The Dance of Connection: How to Talk to Someone When You're Mad, Hurt, Scared, Frustrated, Insulted, Betrayed, or Desperate

by Harriet Lerner

One mother ran a stop sign and hit another car, with her sixteen-year-old daughter in the passenger seat next to her. The mother escaped with minor bruises, but her daughter sustained serious injuries that required two surgeries and a long period of rehabilitation. Of course, the mother was beside herself with guilt, grief, and remorse. She also dreaded her daughter’s unspoken anger. Several times a day, this mother would tell her daughter how sorry she was and how she would never forgive herself. When the daughter expressed emotional or physical distress, the mother would say, “If only it was me, not you. I’d give anything to change places with you!” The daughter began to feel angry, crowded, and disempowered by her mother’s constant focus on how painful it was to see her suffer. “Enough already!” she shouted at her mother one morning. “This is my suffering, and I’ll deal with it. Go take your suffering someplace else.” The mother, to her credit, got the message and entered therapy to cope with her guilt.