I grew up in a wonderful family! My parents were warm, supportive and encouraging.
Except that --
During a period of my childhood, once every few months my father would get angry with me about something. He would lecture me fiercely. Unable to utter a word in response, I would end up sitting in my room, reduced, inside myself, to a powerless puddle.
Then, perhaps a half hour later, he would come into my room and say, "Maybe I was a bit too harsh", and talk calmly to me, and soon the anguish was gone.
One time, sitting in my room a few minutes after one of his lectures, I thought about how this happened over and over again. "And he's always wrong in what he is saying I should be doing!"
I thought about the previous time he had given me such a lecture -- and to my embarrassment, realized that he had been right that time. (Aside: 70-odd years later, I have no recollection what that, or any of his other lectures, was about.)
This was terribly upsetting! If I had been so sure he was wrong, but he had in fact been right, how could I now say, "I'm right and he's wrong?" Do I have to say, "Well, even though I feel sure I'm right, I must assume, based on the past, that I am wrong?" That would reduce my self-esteem and confidence to zilch.
I came up with a compromise. Whenever he gave me such a lecture, I had to think of some way that he could be right. I didn't have to believe it was so, but it had to be something that might be so.
So what about the lecture he had just given me? OK, I came up with a way that he might have been right.
As usual, after a while he came in, and gave his "Maybe I was a bit too harsh" apology. But this time I no longer needed it; I was satisfied with how I had resolved things.
Of course, if "Think of a way that he might be right" was what I should do when my father lectured me, it should also apply to other situations. Every summer, I was sent to summer camp for a few months. I had grown up in a neighborhood with few other children, and some fellow campers found me an easy object for bullying and teasing. I would sometimes imagine a psychologist examining me, and exclaiming, "He is totally non-aggressive. It's amazing that he has been able to survive such treatment!"
So could I think of a way that the kids who teased me could be in the right? All too easily. Imagine a psychologist examining one of them, and saying, "He has incredibly strong aggressive instincts! It's amazing that he is able hold them back as well as he does!"
Well, that was clearly nonsense. And my own fantasy of being someone who was amazing for being able to survive my fellow campers' behavior was equally nonsense.
But I was still hurt by the way I was treated, and still needed to come up with some way of looking at those who did it that might excuse them. What I finally came up with was, "Even though I think the way they behave toward me is wrong, they've grown up with a different point of view. They're not monsters; simply people who have different ideas about such things. I can imagine being one of them, and how they would see their behavior toward me as fun."
And gradually, this kind of approach became my general way of viewing people on the other side of any issue -- to imagine how things would look from their point of view and how they would feel, even though I still disagreed with them. When I do so, I often see that there is some value in their position, even if I still mainly hold to mine. In any case, they're not "bad people"; just people who see things differently.
It may seem a small change in the way one looks at the world. But I find it makes an enormous difference.