Chapter 8: Conflict - Cultivating in Relationships
Navigate family conflicts with wisdom and transform challenges into growth opportunities
Core Viewpoints
1. Family Challenges in the Contemporary Context
Never put a "unqualified" label on yourself, and don't rush to find some "panacea." There are no "standard answers" to parenting, and don't blindly follow so-called "scientific" parenting methods. We must bravely steer the family "boat" and sail through storms with our children, shaping healthy personalities that can resist the waves for our children.
2. Parenting is a Reconciliation
"Wounds left in relationships are healed in relationships"
Discussions about original families were once particularly heated, because almost everyone, throughout their lives, is searching for what they longed for or lacked in childhood. These regrets or hurts in the original family will all be reactivated in the process of raising our children.
Reconciliation with parents
Reconciliation with regret
Reconciliation with limitations
Reconciliation with another life
Ultimately, we must reconcile with our own fate and liberate ourselves from the fate of the "past." In parenting, we will relive painful memories and repeatedly chew on the tangled love-hate relationships, and also discover our unknowns and expand our limitations. This is indeed a deep cultivation.
Parenting is our journey of reconciliation with our own souls.
3. Avoid Involving Children in War
Children's loyalty to parents is blind, they easily become casualties of parental wars. With the development of brain science research, scientists have discovered that in the first few years of our birth, a large amount of unconscious memories are stored in the "amygdala" of the brain.
Seven roles children play in parental wars:
1. Become a mediator
I need to step in
2. Become an avoider
I need to hide
3. Become a caregiver
I'll comfort the parents
4. Become a substitute
Function as a "partner" for the absent party
5. Become an attacker
Attack the other party on behalf of one side
6. Become a scapegoat
Blame the child
7. Become a receptacle
Become an outlet for negative emotions
These unconscious involvements not only fail to solve parental problems but also make family relationships more complex, while causing tremendous psychological pressure and harm to children.
4. Maintain Relationships Before Solving Problems
"Why do we easily lose our temper with children? Because even when hurt, they won't easily leave"
Insights from the "paper folding" experiment:
In a group therapy session, participants took A4 white paper and thought about the most important person in their relationship. They recalled various conflicts, folding the paper once for each conflict. Finally, they crumpled it hard. After 5 minutes, they were asked to unfold this paper.
If this white paper represents your relationship, then now, after repeated "folding," what has your relationship become? No matter how hard we try to smooth out this crumpled white paper, we discover that those creases can never disappear.
Immature psychological defense mechanisms:
Throwing internal "explosives" outward
The most primitive defense mechanism is to "throw out" the "bad" feelings that we cannot handle or bear in our hearts. Emotionally immature parents will throw their work pressure, frustration, and disappointment with their own life at their children under pressure. "Homework" becomes the scapegoat.
Black-and-white thinking, total denial
When people encounter pressure, they easily activate relatively primitive defense mechanisms, which are very instinctive, low-level reaction states, such as splitting, denial, and devaluation. This is like someone in a rage, inevitably thinking in black-and-white, right-or-wrong terms.
Unrealistic idealization
The more fragile, insecure, fearful, and powerless one's inner world, the more likely one is to show an idealized tendency toward the real world, creating an illusory sense of control over reality in the spiritual world. This idealized tendency is particularly likely to be expressed in overly high expectations of children.
Remember: Maintain relationships first, then solve problems.
5. Adolescence Triggers Midlife Crisis
"If all conversation techniques become useless, there's one ultimate move: 'Shut up'"
Psychological characteristics of adolescence:
Adolescent children are particularly prone to conflicts with their parents, partly due to the influence of adolescent psychological characteristics. Adolescents face independence and expect separation, while their personality development is full of instability. At this time, they:
Are both rebellious and desire guidance
Are both independent and need support
Are both confident and extremely sensitive
Such "little hedgehogs" and "little monsters" both want to pull close and push away from parents, particularly testing parents' emotional tolerance and inclusiveness.
Triggering midlife crisis:
On the other side, middle-aged parents, facing their adolescent children who have developed maturely, will inevitably be awakened to their own fear of "aging" and death anxiety in their instincts. In the biological world, the maturity of the next generation, capable of reproduction, means the previous generation can be eliminated. This will inevitably erupt into a tension of intertwined love and hate.
"Cultural feedback" phenomenon:
The "self-media spirit" and "de-authorization" of the internet era have also caused the "authority" of old fathers and old mothers to suffer a collapsing threat. Compared to the older generation, the younger generation has better material conditions and educational opportunities, while the widespread popularization of digital media gives them broader channels to establish communication with others and the environment.
When families welcome adolescent children, parents also begin to encounter their own "midlife crisis," and even have to start thinking about and planning their later years. This will be an intense "farewell" between us and our children.
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