https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=8S0dOo5xsMg
What’s your advice for dealing with the loss of a parent, my father, with whom I had a bad relationship at the time of his passing? Pick an easy one, Stina. Yeah, pick an easy one. Well, the first thing I would say is there’s not a lot you can do about that relationship with your father, because he’s now gone. But one thing you could do is not do the same thing with other people in your life. So we’re going to assume that you have some other family members and that you have some friends for the sake of this discussion. Obviously, I don’t know who you are. If you want to atone for the catastrophe of failing to reconcile yourself with your father, you have to determine what it is that you did wrong. Now, I don’t know your situation. I mean, your father might have been a psychopathic narcissist for all I know, you know, and some people are unbelievably difficult to get along with. In fact, there are some people who are conducting themselves in a manner that purposefully makes them impossible to get along with. And maybe that was your father. It’s certainly possible. But we’ll assume that it was, you know, some him and some you just for the sake of argument, because that’s the more normal case. And now this opportunity to reconcile yourself is gone, and it’s gone in some sense permanently, at least it’s gone in relationship to him specifically. But the problems that plague your relationship, if unresolved, will plague your other relationships because they’re part and parcel of you. And so I’ll tell you one of the things that Tammy and I do if we’re having a fight and we’re locking horns too much and it’s getting intractable. So this is something we learned to do 20 years ago, probably maybe longer ago. You know, and when you get trapped into a fight like that, you get tempted to try to win. It’s like, no, this time for sure you’re wrong. And then you want to make your point. And that’s not great strategy because probably you’re not 100% right. And beside that, even if you do win, you’re stuck with your partner the next day. And if you win all the time, then you have a loser for a partner. And then you don’t win unless you think that you can be a winner with a loser for a partner. And so defeating your partner is not a very good strategy. And plus, most people aren’t that easy to defeat. So even if you do win in some sense and you defeat them, they’re looking for the opportunity to return the favor. And it’ll probably make itself manifest sooner rather than later. And so really what you want to do in the course of the fight is to make it happen. And that’s what we’re going to do. And so really what you want to do in the course of a marital dispute is make peace. And you don’t make peace by not having the fight. That’s not peace. That’s just a lie. Because there are things to fight about. You know, life is complicated. There are hard problems to solve. And one of you has an idea and the other has a plan. And one of you has an idea and the other has an idea. And the ideas don’t mesh. And how are you going to find out what the right idea is unless you engage in the conflict? That’s thinking. And so winning isn’t the right aim to be right. It’s like, well, you don’t want to be right exactly. You want to be smarter than you were yesterday. Or maybe you want to be smarter tomorrow than you are today. Maybe your partner has something to tell you, even if they’re doing it stupidly and badly, just like you are for them. And so you want to listen, but you want to win. And so then you lock horns. And so one of the things we learned to do was to go apart and sit and meditate, so to speak. And like I said, that’s a form of prayer. And the prayer is something like, OK, I want peace. And then you have to decide, do you really want peace or are you still so mad you want to win? And of course, you’re still that mad. So then you got to get that out of your head. It’s like, well, what do I want? I know she’s really wrong this time. Stick it to her. But OK, Christ, peace. OK, peace, God, peace. Yeah, how annoying is that? So you have to get your head around that. Then you think, OK, well, probably I’m stupid in some way I don’t realize. It’s like there is something. You want a certainty in life. There is one. Probably you’re stupid in some way you don’t realize. That’s for sure. So you think, OK, I’m probably perhaps I contributed to this problem in some small way. She’s probably ninety nine point nine percent wrong. But I might be one tenth of a percent wrong. Possibly. Then you think, OK, what did I do that was stupid? But you get this little idea about, yeah, there’s some stupid idea to make this more likely. And you think, well, even that that was stupid, but it’s still only one tenth of one percent of the problem. It’s like it’s not. And as soon as you realize that, you’re going to be like, OK, I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. And then you think, OK, I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. I’m going to be a little stupid. And then you realize that you’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. You’re going to be a little stupid. 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And that’d be really good for your family because if you start fixing your relationship with them, they’ll start generally not always, but they’ll start fixing their relationship with each other. And so then the family can pull together and tighten even though it’s had a hole torn in it. So that’s a pretty good deal. And then you can do the similar things with your friends and that’ll tighten up your your web of social relations. And that can I wouldn’t say exactly compensate for the loss of your father, but it can. It can repair the damage and maybe put you in a situation, put you and the others around you in a better situation. And that’s something that’s definitely worth doing. And so and then I would say if you do that diligently, you’ll be able to forgive yourself. And you might even be able to forgive yourself enough so that you would conclude that now if your father was here, you’d become the sort of person who could actually lay out what was wrong with your relationship and ask for forgiveness and reconcile. And maybe if you did that deeply enough, you could let it go. You know, you could say maybe the spirit of your dead father would forgive you. That’s both possible and plausible. So, you know, I would have people in my clinical practice who’d ask questions like that. And then the whole because maybe they were tortured into depression by the loss of their father and they needed to solve that problem. We’d spend like two years trying to figure out how to do that. It’s a deep problem. How do you reconcile with the departed with the departed dead when you left on hostile terms? That’s a hard problem. Well, that’s how. What do you do that was stupid? Detailed. What did you do that was stupid in a manner that’s detailed enough so that you could start to take the steps necessary to make it happen? And then how would you how is it that you could conduct yourself so that you would take those steps? There’s a that’s a more differentiated problem, right? And you can do that. And I’ve seen people do that. You know, people people can do that. Once you decide that that’s what you want to do, you set your mind to it and you ask, you know, maybe you think, OK, well, I’m having a bad day. And you ask, you know, maybe you think, OK, well, I’m having this problem with my father. I have a similar problem with my brother and he’s still alive. It’s like, great. There you go. Got an opportunity right in front of you to go sort that out. And if you really want to sort it out. Generally, you can. Now, I did say there’s exceptions. You know, there’s a state gospel statement, something very harsh that’s been attributed to Christ. Don’t cast pearls before swine. It’s a rough statement. And what it means is. Stop talking to people who aren’t listening. It might be that you have someone in your family you can’t reconcile with because when you try to make peace, you’re just rebuffed and. And you can try multiple times and be rebuffed. And that might be a reflection of your lack of skill and to some degree probably is. But sometimes you’re talking to someone who. Is. Pursuing that misery. And. Unless they’re until they’re willing to not do that, you may not be able to communicate with them. But then part of that reconciliation process, reconciliation process with your father would also be the development of the ability to distinguish between. People or situations that you can address productively and those you can’t and those you can’t you have to just let go. No, and not push and listen and listen. Yeah. Yeah, right. Because people will tell you. Yeah, well, that’s true. That’s a good. That’s a good point, too. I mean, if you keep talking to someone and they’re not listening and you stop talking, sometimes you can stop talking. And just listen. And then if you listen hard enough, they’ll tell you what their problem is. And that’s really worth knowing, too. So if you have a family member who you can’t. Communicate with and you keep trying to make your point. And it’s not working. So I quit. Quit trying to make your point. It’s not working. Why? You’re not talking to who you think you’re talking to. They’re not hearing what you think you’re saying. You’re not where you think you are. So then you think, OK, where am I? The answer is, well, you don’t know. You’ve got to start to explore. How do you find out where you are? Listen to them. Don’t don’t offer them your opinion at all. If it’s not working, just listen. They will eventually tell you what what they’re up to. And not only will they tell you what they’re up to, they’ll tell you how you could fix it. And that’s really something to watch when you see it happen. So that’s a good rule. You know, you try three times to reconcile yourself to someone with someone. They’re not. You just hit a wall. It’s like, quit talking. Quit talking. Listen harder. If that isn’t working, listen even harder. They’ll reveal themselves and then you’ll be able to figure out what to do. You know, and that’s again, assuming that they’re not aiming down. And now and then you run into someone who’s aiming down hard and you just have to let them hit whatever they’re aiming at. Hard enough to either kill them or wake them up. And often there’s not much you can do about that except try to be a good example and to be available if they do need to reach out. So you imagine you got six or seven people in your family you want to reconcile with. You can try it with a couple of them. If you’re making some progress, good. You can walk down that path. If you’re being rebuffed, it’s like, wow, I’m going to try to do that. So, yeah, the promise is that you can atone for your past sins by confession and. And the genuine determination to do better in the future. Right. So, yeah, that’s the promise is that you can atone for your past sins by confession and. And the genuine determination to do better in the future. Right. And hopefully that’s true, because otherwise when you make a mistake, you’re lost and there’s no way forward. And the best way forward is to figure out what you brought to the table. That’s at least somewhat under your control.