Dear Junsheng:

You wrote about your behavior toward your ex girlfriend: “I did not call her names, physically, or verbally abuse her – but I have often been unable to keep my temper in check whenever I am in distress…I have also been guilty of shutting her out (silent treatments)”.

I suppose your mother gave you the silent treatment that time, when she didn’t speak with you for a few weeks.

When people experience distress, they respond in different ways: some respond in overtly aggressive ways, others respond in covertly aggressive ways. The loving way to respond, when one is angry at another, is in an honest, assertive and responsible way. To talk about it (not to execute the silent treatment), to gather and verify information (not to assume and automatically blame), to consider one’s responsibility for the problem as well as the other’s, and to allow oneself and the other the opportunity to correct their behavior, when wrong.

If you hold on to the perception that your parents are “absolutely wonderful people”, then you figure that your impatience with them is evidence that there is something fundamentally wrong with you, that you are an unloving man, a bad person, perhaps.

It is a big step toward mental health and future healthy and loving relationships to figure see reality more and more closely to what it is. It is only when you see your parents as less than absolutely wonderful, perfectly perfect, that you are able to see yourself as one who was born good and loving.

anita