The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner

All quotes from Harriet's book

Our anger may be a signal that we are doing more and giving more than we can comfortably do or give.

De-selfing means that too much of one's self (including thoughts, wants, beliefs, and ambitions) is "negotiable" under pressures from the relationship.

We all recognize intellectually that repeating our ineffective efforts achieves nothing and can even make things worse.  Yet, oddly enough, most of us continue to do more of the same, especially under stress.

Repeating the same old fights protects us from the anxieties we are bound to experience when we make a change. Ineffective fighting allows us to stop the clock when our efforts to achieve greater clarity become too threatening. Sometimes staying stuck is what we need to do until the times comes when we are confident that it is safe to get unstuck.

Opposites do attract, but they do not always live happily every after.

When emotional intensity is high in a family, most of us put the entire responsibility for poor communication on the other person…. We disown our own part in the interactions we complain of, and, with it, our power to bring about a change. 

Venting anger does not solve the problem that anger signals.

Anger is a tool for change when it challenges us to become more of an expert on the self and less of an expert on others.

If we feel chronically angry or bitter in an important relationship, this is a signal that too much of the self has been compromised.

Recognize our lack of clarity is not a weakness but an opportunity, a challenge, and a strength. 

Our anger can be a powerful vehicle for personal growth and change if it does nothing more than help us recognize that we are not yet clear about something and that it is our job to keep struggling with it. 

Diagnosing the other person is a favorite pastime for most of us when stress is high.

All of us inherit the unsolved problems of our past; and whatever we are struggling with has its legacy in the struggles of prior generations. 

We begin to use our anger as a vehicle for change when we are able to share our reactions without holding the other person responsible for causing our feelings, and without blaming ourselves for the reactions that other people have in response to our choices and actions. 

There is nothing wrong with giving another person advice ("This is what I think…"or, "In my experience, this has worked for me") as long as we recognize that we are stating an opinion that may or may not fit for the other person.  We start to overfunction, however, when we assume that we know what's best for the other person and we want them to do it our way.

If we are dealing with depressed or underfunctioning individuals, the least helpful thing we can do is to keep focusing on their problems and trying to be helpful.  The most helpful thing we can do is begin to share part of our own underfunctioning side.

Don't expect change to come about from hit-and-run confrontations.

Distinguish between privacy and secrecy. 

Most of us react to other family members, but we do not know them.

The Dance of Connection by Harriet Lerner

All quotes from Harriet's book

In many situations wisdom lies in being strategic rather than spontaneous.  This is especially true when we're dealing with a difficult person, a hot issue, or a tense situation.

Truth telling, like peacemaking, doesn't just bloom in our midst.  Sometimes it has to be plotted and planned.

We can usually be more supportive to distressed persons we love simply by caring about them -- by being emotionally present with out pulling back from their pain and without trying to take it away.

Rushing in to offer advice -- or to cheer someone up -- may reflect our own inability to remain emotionally present in the face of another person's problems and pain, or to experience our own.

We need to listen carefully to the wisdom of our symptoms and to try to decode their meaning, because some of us have learned to settle, to fall silent, to deny that unfair circumstances exist or matter, and then to call our compromises "life".  But our bodies, our deeper unconscious selves, remain harder to fool. 

Our family is the deck of cards fate handed us, giving us virtually no say whatsoever about where we landed.

With age comes more discernment, more knowledge of the self, and less willingness to compromise or betray the self to keep relationships calm -- or to keep them at all. 

The recognition at midlife that the future doesn't stretch our forever challenges us to figure out what really matters and to speak wisely.

When we're drowning in emotions, it's impossible to think creatively or clearly.  We may think we're thinking, but in reality we're just reacting.

Come to understand that the other person's insensitive response is fueled by anxiety and history -- not lack of love.

The challenge of intimacy tends not to evoke our most mature selves.

The clarity of our voice rests on the clarity of our self-awareness.

A bottom-line position evolves from a focus on the self, from a deeply felt awareness -- which one cannot fake, pretend, or borrow -- of what we need and feel entitled to, and the limits of our tolerance.

Honesty is the only foundation on which trust can be built.

Silence and stonewalling are simply ways of managing intense emotional reactivity.

Kindness, timing, and tact are not the opposite of honesty: rather they are precisely what makes honesty possible with the most difficult people and in the most difficult circumstances.

No one person creates the pattern in which all the other family members participate.

We need to be able to listen before we can get our own message across.

If you want a recipe for failure in any important relationship, just dig in your heels and refuse to change yourself until after the other person shapes up.

Having an authentic voice is not about speaking from a place of angry reactivity, righteousness, or criticism.  Rather, it's about constructing a more solid and whole self, modeling the behavior we want from others, and thinking about relationship problems with clarity, creativity, and wisdom.

Our conversations invert us.  Through our speech and our silence, we become smaller or larger selves.  Through our speech and our silence, we diminish or enhance the other person, and we narrow or expand the possibilities between us.