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Dear X:
Your answer is fine with me and so I proceed.
You wrote in your last post: “Hardly anything is ever black or white.”
And “It would be just as important (if not more!) to know exceptions to a rule as the rule itself to pass an exam.”
This is the case in studying Law, isn’t it? A person not educated in it may think this or that case is simple, black or white, not knowing that this one detail he missed brings about an exception to the rule that causes the resolution to the legal case to land on an unexpected colorful spot between the black and white ends of a spectrum.
On the other hand, there are simple cases in a person’s life that are either black or white. Particularly: was a child approved of by a parent? Either yes or no, black or white. It is so because children think in either-or, black or white. They don’t have any other life experience than the one they are experiencing, nothing to compare their experience to, and therefore, no colors, only black and white.
Back to your statement: “I grew up in a totally normal family with NO dysfunctional relationship”-
“no dysfunctional relationship” is quite black or white, all or nothing thinking, isn’t it? Especially when “no” is stated in all capitals, “NO dysfunctional relationship”-
and so, I challenge it. Will you share about the relationship between you and your mother (one-to-one context), you and your father (one-to-one context), you and your parents (one-to-two context), your mother and father(any one of those four contexts or more)?
anita