The Art of Conversation

[the_geneticist]

I've gotten to a point where I only engage when I feel I can handle it. It doesn't really tear me up inside much anymore. It can still be frustrating, so I pick my battles so as not to get exhausted.

There was a bit of a transitional period during which threatening never to speak to me again was having less and less effect. When I was a kid and they said that, it felt like my whole world was collapsing. Now, if it actually happened, I'd be sad, but not devastated.

When I got harder to manipulate, they started to back off a bit and soften their approach somewhat. Maybe threatening to disown me was a bluff used to control me. Maybe they realized not having me in their lives is lonelier than they thought it would be. I don't know.

The fact that they have made some concessions is why I'm low-contact with them instead of no-contact. It's also why I'm willing to attempt an honest conversation once in a while to see if we can attempt to improve the relationship. And I grant my dad more chances than I do my mom because he has been more willing to make an effort (even if he still has anger issues).

I would never have attempted such a conversation with my mom, as it's probably a lost cause. But my dad is the one who always encouraged my educational pursuits, and taught be to value logic and skepticism. He always supported my interest in science and expressed pride as I matured and honed my ability to think critically. It's one of the things I'm most grateful for to him as a dad. So, it's baffling to me that he is so quick to jump to conclusions after merely skimming a headline, and that he's so defensive about being challenged.

He was also the parent who most helped me develop a sense of ethics and integrity. So, it's hard for me to reconcile this with the possibility that he is being consciously manipulative and dishonest with me.

Your presence in their life is the one thing you can leverage.  Treat their temper tantrums like you would in a toddler - ignore it and walk away.  You can say "You are upset. Let's talk later when you calm down."  Then hang up the phone and put it on silent.

[Hegemony]

My guess is that he is not being consciously manipulative and dishonest. His emotions are so big and scary to him that they are driving the bus.

Do you happen to know Jonathan Haidt's excellent book The Happiness Hypothesis? He uses the image of the rider and the elephant. The rider is the intellect. The elephant is the emotional response system. The rider, sitting on top, likes to think he's in charge. But when the elephant/emotions panic, they carry the rider far off course.

So I'd guess that being wrong is a huge taboo and danger in your father's mind. One reason I'm guessing this is that my mother was the same way. She would tie herself in knots refusing to look wrong — distracting the conversation, changing the subject, making ridiculous assertions ("I never said that!" — when she'd said it five minutes before). Somewhere in the past, all her value had become tied up in being right, and being wrong meant devastation. And if she was going to be wrong, only she could announce it — woe betide anyone else who tried to say she was wrong, however gently and innocently. Does that sound like your father at all?

It is painful to see our parents so flawed, so overtaken by emotion rather than reason, and frankly, so frightened. It's very hard to detach from it.

And one thing that happens in these situations is that they are responding wholly to their own internal state, not really to an interaction with us. They may be having an interaction with us, but they cannot calibrate themselves to respond to us in those circumstances, only to themselves. So it can feel like being invisible or erased. And when our parents are powerful forces in our lives (as they typically are), it feels as if they are not only treating us as invisible, but making us invisible. In fact I think those parents who have never matured themselves, like yours and like my mother, are harder to detach from — they never helped us form wholly independent identities. Then it's up to us to form them for ourselves, and not to erase ourselves, even if they are not capable of fully responding to us.

Hang in there, SCR.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

I'm just here to offer support, scr. You can do this. You're not alone.

[Anselm]

Ok so here's my defense of interrupters...

It isn't necessarily about rudeness. It certainly can be, however, it can just be a conversational style that yours doesn't mesh well with. If this is something you are encountering a lot, it also might be worth considering if you could be playing a role in the dynamic. It would be nice if your PI could take the time to read the whole email before responding, but it could be that you have a tendency to bury the lede in your writing or your conversation?

I imagine that the rules vary across cultures and among the different social classes within one culture.

[Morden]

Hi SCR, I think Hegemony is on to something really important here. Your dad probably isn't being deliberately manipulative, but he may be scared of being wrong--which drives his reactions to you. The reason he's scared of being wrong may be something that has been with him for his whole life (maybe because of his own upbringing), or it may be driven by changes brought about by aging, or it may be a combination of the two. But it has very little to do with you or what you said/didn't say.
A therapist once recommended The Narcissistic Family (Donaldson-Pressman & Pressman) to me; I am not suggesting that your family is narcissistic, but I found it helpful when thinking through some of my own family dynamics.