Are your loved ones pieces of you?

Watching parents with their children is always interesting, but it recently prompted an 'ah hah' moment. The degree of embarrassment or distress a parent feels at their child's behaviour is an indicator of the degree the parent believes the child is a piece of themself. The old saying is, 'a chip off the old block'.

A toddler who throws a paddy in the middle of the bank is always going to leave a parent feeling some frustration and exposure. If the parent instinctively accepts the toddler as their own person, a completely separate - if currently dependent - entity, then the parent feels the annoyance or anxiety of the situation alone. Sure if some people 'tut tut' it's aggravating, but it's the kid who's having the paddy, and the kid is toddler, and stuff happens. If the parent views the child as an extension of themself, then the child's behaviour reflects on the parent to such an extent that, for all practical purposes, the child IS the parent.

It's a cliche that teenagers go through this in spades when they find their parents so horribly, horribly embarrassing: they're not embarrassing because they're parents, they're embarrassing because they're MY parents. [You may prefer to substitute your relationship of choice here.]

Husbands and wives do it all the time too. A social faux-pas is not just a faux-pas by your partner, it somehow reflects poorly on YOU as well. This is encouraged by the common human behaviour of manipulation, whereby person X wants something from Y so they ask Y's life partner for advice/help/permission/emotional blackmail.

If you catch yourself being mortified or made angry by the behaviour of someone around you (friend, colleague, family member, etc.) remind yourself that their behaviour is their behaviour alone. See if that helps you be less overwhelmed by the sticky social situation which ensues. Our loved ones are not pieces of us, they are themselves first and foremost, and our child/parent/lover/colleague/boss/etc second.

This is post 12 of 365 posts in 365 days.

Silence can say a lot.

Silence can say a lot. There are companionable silences or understanding silences, where nothing needs to be said. There are helpless silences or anxious silences, when we don't know what to say. There are angry silences, sullen silences, where we punish by withholding words. There are hurt silences or defeated silences, where we retreat from words. There is the dynamic silence of being alone in nature. There is the loud silence of being all alone inside yourself while others talk all around you. Or the silence when a group of people refuse to talk to you as a social sanction - what the British call 'being sent to Coventry'.

If you ask a question, and the other person doesn't answer, it's hard to tell whether that means they haven't heard, or they are refusing to answer. Silence can signify consent, when a group of friends says, "Let's all go to X restaurant," you are assumed to agree unless you make a counter-offer. You can encourage the other person in a conversation, whenever they run out of verbal steam, by simply smiling warmly and saying nothing.

Socially, silence can say, "I agree." Silence can say, "I have nothing to add." Silence can say, "I'm bored." Silence can - sometimes - say, "I'm fascinated" (just not as often as the unilateral conversationalists amongst us seem to think). Silence can say, "I think that might just have been the most fatuous statement I have ever heard" - but it says it politely, is unlikely to cause the speaker to bore on for another 30 minutes while they defend themself.

As someone who was once described as having been 'vaccinated with a gramophone needle' - mainly to cover shyness - I had to learn to respect and use silence. I encourage you to play around with silences deliberately, to gauge the effect they have on others, and on yourself.

This is post 25 of 100 posts in 100 days.