Words,words,words...

How difficult it is to get your point of view across to someone who insists on personalizing everything you tell them as darts thrown at them? My client's daughter was due for her driving license renewal, and she was too close to the expiry date for her to go for the test. What started off as a discussion on the subject turned out to be quite an ugly debate on who is to take the blame for this delay. My client insisted on substituting the word blame with the word responsibility. When her daughter tearfully said that she felt nervous when her father sat near her when she was driving, he started a long-winded explanation of how he has always encouraged her and how could she accuse him of discouraging her. Her trying to tell him that feeling nervous and feeling nervous were two separate feelings, did not seem to get across. He kept insisting that he had no part to play in the situation that existed, while her exercise was to try and identify each one's contribution to the current state of affairs. There were two points she said she wanted to clarify. The first was that it was not an exercise at blame game. She stated she took the responsibility of not following up for getting enough practice classes for her. She also took the responsibility of not making sure she realized the importance of doing this at the right time so that she does not work on a crisis management system. She was also specific that her daughter owns up to her share of not doing what she had to : her taking onus of making sure she was ready for the test. Being a very responsible person, capable of being trusted to do her own thing, it was definitely a lapse on her part, especially since it was happening the second time. This was the learning for her, and the reason for this insistence was that she wanted to be sure the child understood that. It takes a lot to do that : own up to your shortcomings. My client was ready to label herself a nag, as she tends to continue reminding people to do something they are supposed to; She also apologized for not having followed up, as she could have, even at the cost of reinforcing that label, avoided this situation ; and ended the discussion by again apologizing for any hurts that may have been caused during the confrontation. But the father refused to be compliant. He insisted on believing that when she said she was nervous, he was discouraging her. He also insisted on believing that there was absolutely nothing he could have done to salvage the situation, and went off on a tangent of how he cannot do anything, without feeling he is being targeted. My client just gave up. And realized that when we are faced with any set of situation, rather than learning from what happened, all we do is resort to fault finding and digging into our deep boxes of revenge and start hurling the darts at each other. What kind of conflict resolution is that ? And then we blame the universe for sending us lessons again and again, when we do not learn the first time over! I guess that was my learning ! Mohana Narayanan May 17,2012