Helping our patients who have strict rigid rules that are unworkable for them

I’ve seen a number of folks recently who have very strong values around equality, fairness, peace and external harmony.

With these values, they have created some very strict “life rules” around these including life should be fair, people should be considerate, people should be nice, people should care, and people should not be argumentative. There are lots of “should and must” in their rules.

Unsurprisingly, they hate conflict, fear conflict, and are very conflict avoidant.

These values are of course very valuable. But the strict rules that they have created around these values are becoming unworkable for them within their context.

So how can we help?

We acknowledge their experience. 

We give them the emotional literacy to understand, appreciate, defuse and hold space for their emotional experiences.

We help them to change the rules but still honor their values for workability in their role, context and environment.

I hope you know what I mean.