6: Romeo & Juliet: Unit V, Difficult people

Unit V, Topic: Dealing with difficult people

Unit V, Part A: DBT Handout.

This time, the handout is two full pages of the book, having to do with “dealing with difficult people” (pp. 150-151). Juliet's "difficult people" are her parents. Partipants will read the scene and then discuss what went wrong.

The handout starts:

In everybody’s life, there is at least one person that we have a relationship with that is thorny, tender, easily ruffled, or in some other way sensitive. Some of us have several or many such people in our lives.

Then the book has participants make a list of such people in their lives and answer questions that bring out the elements relationship, to make one more mindful of them. We do the questions as a group, applying them to Juliet’s relationship to her mother and father. We rate how good the relationship is, from poor to excellent, say why Juliet is especially sensitive to them, and how she would like to improve it.

Then we move on to “difficult” people. The author says:

Now refine your list to focus on people you’re not only sensitive to, but people who you find especially difficult to be around, or aversive. Maybe they act caustic, rude, or shaming around you and others. Around them you find yourself becoming very nervous, resentful, or fearful…

When I use the word aversive in reference to the other person, I mean that the other person has become someone that you would greatly like to avoid. You may even find yourself judging them as repulsive, repugnant, or disgusting. You may find that you hate them, and feel they are worthy of your contempt. As you begin the work of changing your emotions toward this other person, however, try to avoid these thoughts. The idea here is to move away from unnecessary emotional suffering and toward effectiveness so that you don’t carry the burden of your intense negative emotions. The goal is to reduce your emotional suffering. Also keep in mind that the goal isn’t to change that other person. Instead, you’re working at changing yourself.

So the group discusses whether one or both of Juliet’s parents fit this characterization of “difficult.”

Again there is a series of questions to answer. How difficult is each person, on a 0 to 5 scale? In what contexts are they difficult? How does Juliet feel around each one? What judgments does Juliet make? How does she handle being around the person? Actually, we could have considered the nurse, too, in relation to this category, but I didn’t think to have them read that far.

Then the book takes participants through some skills to apply in relation to these difficult people, emphasizing that one will not master them in one interaction. They are difficult. One set is called “exposure therapy,” that is, noticing one’s feelings around the person, using the principle of “opposite action” to engage rather than avoid the person, in a non-judgmental manner, and using conscious breathing to keep centered and focused. The tendency to disengage or dissociate will be strong and may even win out sometimes.

Once one is centered and focused with the “difficult person,” then the next skill is “assertiveness.” This is speaking with the emotion you feel—angrily if you are angry-- but keeping it within bounds and stating what you want clearly and matter-of-factly. It is also doing so with awareness of where the other person is coming from and feeling, and from a willingness to negotiate if you can do so without compromising your core values. That leads into the third skill. “Maintaining your integrity” is a balance between inflexibility and self-betrayal. You have to keep in mind what is fair to both parties. You have to consult your “inner wisdom” to know your core values, and what is really important to vs. what is not so important, all things considered. You have to be unapologetic about speaking your needs and also non-accusatory to the other. You have to be truthful yet also sparing people sometimes, because they can be pushed too far needlessly. These are very difficult things.

Imagining oneself in Juliet’s position but with the skills from our DBT book is a difficult exercise and probably won’t go as deep as one would like. Yet the general direction will become clear to participants.

I am convinced that this skill, hard as it is, is one of the most important ones clients can learn. Juliet’s issue is one that we all have, and mentally ill people especially. It is that of how we relate to authority-figures, especially ones that seem to have absolute power over us. I had that issue in my own early experience and have continued to have it since, close to hand with work supervisors and more abstractly with people running large institutions, from my agency to my government. Mentally ill people have it worse; they are first at the mercy of their family, and then of police, probation officers, mental health workers, and so on, all backed up by the power of the courts. Even for people without major mental illness, early traumatic experiences sets the tone for life, in which one repeats being a victim, unwittingly becomes a perpetrator, and also blanks out memory of the experiences, recent as well as long past. In addition, mentally ill people have their hallucinations or delusions, which can seem more real than reality, or a strong reluctance to relate to people at all.

Part B: Act 3, second half of Scene 5. At the end, after discussing the scene, a few lines from Act 5, scene 3.

Characters:: LADY CAPULET, JULIET, CAPULET, NURSE. At the end, PRINCE.

Scene: early morning of Day 3. Romeo, banished from Verona, secretly stayed to spend his wedding night in Juliet's bedroom. As the scene opens, he has just left, not to return until times are better and the Friar who married them can announce the marriage to their parents. Meanwhile Juliet's mother wants to speak to Juliet.

LADY CAPULET [Within] Ho, daughter! Are you up?

JULIET Who is't that calls? It is my lady mother.
What unaccustom'd cause procures her hither?

Enter LADY CAPULET

LADY CAPULET Why, how now, Juliet!

JULIET Madam, I am not well.

LADY CAPULET Evermore weeping for your cousin's death?
What, wilt thou wash him from his grave with tears?
But if thou couldst, thou couldst not make him live;
Therefore, have done.

JULIET Yet let me weep for such a feeling loss.

LADY CAPULET But now I'll tell thee joyful tidings, girl.

JULIET And joy comes well in such a needy time:
What are they, I beseech your ladyship?

LADY CAPULET Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child;
One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
That thou expectest not nor I looked not for.

JULIET Madam, in happy time, what day is that?

LADY CAPULET My child, early next Thursday morn,
The gallant, young and noble gentleman,
The County Paris, at Saint Peter's Church,
Shall happily make thee there a joyful bride.

JULIET Now, by Saint Peter's Church and Peter too,
He shall not make me there a joyful bride.
I wonder at this haste; that I must wed
Ere he, that should be husband, comes to woo.
I pray you, tell my lord and father, madam,
I will not marry yet.

LADY CAPULET Here comes your father; tell him so yourself,
And see how he will take it at your hands.

Enter CAPULET and NURSE

CAPULET How now! What, still in tears?
Evermore showering? How now, wife!
Have you delivered to her our decree?

LADY CAPULET Ay, sir; but she will none, she gives you thanks.
I would the fool were married to her grave!

CAPULET How! Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
So worthy a gentleman to be her bridegroom!

JULIET Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
Hear me with patience but to speak a word.

CAPULET Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!
I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
Or never after look me in the face:
Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
Wife, we scarce thought us blest
That God had lent us but this only child;
But now I see this one is one too much,
And that we have a curse in having her:

NURSE God in heaven bless her!
You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.

CAPULET Peace, you mumbling fool!

LADY CAPULET You are too hot.

CAPULET God's breath! It makes me mad:
to have a wretched puling fool,
To answer 'I'll not wed; I cannot love,
I am too young; I pray you, pardon me.'
Look to it, think on it, I do not jest.
Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
If you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,
For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good:
Trust to't, bethink you; I'll not be forsworn. Exit

JULIET Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,
That sees into the bottom of my grief?
O, sweet my mother, cast me not away!
Delay this marriage for a month, a week;
Or, if you do not, make the bridal bed
In that dim monument where Tybalt lies.

LADY CAPULET Talk not to me, for I'll not speak a word:
Do as thou wilt, for I have done with thee. Exit

JULIET O God!--O nurse, how shall this be prevented?
Comfort me, counsel me.
What say'st thou? hast thou not a word of joy?
Some comfort, nurse.

NURSE Faith, here it is.
I think it best you married with the County.
O, he's a lovely gentleman!
Romeo's a dishcloth to him: an eagle, madam,
Hath not so quick, so fair an eye as Paris hath.
I think you are happy in this second match,
For it excels your first: or if it did not,
Your first is dead; or it were as good he were,
As living here and you no use to him.

JULIET Speakest thou from thy heart?

NURSE And from my soul too.
.
JULIET Amen!

NURSE What?

JULIET Well, thou hast comforted me marvelous much.
Go in: and tell my lady I am gone,
Having displeased my father, to Laurence' cell,
To make confession and to be absolved.

NURSE Marry, I will; and this is wisely done. Exit

JULIET Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!
Is it more sin to wish me thus forsworn,
Or to dismean my lord with that same tongue
Which she hath praised him with above compare
So many thousand times? Go, counselor;
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be apart.
I'll go to the friar, to know his remedy:
If all else fail, myself have power to die. Exit

Unit 5, Part C: With all these things in mind, here are the discussion questions.

1. Do Juliet’s parents and later the nurse qualify as “difficult persons” for her? Why?

2. If Juliet were following DBT principles, what could she do to make the situation better? Go step by step through the process outlined in the reading.

These questions are short, but they may take a couple of sessions to complete, re-reading part of the scene before the second session. Or one may decide not to finish at all, if it is too much for people. There is time later.

Then I tell the class what Juliet in fact does, and how the action plays out. To end, a participant reads from the Prince’s speech near the end of the play:

Act 5, Scene 3, lines 290-294:

PRINCE. Capulet, Montague,
See what a scourge is laid upon your hate,
That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love;
And I, for winking at your discords too,
Have lost a brace of kinsmen. All are punish’d.

I conclude by saying that we can’t really say whether it could have ended differently in those times. We can’t pass judgment on the characters. All we can do is say what we can do today, to avoid such tragedies.