*No audio is available for this talk. Please enjoy a written recap below!*
Kicking off her talk with a paragraph from her favorite book, Family Ties That Bind:A self-help guide to change through Family of Origin Therapy. The gist is this...
"The more we react to others, the more we lose touch with our own goals and become caught in other people's agendas for us. The ability to be close to others and yet not become enmeshed in their opinions, wants, and evaluations is the sign of an emotionally mature person. Therapists call it being 'differentiated," like a cell that separates itself from another cell, but stays in contact."
So, to be able to identify and pursue what you want for yourself (to be yourself) while maintaining a close relation with others is one of the major goals of Family of Origin work. Most of us are able to do only one of these things at a time. We either conform in order to be close, or cut off in order to be ourselves.
A Differentiated Person
A differentiated person can be themselves--they do not think change is an admission of inadequacy.
Attributes:
- Goal-directed
- Clarify your own values and decide what is important to you.
- Able to choose how you want to be and not be controlled by approval or disapproval of others.
- Distinguishing between thinking and feeling
- considers pros and cons and makes rational decisions because they can distinguish between thoughts and feelings.
- Do not insist others live by their beliefs
- Don't become defensive or aggressive with someone who has different beliefs
- Can choose whether or not to act on feelings
Someone who is less mature and depends exclusively on others to provide them with a sense of worth and self-esteem.
Attributes:
- Obsessed with approval and praise, with loving and being loved.
- Overly sensitive
- See signs of rejection in minor differences between themselves and loved ones.
- Distinguishing between thinking and feeling
- Can't make distinction between thoughts and feelings
- "I feel that you reject me" is not a feeling. It's an interpretation. Any time "that" follows "feel," it's a thought not a feeling. Feelings are always about yourself; they cannot be about someone else.
- We create feelings entirely by ourselves.
Four Reactive Strategies as an Expression of Fusion
- Compliance: pretending there aren't any differences. Peace at any price. May become physically or emotionally ill to cope with differences.
- Rebellion: the choice to fight it. The rebel is so involved in rebelling, in not doing and not being the way others want that the rebel never decides what he or she DOES want.
- Attack: Sees the "other" is the problem and openly tries to change the other using whatever means are possible. Often has low self-esteem and believes the other has to change before he/she can change.
- Cut off: Believes that by cutting off from the family, they will be free of their power and influence and problems will be over. Unfortunately, those unresolved issues follow us into new relationships.
One test of fusion in a family is how easily someone can say, "Hey, this seems to be going on in our family" (identifying a rule) and then talk about it with other family members. The more fused family will refuse to acknowledge that the rule exists and won't talk about it. Many families can continue indefinitely in this state and never change. Some change when one member of the family develops enough self-esteem to be able to risk being different and deal with the reactions that provokes.
Other families are forced to change when their children become adolescents, as this is the time when both the spoken and unspoken family rules get tested and challenged. In fused families, things start to fall apart.
--Rebellious behavior does not represent true independence.
--Often teenagers just establish equally intense fused relationships with their peers. And need for sameness and togetherness takes over.
You Make Me Do It--Being Responsible for Yourself
--stay away from touchy issues
--the more fused the family, the greater the number of issues that will upset families. If you don't want to upset someone, the real motive is self-protection. We don't "upset" them so they won't "upset" us. You play act at sameness to "keep the peace." It also places the blame on them (i.e. "If only you would change, I could be happy!").
Under-Funtioning and Over-Functioning
In unhealthy relationships, the roles become frozen into more or less permanent positions of over and under-functioning. Both have low level of differentiation. One must under-function for another to over-function.There are positive consequences if two people act as a team and the roles constantly change back and forth and never become frozen!
Further Discussion
- How well are you able to be yourself and also be close to others? Are there aspects of your personality that you hide from some people in your life because you think they would dislike you for them? To what extent are your actions dependent on the reactions of others?
- Who in your family is very different from you? Can you be yourself with that person?
- Are you relationship-oriented or goal-directed? What about others in your family?
- Notice how often you and those around you say things like "that makes me feel awful," "you really upset me," "you make me sick," etc. What is a more accurate way of describing these subjective experiences? Start saying it that way and see if people respond differently.
- Think of two situations where your family successfully dealt with differences between its members, and two situations where the outcome was not successful. What kind of process did each family member (including you) go through in attempting to deal with these differences?
- Remember some times in your family when a rule was identified, discussed, and possibly changed. What was the impact of this experience on the family?
- Can you identify some basic beliefs you have developed in your family of origin that are creating upsetting experiences for you now?
- What are some topics or issues that were avoided in your family because people became upset when they were raised? What impact has this agreement to ignore a significant issue had on you and your family life?
- Are there any ways people have traded off their own beliefs in your family of origin for the sake of approval?
- When you or your partner come home at the end of the day, and the other is in a bad mood, while you are in a good mood, how long does it take for your mood to begin to turn sour? Have you ever been able to delay or change that?
- Examine what areas of your life you are being the over or under-functioner. As a short-term experiment (perhaps a week) change your functioning level in one area to the opposite of what you are doing now. What happens to the anxiety level in each of you as you do this? What other issues emerge between the two of you (which were previously hidden) as you change your functional level?
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