How to be accepted by the family?

Be yourself + be accepted

I read a bunch of books about myself, listened to a bunch of podcasts, and often heard one thing: "To feel complete, a person must be very sincere with himself and be himself; at the same time, he must feel that he is accepted by others. Yes.” In other words, not only do I have to be myself, but I also need to feel the approval of others in order to feel complete.

I would like to discuss first, what would happen if I had become myself but could not feel the acceptance of others? I probably feel that I am walking on a very lonely road. It seems that no one understands me, and no one can share joy and sadness. It seems that even if I am myself, I still can’t feel energy. Maybe for ordinary people like me, I can’t be like Song. Rongzi-like "the world is not to be discouraged". On the other hand, if I really want to feel accepted, so I cooperate with others instead of being myself, then of course I will not be happy, but I just wear a heavy mask all the time, and fake laughing, crying, fake naughty all the time, even if everyone Like me, I know that what they like is not really me, so this like has no meaning to me. It does seem like you have to be yourself and feel accepted.

I have written about the process of becoming myself before. I want to discuss the issue of being accepted here. I especially want to write about my feelings about being accepted by my family, because family members are different from other friends and lovers, and it is difficult to cut off the relationship. There is no way. If you say throw it away, throw it away. If you don’t get it right, it will always be stuck there. This is especially true in my life. Family relationships are such a huge and suffocating existence. It will be difficult and exhausting, but I still want to deal with it. Naturally, I have a lot of thoughts and feelings.

family acceptance

This is why I cannot feel the acceptance of my family. My family is very controlling. They have given me a lot of expectations since I was a child, and they habitually ignore my thoughts and feelings. This kind of growth background makes it difficult for me to feel Being loved and accepted also caused me to get used to cooperating with others and ignoring myself. When I started setting boundaries, it was inevitable that I would have a conflict with my family. They could control me however they wanted, but now that I had to resist, of course they were angry. I'm so angry when I just established a boundary, if I want them to support me, won't I be so angry? It can be imagined that it will take a lot of time to do this, and it will be possible to communicate constantly. Frankly speaking, I am still in the process of doing this. . If you want to reach the stage of being accepted by your family, you must first start communicating. Here are some experiences in the communication process:

First figure out what you want to say

I often have a problem. I am full of dissatisfaction with my family, but I don't know what to say first. I say the first sentence but I don't know how to answer the second sentence. So before communicating, I will first set the topic I want to communicate the most. Come out, and then extend the content, for example:

"The most I want to tell my family is that they have stepped on my line, it's really annoying, but do they know what a line is? They seem to have heard it, so what is my line? I don't like what they say to me What to expect, and I don't like them using very intense emotions to force me into submission, so do they know what they're doing? Am I going to tell them my observations about them..."

I will be very anxious to clarify everything I want to say, because I am afraid that I will not say a few words, and then I will be choked back.

It's easy to become listening to the other person

Because I am so used to thinking from the perspective of the other party, I often agree with the other party unconsciously when arguing with my family. The final conclusion is that I should change myself (crying..), I feel weird at the moment, but I always have to reach out to myself. When I reflect alone, I realize that I have not expressed my feelings at all (surprised!).

In order to break this habit, I carefully examined the way of speaking, and found that I would want to ask questions to guide them to see their blind spots. This method can easily become the other party leading the topic, and the other party often can't stop saying, "I He couldn't get in at all, and in the end the topic was completely taken away.

"If you want to be yourself, what if you kill someone?"

"Then why do I kill myself when I'm myself?"

"You just don't want to abide by the moral bottom line when you are yourself, but you can't be a person as long as I like it!"

"When did I become immoral?"

"How do I know, you only want to be yourself, have you ever thought about taking more responsibility for your family, how old are you, and your family is not too bad for you, so when are you going to repay..."

In order to avoid this situation, I no longer use the way of asking questions, but take the initiative to say what I want to say. If they want to take the topic off, I will not continue their words and directly open the topic and say what they want to say. , if they are gushing, I will find a chance to interrupt and pull back to the topic again. In this way, it will be less likely that I will be reprimanded unilaterally, and both parties will have the opportunity to speak, and it will be more likely to have in-depth exchanges on the topics I want to discuss.

Run into each other's differences

In the process of talking with family members, sometimes the understanding of the same word between the two parties can be very different. For example, the definition of morality. I think morality is people-oriented, and everyone's morality is different. This is natural; but They will think that morality is a line used to manage people, and everyone should have the same morality, or at least everyone should abide by a moral standard that 80% of people agree with. These differences often turn the conversation into a conversation between chickens and ducks. The more you talk, the less you know what you are talking about. Only when you find these differences, spread them out to confirm, and recalibrate the communication, can the dialogue get to the point. This process can only be done again and again. Going slowly at a time requires patience.

In particular, I want to mention that the running-in here is to let the other party understand that it is normal for each other to have different ideas. Don’t seem to have to change me, and I will not control your thoughts, so the running-in at this stage is not the same. It's not to make the two sides think more and more alike, but to let the two sides understand that it's okay to be different. If both sides can understand this kind of thinking, the relationship should gradually loosen from a tense confrontation.

Recognize that the other party has their own issues

In the process of communication, I gradually discovered that it is often useless to simply discuss superficial issues. If they say: "I hope you can become a responsible person" or "I hope you can be more rational", a more superficial response It will probably be: "Who do you want me to pay for?", "I think I am very rational", the next dialogue is probably to see who can win the fight, and there is no substantive discussion at all. So I carefully pondered these harsh words, and found that the so-called "I expect you..." is actually their needs. They need my obedience to feel at ease. What is behind this anxiety? Is it because I am too happy? Is it because they don't know how to settle down after I shake their worldview? There seems to be a lot of things to be unearthed behind this. It seems that the family love and hatred hidden under the words has to be solved layer by layer, so that they can stop making up countless reasons to suppress me.

This gave me some inspiration, maybe I have to let them feel my acceptance first, let them know that I support them; they don't need to control me to ease their anxiety; they can let me be myself, there will be no Something terrible happened; if they want to be themselves, they will have my great support. This strategy is still being planned, and I hope to gradually touch the core issues and help each other become better together.

Reality seems better than imagined

Because I am a pessimistic person, I always expect that every conversation will inevitably lead to huge disputes. I often fall into depression when I think about it, but the reality is often beyond my expectations. There is no huge dispute in our communication. We can talk rationally. Of course, we have many different values, and there is still a lot to communicate, but the progress of things is much better than I thought, which makes me very happy. While pessimism often makes me depressed and anxious, maybe it's also what I need in that moment, to prepare me well before taking action, to have a better chance of success, and as things get better, I'm getting less pessimistic.

Although this journey of family reconciliation has only just begun, there are still many pains to be resolved, and I am not sure how far I can do it, but there is always a voice in my heart that wants me to do it, and I think this is a great deal for me. The journey back to strength is also my deep love for my family. I don’t want to be numb, but I still have to admit that I really want to make this family better.