Henry Cloud's Blog, page 12

How to Think about Your Thinking

by Dr. John Townsend

So how can you become a wise, sober-minded person of good judgment—one who thinks rather than reacts and routinely utilizes internal as well as external data? Start by becoming an observer of how you think. It may sound strange to think about thinking, but it is important and helpful. You can begin to pay attention to your thinking by routinely observing your thoughts and by recognizing any cognitive distortions.

Observe Your Thoughts—Without Trying to Control Them

Life is chaotic, and sometimes too much information can cause confusion in an organization. As a result, leaders are under great pressure to think with focus and direction. It is an important task. Sometimes, however, leaders interpret a need for clarity as a need to control their thoughts and keep them directed and precise. This is a problem. Leaders need to provide clarity to their organizations, but they need to also observe where their thoughts are leading and what they mean. There is much value that can come from observing your thoughts.

For example, think about someone in your organization who, when you are engaged in a conversation with him for more than a minute or two, your thoughts begin to wander. It can be like the movie scenes where a bored high-school student enters some daydream while his teacher drones on, then startles back to reality when she stands over him, saying, “Do you understand my question?” When talking to this person at work, you find yourself thinking about golf, lunch, or your date that night. As a result, you miss what the other person is saying and have to quickly catch up somehow so he won’t notice.

You may be tired. You may not be interested in the topic. But there are other reasons you may be thinking those particular imaginative thoughts. And if you understand those reasons, they can point to something valuable for you, the leader. For example:

He rambles on about details no one cares about, and he needs to be coached to be succinct.
He talks in an egocentric way about only his perceptions, and he needs to be helped to consider other people’s experiences and viewpoints.
You are annoyed with him about something, so you detach from him via your imagination. You may need to rectify that.
He is bringing you negative news you don’t want to hear. You may need to hear it anyway.
You can’t sufficiently detach from whatever you were doing and pay attention to him. You may need to refocus on him and return to the previous issue after the conversation.

Do you see all the potential these observations have to add value to your leadership? You can go beyond the symptom to the root cause and deal with it effectively. This is a far better use of your time and energy than not questioning your experience because, more often than not, the problem will only get worse over time.

The point is, you need to be willing to look at not only what you are thinking but how you are thinking. This process will pay off for you in the long term.

Recognize Cognitive Distortions

As part of observing your thoughts, you also need to be aware of ways your thoughts can be distorted or misleading. Psychologists refer to these biases as cognitive distortions, or patterns of thinking that aren’t reality-based and therefore hinder your productivity. There are several distortions that can hamper a leader’s thinking. As you read through the list below, see if you recognize any of these patterns in your own thinking and decision making.

Helplessness—the sense of “I’ve tried and nothing helps,” as if there are no choices available to you.
Passivity—a pattern in which you are afraid or hesitant to take initiative, so you wait for someone or some circumstance to provide the solution.
Negativity—a well-known pattern in leaders in which there is an imbalance of negative over positive. It is often justified as being “realistic,” but it is generally built on fear of failure, not reality.
Self-protective rationalizing—a scenario in which you are unable to own your own contribution to a problem or to see another person’s feedback as superior, so you rationalize your position to the point of uselessness.
One-solution thinking—the idea that there is only one answer to a situation. This kind of thinking is very limited and is usually produced by anxiety or a perfectionist streak. For example, “We need more clients in our medical center, so let’s advertise more.” Who knows, maybe it’s that plus community outreach plus better pricing plus warmer customer relationships. Sometimes there is only one answer, but most of the time there are several. The best thinking occurs when you look at various scenarios and play them out, either in your mind or with others.
False-self thinking—when you try to be someone you’re not by projecting an idealized or false version of yourself. You do this either to please people with that image or to keep yourself from seeing your own faults. It becomes a very restricted way of living and leading.

We all have some of these patterns to one degree or another. Identify the ones you might be challenged by. Then do a reality check with a couple of trusted and honest people who know you well. If the patterns exist, commit a thirty-day practice of reviewing the decisions you make each day. For each decision, look for any evidence of the cognitive distortion patterns you identified. Simply being aware of your patterns will go a long way in helping you to correct the problem. Once you are more aware, then ask a couple of well-grounded people, “How would you have thought about this issue?” Having others model healthy ways of thinking will help you to continue moving yourself in that direction.

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Taken from Leading from Your Gut: How You Can Succeed by Harnessing the Power of Your Values, Feelings, and Intuition by Dr. John Townsend. Click here to learn more about this title.

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What to Do When Your Teen Is Struggling at School

Make no mistake. Your kids are under more academic demands than you were. For better or for worse, the learning curve is steeper, and they have to study more than we did. Subject matters are more advanced. Projects, reports, and term papers require much more advance planning and steady work over time. If you don’t build boundaries with teens early, the situation can get out of control.

I (Dr. Townsend) can remember how jarred I was when my kids started bringing back homework assignments from junior high and high school. We were in a whole new world, and a much harder one. When I saw how far ahead my kids had to be planning their reports, I called my mother and said, “What do you remember about my high school days, like how far in advance did I write reports?” She said, “You wrote them in the car on the way to school.”

That is what I remembered too. Most kids can’t pull that off today. Ironically, this increase in responsibility comes at a time when an adolescent’s internal world is in chaos. Along with this increased responsibility comes an increase in pressure to do well. School matters more in these years. Your kid’s grades and education will affect the path of his life. This too is ironic. Just when many teens stop caring about how well they do in school, their academic achievement matters more than ever. These increases in responsibility and pressure often contribute to the problem of academic underachievement in adolescents.

Kids who have poor grades but lack the ability to make good grades are not underachievers. Technically, underachievement means that a student’s performance is significantly below her ability. Testing can show this at a very accurate level. Underachieving kids can do better in school, but because they aren’t motivated or don’t have the necessary internal structure, they don’t do better.

Academic underachievement may also be due to learning problems, attention deficit disorder (ADD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and emotional struggles, so have your teen evaluated to rule out these matters. (Motivation or structure issues can also play a part in these problems.)

Handling the Academic Problem

If you’ve ruled out a physical or emotional condition as the cause for your teen’s poor academic performance, you likely need to clarify your expectations and establish some consequences if she doesn’t meet those expectations. That’s the purpose of boundaries with teens. Here are some guidelines for how you can help your teen reach his academic potential:

1. Determine your teen’s motivations.

What matters to him enough to influence him to study hard? Some adolescents just gravitate toward studies and are more focused and diligent. They want to succeed because that is how they are wired. Others see how important these years are to their college or work success. They can tie in the future with the present. These teens don’t need a lot of monitoring. They just need for you to provide a warm and study-supportive home.

But some kids don’t care at all about these matters and need more help in terms of rewards and consequences. For other teens, progress reports and quarterly grades are too far in the future to really matter to them. They may need daily structures to help them stay on task; you may need to monitor the time spent on homework and the progress made.

Be careful not to require your teen to get certain grades, and then let him sink or swim. He may not have the internal organizational ability to last four or five weeks without someone helping him, and you will be setting him up for failure. Remember, the less ability your teen has inside, the more external structure and help he needs from the outside, until he has internalized that structure for himself.

So set up several kinds of external structures: help your teen stay on task by monitoring the time spent doing homework and how much he is accomplishing in each subject; get him into a study group; hire a tutor. Do what is necessary, given the need and the available resources.

Talk with your child’s teachers and ask for their help. Most schools are more than happy to help involved parents. They appreciate your alliance with them. For instance, if your teen has the chronic “I don’t know what my homework is” complaint, you and the teacher can work together to help your student improve in this area. You can have your teen write down the homework in every class, every day, in an assignment notebook. Then, at the end of class, have him go to the teacher to review it and initial it so that you know your teen has correctly written down the assignments.

2. Determine standards, rewards, and consequences.

Set out with your teen what his grade requirements and goals are. It helps to have three levels:

Not okay: substandard grades, which will involve a consequence
Okay: acceptable grades, which will result in neither a consequence nor a reward
Excellent: indicating extra performance, which will involve a reward

Then determine specific rewards and consequences for grades, which can range from monetary and privilege rewards to consequences, such as loss of media, decreased social time, and increased chores. Write down what you agree to, and post the list on the refrigerator. You may need to refer to this list often. Besides, when it’s in plain view, your teen will be less likely to argue with you about those rewards and consequences.

Also let your teen know that good grades are important. For example, say, “I know you don’t enjoy doing homework. It’s work, and I didn’t like it either. But it is part of your responsibility, and I expect at least okay grades from you. I want you to succeed, and I will provide as much support as I can, but you must do the work.”

Most schools give progress reports halfway between either quarter or semester reports. These reports give you objective information and time to help your teen with subjects she may be struggling with.

If grades are a problem with your teen, she likely has an unrealistic view of her success and of what is required. So don’t believe her perception that she has done her work or has studied enough. Check it, check it, check it.

3. Establish a daily structure.

If you find your teen doesn’t get to homework until late or not at all, set up his after-school day so that he has to get to his assignments early enough. For example, allow him about thirty minutes to chill out when he gets home from school. Then tell him it’s time to study. He can’t watch television, be on the phone, listen to music, or play video and computer games until he has done the work, including home chores. You want your teen to learn to postpone having fun until after he has earned it. If he fools around and doesn’t get to the homework until bedtime, it’s straight to bed when he’s finished.

You are the guardian of the schedule and of his sleep routine. Weekends should involve some study time too. Teens need weekends to relax and be with friends, but schools often assign homework over the weekend. Remember there are two, not three, weekend nights. Sunday is a technically a school night, so it’s not a late night.

You Can Do It!

If your teen needs a lot of structure, you may have to put more personal time into her studying than you thought. This may be difficult if both parents work outside the home, if you are a single parent, or if you have lots of kids. But even so, your teen’s needs don’t change. She still needs people, support, and structure. Check with other sources, such as the school, a church, or a tutoring service to see if they can provide someone to help your teen stay on task. While a parent is ideal, anyone caring and competent can help.

Finally, your teen’s lack of motivation or defiance may be beyond your resources. If that is the case, look into taking her out of the school she is in and putting her in one that is more suitable for kids who need extra structure. I have had friends with bright but unmotivated kids who have done this, and it has worked well. When the grades came back up, the kids could return to their former school. The structure helped, and so did the desire to get back in school with their friends. Military schools can also make a difference with kids who can’t be reached any other way.

Don’t let your teen put her future at risk simply because she’s unmotivated or lacks structure. Help her change things around. Build boundaries with teens, provide what she needs, even if it means going an extra mile or two.

_________

Learn more about how to handle other adolescent hot topics in Boundaries with Teens by Dr. John Townsend.

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The post What to Do When Your Teen Is Struggling at School appeared first on Boundaries Books.

Boundaries and Your Brain at Work

Remember the old saying “Come on, this is not brain surgery”? It was meant to convey the simplicity of an answer or a concept, and often meant to prod people to get off their butts and do what is obvious. That is how it is with a leader’s boundaries. It is profoundly simple. You do not have to be a brain surgeon to establish the boundaries that are usually made by a great leader.

But at the same time, underneath it all, it really is brain surgery, because the reason that a leader’s boundaries work is that they actually make it possible for people’s brains to function as they were designed. Said another way, if you are trying to lead people and do not establish effective boundaries, your people will not be able to do what you need and want them to do because their brains can’t work that way. You will build an organization full of geniuses who are producing brain-impaired results.

Why is that? Just like a computer, the brain operates according to certain processes that are hardwired or encoded in the system. Ignore the operating instructions, and the brain flounders. But as a leader, if you understand how the brain works and what will make it function optimally, you can create the right conditions to help your people be at their best, and when they’re at their best, the organization thrives and positive results stream in. Show me a person, a team, or a company that gets results, and I will show you the leadership boundaries that make it possible.

So, let’s get specific. What are these brain processes that the leader’s boundaries enable to work? Neuroscience has shown that when these processes are cultivated and protected—which is exactly what strong boundaries provide—good things happen. Let’s start by looking at what brain scientists call the “executive functions” of the brain.

In brain terminology, executive functions are needed to achieve any kind of purposeful activity—such as reaching a goal, driving a vision forward, or conquering an objective. The brain relies on three essential processes:

a. Attention: the ability to focus on relevant stimuli, and block out what is not relevant: “Pay attention!”

b. Inhibition: the ability to “not do” certain actions that could be distracting, irrelevant, or even destructive: “Don’t do that!”

c. Working Memory: the ability to retain and access relevant information for reasoning, decision making, and taking future actions: “Remember and build on relevant information.”

In other words, our brains need to be able to: (a) focus on something specific, (b) not get off track by focusing on or being assaulted by other data inputs or toxicity, and (c) continuously be aware of relevant information at all times.

Here is a little more brain science for you. When those three processes of the brain are activated, results happen because they enable the next level of the brain’s executive capacities, which are the ones you really want to have activated in your organization. It’s the brain on steroids, so to speak. If executive functions of the brain are working well, and people are structured enough to focus, inhibit, and be conscious of what is important, they can execute the following list of behaviors, which actually are involved in producing results:

Goal Selection
Planning and Organization
Initiation and Persistence
Flexibility
Execution and Goal Attainment
Self-regulation:

If you look at this list, it is not a leap to see your team or organization becoming one big brain, figuring out what is important, what is not, and getting it done through goals, plans, persistence, adaptability, flexibility, execution, and good self-management.

_______

Discover more ground-breaking principles to transform your leadership and workplace culture from Dr. Henry Cloud with Boundaries for Leaders.

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How Loving Parents Can End Up with Selfish Kids

Sometimes the most loving parents end up with the most selfish children. How can that be? We have all heard people say things like, “You know how Susan is. She only thinks of herself.” And many times, Susan comes from a nice family. But Susan’s parents did not set boundaries that required her to respect the feelings of others. This lack of boundaries led to egocentrism, which affected Susan’s ability to love. Having no boundaries in childhood can also lead to impulse problems, addictions, or irresponsibility, which is always unloving.

George sat in my (Dr. Cloud’s) office, despondent. His wife, Janet, whom he loved deeply, had just moved out because he had lost another job. A very talented person, George seemed to have everything he needed for success. But he had lost several good jobs because of his irresponsibility and inability to follow through. Bosses loved the talent but hated the performance. And after several family disruptions because of his failures, Janet had had enough.

“I love her so much,” George said to me. “Doesn’t she see that?”

“I believe that you love her,” I said. “But in reality, I don’t think that she does see your love. All she sees is the effect your behavior has had on her and the children, and she asks herself, ‘How can he love us and treat us this way?’ You cannot just love someone and not deliver. Love without the fruits of love is really not love in the end. She feels very unloved because of what you have put her through.”

If George was to have a chance of winning Janet back, it would not come through one more empty promise. He needed to develop boundaries to gain the self-control that would make him a responsible person. Janet was only going to believe in action, not just talk about love.

George had never been required to deliver the fruits of love when growing up. His parents were fine, hardworking people. But having gone through the Depression and a lifetime of hard work, they did not want George to have to struggle as they had.

As a result, they indulged him and required very little work from him. When they did give him chores and responsibilities and he did not deliver, they would not discipline him, thinking that they wanted him to have “positive self-esteem” rather than the “guilt” with which they grew up. Consequently, he did not see any negative effect on his loved ones when he did not perform.

But marriage was different. He was now in a relationship in which the one he loved also had requirements for him, and things were falling apart. For George to become a truly loving person, one whose love actually made a difference in the lives of others, he was going to have to become a responsible person. In the end, love is as love does.

Loving people respect the boundaries of others. Have you ever been in a relationship with a person who could not hear the word no? How did you feel? Typically one feels controlled, manipulated, and resentful instead of respected and loved. A controlling person steps over the line and tries to possess the other. This does not feel very loving, no matter how much the offender says he cares.

Loving people are able to control their impulses. Many alcoholics, for example, have great love for their families. Their drinking greatly troubles them, and they feel horrendous guilt. But still they drink, and although, like George, they love, the effects of their lack of ability to say no to alcohol ends up destroying the relationships they care about. Many other impulse problems—such as sexual acting out, overspending, food or drug abuse, and rage attacks—end up destroying love as well. A lack of boundaries keeps these behaviors going, which reveals how “loving” parents can wind up with selfish kids.

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Learn more about how to instill the kind of character in your children that will help them lead balanced, productive, and fulfilling lives in Boundaries with Kids.

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Eight Steps to Help You Avoid Falling in Love Too Fast

One of my (Dr. Townsend) closest friends, Chuck, is a talented songwriter. When we were college buddies, I was visiting him in his room one day. Chuck picked up his guitar and said, “Want to hear my new love song?” I said I did, and he sang me the following: “I love you. Always have, always will. What’s your name?”

I never found out whether Chuck was referring to his dating history or simply observing college romantic life, but I knew I could identify with his lyrics. I understood the ritual of intense professions of undying love, followed by the realization of utter ignorance about one’s beloved. In other words, too much, too fast.

Relationships grow in a healthy manner only as they undergo experiences, and there is no shortcut to experiences. In other words, we only “know” each other to the extent that we have experience with each other. We can know facts about the person we are dating: their friends, job, hobbies, and so forth. But that doesn’t mean we “know” them as a person. That kind of “knowing” cannot come from reading a file on someone.

Experience requires time. It is simply impossible to get enough experiences under your belt without spending a lot of time dealing with the relationship. Here are eight necessary time-consuming activities on the road to becoming committed to someone:

Having enough talks to safely open up with each other
Entering each other’s worlds of work, hobbies, worship, and service
Meeting and spending time with each other’s friends
Understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses
Going over basic values of what is important in life to each other
Getting to know each other’s families
Spending time away from each other to think through the relationship, alone and with friends
Learning your best style of disagreement and conflict management

It’s hard to imagine doing all these eight steps in a few months, because it can’t be done. Yet so many dreamy-eyed couples will say to their friends, “You don’t understand. It’s as if we’ve known each other all our lives. We were soul mates from the first meeting.” And, while I know people who have met and married quickly, I think their success is due more to their own character than to going through the process the right way.

For example, my Aunt Jonnie and Uncle Walton have been married over fifty years. I have seen his framed proposal of marriage to her. He wrote it to her when they were both in kindergarten! I guess they both knew each other was “The One” pretty early on in life. But I don’t think they would attribute their successful marriage to how early they committed. Knowing and observing them all my life, I think they would instead talk about love, the right values, their faith, and being able to go through good times and bad together.

There is no microwave dating that makes any sense. Use the eight steps to avoid falling in love too fast. Go through the seasons of life with the person you believe might be the one God has meant for you.

________

Get more helpful advice to build the best dating relationship and find the love of your life in Boundaries in Dating by Dr. John Townsend and Dr. Henry Cloud.

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Four Principles to Make Boundaries Succeed in Difficult Situations

“I don’t know if this boundary stuff really works for me,” Jill told me (Dr. Townsend). She was having problems with her 14-year-old daughter. Holly was skipping classes at school and had been caught drinking. Things were definitely headed in the wrong direction, and Jill wanted to act before it was too late.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, I sat down and told her, ‘Things are going to have to change around here. I’m going to set some boundaries with you. This is for your own good. You need to stop the ditching and drinking.’”

“What happened then?”

“She got mad at me, yelled, and left the room. The next weekend she was drinking again. I guess the next step is to send her to some adolescent rehab center—”

“Slow down, Jill. That may be in the cards, but you’re ahead of yourself. I don’t think you’ve given Holly or yourself a real go in setting boundaries. Boundaries aren’t about just giving someone their marching orders and then expecting them to salute. Especially teens.”

Jill had thought that simply being direct and honest was all that was needed to set boundaries. But it isn’t. There are four necessary principles that must be used in order make boundaries succeed in difficult situations:

Principle #1 – Love: I Am on Your Side

Always begin with love. To the best of your ability, convey to your teen (or anyone else) that you care about her welfare and have her best interests at heart.

Boundaries separate people, at least at first. Because of this, setting boundaries often causes conflict. Teens get mad and feel persecuted. They resist boundaries, because boundaries seem harsh and uncaring.

Love will help your teen hear what you are saying, accept the boundaries, and tolerate the consequences. This is true for all of us. When we hear hard truths from someone who cares about us, we need to know that the person is on our side. Otherwise, we are liable to feel hated, bad, worthless, unloved, offended, or victimized. Those feelings don’t lead to a happy ending.

To demonstrate love to your teen, tell her something like this: “I am on your side. I am not doing this because I’m mad, or want to punish you, or don’t care about you. I am doing this because I want your best.” You may not be feeling especially close to your teen when you set a limit, but love is greater than momentary feelings. Love is a stance, an attitude to take: you are on your teen’s side and for her good.

Principle #2 – Truth: I Have Some Rules and Requirements

Love opens the door to change but is not enough. Truth provides guidance, wisdom, information, and correction. Truth exists in the form of rules, requirements, and expectations for your teen. They are the dos and don’ts that spell out what your teen needs to do and what he needs to avoid.

Why is this important? Because your teen needs to know what the line is, so that he can choose whether or not to cross it. If there is no line, you won’t be able to blame your teen for crossing it. Sometimes a boundary doesn’t work because the parent didn’t clearly define the boundary.

By the way, if you feel weird or mean about having rules and expectations for your teens, you should see that feeling as a problem! It is not cruel and unloving for parents to have requirements for their teen’s behavior and attitude. Teens who have reasonable expectations for their behavior tend to do better in life, because boundaries are part of life. Adults can’t show up for work late, nor should they yell at their spouse when they’ve had a bad day. As long as the rules are appropriate for the situation, when you bring them into the relationship, you are helping your child see that structure and responsibility are normal and expected in life.

Don’t get mad. Get clear. Let your adolescent know what is expected and required in behavior and attitude. Write down your rules and regulations and post them on the refrigerator. Otherwise, when he feels you are being unfair in your discipline, he may be right.

Principle #3 – Freedom: You Can Choose to Respect or Reject the Rules

Your teen has probably exercised freedom to make some poor choices, and you haven’t seen much good come from that. But freedom is absolutely necessary, for a couple of reasons:

First, you can’t really make your teen choose the right thing. It can be scary to realize this, but realize it you must. There is a lot you can’t control in your teen. You aren’t present for much of her life, so you can’t control what she does in school and with her friends. Nor can you really control what she does at home, if you think about it.

Second, even if you could “make” your teen do the right thing, it wouldn’t help him develop into a mature, loving, responsible person. That is not how God designed the growth process. He orchestrated things so that we must be free to choose good or bad, to choose him or reject him. That is the only way we can learn from our mistakes, and the only way we can truly love each other from the heart.

Of course, freedom has a limit. If a problem is life-threatening or dangerous, you certainly should intervene. Intervention in the form of involuntary hospitalizations, arrests, or residential treatment programs sometimes has to happen in extreme cases. You want your child alive to be able to grow. But as much as possible, affirm and protect your teen’s freedom.

Principle #4 – Consequences: Here Is What Will Happen

Teens need consequences, because that’s how they experience a fundamental law of life: good behavior brings good results and bad behavior brings uncomfortable results. Depending on the situation, your teen may need to experience something small, such as having to do extra chores at home. Or the consequence may need to be a big deal, such as grounding for a long time with few privileges. But the idea is the same: consequences teach us how to be responsible.

Consequences should be both said and done. Your teen needs to know what will happen on the other side of the line. If you state consequences without enforcing them, you will train your teen to ignore you, because your bark has no bite. The next time you decide you need to have a boundary-setting conversation, be sure you say:

Love – “I love you and am on your side.”

Truth – “I have some rules and requirements for your behavior.”

Freedom – “You can choose to respect or reject these rules.”

Consequences – “Here is what will happen if you reject these rules.”

When you use these four principles, you are providing the stability, clarity, and motivation your teen needs to begin to learn self-control and responsibility.

________

Boundaries with Teens can help you establish wise and loving limits that make a positive difference in your adolescent, in the rest of your family, and in you. Click here to learn more about this book.

Get The 10 Laws of Boundaries eBook when you subscribe to the Boundaries Weekly email newsletter. Learn More

The post Four Principles to Make Boundaries Succeed in Difficult Situations appeared first on Boundaries Books.

Enjoy the Rewards of Boundaries in 3 Straightforward Steps

Jean used to believe that she would never learn how to say no and make it stick. But, as she sat at her kitchen table with a teacup in hand, she felt amazed. It was an unfamiliar sensation, but a pleasant one. Her mind wandered back to the events of the morning. Her eight-year-old son, Bryan, had begun the day with his usual waking-up shenanigans. He sulked and pouted his way to the breakfast table, announcing, “I’m not going to school — and no one’s going to make me!”

Normally Jean would have either tried to talk Bryan into attending school, or blown up at him in frustration. However, this morning was different. Jean simply said, “You’re right, Honey. No one can make you go to school. That has to be something you choose to do. However, if you don’t choose to go to school, you are choosing to stay in your room all day with no TV. But that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself, like you did last week.”

Bryan hesitated in his tantrum. He was thinking about when Mom had made him stay in his room and miss dinner when he had refused to set the table. Finally, he said, “Well, I’ll go — but I don’t have to like it!”

“Absolutely,” Jean agreed. “You don’t have to like a lot of things like school. But I’m sure you’ve made the right choice.” She helped Bryan on with his jacket and watched him walk to the carpool ride outside.

Not ten minutes later, Jean had received a call from her husband, Jerry, who had driven to work early. “Honey,” he said. “I just found out I have a meeting after work. The last time I showed up late for dinner, there wasn’t any. Think you could save some this time?” Jean laughed. “Last time, you never called me to let me know. I really appreciate your telling me in advance. I’ll feed the kids, and you and I’ll eat together later.”

Jean thought to herself, “My son makes it to school, even with a cranky attitude. My husband calls me to inform me about schedule changes. I’m dreaming, aren’t I, Lord?”

Jean wasn’t dreaming. She was, for the first time in her life, experiencing the rewards of setting and maintaining clear boundaries in her life. A great deal of hard work and risk-taking had gone into them. Jean saw visible, demonstrable proof that her boundary work was bearing fruit in her life. Things were different. But how did she get from Point A (boundarylessness) to Point B (mature boundaries)? Can we measure our boundary development?

How to Say No: Step 1 – Practice Baby No’s

Growth in setting emotional boundaries must always be at a rate that takes into account your past injuries. Otherwise, you could fail massively before you have solid enough boundaries.

“This boundary teaching doesn’t work,” complained Frank in a therapy session.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, as soon as I understood that I don’t set good limits with people, I called my father the same day and gave him what for. Can you believe what he did? He hung up on me! This is great, just great. Boundaries have made things worse for me, instead of better.”

Frank is like the overeager child who is too impatient for training wheels on his new bicycle. It’s only several falls and skinned knees later that he begins to entertain the possibility that he skipped some steps in his training.

Here’s an idea to help you navigate this step. Ask your support group or your good friends if you could work on boundaries with them. They will show you their true value in their response to your truth-telling. Either they’ll warmly cheer you on in being able to disagree with and confront them, or they’ll resist you. Either way, you’ll learn something. A good supportive relationship cherishes the no of all parties involved. The members know that true intimacy is only built around the freedom to disagree: “He who conceals his hatred has lying lips” (Proverbs 10:18). Begin practicing your no with people who will honor it and love you for it.

How to Say No: Step 2 – Rejoice in the Guilty Feelings

As strange as it may seem, a sign that you’re becoming a boundaried person is often a sense of self-condemnation, a sense that you’ve transgressed some important rules in your limit setting. Many people experience intense critical self-judgment when they begin telling the truth about what is and isn’t their biblical responsibility. Why is that? Let’s look at the answer in terms of slavery and freedom.

Boundary-injured individuals are slaves. They struggle to make value-based decisions on their own, but they most often reflect the wishes of those around them. And even though they can be surrounded by supportive boundary lovers, they still experience trouble setting limits.

The culprit here is a weak conscience, or an overactive and unbiblically harsh internal judge. Though we need our internal “evaluator” to help us know right from wrong, many people carry around an extremely self-critical — and inaccurate — conscience. They feel that they are transgressing when they aren’t.

Because of this overactive judge, the boundary-injured individual often has great difficulty setting limits. Questions such as, “Aren’t you being too harsh?” and “How can you not attend the party? What a selfish thought!” are raised.

You can imagine the havoc when the struggler actually sets a limit or two, even a small one. The conscience moves into overdrive, as its unrealistic demands are being disobeyed. This rebellion against honest boundaries is a threat to the parental control of the conscience. It attacks the soul with vigor, hoping to beat the person into submitting again to its untruthful do’s and don’ts.

In a funny way, then, activating the hostile conscience is a sign of spiritual growth. A signal that you may be protesting unbiblical restraints. If the conscience were silent and providing no “how could you?” guilt-inducing messages, it might mean that you were remaining enslaved to the internal parent. That’s why we encourage you to rejoice in the guilt. It means you are moving ahead.

How to Say No: Step 3 – Practice Grown-Up No’s

Think for a minute about this question: Who is your number-one “boundary buster”? Who is the foremost person in your life with whom it’s difficult to set limits? More than one person may come to mind. This step deals with those extremely complicated, conflictual, frightening relationships. Straightening out these relationships is a major goal in becoming a boundaried person.

This step underscores the importance of making sure we’ve done our painstaking homework and practice before now. Setting important limits with significant people is the fruit of much work and maturing.

It’s important not to confuse our goals here. Often, Christians who have been boundary injured think that the objective is to set limits on those important areas, and get life stabilized again. They may be living for the day when “I can tell Mom no.” Or when “I can set limits on my husband’s drinking.” While these sorts of confrontations are very important, they aren’t the ultimate target of learning boundaries.

Our real target is maturity — the ability to love successfully and work successfully, the way God does. Boundary setting is a large part of maturing. We can’t really love until we have boundaries. Otherwise, we love out of compliance or guilt. And we can’t really be productive at work without boundaries, or we’re so busy following others’ agendas that we’re double-minded and unstable. The goal is to have a character structure that has boundaries and that can set limits on self and others at the appropriate times.

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This is just the beginning to a major transformation! Learn more about how to say no and really mean it by reading The New York Times bestselling book, Boundaries, now updated and expanded!

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My Teenager Refuses to Change. What Should I Do?

I (Dr. John Townsend) have talked to many young adults who have told me, “When I was a teenager, I acted like my parents had nothing to say to me. I couldn’t afford to act differently. But inside, it mattered a lot what they said.”

You can’t predict how telling the truth and establishing healthy boundaries will affect a teen, nor can you predict when the change will occur. I have seen parents with a seventeen-year-old who would be moving out in a few weeks still make significant inroads with a rebellious and destructive attitude. Don’t let your fears and discouragement limit a process of growth that God designed for your child. Sometimes the right intervention, given at the right time, with the right people, can make all the difference in the world.

Even so, Let’s suppose you do have a teen who is not doing well and is almost out of the house. Consider the alternative. If you give up and go into survival mode, your teen has not experienced the benefit of being around loving, truthful, and strict parents and will be that much less ready for successful adulthood. Even if your teen resisted every effort you attempted and you saw no change at all, something good has still happened. In those last months and weeks, she has experienced and internalized some events that cannot be easily shaken loose. For that brief time, love, responsibility, freedom, and consequences were applied to your teen’s life in a way that was healthy and good.

As a psychologist, I have met many adults who blew off their parents’ help when they were teenagers, only to remember years later what had been done. And they know at some level that that was a good way for them to live. So even if you don’t see the fruit today or tomorrow, your teen will still have some memories of the way life should be lived. Take encouragement from the words of the prodigal son in the Bible who finally “got it”:

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’” (Luke 15:17-19)

Don’t count on getting an apology like that. Instead, fight the good fight of setting boundaries — all the way to the last minute that your teen is in your charge. Your investment of time and energy will not be in vain.

________

Discover how your teenager thinks and learn how to apply biblical principles to specific problems. Boundaries with Teens can help you establish wise and loving limits that make a positive difference in your adolescent, in the rest of your family, and in you.

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How to Cure Your Fear of Being Alone

“Just call him and tell him that it is over,” I (Dr. Cloud) said to Marsha. I had listened to her for months now about her dating relationship with Scott and how she could not stand some of his hurtful patterns. And I was getting both concerned and tired of her denial of the kind of person that he really was. I began to push her.
 So she decided to do it. She called him and broke it off. As expected, he went crazy and showed up at her door begging for her to not go through with it. There were all sorts of promises of change and the usual things that people in denial say when threatened with loss of love. But she held her ground. At least for a day.

Two days later, Marsha called and canceled her next appointment. I called her back and found out the truth. She had gone back to Scott and was ashamed to tell me. I told her to come in anyway so we could talk about it.

As Marsha talked, I felt for her. She described the depression and aloneness that she went into when she broke it off and held her ground. She felt as if she were in a black hole that she could not see out of, and she felt completely hopeless. It was really a dangerous state.

No one who knew Marsha would have suspected her inner agony. She was a strong person in the business world, a committed Christian, and a ministry leader in her church. Everyone loved her, and no one would have thought that she would put up with someone like Scott, or that she could be so devastated by breaking up with such a jerk. But the breakup had left her so sad that she could barely function.

As we worked on Marsha’s feelings, we found that there was a very deep part of her that felt very much alone and unloved, and breaking up with Scott was bringing out a deep aloneness that normally she did not experience. And, as we began to look at her history, she avoided experiencing this internal aloneness by dating men. Each time she would end one relationship, there would be another one, even though they would not be men that she would want to be with long-term. She just could not stand to be alone. And so, her fear of being alone kept her from having boundaries with bad relationships. She would rather give in to a bad relationship than have no relationship at all.

This is a key point about boundaries in dating. If you do any of the following, then you might be giving up boundaries because of a fear of being alone:

Putting up with behavior that is disrespectful
Giving in to things that are not in accord with your values
Settling for less than you know you really desire or need
Staying in a relationship that you know has passed its 
deadline
Going back into a relationship that you know should be 
over
Getting into a relationship that you know is not going 
anywhere
Smothering the person you are dating with excessive 
needs or control

And surely there are other signs as well. But the point is, your aloneness makes you get involved in relationships that you know are not going to last. It also keeps you from being alone long enough to grow into a person who does not have to be in a relationship in order to be happy. There is a very important rule in dating and romance: To be happy in a relationship, and to pick the kind of relationship that is going to be the kind you desire, you must be able to be happy without one.

If you must be dating or married in order to be happy, you are dependent, and you will never be happy with whatever person you find. The dependency will keep you from being selective enough to find the kind of person who will be good for you, or will keep you from being able to fully realize a relationship with a healthy person. If you are afraid of aloneness and abandonment, you cannot use the love of people who are truly there until you deal with your own fears.

So, aloneness must be cured first, and this is a good boundary for dating. Here is the boundary: In order to cure your fear of being alone, you need to put a boundary around your wish for a relationship. Cure that fear first, and then find a relationship. How do you cure your aloneness without a dating relationship?

First, strengthen your relationship with God. Make him your first priority so that you are not trying to get God needs met by a relationship with a person.

Second, strengthen your relationships with safe, healthy Christians. Make sure that you are not trying to get your people needs met by a dating relationship, or by God. Yes, you need God. But you also need people.

The best boundary against giving in to bad relationships, less-than-satisfactory relationships, or bad dynamics in a good relationship is your not needing that relationship. And that is going to come from being grounded in God, grounded in a support system, working out your issues, having a full life, and pursuing wholeness. If you are doing those things, you will not be subject to saying yes when you should be saying no.

________

For more great advice to help you avoid bad dating situations and build a great relationship, read Boundaries in Dating. Click here to learn more.

 

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How Healthy Confrontation Can Strengthen Your Marriage

When my wife, Barbi, and I (Dr. Townsend) were first married, we used to have conflicts about conflict. Looking back, it’s kind of funny as I later went on to write a Christian relationship book called Boundaries in Marriage. Imagine watching us have boundary conversations about how bad our marriage boundaries were. Barbi’s approach to conflict was to avoid it. My approach tended to be more blunt. We’d talk about a problem and it wouldn’t go well. One of us would misunderstand, we would pull away from each other, and the problem wouldn’t get solved.

One day, I asked Barbi, “When we argue, I never stop loving you. Is there anything I can do to make this better for you?” She thought a minute and said, “Maybe if you let me know you love me before you confront me, that might help.”

I thought that was a good idea, so I agreed. The next time I wanted to have a talk with her about a concern, I walked in the room and said something like, “Honey, I just want to let you know I really care about you and I hope you feel safe with me.” Then when I brought up the problem, things went better for her and for us.

This method of having successful conversations went on for a while. As time passed, however, something changed. I needed to bring up an issue, so I began with, “Honey, I just want you to know …” Barbi said, “Stop! It’s okay. I know you love me; just get to the problem.”

We had a good laugh about it. Over time, she had begun feeling safe enough not to need reassurance before each conversation. She realized that I love her even in the midst of confrontation, and she was ready to go straight to solving whatever problem needed to be solved.

When God created marriage, he gave us one of his best gifts. He provided a permanent and safe connection for a man and a woman to experience love, joy, meaning, and purpose together. Genesis 2:24 says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” God designed marriage to be a whole-person connection. This means that, more than in any other human relationship, every part of you ideally is to connect and cleave to every part of your spouse. The love you share should be complete as you intertwine your lives and emotions around each other.

Because marriage is such a wonderful type of relationship, confrontation within the marital relationship is very important. Who is better qualified to understand and speak to someone about a problem than the person who is living life right next to him? You are intimately involved with him. You see the real person, imperfections and all. His ways and actions affect you; you are not dispassionate about him. More than anyone, a spouse should be able to see what her partner’s true problems are.

Marriage is not about making each other happy; it is about growing and helping one’s spouse to grow. For instance, Ephesians 4:16 says good marriages are a large part of how the body of Christ “grows and builds itself up in love.” Happiness can and does come to a good marriage. Happiness, however, is a byproduct of growth and life. It is not the goal.

Confrontation brings empowerment, which is the ability to make choices and changes in your relationship. God created all of us to be change agents for each other. We have a responsibility to influence the people in our lives to be the best possible people they can be. For instance, 1 Thessalonians 5:11 says, “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up.”

Healthy confrontation helps us grow by making us aware of what we are doing and how our behavior affects others. God uses us to deliver the ingredients of growth to the people in our life. Part of the reason we are with whomever we are with is to provide those ingredients for those people. While most would agree that we can’t make someone change, it is also true that we can do much to encourage change.

As Barbi and I have learned to confront each other lovingly, directly, and effectively, we are often pleased in the change not only in our marriage but also in ourselves. We feel a sense of power that we can make changes and that we have choices. God designed all of us to connect and act, and confrontation helps put the “act” into the connection.

________

If your marriage is struggling or you want to make a great marriage even better, Boundaries in Marriage has the answers. Learn how to:

Transform your relationship into a haven of mutual love, caring, and appreciation.
Protect your marriage from intruders, whether parents, affairs, or addictions.
Handle conflict effectively without losing your voice in the relationship.
Develop a sense of closeness and respect that you’ve never felt before.

Click here to read a sample chapter, watch a free video, and purchase your copy today.

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