Family life is challenging and all the more so when a particular family member makes you “crazy.” “My mother drives me crazy!” “My son makes me insane!” “My wife drives me nuts!” What do all these people mean? How do their loved ones drive them over the brink?

How to Alienate Your Loved Ones

There are actually some very popular communication tools that have the effect of inducing neurosis in family members. The purpose of this article is not to teach you these tools so that you can use them at home against your loved ones (sorry). Rather the goal is to help you identify when these tools are being used on you. By recognizing what’s going on you’ll be able to better maintain your sanity. You’ll also be less likely to fall into the trap of arguing and fighting. In a few cases you’ll even be able to get the crazy-maker to stop doing what he or she is doing.

In addition you may also recognize that you yourself use crazy-making communications on occasion. Some people use only one or two of these destructive techniques while others use many. Some people use them rarely while others use them constantly.

Many people use these techniques accidentally having picked them up in their own childhood homes. Some have developed them as protective interpersonal strategies along the way. However since their short-term benefit is far overshadowed by their destructive effects they are worth identifying — and losing — as soon as possible.

The more a person employs any of the following crazy-making communication techniques the more they harm their relationships with spouse and children. This sort of communication tends to break trust and alienate family members preventing close loving relationships. Because there are so many popular crazy-making strategies we’ll look at them in two articles. Here’s our opening list of popular crazy-makers:

1. Punishing a person for doing what you asked them to do. A wife tells her husband “I won’t get upset as long as you call me to tell me you’ll be late for dinner.” Husband calls to say he’ll be late and his wife screams at him “You know we’re having fish tonight! It must be served fresh. Why do you pick tonight of all night to come home late?!” He’ll wonder why he bothered listening.
2. Being impossible to please. A husband asks his wife to serve meat and chicken less frequently for dinner. She starts to supplement the menu with dairy and vegetarian dishes. He complains “This doesn’t taste like food!”

A wife asks her husband to tidy up the cutlery drawer when he has a moment. He does it that same day. She looks over the job and says “You call this tidy?”

In both cases the spouse ignores the positive efforts of the partner to comply with requests and concentrates instead on the flaws and imperfections of performance.

1. Denying something that has been discussed and agreed on. Wife reminds husband that he promised (a couple of months ago) to bring her mom along on their next vacation. He responds “I wouldn’t have said something like that! I never would have agreed to that. You’re making that up!” Some people chronically deny that they said things or agreed to things. In this way they destroy any sense of collaborative partnership in their marriage. They become untrustworthy.
2. Unclear communication. Mom says to daughter “You’re room is a mess! Make sure you clean it up before you do anything else.” A while later Mom enters the room to find Daughter hanging up clothes. She asks “Don’t you have a report to do for class tomorrow?” Daughter replies “Yes but you said I should clean my room before anything else.” Mother says “You knew exactly what I meant! I obviously didn’t mean before your schoolwork! I meant before you read your books.” This technique is related to expecting others to read one’s mind. Instead of saying exactly what one means one expects others to “read between the lines” and blames the other person when they don’t.
3. Refusing to accept one’s part in an agreement. A mother agrees to allow a child to choose his new glasses and then criticizes his choice (“Why would you pick frames in that color?”) A wife lets herself be “talked into” buying a certain vehicle and then blames her husband repeatedly for its various flaws (“You were the one who wanted this car.”) These people refuse to acknowledge that they freely of their own volition worked out a compromise or an agreement. They act as if they had no choice. The most hurtful version of this is saying to one’s spouse “Well you were the one who wanted to get married. I didn’t think it was such a good idea.”