My girlfriend is visiting her family for the first time in a couple of months. She is showing great progress in how she interact with her parents; she is intuiatively using the counter mind-control things from Hassans book, i am so proud of the little bugger.
However, her parents are a really hard case, and today it was her dad who was particular strange. He seem to have an odd tendency to go into completely closed body language (crossed arms), become super formal and repeat himself again and again when they talk; especially the last part seem to be a reaction to my girlfriend showing emotions and affection towards him, for example saying she just want them to be proud of her and be a larger part of her life.
The phrases he would repeat was something along the lines of "he feel he does not know her anymore" and "he feel she is shutting him out". It should be added to the context of this event that he has apparently called my girlfriend several times where she has not picked up (we assume it is elders who call when we dont know the number), and their relationship are not as close as either of them want it to be.
The good news is her mom was extremely supportive and seemed very genuine in how she talked to my girlfriend. I have the impression she is trying to make it work, at least for now. My girlfriend has also said pretty straight out she wish she believed in it but she does not.
I am trying to interpret her dads reaction. There is a positive and a negative interpretation. The negative is that he is completely shut down mentally and nothing is going through.
The positive is that he does this sort of behavious because he has an internal conflict; his daughter is crying and his natural reaction and instincts goes against how he is taught to behave and think (cognitive dissonanse).
I have heard this sort of reaction (repetition of phrases) described before here, and i would like to ask if someone here has any insight to share on the subject?