EP 352: How to Have a Healthy Relationship with a Family Member Who Isn’t Doing the Work with Dominique

This is episode 352. How to have a healthy relationship with a family member who isn’t doing the work with Dominic, welcome to over it and on with it. I’m your host, Christine Hassler. And for over a decade, I’ve been a life coach, speaker and author. Each week. You’ll hear me work directly with a caller. As I coach them through a goal they want to accomplish or an obstacle they may be facing.

I’ll provide a blend of practical and spiritual advice as well as tangible actions you can apply to your own life. Now let’s get on with the episode. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the show and I’m welcoming myself back. This was the first coaching call I recorded since having Athena and it’s wonderful to be back coaching and recording. I’m working very,

very little she’s only three months old. And so I’m still spending the majority of my time with her. I’m sitting here pumping as I’m recording this call. And my mom is in the nursery with her. I’m all tucked in the guestroom because my office is now her nursery. So it’s just a lot of transition. And I so appreciate all of you sticking with me through the maternity leave and hope you enjoyed all the episodes I prerecorded and the coaches corners re airs.

And you got to hear me on some other podcasts as well. So appreciate you so appreciate this loyal following. And I have an announcement to make, and I’m very excited about this. So in 2020, I said, I was going to do my last signature women’s retreat because it really felt complete. Maybe I felt the pandemic coming. I don’t know.

I just felt like that was going to be the last one. And so March, 2020, we had an out in San Diego in the spring and it felt really complete. But then the world changed. And this past year, specially since having a daughter, I have felt the call to do another signature women’s retreat. And it’s just been nudging me and nudging me and pulling me.

And so I’m going to do it. It’s going to be an October. Let me tell you the dates. Hold on. I got to pull up my calendar here. It’s going to be October 7th through ninth in Austin, Texas. And it’s going to be amazing. We’re working on the website and everything. Now, I just wanted to plant this seed so that you knew all you ladies out there that it’s happening the first weekend in October signature women’s retreat,

Austin, Texas. So I hope many of you will be coming today’s episode. Speaking of women is about a relationship with a sister. You’ll hear a Dominique really, really wants to have a relationship with her sister. There is a lot of family history. There is a lot of things that have happened in her life, but she really wants a closer relationship,

but our sister isn’t doing the work that she’s doing. So is it possible, can you have that kind of close relationship with someone when they’re not doing the work? So as you’re listening to this call consider, are you in a dynamic, whether it be family or someone else in your life where you’re wanting closeness, you’re wanting a more vulnerable, deeper connection,

but you’re just finding that the other person isn’t do you continue to be triggered in family situations or in a certain relationship dynamic that someone say something to you that often makes you feel rejected or judged or dismissed. Are you doing no work? And you feel like you’re making all this progress, but then you go back to your family and you feel like you just get triggered.

So keep those questions in mind. As you’re listening to my coaching session with Dominique, Dominique, welcome to the show. How can I help? Hi Christine, thanks so much for having me. So my issue is specifically with my younger sister. I’m currently in my second year of grad school to become a therapist and in this program. And then in this past year or two,

I’ve really dove deep into my healing, my mental health, my just getting to know me in the program has really led me to face a lot of my childhood trauma and my toxic family dynamics for a long time throughout my upbringing and my college years, I was really, I didn’t know, like I had this box filled with like stuff. I was just kind of existing.

I was just existing through the motions and I was people pleasing a lot. I was not really myself. But then this program has led me to, I had like a dark night of the soul type of experience, which ultimately led me to like what I call a psychological and spiritual awakening where I just like woke up from my life. I started to see new things.

I started to see like the dynamics between my family that were really toxic and that contributed to like my depression and my anxiety. But for context, I am the middle child. So I have a older brother and a younger sister. And then my parents and my parents are still together. My parents are immigrants from the Philippines. So I have like this,

the Asian culture in me, which is I grew up where they always brushed their emotions under the rug. They brushed anything uncomfortable under the runners. So very, very avoidant. Yeah. That exists in so many cultures. It’s, it’s an epidemic of the human species, but I, I hear you. It’s, there’s definitely that. I’ve heard that from many people that have Asian roots is there’s that pretend things are fine,

brush things under the rug. So, so what’s your question, cause I don’t need too much context. I’d love to get into the juiciness of your question. So pretty much I grew up with my mom and my sister really, really close. So I was always left out. I was always compared to my sister. Wasn’t the cute one. She was the cute one.

She was the one stealing all the boys and now she’s like TikTok famous. So it kind of reinforces that narrative that interferes with like my self esteem, which is what I’m trying to detach from and in my relationship with her. So she really struggles to empathize with me and connect with me. And it’s usually one sided where she talks about herself and I just listen and she patronizes me.

And I’ve tried to talk to her about all these feelings that I have. And I tell her that I really want a close relationship with her, but she just, she has cussed me out. She said I was too sensitive. She said it was too deep or she just wouldn’t reply. So I know it’s just like the avoidant tendencies from my, from my family where I am now is that I’m like slowly starting to detach myself from the hope of having a deeper connection with her.

And I’ve, I’ve had this hope for a long time and now I’m trying to figure out how to navigate my relationship with her because I do still do see my family, but it’s just so awkward and we’re we’re civil, but yeah. Okay. Okay. So when you say navigate your relationship with her, so there’s a couple of things, you know,

it takes two people for a relationship to change and it sounds like either she’s not interested in having a different kind of relationship or you haven’t yet enrolled her into having a different kind of relationship with you, which do you think it is? I feel like she doesn’t want a relationship with me. Okay. Okay. Would you say that your sister is more of the,

not wanting to dig deep, not wanting to unpack the box of stuff, kind of person like she’s happy with just keeping things as they are being on TikToK and just living in the now, not like wanting to look at the pastor to have those psychological and spiritual breakthroughs that you’re having. Would you say that that’s I would say that. Okay. So here’s the thing that is really important for you to know and understand,

and the emotionally and spiritually mature part of you will totally get this, the sister in you and the younger parts of you will still want a relationship with her. So there may be a little conflict. So let me say what I’m going to say, and then we can go from there. So in order for her to be close to you, she would have to start unpacking her box of Stuff.

And she doesn’t want to do that when you start to dig deep, when you start to be really honest with things that have happened in the family, with some of the dysfunctional behaviors and patterns that are in your family, and that are in everyone’s family, to some degree, your frequency shifts, your consciousness shifts and people subconsciously and energetically can feel that.

And so if they aren’t ready, they’re going to push farther away. And if you can have compassion and acceptance for at this time, Hersel is not ready to do the kind of work that you are doing. And therefore isn’t really ready or willing to have a closer relationship with you. If you can not take that personally, you’re going to have so much freedom and you’re going to really be able to navigate,

because what you’re trying to do right now is navigate the relationship by trying to get her to where you’re at versus navigating the relationship by meeting her where she’s at big distinction. So if you can meet her where she is, then you’re going to have a better relationship with her. But if you have expectations and desires of her to be more where you are or headed in that direction,

you’re going to be disappointed and frustrated. Hmm. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. It’s sort of like, I don’t have the same kind of conversations with my, you know, grown adult, best friend that I do with my five-year-old nephew. There’s a different level of comprehension. And if I went and tried to talk to my five-year-old nephew about challenges I’m having in motherhood or things that I’m going through,

he’d be like, what lady are you talking about? You know, I talked to him about Pokemon because that’s where he is. And I don’t take it personally. So yeah, go ahead. So my question was, which I feel like I have an idea of what you’re gonna say, but how, because when I go over to the family house and she’s there,

like she puts me down, I could feel it in her energy and the words that she say, that’s very like passive aggressive, but I can tell that she’s putting me down, which makes it hard. Like Give me an example. Like The other day I, I told her that I got a scholarship. I was telling my family, I got a scholarship and she wasn’t even happy for me.

She was like, oh, is this the same scholarship you got last time, trying to reason her way to like put me down or like, oh, it’s not even that big of a deal or success to make herself feel better. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, maybe not. You know? And, and again, you said, you said the key thing to make herself feel better.

Maybe she’s intimidated by you. Maybe she’s actually very insecure. Who knows because you know, she’s not doing that work. Yeah. So she said what she said, the problem was you took it personally. Now, now I’m not saying that, oh, we can just put up with people, treating us badly or saying passive aggressive things and just not take it personally.

We can still have boundaries. We can still speak up and say something like, I’m confused by your question. What do you mean? This is an important, this is a really important thing to me. Oh, I see. Okay. And get clarity from her, like call her out. Not in an attacking way, but more in a getting clarification because the minute she said it,

you were triggered. And when we’re triggered, we don’t always respond in the most mature way. We tend to lower ourselves to the vibration that, so if it was passive aggressive, when you got triggered, you went back down to that defensiveness frequency, which is kind of on the same level of passive aggressiveness. So let me ask you this. Why is this so important for you,

for your sister? Like you, why do you care? It goes back all the way to like childhood where we would be in like separate rooms for quiet time where we’d have to read. And I would just be like knocking on her door, like, like the Elsa and Ana type of thing. Like, do you want to be friends? But she would always push me away.

And I think I just always crave that. I knew that I wouldn’t get that like attention from my mom, but at least like me and my sister were in it together. But like, she never was in it with me and something about like female relationships and, and just struggling with that and wanting to have like the sisterhood. And I also grew up with my mom saying like,

oh, you’re we would fight. And she would like, you’re all, each other has like, like don’t fly and things like that. So that’s also embedded in me and Yeah. Yeah. Just wanting my sister, you know, wanting us to go through life together. Yeah. And I hear that and I hear the emotion there and that’s a beautiful desire.

It’s a really beautiful desire. I have a sister and I’m very close to her. And so I feel that, and you know what, it took us a while to get to where we are now. It took us living very different lives in our twenties. A lot of the time it took being, you know, living in separate states, going on very different paths,

but we eventually came back around and have the closeness. Now that I think both of us always wished we would have had, and we were always close, but there’s a different closeness now because we both mature. And so this isn’t not possible. It may just not be probable right now, because again, in order for you to have that closeness, she has to take down some of her walls.

And it sounds like she’s got a lot of walls and she’s mastered, especially when you said she’s took talking to him and she’s probably mastered many masks to protect yourself. And you might need to find some soul sisters, Other women that may not be biologically your sister, but can give you that closeness that you’re looking for. And in terms of nurturing a relationship with your sister,

except where she’s at and who she is. And when she says something that hurts you, not in a defensive way, but in a loving way, in a vulnerable way, say, you know, the way you said that kind of hurt my feelings a bit, did you mean it that way? Not in a defensive way, not in an accusatory way,

but in a vulnerable way. And just know if you want this closeness, you probably heard me say on the podcast, the person with more consciousness, basically the person who’s done more work on themselves has a greater responsibility in the relationship because you have more tools. You have more awareness. Yeah. Yeah. That is so true. I think they’re like a part of me is just afraid that like,

we’re never going to be close ever again because like, that’s what I see in my family. Like there’s a huge problem and it never gets resolved. And the fact that everybody brushes things under the rug, like I’m afraid that that pattern is just gonna continue inside her. And we’re, we’re never gonna be. And that’s just a really hard thing that for me,

Well, you don’t have to because it’s not true right now. You’re not dead. You’re not 95 years old. You have some time here. And remember what I said earlier about enrolling her into a better relationship, the best way you can do that is being a walking advertisement for doing the work. Let her see you be more loving. Let her see you be more vulnerable.

Let her see you communicate in different ways. That’s how we invite people into the work. We, yeah, we be it. We don’t talk about it. We don’t tell someone how to be. We beat Of course, people to do the work. Yeah. I find, I find myself every time I go to my parents’ house and my sister lives with them,

that I find myself going into the lower frequency. I get mixed up in the matrix of it because people are being passive aggressive. And then I find like, I guess the inner child in me, like you said earlier, getting defensive or actually I’m very nowadays, I’m very, just quiet. I just, I retreat inside because I don’t want to say anything.

I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. And it’s in this new, like higher level frequency. I haven’t, I live, I feel like I live in it with my friends and like people outside of my family. But when I’m in my family, I, I like can’t bring in. Yeah, well, you can. You’re just scared too, because you’re scared of rejection.

You’re scared of judgment, super normal. Give yourself some time. You know, it’s like, let’s say that I started taking guitar lessons and I started getting good at it. And I started getting good at practicing into my room and maybe playing with a few friends. And now I get the invitation to go out and perform in front of 500 people with my guitar.

It’s not going to feel the same. It’s going to feel a lot bigger when we are learning about ourselves and digging up old wounds, going back to the source of those is like playing that guitar in front of 500 people. It’s really intense And it amplifies everything. So be gentle with yourself and the expectations you’re setting on yourself. We tend to not regress when we go back to our family,

but we, we tend to be more sensitive to triggers. So what I’d encourage you to do is before you see your family and after you leave, have a little ritual that you do that before you go in, you put your hand on your heart, you put your hand on your belly and you just talk to yourself and you talk to the parts of you that are scared.

And maybe you talk to the little girl inside of you and say, this is the family I chose to come in and learn what I needed to learn. It does not define me. I’m no longer, you know, I no longer live here. Like I’m my own person. I’m on my own path. And I’m safe. These people are not my God.

You know that they’re not the source of my love, my approval, my validation, any of those things. Like it’s safe to be me and monitor too. A lot of times, you know, I tell people when you’re doing a lot of the deep work, you may have to limit the time you spend with family. And that’s okay until you get a little more embodied in this work,

but just know that there’s still, every time you see your family, there’s still a little girl in there that wants things to be different. The more you move into this is what it is. I accept what it is. And I’m not looking for them to make me feel any better, the easier it’s going to be. But can you see, there’s still a part of you too attached that is attached to wanting it to be different.

And that’s what makes it hard. Yeah. Every time I go there, I’m hoping nowadays I don’t hope as much because I’m more aware. It’s just trying to figure out how does stay grounded when You may not. You may not. And that’s okay. Here’s a better intention. Catch yourself. When you get triggered and go into the bathroom, take a few deep breaths or go outside and do whatever you need to do to make yourself kind of,

to bring yourself back to present day reality. Hmm. Okay. Oh, that’s I hope I’m able to do that. Cause sometimes I just get so caught in it. You know, that it’s hard to even distinguish when I’m triggered, because that type of feeling is like normal to me. Yeah. Well, well, but you’re able to talk about it now,

right? So, you know, you know, you’re not unconscious to it, you know, what’s happening and you might not be able to catch it in the moment, but like talking to me right now, you know what happens? That’s awareness. That’s huge. Dominique. That’s huge. So this personal development is not an overnight process. It takes time.

Let it be okay that you get triggered. Sometimes let it be okay that you don’t feel grounded and honor your boundaries, honor your time and find ways. You know, we grow through the triggers. The triggers is what is keeping you doing the work right now. And so you may need them because it may be bringing up different levels and different layers you’ve said yes to the spiritual and emotional awakening.

So the triggers are just moving you off. It makes so much sense. Cause I’ve felt I’ve been feeling super stagnant after that awakening. And I don’t know why I’m not moving forward. And I think it’s because I’ve been super avoiding to the triggers. I haven’t been allowing myself to be, feel the emotions of the trigger and move through them rather than completely avoiding them.

Well, there you go. Ah, there you go. I really have to put a brave face on, Well, let’s call it an authentic face. Yeah. And remember courage. Isn’t the absence of fear it’s moving forward even when we feel it. And so right now, this isn’t about your relationship with your family, as it’s more about your relationship with yourself and how you move through triggers.

And you’ve heard my, my infamous saying, you can’t go to a Chinese restaurant when you want nachos. You just don’t get them. And so no know who your family is and what it is. Find other ways where you can get the fulfillment and the connection that you’re longing for and find, you know, and you’ll have to experiment with different things that keep you grounded.

You know, for me, bathrooms have always been a good place to reset, you know, just turning the water on right in the water, looking at myself in the mirror, talking to myself, whatever I need, but that’s, that’s remove expectations of them. And you see you’re doing it to both like you’re, you’re wanting you to be different.

You wanting them to be different. Let’s just accept where everybody is. Again, when I say that, that doesn’t mean tolerate shitty behavior, you know, have your boundaries, if something rude is said to you with curiosity, ask what was meant by that and stop wanting it to be different Things change when we lessen our attachment to wanting them to change.

Yeah. And then if it happens, it happens. But yeah, the only, the only way for me to move through this is for me to accept things the way they are. Yep. Not complacency, But acceptance. And just focus on you nurturing the relationship with yourself, continuing to do the work, using the triggers to move you forward and setting the intention to call in your soul family and your soul sisters.

You know, I’m lucky I have both a biological sister and soul sisters And, But it’s taken work and intention. It didn’t just happen. Yeah. This is definitely what I needed. I felt really stuck for awhile. I’ve I’ve been re just hanging out with friends that make me feel good, but I think there’s always that part of me that didn’t know what to do with my family.

And I just been avoiding them and not talking to them and they keep texting me and I’m like, yeah, I’m fine. Yeah, I’m fine. But really, I just don’t know what to do around them. But now no, I, I feel like I have the tools. I just haven’t been applying them or practicing them. And yeah, Well,

you probably just needed someone to tell you that you’re doing great and you’re putting a little too much pressure on you and everybody else. And they’re going to feel that no one wants no one changes when they feel pressured to change and just know, you know, your family, they’re doing the best they can to, and all that focus and attention you’re putting on your sister and wanting her to be different.

Just bring that back to you and surrender. You never know when she’ll wake up, but in the meantime, just love a rose. She has. Okay. I really have to look past the past. The flaws. Just don’t look at them at all. Look at what you love. Look at what you appreciate. The more we look for flaws and others,

the more critical we are of ourselves. Oh, I see. I think that’s something that I haven’t, I I’ve been holding onto this story of like the negative part of her, because I’ve, I’ve been so hurt by it. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. And you may have some anger work to do, and I’m not minimizing your hurt,

but it is not helping. So deal with your hurt rather than wanting her to change and fix your heart. Okay. Oh, I see. Helpful. Yes. This helps so much. I’m like really excited now because now I have something to strive for instead of being avoiding and fearful of just even going to my parents’ house, I’ve been super, super avoidant.

And my dad’s birthday is next week. And I was thinking about not going and I missed mother’s day just because I was being avoiding. But now I’m hopeful. I’m really hopeful. Beautiful. So thank you Dominic for this question. Thank you for doing the work I love you’re on your way to becoming a therapist. It is such an important job. People need safe people to sit and speak with and do the work with.

So I commend you for that. And when we say yes to you being any kind of facilitator, coach therapist, anytime where we’re working with people’s emotions in their past, all of our stuff comes forward because we have to be it to help other people, right? We have to show up in a way that is embodied. You know, it’s like,

I’m not going to go and teach Japanese to someone unless I speak that language. And you can read all the books and know all the theories, but until you actually do the work and embody it, how are you going to help people? So this is great. Dominic is in the perfect place. She’s getting triggered as she’s digging up her stuff and she’s in school.

That’s exactly where she needs to be because she’s being accelerated so that she can help other people. So I’m not concerned about her getting triggered at all. It’s very, very normal to me. And I love that. We talked about some tools in which she could deal with it in terms of grounding herself while she’s there speaking to herself, speaking to her little girl,

taking those bathroom breaks. And when things are said to her that are triggering, responding in a curious non-confrontational non-defensive way so that she has boundaries, she gets speak up for herself and she may be gives people the opportunity to explain themselves like that comment, her sister made, maybe she didn’t mean anything by it. Maybe she the habit of the way that they communicate,

because that’s the thing. We get into habits of communication with people. And we teach people how to treat us. And often people say something and then I’ve realized the way they said it. And they didn’t mean anything, but the way it landed for us means something, right? These are the habits we get into. So calling it out. But if we do it in defensive or confrontational way,

then the other person’s going to get defensive and we’re back at square one. So Dominique is in this place where she is having the opportunity to practice acceptance. I like this is the way my family is. This is where my sister is and I can’t heal my wounds by expecting other people to change. And I don’t know if I said this to her so directly.

I don’t want to say to all of you, this is something I see. So often we do the work. We see the issues, and then there’s a part of us that get so attached to wanting people to change because if only they would change and it would be different than our wounds to be healed. So she knows she has this one with her sister,

and now she’s wanting the relationship now to fix pain of the past. Not the way it works, not the way it works. We can’t expect someone that hurt us in the past to fix our wounds by changing themselves. It’s an inside job. How many times have you heard me say that? I have to remind myself of that too. It’s an inside job.

So Dominic’s work here is to accept them for where they’re at. Her sister, her parents, everyone have her boundaries have her care. Fermentations speak openly, but not so openly that she’s going to be disappointed. Remember you can’t go to a Chinese restaurant and expect nachos. So she can’t have the same kind of conversation she can have with me or someone else.

Really in the work with her family, we have to meet people where they’re at. It’s like the example I gave between talking to my 40 something best friend or my five-year-old nephew. I adjust my conversation. I adjust my lag language. Cause he can’t meet me at the same place as my best. He could meet me cause he’s five. And if you can kind of think of consciousness in age like that,

like think of people in your life. You so want them to be different. And maybe they’re 45 years old, but consciousness wise, maybe there’s seven. And that isn’t a dig. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid. That doesn’t mean they’re less than it just means in terms of doing the work in terms of like earth school, that’s where they are so accepted.

When we constantly want people to be different, we’re constantly disappointed and we’re constantly triggered and we’re wasting a lot of the time and energy we could be spending on doing our own work by just hoping and praying and wanting them to be different. And we create the possibility of people actually being different when we’re different, when we change and we be the change that we want to see,

that’s the best advertisement for anyone to want. A different relationship with us is just be different. Be the you that you know, you authentically can be stop looking for them to give you permission, to be different, kind of you just be, you be the change. All right, everybody. That is a show for today. Thank you so much,

sending you so much love and many blessings until next time. Thank you for listening to over it and on with it. I love hearing from you. So please post your comments or questions at christinehassler.com/podcast. That’s also the place you can sign up to receive coaching from me in an upcoming episode. And if you love the show, please share it and subscribe in iTunes. You can find all my social media handles and sign up to be part of my community at christinehassler.com

until next week here’s to getting over it and on with it much love and many blessings.