You are not alone in feeling out of place in your family of origin. Just because we start in one place doesn’t mean that’s where we ultimately end up. As we get older, we often find ourselves spending more time with the family that we have chosen or created. Sometimes that includes the families we came from, but often it does not. It sounds as if your path has taken you in directions that your family members have not shared. It is only natural to feel out of place. It’s great that you feel so comfortable with your wife’s family. What a wonderful resource to have.

I wonder if some of the distress you are feeling comes from a sense of being responsible for the choices your family makes. You talk about not wanting to expose your wife to your family—is that from fear of what she will think of them, and by extension you? Do you believe they present a threat to you, your wife, or your relationship? You are not defined by your family, only by the choices you make. The fact you’ve chosen a path that differs so significantly from your family of origin makes a clear statement about who you are and what you believe. I wonder how much fear of judgment is contributing to the discomfort you are feeling when you are around your family.

Your intolerance for your family suggests that, whether you’re aware of it or not, you are likely grieving your emotional distance from them. I encourage you to identify the pain, fear, or vulnerability which colors the lens through which you view your family. If you can attend to the deeper vulnerability within you, this lens may become clearer, the distance you are feeling may diminish, and along with it—to some degree—your grief. (Of course, there may still be some grieving to do.)

You have many choices as to how you handle family situations. It sounds like it is important to you to retain a sense of your history, your roots, and where you came from. You also mention that your mother’s health is declining. Cutting off your family right now could cause you pretty significant distress. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. You can insulate yourself from the discomfort you feel at the differences in your current life choices without cutting yourself off from them.

You seem to be focusing on the ways you differ. Are there things that you share? Even though you don’t share many of the values your family does (politics, animal rights, etc.), are there some things that make you feel connected? Was there something in the way that you were raised that allowed and encouraged you to forge your own path? Are there qualities about your family that you can appreciate?

You seem frustrated by your family’s unwillingness to change their ways when you are with them. Do they expect you to change your ways when you visit or do they accept you as you are? It is possible to love and accept others who don’t believe in what we do or act in ways we would. In fact, once we stop trying to change others and accept them as they are, it can bring significant relief. If we accept that we can love people by virtue of a shared history without necessarily liking them, that can make things easier as well.

If you focus on the qualities you appreciate about your family, on how your experiences in your family shaped the choices you’ve made, you can value your family connections for what they are—part of a shared history. You can also limit how much time you spend with them if being around them causes you distress. Ultimately the shift is not going to come from them—and may not even come from avoiding them. The most impactful shift will be an internal one. You may want to work through some of this with a therapist who can help you integrate your past and your present more peacefully.

Best wishes,
Erika

Over the course of a decade working therapeutically with adolescents and their families, I have observed countless young people as they reach a highly anticipated milestone in their lives: turning 18. I have also observed the parents of all those young people as they attempt to adjust to the transition that occurs when their “baby” officially becomes an adult. It has been my experience that a child’s 18th birthday is an especially potent event for families, and the ways in which families respond to this event, for better or worse, can form the basis for the launching of their child into young adulthood.

Of course, we all know why the 18th birthday is a really big deal: it’s the one on which Western culture bestows young people with most of the rights they will enjoy for the rest of their lives. These rights include moving about at will without restrictions, curfews, or the like; choosing friends and partners of whom the parents may not approve; signing contracts such as military enlistments, marriage certificates, and leases; borrowing money via loans and credit cards; obtaining or declining medical and mental health care; and quitting or enrolling oneself in educational programs.

Along with those rights, a number of new responsibilities are also bestowed upon each young person on his or her 18th birthday. For example, the young adult must actually uphold any contract that is signed, including paying back loans and lines of credit. Another new responsibility is that, legally, a person—even one who is still in high school—is treated as an adult rather than a juvenile within the legal system. The 18-year-old’s behaviors and choices carry consequences that are far and above what they have ever before experienced.

With all of the cultural and personal implications that hang on the 18th birthday, it is no surprise that navigating this milestone can challenge families. This is an event that can change, literally overnight, the power balances, rules, and expectations between parents and children. Families may spend months or even years nervously anticipating this change; conversely, they may be blindsided by the realities of parenting a child in this brand-new context, and find themselves dealing with unexpected consequences.

In some families, the 18th birthday is treated as a full stop to adolescence, and the newly minted adult is expected to (or believes he/she is ready and able to) immediately begin fulfilling many adult-like roles. The adult child may be expected to, for example, begin paying rent to the parents, purchase his or her own vehicle, or find a full-time job.

In other families, the cultural and legal implications of a child’s 18th birthday are treated as irrelevant inside the family fold; the family attempts to keep everything regarding their child, from rules and curfews to roles and communication styles, exactly the same as before.

In still other families, both the anticipation and actual event of a child turning 18 can become a flashpoint for family upheaval and conflicts. The newly adult child may use turning 18 as a springboard for rebellious or ill-advised shows of independence. Likewise, the parents may threaten the adult child with being kicked out, losing financial help, or other withdrawals of support in an attempt to enforce compliance with rules and expectations.

The “real world” is at once enticing and terrifying for emerging adults.

Many young adults have described feeling as if they’ve been thrown into the deep end of a pool once it sinks in that they are truly considered adults, and may often feel quite unprepared to meet the demands of the “real world.” At the same time, they are excited to flex some of their new independence and privileges, and may at times feel driven to act out adult-like roles and scripts the moment that they have the legal ability to do so.

One primary reason for this is that at 18, the young person’s brain is continuing to develop and does not yet function as a fully mature brain does. The brain’s reward system, governing the way that novelty- and pleasure-reinforcing neurotransmitters such as dopamine are released, peaks in activity in the late teen years. The prefrontal cortex—which aids with decision making, problem solving, and impulse inhibition—is not at its full level of function until the mid-twenties. The fact is, a young adult on his or her 18th birthday is not magically wiser, more resourceful, or more emotionally mature than he or she was the day before, and won’t think and act like a fully mature adult until a few years later.

To complicate the picture, there are almost always needs and dependencies that persist between the 18-year-old and his or her parents. For example, an 18-year-old who is still in high school cannot work full time even if he or she wanted to, and even those out of high school usually continue to be financially dependent. Shared health insurance, car insurance, family cell phone plans, and other matters of money and information mean that negotiating the leading edge of your child’s independence can be tricky at best.

Although we in Western societies now experience a more extended period of adolescent development and dependence than ever before, and although we are now more aware of the realities of brain development, the fact is that 18 continues to be the age of majority in the United States. The mismatch between the legal freedoms and the young person’s capacity to exercise them responsibly can create rough waters for families to navigate. Power struggles that exist between the child and the parents around the time of the child’s 18th birthday can quickly escalate into the child threatening to leave, and/or the parents threatening to kick the child out. The child may choose to do things that are legally acceptable, but are not acceptable to the parents who support him or her.

Every family will handle this transition differently, according to its own unique set of strengths, expectations, and history. However, there are a few rules of thumb that parents can keep in mind which may assist them in managing this major milestone.

The boundary around the family must be flexible—neither too diffuse nor too rigid.

First and foremost, resist the urge to threaten to kick your child out. The subject of your young adult child leaving home will often arise sometime within the months around his or her 18th birthday. You may find your child saying things like, “I don’t like your rules. I should go live with my friend where they don’t have these rules.” Often, by talking about (or threatening to) move out, the child is testing out ideas about being an adult, without any actual intention of following through on those ideas. The 18-year-old usually does not have the experience, wisdom, or resources to leave the home in a safe or well-planned way—and he or she knows it.

If your child does threaten to leave home, as the parent it is imperative that your response be one of reassurance that the child is still a part of the family and that the family home continues to be his or her home. Remember that your 18-year-old is struggling to adjust his or her self-concept to include adult-like roles, and mentally trying some of these on for size is developmentally normative. However, when parents respond to limit-testing behaviors by threatening to kick the child out of the home, the child feels insecure about the stability of the family system and his or her role in it; the boundaries become diffuse and the child becomes unsure about whether he or she can count on remaining a part of the family on which he or she remains largely dependent.

Another problem with parents threatening to kick the child out is that systems under stress tend to escalate to the most intense point of conflict during each conflict cycle. Once parents introduce the possibility of kicking the child out, it is likely to become incorporated into every argument that follows—either by the parents or by the child in anticipation of the parents’ threat. This escalation pattern severely disrupts the stability of the family system.

So it’s important that the boundary around who is in and who is out of the family system remains well-defined so that the young adult child feels secure about his or her place in the world long enough to figure out his or her next steps into adulthood. However, it is also important that the family boundary not be so rigid that it inhibits the child’s necessary practicing of adult-like behaviors in safe and appropriate ways. Families who refuse to allow their 18-year-old to make an increasing number of choices and reach increasing levels of independence can inhibit the development of responsibility, self-sufficiency, and life skills that the young adult child will soon need. Therefore, ongoing adjustments to certain family rules, such as curfews, jobs/bills, and friend/partner choices, are essential.

Use negotiation skills to co-create a new set of roles and rules that meet the needs of all family members.

How, then, can parents approach these transitions? One way to help your child learn how to be an adult is to treat him or her like one—at first emotionally, and later more practically. Speaking respectfully to your child, accepting his or her opinions as valid, and encouraging him or her to do the same to you are ways to introduce your child to adult-like, egalitarian relating. Negotiating new rules, privileges, and responsibilities together—“family meetings” are helpful for this—allows both the parents and the child to mutually create adjustments to the rules that are thoughtful, sensible, and predictable. Many families find it helpful to write down the new rules and display them in the home so that all parties remember them (and remember that they agreed to them!).

If any family member feels that the current rules and expectations are not working, they can call a new family meeting at any time to review and possibly revise them. If parents and child reach an impasse, try to be as creative as possible to find ways to meet the needs of all family members. Young adults may be happy to agree to increasing levels of responsibility in the home in exchange for increasing levels of trust and privilege. The family members should keep in mind that flexibility, communication, and negotiation with a goal of mutual agreement will take them smoothly through this period of transition.

It can be helpful for these discussions to begin well before the 18th birthday, so that there is plenty of time for the family members to think ahead, anticipate, and become mentally ready for the changes to the power balance and expectations that will likely occur. A discussion that occurs over the course of weeks or months is more likely to involve all family members, cover more contingencies and “what-ifs,” and result in a smoother transition through the actual birthday.

However, it is never too late. If you find yourself with a child who is already 18, or even 19 or 20, and are experiencing a difficult family adjustment into your child’s young adulthood, it is still advisable to approach your child and create an open dialogue about the rules and roles in the family.

Even if parents seem OK with a decision to divorce, it does not mean that their children have to be OK with it. Divorce changes a child’s world in a pretty major way. It is OK and normal for a person in such a situation to feel sadness, anger, resentment, confusion, frustration, and anything else he or she might be feeling. It sounds like you are being asked to make some big decisions before you’ve had much of a chance to process how you are feeling about it all. It also sounds like you feel your parents have put you in a no-win situation. By making you choose, it seems you feel like you aren’t just choosing where to live, but taking sides. I’m sure that doesn’t feel very fair.

It is OK for children, amid divorce, to tell their parents what they are feeling. If any decision feels too big to make alone, it is OK to ask them for help. It is also OK to ask them if they can connect with a therapist or someone who can help a child sort through this situation.

It sounds like your parents are trying to figure things out, and maybe, by giving you the choice, they are trying to make you feel like you have some control in what seems like a situation that is so out of your control. They may be trying to help and let you have a voice in the process. That can actually be a really good thing.

A child whose parents are divorcing should feel empowered to let them know that it is making things hard and that he or she needs help, support, and guidance. Also, keep in mind that the choice you have been presented with might not have to be a permanent one. One option might be to try to finish the year where you are, thereby staying in your school through this year and then reconsidering in the summer what will work best for you.

I know this choice feels monumental—it doesn’t have to be. You also do not have to do this alone. By asking for the help you need, you will set yourself up to manage the changes that are coming without feeling as conflicted and overwhelmed as you feel right now.

Best of luck!
Erika

During a discussion in my Family Studies class, we talked about the different type of families and why there are issues in the family. I couldn’t help but to think about my situation and my own family issues, and, instantly, lack of communication came into my head as a reason why there are issues in some families.

The reason I chose lack of communication as the main catalyst for families falling apart is that I’ve experienced it personally. I was born in the West African country of Sierra Leone. I lived there with my mom and dad until I was about 8 years of age and was brought to America and my mother’s younger sister was given custody of me. She became my mother and I became her child. Things seemed perfect, and to my family back home I was living the best life there is. I was in the land where everyone wanted to be—America.

And everything was great, because it was the two of us together; she loved me like I was her very own child and I loved her, for she was now my mother. It wasn’t until a third person—a man—was added to our family that we were divided. Everything started falling apart because I was left in the dark. Things were never shared between my new mother and me. We still communicated; however, the things that should have been shared and talked about were deemed too taboo to be spoken off. As she decided to be with this man, nothing was discussed with me. Even though I was a child I still believed that if someone else is to be a part of my life, I deserved some input.

When I was in high school, during my 10th grade year, she decided that we were going to move in with the man. Once again, it was as if my opinion did not matter—I was never asked about how I felt about moving in with this man, or whether I even wanted to move in with him. My mother was simply focused on her well-being, which drastically divided us. I figured, if she was not involving me in life’s big decisions then why should I let her know what was going on in my life?

We continued to live together, yet we were so far apart. We never talked about anything pertaining to what issues I was having in school or things that were going on in my life. There were times we would go out to the movies or out shopping like the “normal” mother and daughter, but during those times when we were supposed to have bonding experiences, all we would talk about was the weather. Sometimes we didn’t even say much of anything to each other. We drifted so far apart that now our relationship is nonexistent.

For so long I felt nothing but rage and anger. Questions filled my heart. Why was she with him? With everything in me I hated him because of what he did to me while she wasn’t around—all the rude comments he would make and sexual advances toward me. There was so much hatred in me! It transferred over to her as well; if only she would have asked how I felt about us living with him, maybe I would have shared more with her.

Breaking the Silence

I eventually told her everything that happened in that house while she wasn’t around: his rude comments, as well as his sexual harassment. More secrets came out, and things that for so many years I held inside and had never spoken of to anyone. She asked, “Why now?” She wanted to know why I waited so long to tell her. I said, “I know it’s not the ‘right’ time to tell you because you’ve been in the relationship for so long, but it is never too late for someone to know the truth.”

I did not go to a professional therapist per se. I had therapy from an older friend who had his master’s in psychology. He was the first person I talked to about the problems I was dealing with. He helped me face my issues, rather than ignoring them like I’ve always done. Before, I would avoid issues by not talking about them or by dismissing them. Before opening up to him I always buried the pain, anger, hurt, rage, and fear. But he helped me to take on all these emotions firsthand. So I decided to talk to my mother about everything I went through as a child—how I felt like my feelings did not matter, and how she chose her husband over me, always.

The process helped me, because rather than doing what I always did as a child—that is, either avoiding the situation or completely dismissing—I was able to express everything that for so long I kept bottled up inside of me. I was finally able to TALK about it. After releasing years and years of emotions, I was finally able to let go. My mother finally understood where I was coming from—why for so many years we never really had a relationship, why I was never fond of her husband, and why I disliked him so much.

Peace, Healing, and God

Today, I am on my own. I have my own apartment, I go to school full time, and I am working to be successful. I have yet to know what my mother did about her relationship with the man. She wanted us to sit and talk as a family about everything that happened in that house, but I said no; I needed time to truly let go of everything. I needed time to find me, I need time to heal—and healing begins by finally talking about it). I don’t know what the future holds for us, but it is my prayer that things get better and that she finally realizes the man she chose is not healthy for her life.

While our communication is minimal, I try to keep a relationship with my mother, mostly because of God. I believe that whatever is tied here on earth has been bound in Heaven. I want to be able to live my life without anger, without rage. I want peace. I want to be forgiven for my mistakes because I was not the perfect child, and I’m still not a perfect person. Most of all I want to be able to forgive, and I don’t want anything to come between me and my blessings from God because of me not communicating to the woman who raised me.

For the rest of my life, I don’t have to be angry any more. I don’t have to feel afraid or hold things in. I can live my life the way I want to, and the way I feel is best for my well-being. And although my relationship with my mother has forever changed, now at least she knows why things are the way they are between us. I have no regrets about anything.

The term “enabler” has gained widespread recognition and use in popular culture and media over the past several decades. It is a label that can result in a great deal of anxiety and guilt for anyone who has been accused of being, or suspects that they may be, an enabler.

In its original context, enabling refers to a pattern within the families of people addicted to alcohol and drugs, wherein the family members excuse, justify, ignore, deny, and smooth over the addiction. This notoriously allows the addicted person to avoid facing the full consequences of his or her addiction, and the addiction is able to continue.

In a wider sense, enabling can describe a pattern of behavior that becomes organized among the family and friends of not just an addicted person, but any person who is exhibiting poor choices that harm themselves or others and for which they are not being held responsible.

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Who are enablers? Enablers can be romantic partners, ex-partners, parents, adult children, siblings, or friends. The one thing that all enablers have in common is this: they love someone who is out of control, and they find themselves taking more responsibility for the actions of that person than the person is taking for themselves.

The one thing that all enablers have in common is this: they love someone who is out of control, and they find themselves taking more responsibility for the actions of that person than the person is taking for themselves.

Who is enabled? The enabled person may be one who is refusing to take on responsibilities he or she would otherwise be expected to take on in the course of age- and stage-appropriate development. The enabled person may be exhibiting a range of poor choices with alcohol and drugs, ranging from abuse to addiction. This may also encompass poor choices around so-called “soft addictions” such as gambling, pornography, or excessive video gaming. He or she may refuse, or appear unable, to fulfill normative roles of adulthood. If a parent, he or she may underperform or disregard the responsibilities of parenthood. He or she may frequently disrupt romantic partnerships. The enabled person often displays poor money management, as well as disorganized academic and/or career-planning choices. He or she may quit or be fired from a series of promising jobs and educational or training programs. The enabled person often describes himself/herself as a victim of circumstances or of other people.

The enabled person’s behavior elicits a great deal of anxiety within the people who love him or her. This creates a dysfunctional system into which people who are close to, love, or care for the person can become enmeshed: compelled to organize their own behavior around the needs and choices of the enabled person.

Some who use the term “enabler” do so with a heavily negative judgment against the person who fulfills the role. It is commonly believed that enablers are knowingly, even willingly, complicit in the actions of the person they are enabling; that enablers support and condone the negative choices of the person they are enabling.

This is far from true. Enablers do not like or feel OK with what the enabled person is doing. To the contrary, enablers are often the ones most affected by, and most disturbed by, the negative behaviors of the enabled person. They feel extremely anxious about the destructive consequences that the enabled person could face.

Consider the following quotes from self-described enablers in therapy:

• “If I kicked him out, he would be homeless. He’s so irresponsible with money, he could never make it on his own. What else am I supposed to do?”
• “Every time I’ve tried to talk to her about her addiction to those pills, she’s gone on an even worse binge, and I’m afraid she will overdose.”
• “I know I shouldn’t have paid for his lawyer after the third DUI, but if he went to jail, he would lose his job.”
• “Every time she and her boyfriend fight, she crashes here. I let her because I know he can be violent, and I don’t want her to be hurt. I wish she would leave him for good.”

In other words, enablers detest the behaviors of the enabled, but they fear the consequences of those behaviors even more. They are locked into a lose-lose position in the family. Setting boundaries feels like a punishment, a rejection, or an abandonment of the person they love. Enablers may struggle with the guilt they would feel if the person they’re enabling were “left alone” to be hurt and damaged by the real consequences of their actions. In some instances, enablers are also protecting themselves and/or children from those consequences.

Enabling, therefore, is a distorted attempt to solve problems. Enablers desperately desire to find a solution to the issues at hand, but their attempts to do so are severely limited by the dysfunctional family system.

Enablers frequently find themselves thinking things like:

• “If only I can keep this person going through their current crisis, it will buy us another day.”
• “If I can’t change what they’ve done, at least I can help limit the damage of that choice.”
• “Maybe my loved one will wake up and come to his or her senses. Maybe a real solution is waiting right around the next corner.”

Enabling has the effect of releasing the enabled person from having to take responsibility for his or her behavior. Enabling means that someone else will always fix, solve, or make the consequences go away. When someone is in the throes of an addiction or other grossly dysfunctional behavior pattern, he or she begins to rely on the resources available. Enabled persons will come to expect that their behaviors are disconnected from consequences or negative outcomes. Enabled persons may even begin to hold their enabling family members in “emotional hostage” in order to keep this pattern going. They may learn to manipulate their enablers in order to ensure that the help and support keep coming.

In this kind of a system, everybody loses by inches. The enabler is desperate to prevent one enormous crisis, but winds up experiencing a constant state of stress as he or she attempts to manage each smaller daily crisis. Enablers generally are aware that they are being taken advantage of in some way; they often report feeling frustrated, unappreciated, and resentful.

The enabled person becomes stuck in a role in which he or she feels incompetent, incapable, disempowered, dependent, and ineffectual. He or she may gradually accept a self-concept that includes these negative traits, destroying self-esteem.

How, then, does the enabled person also “lose”? The enabled person may wish he or she felt in control of themselves, particularly with regard to addiction; but lacking the life experience and lessons that facing consequences brings, they may not know how to break those patterns. They may not have had the benefit of true self-reflection and self-evaluation of their behaviors. The enabled person becomes stuck in a role in which he or she feels incompetent, incapable, disempowered, dependent, and ineffectual. He or she may gradually accept a self-concept that includes these negative traits, destroying self-esteem and rendering the person even less likely to suddenly do a 180 and become responsible and self-sufficient in the future. The enabled person may essentially be prevented from building the skills and motivation he or she needs in order to practice responsibility and reach his or her full potential. Because the enabler(s) will always solve problems for them, the enabled person does not learn how to solve their problems themselves.

By this point, you may be thinking, “I can see some of the ways I have been enabling my loved one. What now?”

You must accept that while your enabling behaviors come from a place of love, enabling is an ineffective way of solving problems at best; debilitating to all involved at worst. You may buy another day or prevent another emergency, but in the end, you are only postponing the real solution.

The key to breaking the pattern of enabling is to return responsibility to the person it belongs to. This involves setting boundaries between yourself and your loved one. You can no longer attempt to take on responsibility for anyone else’s actions but your own. Your loved one’s choices are (and have always been) his or hers. Your loved one’s outcomes and consequences, as well, belong to him or her alone.

The enabled person lives in the same world, with the same rules, as everybody else. Managing their world for them means that they don’t learn to manage themselves within the world. He or she is very likely to have untapped internal and external resources which have not been utilized because the enabling pattern has short-circuited their growth.

When you set boundaries, you release your need to control the outcomes that your loved one experiences. You allow your loved one the chance to connect his or her own choices to the positive and negative experiences that naturally follow. Their choices, their consequences, and what they do or don’t learn from them are all on their side of the boundary.

On your side of the boundary, this means that you must learn to cope with, and internally manage, the anxiety of not being in control of your loved one. Many recovering enablers find that they must rely on their own sources of support to help them overcome the urge to control and enable. The fear of your loved one being hurt can be so overwhelming that setting boundaries and stepping back can be panic-inducing. Receiving counseling for further insight and support in this area is highly recommended.

When you stop enabling, this does not mean that you stop loving the person. It does not even mean that you cannot help him or her.

When you stop enabling, this does not mean that you stop loving the person. It does not even mean that you cannot help him or her. There is a difference between healthy help and enabling. Healthy help involves providing information, encouragement, and coaching to your loved one. You may give your loved one contact information for doctors, counselors, lawyers, or rehabilitation programs, without feeling the need to force him or her to accept this help. You may discuss with your loved one what the possible consequences of actions might be, without feeling as if you must make sure they make the choice you want them to make. Healthy help puts your loved one in control and allows you to take a secondary role.

Enabling is essentially love turned to fear, and help turned to control. The effects of enabling are toxic to all involved. With a solid understanding of what enabling is, and what it is not, there is hope for families who are acting out this pattern. An experienced individual and/or family counselor can be a valuable source of support for anyone who is looking to break enabling patterns.

“You’re so selfish!” I hear this phrase too frequently when working with people who have trouble with separation and individuation. When children hear from their parents that they are selfish, it is typically understood as, “You are thinking about yourself when you should be thinking about me.”

In my psychotherapy practice, I meet many adults who grew up having internalized the experience that they are selfish if they choose their own needs and desires over those of their loved ones. Many continue to deny their own wants in favor of what they believe is best for their parents. Some have transferred their worries to include other relationships and, in the extreme, may avoid feelings of selfishness by providing for everyone else’s needs rather than their own. In most cases, people who believe they are selfish believe they are bad people. This guilt interferes with the ability to develop into separate individuals who know what they want and are comfortable getting it.

The power of guilty feelings about selfishness makes it very difficult to consider that selfishness is not by definition a bad thing. Selfish implies exclusive or excessive interest in oneself. It is unfortunate that parents who use “selfish” in an accusing way tend to use the term if the child’s focus on self in any way (not exclusively or excessively) conflicts with the parent’s needs.

I am going to briefly describe two people with whom I have worked who were severely limited by their inability to individuate because of their guilt over perceived selfishness. In our work, an important goal has been to understand selfishness as exclusive or excessive and to feel emotionally entitled to prioritize one’s own needs some of the time.

“Kate” felt trapped. She came into our session looking very agitated. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said. “I told Alan and the kids I had to visit my dad on Thursday night to help him make decisions about selling his apartment. I promised I’d come for dinner. My daughter Kim has a soccer game, and Alan is mad that I’m choosing my dad. He says I neglect our family. No matter what I do, I feel so selfish. They don’t get how painful it is for me to choose my dad over them. But when my dad needs me, if I say no, I feel the most selfish. He’s so helpless and upset when I’m not there for him. I know my mom will have some ideas, but he really relies on what I think. He’ll get anxious if I don’t come and advise him about this. I tried to tell him that I needed to come on another night, but he said, ‘It has to be Thursday. I’m your father, Kate, how can you be so selfish?’ ”

I reminded Kate that she was responding to that word again: “selfish.” I asked Kate what happens to her when she thinks she is being selfish with her father. I asked, “What buttons get pushed? What is the experience of thinking that you are selfish that makes you feel so trapped and unable to say no?”

Kate responded: “I feel like such a bad person. There is so much guilt. How could I upset my father? He gets so disappointed in me. I can’t stand that I could be such a bad person. You know, when I was a kid and this kind of thing happened, he would get a little teary and walk away from me and leave the room.  I felt like I hurt him so much. In those moments I thought he would never come back. It felt like a punishment. I guess I still become that scared little kid every time he asks me for something. I have no choice but to give in to his wishes. I’m not sure I even know what my own wishes are.”

Kate had come to therapy because she was having problems in her marriage. She frequently got caught up in trying so hard to please everybody that she never seemed to express or know herself. Her husband complained that he felt like there was no one there. In our work, Kate came to realize that in early relationships with her parents, she had been so attuned to their needs and wishes that she had not developed her sense of an individual self. She was beginning to recognize that in order to protect herself from feeling like a bad person, she had unconsciously neglected the development of her own desires and feelings. This was now creating a problem in her relationship with her husband.

When childhood years do not provide the conditions for separation and individuation, the repercussions for adult relationships can be serious. In particular, anxieties about selfishness toward parents can generate intolerable feelings of shame and badness that can exert a powerful influence in adult life.

“Tess” came to therapy feeling depressed and anxious. She was 25 years old, working as a clerk in a bookstore. She felt isolated and lonely. Her main social contact was her parents. Tess looks back on her childhood with mixed feelings. On the one hand, she has fond memories of enjoying school, being close to and having fun with her friend Isabel, loving her piano lessons and practicing. At the same time, she said, “Maybe I didn’t have enough friends or should have gone to extracurricular activities in school. But I didn’t really mind. I liked being by myself, and kids were nice to me. I just didn’t talk a lot or do a lot of stuff with them.”

I asked Tess, “So what makes you seem so uncertain about whether you had a positive experience growing up?”

Tess was silent and thoughtful and then said, “I guess I thought things were pretty much OK, but my parents, especially my mom, always seemed to think I should be doing different things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she was always telling me I should call other kids or join a club or invite kids over. She compared me to herself and how many friends she had. She said she was worried about me since I seemed so socially awkward. Actually, I felt OK, but I had the feeling she thought there was something wrong with me. I was right. When I was about 12, I overheard her talking to my dad. Really, she was crying, not talking. She was very worried. She called me antisocial and said I was going to have real problems. The worst part of that memory is her crying something like, ‘I feel so hurt, she’s so different from me. She doesn’t seem to care about how this makes me feel.’ I was shocked! I ran up to my room and started to cry. I felt really scared. I didn’t know I could make my mom feel so terrible. I think that was the beginning of feeling it’s not OK to be me and that I was selfish not to be the daughter she wanted. But I also felt like if I was me, they would think these terrible things about me. After that, I just tried to please them, especially my mom. But I spent so much time trying to please them, I never thought about what I wanted.”

As Tess and I continued to talk, we became aware of how she was extremely reliant on her parents for feeling good about herself and for guidance. Tess was struggling with what to do with her future. She was considering graduate school in speech therapy or education. She also talked to me about her love for poetry and how maybe she would like go back to school for writing. “My parents think I’m better off with something more practical, so they suggested speech therapy or education,” she said. “I got some information about programs, but I can’t seem to get myself organized to apply. Speech therapy is my mom’s field, and it makes her so happy to think that I would be a speech therapist. I feel so good when she is happy because she approves of what I’m doing. When I think of pursuing poetry, I feel so selfish and so guilty. I know it brings up feelings in my mother of me being so introverted and awkward and makes her so miserable. I know I rely on her too much, but I hate to give up how good it makes me feel when I make her happy. It feels less scary when I go to them, maybe because then I don’t have to feel so bad and selfish if I consider what I want. … Maybe I don’t even want to be a poet.”

Both Kate and Tess were stuck in the dynamics of their early relationships with their parents. For both, the impact of their parents’ anxieties, aggression, and judgments had made it emotionally necessary to comply with demands regarding who and how they should be. Both had parents who were narcissistic and needed their child to be attuned to and accede to their wishes and desires. Not to do so was experienced as the child’s selfishness and wounding to the parents.

Hurting a parent can feel like inflicting a wound. This can make a child feel that the parent is impaired and unable to take care of the child and/or that there will be some retaliation. Terrible shame for being so “bad” and “selfish” is experienced. Kate and Tess, in order to protect themselves from these intolerable feelings and sustain a relationship of positive regard from parents, gave up knowing what they wanted and needed. In the safety of not knowing, they never fully developed their sense of self. They are unable to be clear about what they want for themselves, and rely heavily on parents for recognition and self-esteem.

But change is possible. Through their struggles, they can succeed in letting go of seeing themselves as selfish when they have a need or desire which differs from someone they love. This will allow for the emotional freedom to know what they want, think, and need. They can become their own, unique, individual selves.

“Jeanette” and “Tim”—names and identifying information have been changed—have been married for seven years when they seek couples counseling. Tim complains to the therapist that each time the couple argues, Jeanette phones her mother, Barbara, to vent. Tim has become uncomfortable around his mother-in-law, feeling as though Barbara has formed a negative opinion of him as a result of these conversations. Tim also feels that the involvement of Barbara makes it more difficult for him and his wife to work on their marriage together. Jeanette insists that she has tried and failed to talk things out with her husband and that she needs her mother’s input in order to resolve her feelings.

“Kristen” is the 17-year-old “baby” in a family of three siblings. As each of her older siblings grew up and left home, Kristen sensed increasing tension in her parents’ marriage. Recently, her father began to confide in Kristen regarding the conflicts between himself and her mother. She fears that upon her graduation from high school, her parents’ marriage may dissolve and they will seek a divorce. She is worried that her father, in particular, will be extremely negatively impacted if this occurs. Kristen’s grades have dropped and she is procrastinating on completing her college applications. She is considering staying at home to work instead of attending her dream university because she is fearful of leaving her parents “alone with only each other.”

“Joe,” “Mike,” and “Eddie” are brothers in their forties. While Joe and Mike frequently argue and find fault with one another, Eddie subsequently receives phone calls from each of his brothers complaining about, blaming, and accusing one another. Eddie feels as if he is constantly being pulled into the middle of a decades-long conflict between his brothers, and spends long hours speaking to each of them in an attempt to move them toward resolution. He has begun to avoid family gatherings in anticipation of the stress of being his brothers’ referee. Eddie’s wife “Lisa” observes the stress he is under and is frustrated by the toll this family conflict has taken on her husband.

In each of these scenarios, a dyad (two-person relationship) has become taxed and communication strangled, which has resulted in the triangulation of a third party into the relationship.

Triangulation is a family therapy concept discussed most famously by multigenerational family systems theorist Murray Bowen. Bowen described dyads as being inherently unstable under stress, much like a two-legged stool. When in balance, the dyad is capable of functioning well and meeting the needs of both people in it. However, when thrown out of balance by conflict, stress, or transitions, the dyad will often pull in a third person, or “leg” of the stool, to help them stabilize the relationship.

According to Bowen, some triangulation is normal and even healthy in the course of a family’s interactions. Because dyads are inherently unstable, the involvement of a third party can assist a two-person relationship in overcoming impasses, meeting needs, and coping through stressful times. For instance, two children who are arguing over a toy may seek out a parent to help them resolve the conflict. This kind of triangulation occurs because both of the people in the dyad are looking for healthy and effective mediation. When the triangulated person gives input, it is accepted into the dyad and processed together in a way that moves the original dyad forward in their relationship. Healthy triangulation can also occur in the context of parents (or other family caregivers) who come together to meet the needs of a third member, such as a child.

Triangulation can become unhealthy in families when it causes undue stress on the third party and/or when it prevents, rather than invites, resolution of the dyad’s conflict.

In the case of Jeanette and Tim, the triangulation of Barbara is being sought by only one of the spouses. Furthermore, the input provided by Barbara is not being brought back into the marriage for joint processing by both spouses. It is being withheld by the wife for her own individual purposes. Jeanette’s conversations with her mother are essentially taking the place of the emotional process that needs to be occurring within the marriage itself in order to return the marriage to healthy functioning.

In the case of Kristen, the 17-year-old high school student, her triangulation into her parents’ marriage is both active and passive. Her father has actively placed Kristen in the role of confidant, replacing communication that should be occurring between husband and wife. Kristen has also been passively placed by her dysfunctional family system into a role in which she must sacrifice her own individuation and growth in order to serve her parents’ emotional needs. Although her mother and father may not be expressly stating this to Kristen, the message is clear: The parents are relying on Kristen’s presence in the home in order to avoid confronting the breakdown of their marriage.

Finally, in the case of brothers Joe, Mike, and Eddie, the triangulation of Eddie over the course of many years has simply become an ingrained part of the conflict-heavy dyad between Joe and Mike. Joe and Mike have become accustomed to being able to discharge the anger and tension of their dyadic relationship onto a neutral party. After they utilize Eddie to manage their emotions, they return to their battles with one another with ever-renewed energy. The triangulation in this case is a piece of the unhealthy cycle rather than an honest attempt to seek mediation. Eddie has begun to bear the symptoms of the dysfunctional relationship, and his own bonds with uninvolved family members are crumbling under the weight of his “referee” role.

It is predictable that everyone will encounter triangulation in their family relationships at some point, whether as one of the dyad seeking stability or as the third party who is being put in the middle. If you find yourself involved in a triangle, it is helpful to ask yourself a series of questions in order to determine whether this triangle will ultimately be beneficial or harmful to the family system:

• Are both people in the original dyad jointly seeking the input of the triangulated member?
• Is the input of the triangulated member being brought back into the dyad itself for mutual discussion and consideration?
• Is the dyad openly and directly communicating with one another before, during, or after the triangulation occurs?
• Is everyone involved, including the third party, able to speak frankly and express their own emotions and opinions authentically?

If the answers to the above questions are yes, then the triangulation is likely to be of the normal type which necessarily occurs in families over time.

• Does any member of the triangle feel overly forced, pressured, stressed, blamed, or manipulated by the interaction?
• Does any member of the triangle feel as if he or she is not allowed to speak freely, express emotions, or ask for needs to be met?
• Is the triangulated member being pulled into an inappropriate role (such as a child being parentified or overly confided in by a parent)?
• Is this part of an ongoing pattern of interaction in which the original problems never seem to be resolved?

If the answers to the above questions are yes, then the triangulation may be the type that is unhealthy and dysfunctional in the overall family system.

If you find that unhealthy triangles are occurring in your family, there are steps you may take to counteract the negative effects of such triangles:

• A triangulated person can decide to step out of the middle by refusing to speak about the conflict with the involved members. The triangulated person may inform the two people in the dyad that he or she will continue to have a relationship with each of them that does not include taking a referee, peacemaker, or other inappropriate role.
• Encourage the original two-person dyad to speak to one another rather than projecting their conflict outward. Open, honest, and direct communication between family members is the most efficient antidote to dysfunction in families.
• If a triangle is still needed for the dyad to stabilize, encourage the two people to seek a professional mediator, counselor, or therapist. The professional will likely become triangulated, but can step into the triangle with a background of training and objectivity which will allow the professional to work from his or her triangulated position to help the dyad return to healthy functioning.

Shouting, yelling, screaming. Nearly all parents have done it; nearly all children age 10 and under have heard it. In small doses, such as in emergencies, yelling is not believed to be harmful. Yet, as common as this interaction is within families, if it happens too often it can break down positive conflict-management skills and flood a family’s emotional field with negative affect.

Why Do We Yell?

The most basic reason we yell in any situation is because, on some level, we feel we are not being heard. Whether literally—the person is in another room, for example—or figuratively, not feeling heard is an incredibly frustrating experience. When we believe we have a valid point and are being intentionally ignored, misheard, or invalidated, inside our brains we are thinking, “They must not really be hearing me. I will speak louder. That should do the trick!”

Yelling also stems from a need for control. Yelling is a form of verbal aggression; it carries the message that the yeller desires to be the loudest and most dominant person in the room. If someone is yelling, it is a good bet that the yeller is feeling out of control and is feeling the need to dominate the interaction.

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Parents often experience frustrating and even oppositional behaviors from young children. Depending on your child’s age, he or she may be focusing on developmental tasks ranging from establishing a sense of independence to experimenting with rebellion. The act of not listening to you can actually be part of your child’s necessary development.

At various times of the day or week, parents’ reserves of patience and energy can already be low. For example, a full-time parent may feel that he or she can barely make it to nap time with sanity intact. A pre-nap meltdown from their toddler hits them at their absolute lowest point of the day. A working parent’s morning can be so tightly orchestrated that just the slightest alteration in routine can cause a cascade of setbacks and tardiness. Throw in an early meeting and some traffic, and there is a perfect storm of frustration which can come lashing out toward a child. Parents can reach a saturation point at which their own coping skills are no longer carrying them through a particular interaction. At these points, parents often resort to yelling in an attempt to regain a sense of validation or control.

What’s the Case against Yelling in Families?

Yelling raises blood pressure, heart rates, and adrenaline levels. Those who yell exhibit higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their bloodstreams over time. These physical consequences are also seen in those who are yelled at. Like second-hand smoke, second-hand anger can take a big toll on health.

That’s a case against yelling in general, but in families with children age 10 and under, there are several other reasons that yelling isn’t healthy.

Children look to their parents to maintain the safety—physical and emotional—of the family. Babies and very young children do not yet have the ability to determine the difference between a real threat to their safety and an upsetting or frustrating circumstance. Many parents can attest to this, hurrying to the scene after having heard their toddler scream as if hurt, only to discover the source of the scream was a minor frustration such as not being able to reach a toy. The child’s cognitions in this stage are quite concrete; circumstances are either “all good” or “all bad” and there is little room for ambiguity. Children under age 5 can therefore mistake a parent’s loud tone with an alert to a true threat. This can be terrifying for a child in this developmental stage.

Fear is one of the most basic and universal emotions—every animal experiences it. Fear is centered on a primitive part of our brain called the amygdala. When fear permeates a young child’s emotional experience, such as in a household with daily episodes of yelling, the amygdala will become overly active and this will inhibit the child’s brain from working on higher-level functions such as concentration, reflection, learning, decision making, and behavior planning.

With older children who are more verbal, the words that are shouted can be even more harmful than the tone itself. Even though yelling is an attempt to gain control through aggression, the irony is that in doing so, we actually lose control of our behavior and our ability to filter and manage what we are expressing. Negative labeling, blaming, and other harsh words are especially harmful to children because children accept unconditionally that what their parents say is true. Children between approximately ages 5 and 10 have the cognitive ability to understand the words themselves, but not the adult’s emotional context. They will internalize the messages from the parent without questioning if they are accurate, and will add those messages to their budding self-concept.

[fat_widget_left]Finally, many parents who yell can relate to this scenario: “When I don’t yell, my child doesn’t listen to me. He or she only seems to respond (do what I want) when I yell.” The escalation involved in yelling can become a self-reinforcing feedback loop. Children can become desensitized over time to their parent’s escalation pattern. The child, who is interested mainly in persisting in play or attending to his or her own agenda, will naturally search for ways out of responding to a parent’s demands. We cannot fault the child for this; it is simply a piece of his or her development. The more parent-free space and time a growing child can carve out, the more he or she can explore the world around him/her and his/her own inner experience. The child learns that the parent will eventually escalate to yelling each time, and so the child learns that he or she does not need to respond until and unless yelling is used. The “pre-yelling” time becomes seen by the child as “don’t have to listen yet” time. And the parent, on the other side of this interaction, keeps needing to up the ante over time to get the same response.

How Do We Break the Yelling ‘Addiction’?

1. Set a SMART goal around yelling: a Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound goal that solidifies your commitment to changing this behavior. Such a goal may sound like this: “Within the next month, I will decrease my instances of yelling on weekday mornings until I’m yelling once per week or less during that time period.” Write down your goal and put it in a place you will see it every day.

2. Find ways to increase true power, so that false control is less tempting. Yelling is false control. It feels powerful in the moment, but it undermines our internal self-control and the quality of our relationships over time. Ways to gain true power include:

• rearranging your schedule to relieve some of the pressure on certain times of the day or week that you tend to yell
• asking for help and delegating tasks to decrease your overall stress
• planning ahead for triggering moments, such as taking a distracting toy to the grocery store, or laying out your child’s school clothes the night before
• taking advantage of calm times to focus on strengthening a positive relationship with your children which will serve to buffer any episodes of yelling

3. Assume responsibility for the outcome of each interaction. You are the parent. You set the stage for the relationship between you and your child. If your child escalates, this does not mean you must escalate. If the situation escalates, this does not mean you must escalate. No matter how bad the traffic, how frustrating the missing shoe, how grating the whining, or how sassy the defiance—in the end, you always have a choice.

4. Speaking of choices, realize that yelling is only one of hundreds of things you can choose to do in a frustrating moment. Instead of yelling, you could:

• whisper
• sing
• dance a jig
• say a little prayer
• close your eyes and count to 268
• take a lap around the house
• splash your face with water
• go outside and yell at the snowman or rosebush in your yard instead

Some parents choose a grounding object, color, or mantra which they use to bring their attention away from their momentary anger and refocus it on their goal.

5. Return often to a developmental lens through which to view your children. At all times, children must be expected to behave as children. They cannot and do not think, process, or behave as you do. It is entirely predictable that children will lose things, drag their feet, misunderstand you, ignore you, and throw tantrums at inopportune times. The more you can remind yourself that this is developmentally normal, the less you will feel personally offended or annoyed by childish behavior.

6. When—not if—you do yell, be prepared to acknowledge and apologize for this to your children. Parents must be willing to role-model to children the process of owning up to poor choices and the effects they can have on others. If as parents we are not willing to do so, how can we expect the same from our children?

Breaking ingrained patterns of interaction like yelling is not an easy thing to do. Parents must take full responsibility for “being the change they want to see” in their families. Parents must make their tendencies and triggers conscious, face them honestly, and focus their attention on them if they wish to change. Keeping a written goal, a list of alternatives, and a developmental perspective will be of great help to the parent who wishes to reduce yelling. Over time, parents who make these efforts will be able to enjoy a great deal more peace in their family, a reduction in stressful feelings, and an increase in the amount of true power they are able to exert over their lives and actions.

Counselors and their work are changing and developing constantly. Some counselors are choosing to work in one particular area of home-based counseling with children and families. These families are comprised of varying cultural and socio-economic status. Because working with these families is often inconsistent, sporadic, or engaged in crisis, the traits of a professional working in this area include positive “rapport, warmth, optimism, humor, and commitment” [4].

There are several advantages of performing in-home therapy, including, as a therapist, being able to build rapport, observe child and family functions outside of an office setting, make assessments, and model consistency and routine [3]. Additionally, research is showing that children in families who attend more sessions in therapy (approximately greater than 50%) have better outcomes than those families with poor attendance, [1]. It is more efficient or convenient at times for the counselor to come to the client, given transportation issues or hectic schedules.

The disadvantages for in-home counseling include safety concerns for both therapist and family, as well as lack of consistency. It can also require extra scheduling time (accounting for travel) [3].

Unfortunately, there is not a singular theory that can encompass the needs for home-based therapy. Instead, home-based therapy combines techniques cognitive behavioral therapy, multisystemic therapy, social leaning theory, solution-focused therapy, and psychoeducation for families [2]. These provide additional barriers for counselors doing this work, because they must be trained in several areas and remain flexible when executing them on a case-by-case basis.

Personally, I recommend that in-home counselors create their unique approaches to working with children and families. At the same time, I recommend that they remember basic ethics training. I have titled the professionals in this field “unconventional counselors.” We are those counselors who are trained, licensed, and affiliated with certain larger entities. We act as our own strongest agent of change.

Here’s a list that might be helpful for a first-time home-based therapist:

1. Create your own personalized “on-the-go” counselor toolkit. Each counselor toolkit is going to be different based on your client population and your own therapeutic strengths. The more you are genuine to your own self, the more honest your toolkit is going to be.
2. Be prepared and well-trained in flexibility. This is not the kind of position that you take lightly, nor is it one in which you participate in routine hours or appointments. Be ready to have at least two back-up plans in case your scheduled day does not go as planned.
3. Clients that receive in-home counseling are notorious for inconsistency, whether that manifests with appointments, progression, or regression.
4. Supervision, supervision, supervision. Adopting the role of an in-home counselor is based in a familial approach. In our world, however, a familial approach does not mean a family of origin. This may include other professionals (caseworkers), fictive kin (long-term friends of the family), foster parents, and alternate community supports. An ethical “unconventional counselor” will always seek consultation and professional supervision from other professionals.

References:

1. Carrasco, J. M., & Fox, R. A. (2012). Varying treatment intensity in a home-based parent and child therapy program for families living in poverty: A Randomized Clinic Trial. Journal of Community Psychology, 40, (621-630). doi:10.1002/jcop.21492
2. Macchi, C. R. & O’Conner, N. O. (2010). Common Components of Home-Based Family Therapy models: The HBFT Partnership in Kansas. Contemporary Family Therapy, 32, 444-458. doi: 10.1007/s10591-010-9127-1.
3. Morris, J. (2003). The home visit in family therapy. Journal of Family Psychotherapy, 14(3), 95-99. doi:10.10.1300/J085v14n03_06
4. Thompson, S. J., Bender, K., Lantry, J., & Flynn, P. M. (2007). Treatment engagement: Building therapeutic alliance in home-based treatment with adolescents and their families. Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal, 29(1-2), 39-55. doi:10.1007/s10591-007-9030-6

History repeats itself, especially in our psychological lives and in our relationships.

Although this fact has been recognized for millennia, one of its earliest formulations in the field of psychology is called repetition compulsion. According to Freud (1914) repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again, either in real life or in dreams.

Does this idea resonate with you? Are there patterns you tend to repeat in your relational life that you just can’t seem to break or, at the very least, have been slow in changing?

Although Freud attempted many explanations of this phenomenon, some more satisfactory than others, it was only in later years that we’ve gained a fuller picture of why these sorts of events are repeated.

Over the course of our lives, we interact with many different systems. However, our family of origin – the first system we encounter – has the most pervasive influence on our emotional and physical development and future relationships. As we grow up, our parents teach us what’s good or bad, valued or worthless, important or unimportant. In many cases, we learn this from what our parents say and do. In other cases, we learn more indirectly, impacted by our family’s emotional atmosphere [1].

Dorothy was a 45-year-old woman who came to psychotherapy knowing exactly what the problem was but with no idea how to solve it. Mostly, I was struck by her exhaustion – she had deep circles beneath her eyes and looked completely drained.

“I’m not living my own life anymore,” she quickly told me.

As we talked, I learned that Dorothy was exclusively caring for her aging mother, in spite of the fact that her two sisters lived less than an hour away. She visited her mother morning and night. Most days, they talked on the phone ten times. Dorothy’s mother was emotionally abusive, often calling her a terrible, hateful daughter; at other times, she phoned Dorothy’s husband to complain about Dorothy’s failings. Dorothy never confronted her mother or insisted that her sisters contribute to their mother’s care.

Dorothy experienced ongoing emotional neglect during her childhood. Although her mother was well intentioned, she’d suffered from severe mental health issues. Dorothy recounted innumerable incidents in which she sought, without success, to elicit her mother’s love. “I remember her lying on the couch almost every afternoon when I got home from school. She’d been crying and hadn’t changed out of her pajamas.”

After a brief pause, I asked, “You just wanted her to notice you?”

Dorothy sighed. “Yes,” she continued, “but no matter what I did, that never happened. I brought home artwork from school, cleaned up the house. Several times, I even cooked dinner. But my mother never got off the couch or thanked me for my effort.”

“I wonder,” I offered, “whether you’re still trying to get her to love you now.” Dorothy began to cry, a first lightly but then in more heavily, making contact with deeply held but rarely acknowledged feelings of disappointment and loss.

We all leave our family of origin with emotional baggage. Some people have more baggage than others, and some are more aware of what’s packed in their bags than others [1]. Learning what’s packed in these bags, and perhaps deciding to work through and leave a few items behind, is the essence of family of origin work.

Dorothy understood that she was repeating a pattern from her early childhood. But change did not come quickly. Over a series of meetings, we discussed the strong emotional pull Dorothy felt to recapture her mother’s love and attention – though she freely admitted that she’d never had these in the first place. Several months later, Dorothy came in and said, “My mother started insulting me again on the phone today.”

“And?” I said, waiting for her to respond.

“And I told her, ‘If you can’t speak to me kindly, then we’ll have to talk another time. Maybe tomorrow when you’re feeling better.’”

“What happened next?” I asked

Dorothy sighed. “She kept going, like we expected she would. But I rose to the occasion. I said, ‘I’m sorry mother, we’ll have to talk later,’ and I hung up the phone.”

This article will be continued in future installments.

References:

1. Brown, F.H. (2006). Reweaving the family tapestry: A multigenerational approach to families. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
2. Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreb¬¬History Repeats Itself

Surprisingly, studies show that some of the seemingly less dramatic kinds of experiences, such as neglect, in childhood actually do more harm than overt abuse such as physical violence. Neglect isn’t talked about as much as physical, sexual, or even verbal abuse, and depressed adults who experienced neglect in their childhoods often wonder why they’re depressed.

Even when people think about neglect, they picture parents who are too drunk or high to take care of their children, who prioritize adult sexual relationships over their children, or who don’t care about their children and thus don’t bother to feed them or provide clothes and other necessities. They may imagine parents who are irresponsible and who forget or don’t know how to take care of their children’s needs. All of this happens, but it can happen without such extreme dysfunction.

Sometimes neglect can happen even when parents are trying to be responsible, when they simply don’t have the resources to parent fully. For example, when one parent leaves and the other has to work two jobs to provide food and shelter, they may have to leave the kids to fend for themselves or let the older ones to do the best they can to parent the younger ones. I’ve had clients from families in which this happened when the older one was as young as 3, taking care of a baby or two.

But neglect can also happen in families in which one or both parents are depressed, have demanding jobs, or have so many children that there isn’t time to meet all of their needs. It can happen when one of the parents, siblings, or grandparents is chronically or gravely ill or dealing with mental issues. Often this requires the rest of the family to put most of their time, energy, and attention into that person. It can even happen in families that value individuality and independence. Thinking they are teaching these values to their capable children, parents may overlook concrete and emotional needs even capable children have.

Neglect can cause children to miss learning the skills they need to be fully functional adults. When kids have to teach themselves how to handle life, they often don’t learn the best ways. Neglect can cause children to feel profoundly lonely and empty. It can make it more difficult for them to form friendships, causing them to feel even lonelier and preventing opportunities to develop social skills. They may feel like they don’t fit in anywhere, and learn to cope alone. Perhaps most insidiously, neglected children often conclude they aren’t worth parental attention and care, or that their needs aren’t important or just aren’t ever going to get met. These beliefs, carried into adulthood, undermine the ability to develop loving, respectful, equally powerful relationships.

Not through parents’ intention or direct action or message, but through lack of action, children can turn in on themselves—blaming themselves for how bad they feel. They can grow up with these invisible wounds, not even associating them with their parents, who may be loving, well-intentioned people.

Clearly, there is a huge range of severity of neglect, depending on factors such as how young the child is when it begins, how extensive it is, whether there’s a basic foundation of love and respect from parents, whether there are other adults who provide at least some of what the child needs when parents don’t, what other abuse is involved, and whether other resources are available.

How people cope with neglect also varies, just as it does with abuse and trauma. Neglected children may cope by clinging and being dependent; by giving up and lacking motivation or hope; by withdrawing and resisting human contact; or by acting out with crime, dangerous sex, etc. They may experience depression, anxiety, self-attacks, eating issues, or addictions. Any or all of these results of the neglect can follow the child into adulthood.

If you don’t understand why you’re depressed and think you had good parents and no trauma, consider what you might not have had. Did you struggle with anything your parents didn’t protect you from or help you with—even things like unrealistic standards for yourself? Did you have to take care of yourself more than your friends had to take care of themselves, or that you would expect of your children, nieces, nephews, or godchildren? Did your parents show no interest in things that were important to you? Did you have to work at getting your parents’ attention? Did you get physically or emotionally hurt because your parents weren’t paying attention? Do you feel like your needs aren’t important? Do you not expect to have them met? Check in with yourself, your journal, your therapist, and maybe your siblings to see if you can find ways your parents weren’t there for you that others are for their kids … and look at how it affected you.

There is nothing like bringing home a close friend or partner to shine a spotlight on the unspoken rules by which every family, your family, lived and lives.

Every family that lives with one another for some time develops a set of patterns for emotional engagement that soon feels like the “family rules.” These expectations for behavior may start within a marriage and strengthen their grip as children are brought into the home. Once the children catch on to these patterns, they begin to live by them. Only family members know how that family works, even though no one may have ever spoken these powerful expectations out loud.

Many of these rules are quite helpful, and create a kind of emotional shorthand that members count on. Some rules families frequently live by are: this family lets one another know our whereabouts; this family goes to church/synagogue/mosque; this family values education; this family values friendship, and this family works hard. Others might be less helpful. They might be expressed as: this family avoids conflict; this family never questions mother/father; this family relies on men for money, women for support; this family doesn’t live outside our region; this family keeps secrets, and this family doesn’t trust anyone outside the family.

With these internal rules, members keep the connections of their family relationships, even unhealthy ones, intact. Once we bring another person into close relationship with this family system through marriage, the rules become more obvious; our new partner has no way of knowing or observing these internal rules except by bumping into them. Because they don’t have the years of unconscious training in working within the boundaries of these family expectations, newcomers invariably stir up distress and even conflict by disregarding these rules or even openly disagreeing with them. This is one way newcomers remain permanently on the outside of their partners’ family systems.

This is where the partner, whose family of origin is the one getting stirred up, has to bring his or her best self to the party or he/she will end up offending and damaging the new family and partner. If the rule is “no one can challenge the way Mom behaves,” Mom can run roughshod over the new wife of her son and her son gets caught between his loyalties toward his family of origin and that toward his partner. Because the loyalty to one’s family of origin is older and deeper, chances are that is the one that most easily wins.

In families where emotional connection has never been particularly intense or expected, this kind of division of emotional importance happens automatically. Parents have children, raise them, and expect that once their children marry, the old family changes. The new has come, and everyone has to adjust. In more emotionally intense, enmeshed, or distressed family systems, blending a new spouse and/or grandchildren into the mix may require an our-way-or-the-highway kind of behavior from the newcomer that can make for chronic distress for everyone.

I counsel couples who find themselves in conflict over family rules to think about loyalty as an emotional quality of relationships that can and must be shared unequally. One can be loyal to both one’s family of origin as well as to a new spouse, but the most successful marriages have partners who transfer their primary loyalties to their new partner. Mom or Dad may still be core relationships, but if there is any important conflict, decision, schedule, or issue to decide, the default must move to the spouse and couple.

If you and your partner seem to be in constant conflict over your visits back to visit your parents, your time spent with siblings, or the ever-present sense that you care more about pleasing your parents than you do your spouse, check in with yourself regarding that unequal balance of loyalty. If you feel miserably caught in the middle, it’s time to shift your focus. Unplug some of that urgency from your family of origin and give it to your new partner and children. And, of course, if it’s just not as easy as that for you, consulting with a local marriage and family therapist will help you more easily make that emotional transition.