Despre intimitate, conexiune și mai multă autenticitate în relații cu Harriet Lerner

We all do better in life when we can stay reasonably connected to important others; when we can listen to them without trying to change, convince, or fix; and when we can make calm statements about how we see things, based on thinking, rather than reacting.

We all do better when we can process an important issue and take a clear position rather than relying on silence or blame.

We all do better when we have a clear bottom line (“I am not able or willing to live with these behaviors”) rather than communicating through our own behavior that “anything goes.”

We all do better when we can deal directly with our most difficult family members rather than talking about them with other relatives.

And finally, we all do better when we can de-intensify our anxious focus on the other’s problem and put our primary energy into clarifying our own beliefs, convictions, values, and priorities, while formulating plans and life goals that are congruent with these.

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Defining a whole and authentic self also means sharing both our overfunctioning and underfunctioning sides with significant others rather than participating in polarized relationships where we stay focused on the other person’s problems but do not share our own. Every person, without exception, has strengths and’ competencies as well as weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but most of us have difficulty identifying and expressing both sides. This is especially the case when an overfunctioning-underfunctioning polarity gets set in motion and each person’s behavior only provokes and maintains the behavior of the other.

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