What is your family tension saying to you?
What do you do when you are faced with a family blowup? And by blow up, I mean one of those moments were you start to feel like the universe is spinning out of control with you at the center of it. All of a sudden words are being expressed that seem to heat up the air around you and mysteriously seem to be sucking the air right out of you. Your emotional alarms are going off, but somehow running away from the fire just isn’t quite an option.
We all know what conflict feels like. Whether you are fifteen or fifty, you live in relationships. Relationships are complicated and force personalities to blend harmoniously with work and attention. There are no strangers to this roller coaster of progress and regression. Sometimes working on a relationship can be done with ease and comfort. Other times it can become a whirlwind of dysfunction.
Dysfunction in a relationship can feel like a sickness. It is disorienting in that it causes you to question your own participation, fault, and contribution. It is exhausting as every bit of your energy seems to be filtered through the basic need of survival. Dysfunction often plays games of hot and cold leaving you reacting to circumstances. And worst of all, unlike physical sickness that can often provoke a sense of community as others tend to your comfort, family dysfunction can often leave you emotionally bankrupt with feelings of being isolated, rejected, and abandoned.
So what do you do when your family sickness all of a sudden becomes highlighted by tension?
It takes enormous motivation, courage, and perseverance for a family to work itself out of its unhealthy state and to develop something new that will work better for everyone.
To deal with the dysfunction in a family is not only to deal with whatever the problem is (e.g., father’s drinking, mother’s temper, the child’s truancy, etc.), but also to deal with an intricate system of illusions and myths that the family relies on to keep it whole.
Here are a few actions to consider when you find yourself in the midst of a tumultuous family situation:
Don’t spend your time focusing on criticizing your family. Take a step back and try to identify the forces that keep your family stuck. It might not be the most obvious presenting problem.
Take the time to become aware. Reflect on your own health and functioning. How are you participating in the family dynamic? Why do you respond this way? Are you a protector, a provoker, or a procrastinator? What needs are you trying to get met or neglecting for the sake of another member? In reflecting, take the time to be honest with yourself without judging. Chances are judging yourself or others is a part of being stuck.
Seek out information about yourself like you would for a research paper. If you truly don’t know why you react the way you do or how you contribute to your family, seek out healthy/stable individuals you can discover more insight from.
Identify the things that fit your life story. Take notes about how you view relationships. What are appropriate interactions in your eyes? What is your belief system? What assumptions do you have and what perceptions are you clinging to? Are you okay with these assumptions? Are you willing to live with them? What would you lose if you let go of these beliefs?
Purposely observe other families that you find to function strangely. Why do you see it as different? What would have to change in you or your family to be different? Would that change be more stable and healthy?
Google search questions that might provoke insight:
The rules of dysfunctional family systems
Family roles or scripts
Read on being the Addict, Enabler, Hero, Scapegoat, Clown, or Lost Child
Codependency/enabling
Adult attachment pain
Adult children of alcoholics — even if there was no alcohol in your house
Boundaries in relationships
Signs somebody may be manipulating in a relationship
Defense Mechanisms
Take ownership of you own actions, attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Chances are the fate of your family does not all rest on you so be careful to not take too much responsibility, but definitely don’t underestimate your contribution either. You cannot control them, but you are most definitely the one in control of your own mind, body, emotions, spirit, and social interactions.
Change takes time and is a process. Start with just one behavior you can control that might support the change.
Knowing how to change a situation from the inside of it can be defeating. There is a lot of healthy/ life giving help available in the world. Be willing to take advantage of some of it.
Practice being healthy in other areas of your life. Sometimes our social interactions are heavily affected by our lack of balance in the rest of our life. You might need to address where you are out of balance emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually.
Don’t be afraid to practice. As you learn more about yourself, you are going to be more equipped to turn your awareness into change. Be careful to not put too much pressure on yourself though because “trial and error” is normal and even necessary. So be patient with yourself and those you love.
Resources: http://psychcentral.com/library/id23.html, http://www.boundless.org/adulthood/2014/8-steps-to-break-a-cycle-of-family-dysfunction