Ruang (Ny)Aman Discusses Healthy Relationship with Your Parents

Parents-children relationship can be tricky, emotionally damaging even in many cases. This is why March’s session of Ruang (Ny)Aman explored the topic “Relationship with Parents”, featuring Ita D. Azly, an Associate Family Psychologist at SAUH (Sahabat Satu Hati).
Ruang (Ny)aman is a monthly gathering and a platform for women to share their stories. The recent gathering took place on March 30, at Ke:kini in Cikini, Central Jakarta.
Felencia Hutabarat, Management Director of Ke:kini said feedbacks from the first session of Ruang (Ny)Aman in February showed that many people have problematic relationships with their parents.  
“Parents often make plenty of demands to their children that conflict with the children’s views or values. So then the children question the extent to which they should follow the wishes of their parents, and what to do when they cannot fulfil their wishes,” Felencia told Magdalene.
At the event, psychologist Ita D. Azly explained some theories of psychology such as Genogram, which is a graphic representation of a family tree that displays detailed data on relationships among individuals. The other theory is Jendela Johari (Johari Window), a psychological technique founded by two prominent American psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others.
“You are alive. In this life we will faced various problems or challenges, but what we need to understand is we have options to solve them,” said Ita D. Azly.
“There are two ways we face our problems: flight or fight. If we choose flight, we only put the problems away temporarily and it will come back later on in our life. But if we choose to fight our problems, then we can solve it right then and there,” she said.
She also said that the most important thing is that we need to be aware of ourselves, and we need to accept the fact that it is a part of our path towards maturity, and, ultimately, we can be better prepared in our actions.
“One of the useful lessons I got from today’s session is I can share my thoughts while being educated. I also feel that Ruang (Ny)Aman gives me some new perspectives and more rational reasoning to solve my problems,” said Kezia, one of the attendees.
In her closing, Ita emphasized the need to appreciate ourselves. Whatever happens, we have made efforts, which shows that we want change to improve the situation. The best way to look at it is to see the problem as a blessing in disguise, she said.

The next session of Ruang (Ny)Aman #3 will be discussing the topic of body image. If you want to participate in Ruang (Ny)Aman next event, you can check out Magdalane’s social media accounts.
Camely Arta is undergraduate student majoring in Management. She spends way too much of her time binge-watching on Netflix, and takes pleasure in Mexican food occasionally.
Read Camely’s piece on a new online platform to help people with mental health issues.