How Roles Cause Arguments Insights February 2007

Lots of arguments, whether between couples or amongst any people, are about how people fulfill their roles. A role is any noun you would use to describe what you do or who you are: a mother, father, professional, labourer, son, daughter, sibling, friend, acquaintance, co-worker, spouse… there are many roles in our lives.

With any role in your life, you have personal ideas about how to successfully fulfill your role. Others may have different ideas.

For example, you may consider yourself a responsible provider if your bills are paid, or if you go to work on time. Another person might judge you a poor provider if you can’t buy an SUV. That judgment might happen even if you prefer an economical vehicle.

You might consider yourself caring because you are interested in people’s lives and care about what happens to them. Another person might consider you a worrier, or nagging, when you believe you’re being caring. (Every parent of a child over ten knows this one.)

You might consider yourself loving because you cook and clean and run around like crazy to take care of your family. Your spouse might complain because you don’t feel sexy at the end of a hectic day.

How many of your conflicts with others are because they have a different opinion about how you should fulfill your roles than you do? How many of your conflicts with others are because you want them to fulfill their roles the way you expect they should be fulfilled? Without tools to help, this kind of disagreement can escalate into an ongoing, bitter, and destructive difference. It’s bad for relationships and families, and even harder for blended families where roles are even more complicated.

But if you can identify the problem, surely you can find a solution? If only it were that easy. Your subconscious, which influences your emotional reactions and behaviors in ways that often feel uncomfortable even as you speak or act or react emotionally, has really strong opinions about roles. It believes you must conform to the rules of the tribe – and you have many tribes. In fact, it will want you to conform to rules of various tribes that have contradictory requirements, all at the same time. That’s impossible. The result is incredible stress that permeates your relationships with tension, irritability, even hostility.

How can you break that cycle of deterioration? Roles require several steps to deprogram, but you can certainly start the release process. Before I describe a useful tool, I wanted to give you one other important gem. When you have an issue that is part of a role, the role acts as an anchor for the issue. If you don’t release the role structure, you won’t release the issue.

Here’s an example. Say you’re aware that you’re a worrier, and have tried to heal that using whatever methods you’ve learned, or working with a practitioner, and feel dissatisfied with the results. If worrying is part of a role for you, perhaps part of your idea about how you care about people, or how mothers behave, or how conscientious people behave, then that role will anchor the issue and hold it in place. To successfully release that issue, you’ll have to release the structure of the role belief system. Once you’ve released that structure, you can successfully release the issue.

Now, the how-to part. There are always multiple ways to do this work, and I try to choose a tool that is easily described in print for these columns. Here’s one way you can work on releasing structures, and thus deprogramming those role conflicts and the anchors that hold onto your issues.

Start by sitting quietly and breathing slowly, focusing on your breath. Don’t worry if your mind chatters, just bring your attention back to keeping your breath slow and even. Think about this concept of roles forming structures that anchor your issues. How could you visualize that? If you’re not visual, think about feeling the presence in your body. It might feel like tingles, or pains, or tightness, or cold or hot spots. If you are visual, imagine seeing those roles, and anchors, and structures like wires or some other form of physical presence around and through your body. Take your time to notice either the physical sensations, or the imagery, in all the places it occurs inside and outside your physical body. Keep breathing.

Once you can acknowledge the presence, you can decide to let it go. The reason it’s safe to let it go is that your cognitive brain understands conflicts and knows how to resolve them in ways your subconscious will not. Therefore, releasing these conflicts from your subconscious is allowing your cognitive brain to deal with schedule challenges and juggling requirements without stress. After all, it’s just life, why stress out about it? Even if you make a mistake, it’s unlikely it will kill anyone.

Think about releasing your subconscious from these stresses and conflicts, and do that by imagining melting away those structures, anchors, and beliefs held in your body and your energy. You can imagine melting them away with beams of light, with liquid light that flows like water, with white light fire that burns them away, or with air that blows them away. Whatever feels right for you is fine. The important part is your intention to let it go: the visualization, or the experience of sensation if you aren’t visual, is simply a way of focusing your intention.

Keep the purge flowing until you feel you have released everything you could ‘see’ or feel. When you are done, let yourself breathe for a while, and think of that stream of energy continuing to flow through you to release any toxins and help your body adjust to changes.

Like any healing, you will release only what you’re subconsciously willing to release at the time, so it’s useful to repeat the process a few times until it feels really clear and no more images or sensations occur. You’ll notice a change in your personal interactions, and your relationships, as you release structures. As you open yourself to change, you life will get better and better. Enjoy!

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