You Can Go Home Again
December 17th, 2009
By Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT, Family Therapy Topic Expert Contributor
Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
For better or worse, we first learn about making and keeping relationships in our families. During our formative years, our parents establish patterns with us; patterns of connection and separation, of independence and dependence, of give and take, that literally shape our developing brains and how they work for the rest of our lives.
The problem, of course, is that this is a very imperfect process. Our parents have inherited their own patterns from their own parents, families and culture and combined them into their own style. Very few of these emotional patterns are conscious; we rarely notice or examine them. This automatic process is why family emotional patterns are so often repeated generation to generation. When they work for us, they help us develop into caring, connected, loving human beings. When they don’t work well, we can be shaped by anxiety, demands, rigid roles and expectations, and inflexible rules for behavior. Of course, most of us have a unique, messy combination of both.
One of the most emotionally charged family experiences we share are the subtle and not so subtle family expectations that swirl around “The Holidays.” Whether the holiday is Christmas, Passover or the cultural New Year, many families have traditions that involve returning “home,” visiting parents or relatives, eating, and sharing worship or rituals together year after year. For adults who have left their parental home and established an independent life, these expectations can arouse surprisingly high anxiety and worry. We can be caught off-guard by overwhelming feelings of obligation, excitement, frustration, pleasure, anger or any combination of feelings about the family traditions we know but now have a small measure of distance from. And if we add into the mix the distance and cost of travel, or the demands of college, work or a new spouse or child, it can feel like a chaotic world inside our heads.
Most of us solve this internal family stress in just a few ways.
We may promise to return home, but find a conflict at the last minute. We may go, but
bring along a friend, spouse or child, and use them as an emotional buffer. We may go and find the old emotional patterns so arousing we eat, drink, sleep, or spend too much while there. We retreat to the computer, the new novel we brought, or constantly check our smart phones for communication from the outside world. And still others of us find the whole returning to our family so stressful we end up in huge, raging family fights just when we want to be relaxed and connected.
It is hard to return home to our families. We want to behave well, but find our own reactions surprising and troubling. How can we stay connected in a more healthy way to the people and traditions we had growing up, without completely throwing them out? How can we be calmer under the stress of bad communication, or alcoholism, marital conflict, unspoken rivalries, disappointments or fear?
Family systems theory understands the family as both the source of this emotional stress as well as the soil in which new, more flexible personal patterns of connection need to grow. How can we change our point of view of family and behave in slightly more helpful, relaxed ways?
The answer is two fold.
Firstly, we must recognize that we are part of that same family that makes us so confused. We need to return to our families over time, in small amounts, and become a witness or observer of our family’s emotional process. We can enter into our family process as both participant and student. What do we notice? How do this family work? How do I participate in these patterns? What if I were to do something slightly different than before?
And secondly, we make a steady effort to talk with, deal with, and know each member of our family one to one. When we can have real, face to face relationships with the people in our extended emotional system, we stop behaving with them in old, rigid, familiar ways, and have to deal with them as people in the here and now. And not surprisingly, they have the same experience with us.
These basic emotional changes are the building blocks to creating a more flexible self when dealing with our families from a distance. We don’t have to cut our families out of our lives, and we don’t have to simply accept their unique problems and bear our burdens silently. Observe your family system, and focus on your relationships with people individually. You can go home again, with a shift in purpose and perspective, and find yourself better connected and less anxious.
© Copyright 2009 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT, therapist in Burnsville, MN. All Rights Reserved.
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Comments
This article was of much help to me,as I find it very stressful to go to my parents’ in the hloiday season and meet and be with all my aunts and uncles…I find it chaotic.Some of my cousins and even my own siblings enjoy the holiday season,but for some reason I don’t quite like it…
Bobby,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, chaos can be the word when it comes to our families. Try to turn yourself into a participant/observer of those moments. What do you notice happening at those times?
And when those moments happen over and over, what have you done in the past to help you manage? Can you take a break, take a walk, read, or listen to music, and then re-enter the family when you feel less tense?
Remember to focus on talking to family members face to face, working on building relationships in the present.
It can be a long journey to feeling better in our families, but it can improve. Stay connected with them, and good luck!
I guess this is why my brother tells me that I remind him more and more of our mom every day. . . scary!
Me and my cousin used to be very very close when we were little and prefer nobody else’s company except each other’s…we used to play together,go to school together amongst other things. Then he moved to anotherr country and now we are both 20 years old and when I met him after a long gap, we didn’t connect much…after a little talk of the ‘good old childhood days’, both of us realized we had nothing to talk about! I felt sad that we are now finding it so difficult to connect even though we were so close to each other in our younger years.
Ryane,
Yes, it is humbling when those family patterns really show up in our lives. I wonder who your brother reminds you of?
Damien,
Could you connect with your cousin in small ways, over a longer period of time, to see if your relationship could grow beyond the good old days of childhood? Social networks like Facebook are one way people are finding it easier to put those old relationships back into the present day.
I share a great relationship with my folks and I just can’t picture leaving their side. When I’m feeling low, it is their love and warmth that always pulls me out of dumps and cheers me up. Like they say- there’s no place like home…and,there’s nothing like your family! :)
I really agree with you when you say that parents have a mjor role to play when it comes to building who we are… I have seen a couple of people who have been sad most of the time because they grew up in an environment of parents conflicting. Hence it becomes very important for a couple to provide the right type of environment to their kids…
It is great to read of positive parenting relationships readers have. I promise you, your parents are thrilled and proud of you, too.
The effect of parenting really can’t be overstated, both genetically and behaviorally. That relationship shapes the majority of a person’s personality and view of the world. Those who work to soothe, correct and improve themselves – despite bad parenting – with therapy and self understanding are heroes.
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