The way to establish a relationship without conflict in a family is through healthy communication.
Communication is the process of transmitting a message from a sender to a receiver. If the sender is healthy and the receiver has a problem, the message will be perceived as distorted in proportion to the mental problem. In such a case, healthy communication cannot be mentioned. Both the sender and the receiver must be mentally healthy.
Having positive feelings about yourself is the basis of healthy communication.
To establish healthy communication, one must first love oneself. For someone who does not love himself, who sees himself as worthless, spouse, child or parent, the others are meaningless. But for someone who values himself and is happy internally, other people have meaning. Only then can one care about others. Because just as a person establishes a relationship with himself, he establishes relationships with others, especially with family members.
Sometimes, since a person cannot form an integrated sense of self, he determines his own worth by the attitude of others toward him. When someone treats him well, he feels very good and loved, while he feels valuable, but when one treats him badly, he perceives himself as a worthless person. This is a huge communication barrier. Because a person cannot be all bad or all good. It's a combination of the two. However, sometimes a person cannot perceive himself as a whole. There is a split: It's either good or bad. This is determined by the emotion of other people toward him.
For instance, a partner who is having a bad day comes home very glum and speaks coldly. In such cases, one may feel like this: "He is not happy to see me; he does not like to spend time with me. I am worthless. I'm not worthy of being loved." Even if her partner values her in general, she may perceive herself on the bad end just because of this incident.
Sometimes the opposite happens, the partner is very pleasant and happy, so if he looks positive, she feels overvalued and immediately switches to the good side. In both cases, the person perceives herself according to her partner's feelings, not according to her own inner sense of worthiness. This is a pathological thing. Perceiving oneself as a whole with its good and bad aspects is a skill that needs to be developed until the age of five. If the age of 0-6 is problematic, unfortunately, the person cannot complete this integration.
The second factor that fuels conflicts in the family are the transfer of negative feelings of people to each other within the family.
Negative emotion transfer means that instead of giving information or solving problems while communicating, one tries to relax by making the other party feel their unconscious negative emotions. These behaviors can be done verbally as well as with tone of voice, facial expressions or body language.
One needs a receiver to convey his negative emotion. If there is a key, there must be a lock. If there is no one who receives a negative emotion, then one can not project that. For one to send an emotion, there must be a receiver. When there is no receiver of the emotion, after a while, one gives up conveying negative emotions and is left alone with the emotions he wants to impose on the other.
Talking sarcastically, making fun of, or insulting are unconscious behaviors done to make the other party feel bad under the name of a joke. It evokes a feeling of imperfection, worthlessness, and attack on the other side.
Another way to convey negative emotions is to occupy the other person.
For instance, a woman who does not send her husband to a game with her friends because she is alone; or a man who interferes with his wife's clothing ... Both limit the living space of the other, it means occupation. The same mechanism applies to the relationship with the child. It is an occupation when parents ignore the child's needs and impose their own needs on him. Negative feelings such as suffocation, boredom, not being seen, being swallowed, disappearing and helplessness awaken in people who are occupied. Although these people cannot physically end the relationship, they will end it emotionally. Family members start to use the house as a hotel; they become strangers living in the same house.
The third factor that increases conflicts is people trying to change each other's feelings.
Sometimes the person perceives family members or friends as part of himself. When others do not agree with him or feel something different in the same event, he feels many bad feelings, such as worthlessness, being wrong, and immediately tries to attract people's feelings to his own. Trying to change the feelings and thoughts of others, and trying to persuade them directly or indirectly, is a problem that significantly disrupts relationships. What is healthy is for everyone to stay in their own feelings and establish the relationship in this way.
The present is not independent of the past. The positive or negative experiences of the person today are nourished by the relationship he established with his primary caregivers during his childhood.
Self and world perception develop in the 0-6 age range. The first month of the baby's mind is like an empty camera. He begins to record everything that happens around him with an emotional tone. He takes all family members' positive and negative feelings, especially his mother. It doesn't matter who owns the emotion.
As he gets older, he separates good and bad feelings. When the same person gives good and bad feelings, he does not perceive him as a single person but as two separate people who give good and bad feelings. He perceives himself by dividing himself into the good me and the bad me. As the good feelings he receives from the environment increase, he eliminates this division around the age of 5 and becomes an integrated self with good and bad sides; an integrated perception of the other with its good and bad sides is formed.
Again, around the age of 5, he starts to realize that he has his own limits and the limits of others. He begins to perceive that people can think differently from him. However, these abilities are shaped by the relationship with the primary caregiver. If caregivers have such problems, they pass them on to the child. And these problems are passed on from generation to generation.
Unfortunately, not everyone goes through this period in a healthy way. As a result, the person experiences problems in the family and close relationships. A spiritually immature person remains a child, even as an adult.
The first solution is to notice the communication errors made. He may ask people he trusts to criticize him. When establishing a relationship, he can ask about the good and bad aspects. The comment from an outsider is eye-opening. Introduces one to himself.
The most important way to establish a healthy relationship is not to impose negative emotions. For this, the person needs to realize the negative emotions he wants to impose and work on them. As they communicate without loading negative emotions, the depth, quality and efficiency of their relationships increase. He enjoys his relationship, and learns and teaches.
If the person can stop, reduce and change himself as he realizes, he can continue his relationships without psychotherapy support. However, if these problems are too intense, they cannot be solved on their own and their functionality starts to deteriorate in business and social life, especially in family relationships. In this case, psychotherapy support is essential.
* Specialist clinical psychologist, Istanbul Gelişim University
