When we are aware that we feel triggered by a family member, we can simply choose to excuse ourselves and visit bathroom. The bathroom is one place that we can be assured of our privacy, and we can stay there as long as we need to. We can use bathroom as a sanctuary where we can regain our composure and gather our strength so that we feel safe enough to return to battle. If any of our family members are indelicate enough to comment on how much time we seem to be spending in bathroom, we can always plead an upset stomach or a weak bladder.

TIP #4: LOSE THE BATTLE TO WIN THE WAR We have to be very clear about our objectives in terms of our family relationships. If our ultimate goal is to improve our family relationships, we have to be willing to stay focused on big picture. The most difficult lesson for most of us to accept is that in order to win war, we have to be willing to lose battle. Our long-term objective is to feel more safe and more validated in our family relationships. To reach this goal, we must help our family members to feel safe and validated. In order to do this, we must be absolutely clear that we are capable of meeting our own safety and validation needs.

We often experience our families as competitive environments. Our old blueprints tell us that there's a limited amount of safety and validation available, and that we must compete with other members of our family to meet our needs. We insult and snipe at each other because we can only feel safe and validated if balance in our accounts is greater than balance in everyone else's accounts. The more we care about earning other people's approval and validation, more vulnerable we are. When one of our family members makes a comment designed to make us feel less valid, we do not need to defend ourselves. We can recognize that this person is asking to be validated, and we can validate them. Sometimes, this means letting them think that we are less successful, accomplished, and generally wonderful than we truly are.

We must be willing to lose every single family argument we encounter. Letting our family members win argument allows them to feel safe and validated. As long as we remember that we create our own safety and validation, and we do not need to compete with our family members, we can lose argument because it will help us to win war. We must let our family members believe that they are right about whatever issue is, no matter how blatantly wrong they actually are.

We know truth. That will have to be enough for us.

TIP #5: ALWAYS, EVER, NEVER If we want to relate to our family members as they are now and not as we remember them being in past, we must eliminate three words from our vocabulary: always, ever and never. In lexicon of family "discussions," always, ever and never are relationship air-raid sirens. They signal that an attack has been launched and it's time to duck and cover. Specifically, we must avoid some of our favorite statements in our family relationships such as, "You always behave this way," "When have you ever supported me?" and "You never give me any credit." If we find ourselves using any of these words in a similar context, it's a red flag that we're focused on past and not on present. Likewise, when our family members use these words about us, they're relating to us as we were, not as we are.

As soon as we become aware that we are using these words, we must stop. It's likely that our use of these words has made our family member feel unsafe and invalid. We can apologize for having used one of these words, and acknowledge that we have been unfair. Something about current discussion has triggered an unpleasant association for us. If appropriate, we can rephrase statement, keeping it specific to present.

If we're on receiving end of always, ever, never statements, we can choose to respond, rather than to react. In middle of a family get-together, wisest choice is often to deflect statement, perhaps even acknowledge that statement may have some validity when applied to past, and then change subject. If discussion has uncovered an old wound, wound will still be there for us to heal at a more appropriate time and in a more appropriate environment.