All Problems Are Interpersonal Relationship Problems
There is no such thing as the problems of an individual.
All problems are interpersonal relationship problems. This is a concept that runs to the very root of Adlerian psychology. If all interpersonal relationships were gone from this world, which is to say if one were alone in the universe and all other people were gone, all manner of problems would disappear.
What about the problems of an individual?
There is no such thing as a worry that is completely defined by the individual; so-called internal worry does not exist. Whatever the worry that may arise, the shadows of other people are always present. if you existed completely alone in the universe, the very concept of loneliness wouldn’t even come up. You were so afraid of interpersonal relationships that you came to dislike yourself. You’ve avoided interpersonal relationships by disliking yourself.
Suppose, for instance, that there is a certain Mr. A whom you don’t like because he has some flaws that are hard to forgive. But it isn’t that you dislike Mr. A because you can’t forgive his flaws. You had the goal of taking a dislike to Mr. A beforehand and then started looking for the flaws to satisfy that goal. So that you could avoid an interpersonal relationship with Mr. A.
For Ex, in relationships between lovers or married couples, there are times when, after a certain point, one becomes exasperated with everything one’s partner says or does. For instance, she doesn’t care for the way he eats; his slovenly appearance at home fills her with revulsion, and even his snoring sets her off. Even though until a few months ago, none of it had ever bothered her before.
The person feels this way because at some stage she has resolved to herself, I want to end this relationship, and she has been looking around for the material with which to end it. The other person hasn’t changed at all. It is her own goal that has changed. Adler called the state of coming up with all manner of pretexts in order to avoid the life tasks the “life-lie.”
Even if you are avoiding your life tasks and clinging to your life-lies, it isn’t because you are steeped in evil. It is not an issue to be condemned from a moralistic standpoint. It is only an issue of courage.
Life Tasks:
In Adlerian psychology, clear objectives are laid out for human behavior and psychology.
There are two objectives for behavior: to be self-reliant and to live in harmony with society. Then, the two objectives for the psychology that supports these behaviors are the consciousness that I have the ability and the consciousness that people are my comrades.
Adler made three categories of the interpersonal relationships that arise out of these processes. He referred to them as “tasks of work,” “tasks of friendship,” and “tasks of love,” and all together as “life tasks.”
First, let’s look at the tasks of work. Regardless of the kind of work, there is no work that can be completed all by oneself. Interpersonal relationships of work have the easy-to-understand common objective of obtaining good results, so people can cooperate even if they don’t always get along.
People who get tripped up in the interpersonal relationships at this stage are the people referred to as “NEETs.” They don’t try to work simply because they want to avoid the interpersonal relationships that are associated with work, not that they don’t want to work or that they’re refusing to do manual labor.
For example, a man sends out résumés to find work and gets interviews, only to be rejected by one company after another. It hurts his pride. It’s not an example of work itself becoming disagreeable. What is disagreeable is being criticized or rebuked by others through the work, getting labeled as having no ability or being incompetent or unsuited to the work, and hurting the dignity of one’s irreplaceable self. In other words, everything is an interpersonal relationship issue.
On the other hand, the task of friendship is difficult intimate, or deep. A lot of people think that the more friends you have the better, but I’m not so sure about that. There’s no value at all in the number of friends or acquaintances you have, but what we should be thinking about is the distance and depth of the friendship.
The last one is the task of love. It can be divided into 2 stages. one, what are known as love relationships; and two, relationships with family, in particular parent-child relationships. We have discussed work and friendship, but of the three tasks, most likely it is the task of love that is the most difficult.
When a friend relationship has turned into love, speech and conduct that were permitted between friends may no longer be permitted the moment they become lovers. Specifically, that would mean not permitting socializing with friends of the opposite sex, and in some cases just speaking on the telephone to someone of the opposite sex is enough to arouse jealousy. The distance is that close, and the relationship that deep.
But Adler does not accept restricting one’s partner. If the person seems to be happy, one can frankly celebrate that condition. That is love. Relationships in which people restrict each other eventually fall apart. When one can think, Whenever I am with this person, I can behave very freely, one can really feel love. One can be in a calm and quite natural state, without having feelings of inferiority or being beset with the need to flaunt one’s superiority. That is what real love is like. Restriction, on the other hand, is a manifestation of the mind-set of attempting to control one’s partner, and also an idea founded on a sense of distrust.
In love relationships and marital relationships, there is the option of separating. So even a husband and wife who have been together for many years can separate if continuing the relationship becomes distressful. In a parent-child relationship, however, in principle this cannot be done. If romantic love is a relationship connected by red string, then the relationship between parents and children is bound in rigid chains. This is the difficulty of the parent-child relationship.
How to handle a difficult parent-child relationship?
You must not run away. No matter how distressful the relationship, you must not avoid or put off dealing with it. Even if in the end you’re going to cut it with scissors, first you have to face it. The worst thing to do is to just stand still with the situation as it is. It is fundamentally impossible for a person to live life completely alone, and it is only in social contexts that the person becomes an “individual.”
All interpersonal relationship troubles are caused by intruding on other people’s tasks, or having one’s own tasks intruded on. Carrying out the separation of tasks is enough to change one’s interpersonal relationships dramatically. There is a simple way to tell whose task it is. Think, Who ultimately is going to receive the result brought about by the choice that is made?
Reference: Based on Book Courage to be Disliked.