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    A Tyranny of Vapors: Twenty-Seven Brief Outlines Addressing Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and The Emotionally Walled Off Spouse
    A Tyranny of Vapors: Twenty-Seven Brief Outlines Addressing Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and The Emotionally Walled Off Spouse
    A Tyranny of Vapors: Twenty-Seven Brief Outlines Addressing Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and The Emotionally Walled Off Spouse
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    A Tyranny of Vapors: Twenty-Seven Brief Outlines Addressing Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and The Emotionally Walled Off Spouse

    By Erik Johnson

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    About this ebook

    High conflict couples wrangle over any number of issues but often at the root is a power struggle. Who will control whom? For over twenty years marriage therapist and family conflict mediator Erik Johnson has been helping couples negotiate control issues and arrive at a more equitable balance of power. This book contains lists and one and two page strategies that help controllers control less, the overly compliant comply less, and couples work to together with clear communication patterns. Emotionally walled off spouses are often walled off because they've felt controlled. Controlling spouses find those walls unpleasant and try hard to break down the walls. A vicious cycle is then created. Since it's rarely the controller who comes to counseling, Erik empowers the controlled to nicely but firmly assert their wishes. The outlines contained in this book cut right to the chase with scripts, suggested wording, and the benefits of approaching marriage relationships with equity, clear boundaries, and respect. The title "Tyranny of Vapors" is taken from the term nineteenth century doctors used to describe patients who used their exaggerated illnesses to control others. This book is intended to deliver couples from this tyranny. Occasional reference is made to Hebrew wisdom literature and their wise strategies when confronted with relational walls.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherErik Johnson
    Release dateJun 22, 2014
    ISBN9781310650086
    A Tyranny of Vapors: Twenty-Seven Brief Outlines Addressing Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and The Emotionally Walled Off Spouse
    Author

    Erik Johnson

    Retired marriage and family counselor. Five kids, four sons/daughters-in-law, writer, cartoonist.

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      Book preview

      A Tyranny of Vapors - Erik Johnson

      A Tyranny of Vapors:

      Twenty-seven Brief Outlines Addressing

      Marital Control, Excessive Bossiness, and

      The Emotionally Walled-Off Spouse

      Erik Johnson

      Copyright 2014

      ISBN: 9781310650086

      Smashwords Edition. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Cover photo by Reinald Kirchner (Flickr: smoke 1) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

      Nick's mother [Regina], who had a long history of mental illness, had subjected her children to what nineteenth-century doctors called a tyranny of vapors—meaning that she used her many aches and complaints to control folks. No matter what was going on in the lives of her children, it was all about Regina. As an adult, Nick had distanced himself from her, loathing the trope of the Invalid Woman, and he had often told me that he wouldn't be with me if I were one of those clinging, hysterical types. Rhonda Janzen, Mennonite in a Little Black Dress

      The common ingredient in all successful marriages is accepting influence. John Gottman, marriage researcher, Seven Principles for Making Marriages Work

      Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. Thomas a Kempis Christian mystic, The Imitation of Christ

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Introduction

      Why We Try to Change Our Mates

      Why Changing Our Mates is So Ineffective

      Take the Am I Controlling? Quiz

      Thoughts That Make Us Less Controlling

      What are the Alternatives to Control?

      Beliefs That Help Us Resist Being Controlled

      Beliefs That Make Us Vulnerable To Being Controlled

      Responding To Controllers

      Two Letters To A Controller, One Healthy, One Not

      Is My Spouse Really Controlling Or Am I Just Noncompliant?

      Confronting the Controllers In Our Lives

      Motivating the Controller to Quit Controlling

      Five Options for Marital Gridlock

      Options When You Don't Feel Safe

      How To Speak So Partners Will Listen

      When Your Spouse Resists Change

      Requesting Without Demanding

      Closeness VS. Control

      When Your Partner Won't Work On The Marriage

      When A Spouse is Uninterested In Cooking, Cleaning, Or Romance

      When a Spouse Doesn't Follow Through

      Control: The Number One Cause for a Partner's Walls

      For the Walled Out: Wooing the Hard to Woo

      For the Walled Out Husband

      For the Walled Out Wife

      For the Walled Off Spouse: Overcoming Silence

      Tips for the Pursuer

      About The Author

      Other Marriage Building Products By Erik

      Introduction

      If it seems quirky that I include ancient Proverbs in this book about modern human relationships please consider the following.

      Cities in the ancient world were protected by walls to keep enemies out. If you wanted to take over a walled city you could ram them, which was bloody. You could pray for a miracle, and the walls come a tumblin' down, or you could wait until they surrendered.

      Proverbs says, An offended [partner] is more unyielding than a fortified city, and disputes are like the barred gates of a citadel, (18:19).

      This is a good metaphor for marital strife. If your partner is walled off you can attack them, which isn't effective. You can pray for a miracle and hope action is exerted at a distance. Or you can wait until they surrender.

      Surprisingly, Proverbs offers additional counsel on how to repair walled off relationships, including exploring why those walls were erected in the first place. Many spouses build emotional walls for protection from, not marauding armies, but the tyranny of vapors of a controlling spouse.

      This booklet contains the one and two page handouts I've used over the years which clients have found most helpful when dealing with marital control, excessive bossiness, and a spouse with a walled off heart. I hope they help you dispel any vapors tyrannizing your marriage.

      Why We Try To Change Our Mates

      Why does a moth flutter around a porch light? As a navigation strategy it's unhelpful and yet moths persist on thinking, If I keep doing this I'll find my way north.

      Why do flies bounce against a picture window over and over? They're trying to get out of the house thinking, If I keep beating my head against this wall I'll eventually find the exit.

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