Relative Safety

I love my cousin, but it is hard to be around her. She still has wounds from a rough childhood and is impatient, a perfectionist, extremely sensitive—and she complains about everything. She never looks at how her own behaviors may be contributing to a situation, but is lightning-quick to blame others. Three years ago my parents tried to talk to her about her behavior—and their relationship still hasn’t recovered. My cousin has everything going for her—a loving husband, healthy kids, financial stability, a safe home—yet stays in a negative mindset. I want to confront her but fear I’ll get the same reception my parents did. How do you approach someone who seems “happy” with being unhappy?

The same way you approach anyone else you want to engage in conversation—with the sole aim of understanding. Which means, for starters, forget about confrontation. It’s way more cinematic than it is productive. It puts people at odds, hardening positions and stirring defensiveness. Reserve it for dealing with bullies and others who misuse power.

Before you attempt to adjust your cousin’s mindset, it would be helpful to examine your own. You reveal a number of assumptions that may well preclude understanding. Each one bears scrutiny: Your cousin never examines her own behavior; she is unaware of her impact on others; she is anchored in a negative mindset; a nice husband and a nice home nullify the effects of a “rough childhood.” All of those assumptions lead up to your summary judgment—your cousin is “happy being unhappy.”

There is, in fact, no way you could know how she sees her own behavior, what her mindset is at any moment, or whether she really is unhappy. However, if you want to influence her behavior, it would be good to know how she sees things, information you could get in a warm and trusting conversation.

To influence your cousin (or anyone else) in any way (or at any time), you need to first find out and understand what’s driving the behavior you don’t like. How does she see the world? What are her fears? What sets her on edge? That is, you need empathy—the wherewithal to see her perspective. To do that, you first have to be willing to lay aside your own preconceived ideas. Empathy automatically defuses defensiveness; down goes the need for blame.

Here’s one bit of information that could help you understand your cousin (and anyone else). People, and especially children, tend to adapt to their environments—including “rough” ones—and develop behaviors that will help them survive, especially when they are dependent and powerless to change their circumstances. To find a way to endure years of difficulty and not be flattened by them is a sign of health, a mark of resilience. The qualities that irritate you most about your cousin may have been the very ones that helped her get through a rough childhood.

It is also true that the skills that may get such people to adulthood don’t always work so well to get them through adulthood. What helped them survive the unpleasantness they grew up with may have outlived its usefulness.

People who have a rough childhood often grow up with a deeply embedded sense that they are unprotected. As a result, they may be keen at spotting situations of potential vulnerability and lightning-quick at marshaling defenses.

Such information may help you find pathways into the kind of conversation you need with your cousin. You could, for example, bring up some happy childhood memory you both share and examine how you both see it. That could provide an opening to discussing other experiences that might have been less than ideal—and how she got through them. There is no one right way to get the hoped-for conversation started, but there is just one mindset: compassion.