You can't change people. Or can you?
- Elfreda Manahan-Vaughan
- 23 hours ago
- 8 min read
How unconditional acceptance changes the way people relate to you.
I recently had a discussion during supervision about the usefulness of sharing client stories to illustrate some of the changes people experience whilst completing a coaching programme with me. It is something I have always struggled with as I believe that my coaching sessions should be completely confidential and I would hate for someone to recognise themselves in one of my stories. Ironically, I find this less difficult when I am teaching than in written form. When I am speaking I am able to amalgamate stories into one so that no one could possibly recognise who I am talking about and I also make sure I never share something in a place where even the tiniest detail could be familiar.
I think what I struggle with when writing or creating videos is that the content is more permanent and many of my clients follow me on my socials. With this in mind I will endeavour in this blog post to share some stories of how unconditional acceptance can and does transform relationships for the better. All stories are not related to any one person and will also use some fictional elements to ensure no person can be identified.
The emotionally immature mother.
Over the years I have had several clients who have come to me because of immature, overbearing and/or controlling mothers. Sadly, for many, these issues become even more pronounced when a parent is aging and, in my clients cases, their daughter is expected to take on the responsibility of their care.
The hardest part is often the awareness that this person is never going to be able to give you the kind of love and care that you so desperately needed when you were young. Also, for many, who are now mothers themselves, it is the confusion as to how they could be so cruel or selfish to their own children.
Angela's (fictional name) mother is in her 70s. She was quite good when Angela was young at caring for her physical needs. However, when Angela's parents separated she found that she became a shoulder for her mother to cry on and as she entered her teens became overly conscious of not wanting to upset her mother and so she kept her feelings to herself.
When she came to see me she had begun to wonder if, despite her own anxiety, she had avoidant attachment, as she noticed in her adult life she was inclined to withdraw when faced with other people's emotions. Angela was a natural fixer and seemed to spend all day solving other people's problems. This showed up in her job in HR but also as the one her siblings came to when they had problems to solve and now more recently when it came to her mother's care.
Her mother was typically passive aggressive and was inclined to play the victim when Angela was unable to visit. She appeared to create problems that caused Angela to have to drop everything to be there for her. She would forget to pay her bill and have her power cut off. Or she would miss hospital appointments and Angela would get a call as her next of kin.
The biggest issue arose when she had a fall and the hospital said she couldn't return home without help. Angela offered to have her stay with her but her mother said she wouldn't have time for her when she was busy with her own children. Angela arranged home help but her mother refused to answer the door to let them in.
The straw that broke the camels back.
When Angela came to me, she had had enough. She had visited her mother and discovered that she wasn't eating properly, had missed medication and had refused to go to her doctor when her friend called to bring her. Once again she was hospitalised as she was potentially anaemic and under weight. Angela was hoping I would help her to convince her mother to take some responsibility and then she could have less to worry about and maybe, maybe they could have some kind of proper mother-daughter relationship.
I'll be honest, Angela was a little disappointed that that is not how it worked. I helped Angela see how her mother's neediness had driven her to develop more avoidant attachment strategies. She could see how she hid her feelings (inhibiting affect). How she was independent and tried to do her best (compulsive compliance) and how she had fallen into a pattern of having to care for her mother at an early age, instead of the other way around (compulsive caregiving).
Once she could see herself in those patterns I helped her see her mother in the coercive attachment strategies. Her mothers helplessness (feigned helplessness), her childlike vulnerability (disarming) and her passive aggressive criticisms (threatening and punitive).
The next step was helping her to see how one fed into the other
Start with what you need and go from there
One of the hardest things for someone with avoidant attachment to identify is their own needs. The other is knowing how you feel.
When I asked Angela how her mother's behaviour made her feel, she typically fell into the pattern of telling me about the context and not her feelings. When this happens, if you ask someone how they feel, they will tell you about the event or what is going on. For example, Angela told me how her mother wasn't eating properly, how it was difficult for Angela to travel to see her when they lived close to 100km away. She told me about how busy she was. How her own relationship was suffering and how her two children were not getting all of her attention and she was worried they would feel.
What she didn't say was that she was tired or angry or sad or even hurt. When I guided her to notice how she felt. I could see the resistance on her face. Sharing and knowing your emotions for someone with avoidant attachment can be terrifying, because feeling vulnerable can feel helpless, when you have spent so much of your life feeling like there is no one to look after you and that you have to look after everyone else.
This is why it so important that I create a safe space for clients to share without feeling judged or that there is something wrong with them for how they feel.
When Angela eventually acknowledged her feelings she was sad but also angry. It took a large amount of time to help her to do this as we had to start with where she felt it and allow it to voice what she was actually feeling.
She was sad that she never had the type of mother than we are all led to believe we should have. One who will care for you unconditionally, who will be a soft place to fall and who you will not feel judged by. She was angry that if something happened to her mother that she would feel responsible and also that all this seemed to fall on her shoulders alone.
How unconditional acceptance leads to change.
One of the biggest challenges when someone has grown up with insecure attachment is understanding unconditional acceptance. If you are criticised or felt like you weren't good enough then you'll know what it's like to feel like there are conditions placed on whether you are loved. Unconditional acceptance means that you feel like you don't have to be something or a particular kind of someone to be loved and accepted. You feel like your flawed self can, and will, be loved anyway and that all the things you learn or achieve are just a bonus.
When you are hurt by someone it can feel hard to imagine how you can love them as they are but the first step to creating security is to stop trying to change them. This is what Angela set out to do.
She started by stopping telling her mother what she needed to do and started asking her questions about how she could solve her own problems. She asked her how she planned to live alone and what she would do if she fell or was sick or needed help. She asked her what was stopping her from going to the doctor. Instead of reprimanding her she told her that she loved her and she was afraid something bad would happen.
When she asked her mother to find her own solutions and offered to help her, not control her, her mother started to change. She agreed to go into respite care until she was able to live at home alone. She allowed Angela help her decide what food she could eat and easy things she could prepare at home herself. They planned when she could visit Angela and what was a reasonable amount of time for Angela to spend with her during the week.
I am not going to lie and say it was easy, there were several bumps along the way but for Angela it was different. For the first time in her life she stopped seeing her mother as a problem to be fixed and started to see her as someone who she could collaborate with the find solutions to her mother's problems.
A new kind of relationship
When the pressure was off Angela to fix her mother's problems there was suddenly time for other things. They started to talk about their lives. She talked with her mother about her childhood about her own relationships with her parents. She got a deeper understanding of who her mother was and what she was actually capable of. The biggest change happened when her mother started to ask her about her life and paid more attention to what was happening for Angela and her relationship and children.
Angela stopped feeling so angry, she was still a bit stressed but she gave herself permission to feel that. She also stopped hoping for her mother to be someone she wasn't and started to allow herself to love the person that she was. Although she was still sad for her younger self who didn't get the love that she needed, she stopped feeling sad for her present self for not having a mother that she could love and respect.
For Angela this was the beginning. She had the tools and understanding as to how to navigate her relationship with her mother and more importantly how to not make the same kind of mistakes with her own children.
Coaching gives you the tools
For most of my clients coaching is the catalyst for changing what is not working. Once a client has successfully tested new ways of relating to others they are happy to continue the work themselves. The hardest part is understanding why it is not working and practicing doing things differently. Once they achieve success then my work is done. The door is still always open for them to return when they hit a rough patch but for many the tools they have built are enough. Once you change the way you see the world, the world changes and once you treat someone unconditionally they change without you having to make them and that is because you no longer expect them to.
If this resonated with you and you think you could use some help with navigating one of your challenging relationships then let's talk, you can book a free discovery session and we can go from there.
Thanks for reading. I hope our paths cross again in future.
Love,
Elfreda
Comments