Jim and creating respect in his relationship with his dad

Jim is a guy who was in one of my groups many years ago.  He had been ordered out of his own home as a consequence of his abuse of his daughter, but he was steadfast in his wish to restore his marriage and his family.  In order to minimize his own expenses so as to continue to financially support his wife and children, he moved back in with his parents. 

Jim was earnest and honest and hard working, but not very psychologically minded.  He had no sense of what was going on with him when he sexually abused his daughter.  He insisted that he had not been abused himself as a child.  He was able to recover a memory of feeling abused by the school system when they put him into a program with mentally retarded kids when he was found to be severely dyslexic.  He did remember when he was about three and the emergency room nurse asked him if the gash on his head was from falling down the stairs as his father had said.  Not realizing that he was supposed to lie, he corrected the report explaining that his dad had thrown him against a radiator.  But he was quite certain that he had never been sexually abused.  He had seen his dad sexually abuse his mother and his sister, but he had never been sexually abused himself.

Jim had a difficult time identifying any of his feelings.  This was most evident around his anger.  Many people suffer from being too angry, that is they tend to act out anger over even small things that happen.  Jim was one of those people who don’t have enough access to their anger.  Some people are so unaware of anger that they are easily taken advantage of.  This was a problem for Jim.

Thus it was quite a breakthrough when Jim came to his Monday evening group and announced that he was angry.  I was delighted.  “So, Jim, what are you angry about?”

“It is my dad.  He just doesn’t treat me right.”

“What happened?”

“It was yesterday morning, Sunday morning, and I was in the kitchen fixing my breakfast, I was frying some eggs, and just as I was about to use the spatula to get the eggs out of the pan, my dad comes in, it is a small kitchen, and as I get the spatula under the eggs, he pushes me to the side to get to the coffee pot and the eggs fly across the room and onto the floor.”

“Wow, so what happened?”

“He poured his coffee and went into the breakfast nook to read the paper.”

“No, I mean what did you do?”

“I cleaned up the eggs.”

“Did you say anything to him?”

“No, that wouldn’t do any good.  He isn’t going to change.”

“Right, well, whether he changes or not, you can’t change him… but didn’t you feel like telling him off or anything?”

“No, that wouldn’t do any good, he isn’t going to change.”

In the discussion that followed we affirmed that we were not going to be able to change his dad but that there are things that he needs that he isn’t getting when these things happen.  Jim was easily able to see that his dad always treats him this way and that it hurts his self-esteem.  He was able to frame the issue in terms of self-respect.  He was not getting the respect that he wanted from his dad.  What might he be able to do that would create for himself the respect that he needed.  What could he do which would create a greater sense of self-respect? 

We discussed what he might be able to do differently whenever these events come up and to set up a three part response to these events in his relationship with his dad.  They were;

1.       “Dad when you (in this case) push me and my breakfast ends up on the floor and you don’t acknowledge responsibility for what you have done,

2.       I feel as though you don’t have respect for me and are not interested in being accountable for how you affect me, and

3.       I wish we had a relationship in which we treated each other respectfully.”

Jim agreed that it might feel good to say this to his dad, but he had to remind us again that his dad wasn’t going to change.  I assured Jim that we weren’t trying to change his dad but were supporting Jim in being different in a way that created the respect that he was missing.  He agreed to try this different way of being in the coming week whenever his dad treated him in a manner that didn’t feel respectful.  He allowed as how that was just about any time he and his dad were in the same room.

The next week when Jim checked in at the group session he reported that, “It didn’t work.”

“How do you know it didn’t work?” I asked.

“My dad isn’t going to change.”

“No, he isn’t going to change and we aren’t going to change him.  What happened?”

“I was sitting in the living room reading the newspaper and he came in and took it right out of my hands.  I said to him, ‘When I am reading the newspaper and you take it from me without saying anything to me it feels like you don’t have any respect for me and I want to have a relationship where we treat each other with respect.’”

“Excellent!  So what happened?”

“He looked at me like I had two heads and then sat down and read the newspaper.”

“Okay, but what happened with you?”

Jim had to stop and think about this for a minute.  He was not yet accustomed to paying attention to his own feelings at this point and he had to do make some space in his awareness.

“Well, actually, now that I think about it, it felt kind of good.  Even though my dad looked at me like I had two heads, he looked at me.  He doesn’t normally do that.  And another thing, it felt good to hear myself stand up to him.”

We talked some more about how it felt to him and then he committed to continue to respond to his dad this way.

Here was a pattern of conflict—Dad treating him disrespectfully—in a significant relationship which Jim had set with long enough to let it begin to solve him.  He had a new way of being in the relationship which could begin to construct what he needed without depending on or insisting that the other change.

Over the course of the next several months Jim continued to practice this speech to his dad whenever his dad treated him in a manner that did not feel respectful.  Over the months Jim got better and better at delivering the speech and felt stronger about himself for being able to present his wishes clearly.  But he also began to notice a shift in his dad.  From time to time his dad would start to do something disrespectful and then stop himself, as if he didn’t want to hear the speech.  His dad’s behavior was changing, not because he changed his dad, but because he changed his relationship to his dad and his dad had to adjust to the change.

Jim was able to identify a pattern of conflict in a significant relationship and to be able to fashion a plan for how he wanted to be different whenever the pattern emerged.  The goal of the plan was to change the way Jim acted such that he would be responsible for creating what he needed without expecting or depending upon the other to change.