When I say your family, I mean either your parents, siblings or other relatives – maybe all of them! Especially after a prolonged holiday period like Christmas and New Year, chasms can appear in family relationships that didn’t see so obvious before.
Some families are very close, meeting up as much as possible and spending time like Christmas together. However, the other side of that coin is that others don’t see their families, talk to them or contact them on birthdays and anniversaries.
There can be many different reasons for this, sometimes involving childhood grievances, or arguments in adulthood resulting in distance and non-communication. Sometimes this happens after a parent died – he or she might have been the person who provided the ‘glue’ that kept the family together and once they’re no longer there, things fall apart. Support fo one another wanes and they feel like strangers to one another.
For some, they can cope with this, saying that everyone’s busy or that they have very different ideas about life in general – their politics, way of life, values and principles – and they accept that people are busy and, despite growing up together, they have little in common. There are so many ways that people can become estranged that it’s surprising that it doesn’t happen more often!
For others, it’s like an ongoing wound – they find it difficult to come to terms with the feeling of abandonment and hurt. When seeing clients, I came to realise that some families are very good at dealing with conflict – they discuss things, compromise and try to see things from each other’s points of views. With others, they’ve grown up in an atmosphere where arguments and conflict were never really resolved which means they haven’t picked up ways of dealing with different points of view without shouting and storming off!
If you’re someone who honestly wants to reconcile with your family, how can you go about it?
- Forgiveness is a good start. This isn’t easy and you have to be sure that you’re ready for it – there’s always the chance of rejection and few of us want to put ourselves in that position. So, before you pick up the phone to take the first step, make sure you know what you want to say and acknowledge to yourself any part that you might have played in the situation.
- If you manage to talk to your parents or siblings, take tiny steps. Don’t launch straight into what went wrong and start accusing them. Try general things, ask how they are and don’t react defensively if they seem aggressive.
- Be patient – it took time to get to this stage and it will take time to recover.
- However long the estrangement, people’s lives will have changed, whether it’s been weeks, months or years. Allow for that – they might have become more entrenched in their attitudes and, for that matter, so might you!
- Keep reminding yourself what you want to achieve – communication and eventually meeting up might be the most to expect at this point.
- Listen to what they have to say – you might not agree with them, but let them finish. Their feelings are important but if they shout, make it clear that you won’t tolerate that. You could say something along the lines of “I can see this has upset you and that isn’t what I wanted. None of it is easy, but I’ll ring again soon when we’ve both calmed down”.
- If you say you’ll ring or write again in a few weeks, make sure that you do so – being consistent and reliable is vital.
These aren’t foolproof ways of mending bridges but they’ll almost certainly help if you want to work towards getting on better terms with one another again.
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