Family: The Challenge of Families

The Challenge of Families

Written by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

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Title: The Challenge of Families Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D. E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com Copyright: © 2005 by Margaret Paul URL: http://www.innerbonding.com Word Count: 709 Category: Relationships, Family

The Challenge of Families By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Angie grew up in a family where she was repparttar 110208 caretaker. The oldest of four, Angie was repparttar 110209 only member of her family capable of deep caring, empathy and compassion. As a result, she was always attempting to protect her brother and sisters from her father’s physical and emotional abuse. Even her mother learned to turn to her for help and protection. Because everyone learned to rely on Angie, when things didn’t turn out repparttar 110210 way they wanted, Angie was repparttar 110211 one they blamed.

Angie became an invisible child. Because of her acute sensitivity to other’s feelings and needs, her feelings and needs went unnoticed. Everyone in her family wanted to take from her, but no one wanted to give to her. Angie was not a happy child.

As an adult, Angie did much inner healing work. She discovered that she had been ignoring her own feelings and needs while caretaking others. As she learned to take loving care of herself and let go of taking responsibility for everyone else’s feelings and needs, her family became furious with her. How dare she take care of herself instead of them! The blame that Angie had always experienced from her family intensified. Nothing Angie said had any impact on her family’s behavior toward her. They refused to support her in taking care of herself. They just wanted her back in repparttar 110212 old system.

Angie finally decided that, although she loved her family, she needed to disengage from them. She realized that it was not loving to herself to allow her family to continue to treat her badly. She was unwilling to continue repparttar 110213 old family system, and she realized that she had no control over how her family treated her. Angie broke almost all communication with her family for three years.

Of course, this caused her parents and siblings to blame her even more. During repparttar 110214 few times that Angie communicated with her mother, repparttar 110215 hostility was extreme. “What is repparttar 110216 matter with you? Have you gone nuts? How can you abandon your family? You are being so selfish! Don’t you care about us?” Angie knew that it was useless to try to explain. Her mother didn’t really want to know repparttar 110217 answers to these questions – she just wanted to have control over Angie.

Developing Your Child's Compassion

Written by Anil Vij

Character is a set of qualities, or values, that shape our thoughts, actions,reactions and feelings. People with strong character show compassion are honest and fair display self-discipline in setting and meeting goals make good judgments,show respect to othersshow courage in standing up for beliefs have a strong sense of responsibility are good citizens who are concerned for their community maintain self-respect.

Compassion

Compassion, or empathy, means identifying with and being concerned about other people's feelings and needs. It provides repparttar emotional root for caring about other people. It allows us to be understanding and tolerant of different points of views and beliefs, it makes us aware of repparttar 110206 suffering of others, and it allows us to empathize with them or to feel their suffering as our own.

Compassion also allows us to feel joy and excitement--rather than anger and despair--at other people's successes and achievements.

Babies may begin to cry when they hear other sounds of crying, and coo and laugh when they hear others making happy sounds. By repparttar 110207 age of three, many children will make an effort to hug or comfort another child or a parent who seems upset. As children grow, compassion can guide their actions and behaviors in positive ways. They underst and that by doing something wrong, they cause others pain or unhappiness.

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