Snake Oil

One of my clients, who wasn’t willing to accept that it was how she was thinking about things that was the biggest player in the game, shouted at me in frustration “it just Snake Oil that you’re selling. You’re saying that I just need to realise that it’s my thoughts on what is happening that makes it real and that my sister is in fact not an awkward bitch but instead it’s how I think about how she behaves that makes it so! I can’t swallow this.”

I thought for a minute (particularly because this is the first time she had spoken about her sister) then I said tell me more about your sister.

She doesn’t speak to my mum and mum is fed up with her, and it is me that has to be the go-between.  

Why

Because they don’t speak to each other, they both bitch and moan at me.

Why is it your job to be the go-between?

Are you not listening, I said that they don’t speak to each other?

I heard you say that, and I also heard you say that you thought that it was your job to absorb that and be the go-between. It is this thought I’m challenging.  What would you like to have happen?

Id like them to start talking to each other, and if that’s not possible then Id like them to leave me out of it.

So, right this moment you can be out of it. You can stop thinking that it’s you that’s got to ‘fix them’ and no longer enter the cross chat with them.

Then they won’t talk and the family will be broken.

They don’t talk right now, and it’s you that’s breaking.  You can tell each that you love them and want  quality time with them but that you can no longer advocate for either of them.

I am scared then that they will never speak again.

They don’t speak now, and you have no way of knowing what will happen. You are creating possible outcomes and living as if these are real. How about creating an outcome where without the go-between they actually talk to each other?

To talk to people for the first time about how their thoughts paint the world that they live in is hard for some to take on board. They have lived so long in the thinking that the world is happening to them, that it is really hard for them to face the fact that they are the artist and the world they live in is the canvas on which they paint.

I followed up with her this week, and she has managed to extricate herself from the situation. She told me she spoke to them both and said that she could no longer be involved. She said at first, they tried to rope her in, but she just politely and with love says things like
“I can see this hurts you, and I hope that one day you can talk to her about it” then I change the subject. Funny thing is because I am not passing things on, the noise between them has quietened.”

Lastly her husband said that life in their house was now happier because the wider family dynamics were no longer ‘poisoning’ the atmosphere and that he didn’t have to tiptoe around the subject. This really hit her hard, because she had no idea that he had felt this way the whole time it had been going on.

Goes to show, if you don’t drink the poison, you don’t need the antidote.