Most of us react strongly to family members—especially our mothers—but we do not talk to them in depth and gather data about their experience. We may know virtually nothing about the forces that shaped our parents’ lives as they shaped ours, or how our mothers and grandmothers dealt with problems similar to ours. When we do not know these things, we do not know the self. And without a clear self, rooted in our history, we will be prone to intense angry reactions in all sorts of situations, in response to which we will blame others, distance ourselves, passively comply, or otherwise spin our
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