“Ask yourself what you’re really trying to get from the other person in this interaction. Be honest. If it’s your parent, do you want your parent to listen to you? Understand you? Regret his or her behavior? Apologize to you? Make amends? If your goal involves empathy or a change of heart on your parent’s part, stop right there and come up with a different goal—one that’s specific and achievable. Remember, you can’t expect immature, emotionally phobic people to be different from how they are. However, you can set a specific goal for the interaction. Identify the specific outcome you want from each interaction and set it as a goal. Here are some examples: “I express myself to my mother even though I’m nervous.” “I tell my parents I’m not coming home for Christmas.” “I ask my father to talk nicely to my children.” Your goal might be just to express your feelings. This is achievable because you can ask others to listen, even though you can’t make them understand. Or your goal might be as simple as reaching an agreement about where the family will have Thanksgiving dinner. The key is to go into the interaction always knowing the end point you wish to arrive at.”