What to do when family hurts you?

Managing family relationships and dynamics can be a very tricky area to navigate.  Something to consider is that traditionally, your family is the people you have spent the most time with throughout your lifetimes.  With that said, family members typically know you well enough to say and do things that “get underneath your skin” quite easily.  Whether it is their intention or not is a different story.  The most common issue with a family member’s doing or saying something to cause hurt/harm to you is a violation of boundaries and poor communication.  Here are few things you can do to increase healthy boundaries and communication efforts with them:

1. Build more understanding around your boundaries: When it comes to having healthy boundaries, one of the most important parts is understanding where you “draw the line,” so to speak.  It might be helpful to write up some of your own values that are important for you to maintain.  This way, if a family member says or does something that violates your values, you have a clearer understanding of how your boundaries are being violated.
   1. Know when to say no: if certain boundaries are being crossed, then it is important to communicate to that person that this is something that you cannot allow (we will talk more about healthy communication skills below). 
   2. Be aware of your own internal boundaries: oftentimes, we become offended or upset by our family members for doing so if people are crossing our boundaries.  Sometimes that feeling of offense or upset can cause us to act on those feelings and “lash out” at our family members.  This is in response to that hurt you experience.  Remind yourself that the goal is to teach this family member that your boundaries are important; lashing out at them will make it more challenging for them to fully comprehend the importance of these boundaries.  Take a few deep breaths if you need to calm yourself down first before you speak up. 
2. Assertive communication: As noted above, the goal in this approach to managing times when your family does/says something hurtful is to teach or inform them that their behaviors are hurtful.  So to do this, being able to communicate with them assertively is important.  The goal is to avoid being aggressive and/or passive with your communication.  So the best way you can do this is to focus on the action (or triggering event), the feeling (outcome), and make a request (setting the boundary).  You want to be as specific as possible with this approach.  For example, you might go to them and say, “when you said/did (insert example), this made me feel (insert emotion), moving forward can you please (request some compromise so that your boundary is respected).”