Can a young woman change the conversation with her angry dad?

A young woman I know told me she’s tired of receiving angry texts from her father. She used to have a good relationship with him despite their political differences, but now their relationship consists solely of these texts. She wants to mend the relationship, but she was stuck and didn’t know what to do, so she asked for my help. She warned me, though, that she fears the relationship might be too far gone.

Her father’s latest text to her was about how he wanted to protect himself against immigrants that might take away everything he’s worked for.

Here’s what I said to her:

“The fact that your father has shared that he's afraid is a huge opening. Men don't often talk about their fears, so this can be an opportunity to build your relationship with your dad beyond you being the child and him being the father. You can be peers in this conversation.

Personally, I feel sad that he’s afraid immigrants are going to steal what he’s earned. If you can empathize with his fear, then you might be able to get him to talk about it. If you’re curious, you might ask questions like, how long have you been afraid of that? Are these fears recent or longstanding? Are there certain things that make you more afraid? I know there was a difficult time in his recent past when his business failed, so you might ask him to compare how he feels about now versus then. This could be a rich discussion and open up space for you to communicate. 

If you want to keep going, or want to start in a different place, you can ask him to be specific about how immigrants are going to take advantage of him. What does he think might happen that would make that happen? Would he lose the house? His savings? His social security? How could that happen? Because our fears are amorphous, they sometimes dissipate when we start getting really specific about what could happen and face our fears, because we realize those things aren't really going to happen. (This is one application of a technique called the illusion of explanatory depth. It works on the principle that we might think we know a lot about something, but in reality, we don’t always. So, when we start explaining it to someone else, we realize we don’t really know as much as we thought we did, and our position can soften. Perhaps this could be the case for your father about what he says about immigrants.)

Another potential rich area of discussion could be whether he’s had good or bad experiences with immigrants where he lives now. He must run into people who are immigrants in a store or other places. The more you get him talking about specific experiences, the less fear he might feel. I think there might be a "fear of the other" embedded in what he’s saying, but when he thinks about specific people, that fear might abate.

At this point, you could chime in with some of your own experiences with immigrants, either at school or work. This might be the time to use the moral reframing technique, using a value that is important to him, like patriotism or fairness — values he already used in his text. You could ask what he thinks about an immigrant friend of yours who is working hard and trying to make this country a better place. That would hit both the values of patriotism and the merit-based flavor of fairness. Or you could mention that the founders of Google are immigrants who have contributed greatly to America’s wealth. Without immigrants like them, America would be a poorer place, and his stock portfolio would be worth less.”

There’s lots of stuff to for this young woman to consider. It will be a hard conversation, and if she commits to doing it, her goal needs to be to improve their relationship. Doing this successfully requires practice! If you find yourself in a similar situation, it might be a good idea for you to get someone to role play it before you try it for real.

This method doesn’t guaranteed success in convincing someone to come to your side, but it will open up the conversation in a new way.

As I pondered the fact that this young woman told me she thinks her father may be too far gone, I realized her situation is a great example of why we need a community of people to support us as we try to develop a new way to communicate. It’s hard! We’re not going to succeed all the time; in fact, we may fail more than we succeed, and there’s a learning curve. You need to practice to improve, and practicing in a supportive group of people is a way to make learning easier. That’s why I’m launching a Mending Fractured Relationships community. Email me at info@ethicalframes.com to join the waiting list to be notified when the community becomes available.