controlling people are:

1)      Wants to control others; judge them, criticize them; give them advice, order them around; tell them what to do, when, where, how to do it; argues a lot; is often irritated, irritable(anger, anxiety)(anger: yelling, raging); has their own definitions of right and wrong ; “my way or the highway” attitude; there is only one way to do things: my way; perceives things and people negatively; looks for mistakes;

2)      Doesn’t want to be controlled, told what to do; perceives ideas and recommendations as telling them what to do, or criticizing or challenging their ideas;  when you have ideas they see you as thinking you are smarter, have better ideas than them; can’t apologize; can’t admit mistakes;

3)      Is not in “control” of themselves: of their actions, attitudes, words, thoughts, perceptions; their lives are often out of control: jobs, relationships; can’t handle frustration; lack of patience; so they try to control their immediate environment: house, loved ones; value turmoil (so they can use their advice skills, obtain power, and get attention); are ego-oriented: have a need for approval; never feel they are good enough(due to how they were parented);

4)      Has the need to stay in “their comfort zone”. This person was given messages as a child: it is not OK to make mistakes: they develop a fear of failure; so they do not usually try new things; They feel very “safe” in their home, sometimes at work, and doing things that they have always done and are good at; they are not terribly comfortable in social situations, unless it is a sporting event;  they feel control when in their car;

Lastly, don’t forget to talk about what you are looking for in a relationship and about things that scare you off, with your potential partner. Tell your dating partner what you like about them often, but talk about red flags also.

New Year’s resolution:  to be in positive relationships

We have begun a wonderful new year: 2014. Again, a time for new beginnings, and/or examining how to improve and enhance our lives, our relationships, in the new year.  It is a time to make a list, actually write down, what we envision our lives will look like in the new year: our wish list, the positives. We can visualize the types of people we will bring into our lives, that we will form relationships with: their actual qualities, values, beliefs, attitudes, such as happy, kind, healthy, fun, loving, positive, peaceful…  We can also evaluate the people already in our lives, our relationships. If we are dating, is this person all the above or is he/she controlling, angry a lot, unhappy a lot, stressed out a lot, unable to have fun regularly, unable to show unconditional love and affection, and thus affecting your life negatively? Is our spouse full of the positives above or the negatives?  So, it is also a time to “clean house”. If we are in a negative, toxic relationship it is time to either get counseling together, or get out.

In this new year we deserve to be happy, joyful, peaceful, loving and loved, healthy and around positive, uplifting people.  In the past articles we have talked about what control in a relationship looks like. We have talked about what a happy, healthy lifestyle looks like re relationships, and how to be positive people, how to be encouraging. We talked about where we come from: where our attitudes, skills with people, beliefs come from:  from our parents and how we were parented and we have been encouraged to examine those things,  re-learn those things, and re-parent ourselves if need be.  We have talked about the opposite of control, having options, choices, free wills, ideas , new experiences and the ability to try new things, and make mistakes, the courage to be imperfect;  to take it easy on ourselves and our loved ones; to find compassion and contentment.  We have talked about all the “special times” in our year: the “holidays”, and how they symbolize the positives in our lives, in our country, and our values and beliefs.  Hopefully we are able to think about and examine our values, beliefs,  attitudes and live a purposeful, positive life even when it is not a “holiday”; to be encouraging and thankful daily.

So, we can resolve to examine our year, our relationships for quality and lack of quality, and resolve to improve and enhance, or if need be, get rid of toxic relationships; to take care of ourselves and love ourselves. “To love ourselves” does not mean at the expense of others. It does not mean to be egotistical and driven by ego. It does not mean to be self-centered. It just means to be compassionate and loving to yourself and not allow others to injure you continuously.  It means insisting others respect your feelings and basic needs most of the time.  It means learning and using effective communication, stress management, and problem-solving, and not letting others tear you down. It means taking care of your body, soul, mind.

Regarding romantic relationships, we can resolve to bring those people with positive qualities, values, beliefs, skills, and attitudes into our lives. The beginning of the process to do this is to actually write down  those qualities that your partner will have, actually “see”, envision, this person (not his/her face);  do visioning, actually seeing yourself with this person, what you will do, say, how you will be together, where you will live, how you will “love”,  being kind and positive with each other, having fun together, how you will share your lives together,  things you consider compatibility “must-haves”, etc.  Then do visioning each day, envisioning the positives happening to you, your positive life.

For all other relationships, such as friends, children, parents, etc. we can resolve to be kind, encouraging, positive, good friends, compassionate, have fun with them,  be good listeners,  explore and talk about values, beliefs, learning new things,  and not be controlling.

Happy New Year!  You CANNOT be happy when trying to control others, and when loved ones, significant others are trying to control you…  relax, take each day as it comes, enjoy each day, focus on breathing, noticing beauty and positives in things and people, and “seeing”  all the wonderful events and people coming into your life.