Family Dynamics & Healing…
Ah Family Dynamics, we all got em…
When I say my family was all pretty on the outside and crappy on the inside, I don’t mean the whole family. I mean mostly my immediate family of birth. However, I find that the very things that allow abuse to continue, thrive and go un-hampered tend to be symptomatic in the complete dynamic of the familial structure.
I don’t say any of this with anger, or hate or frustration. I used to, I used to be very angry, frustrated and in deep pain over the issue. I am merely estabilishing it as a fact. If we can look at the facts, cease to deny the fact that these truths exist, accept that they do exist, real and honest change can occur.
Let me illustrate. I was sexually, psychologically and emotionally abused as a child. Now, I did not become a child molester or rapist. However, as a new parent I chose to use yelling, and unthinking verbal assault as a form of corective action.
Ah here it comes, the justification and rationalization for my early parenting skills: “But you didn’t know better…”, “You did better than your parents…”, “At least you didn’t beat them….”
That kind of justification is systematic in our collective human experience. It is unproductive, it doesn’t help solve anything, and it often reinforces less than creative behaviors. It is often said in kindness, meant to be a lack of judgment on a person, and at the same time those statements are also true. I did not know better, I did do better than my parents, and I did not beat my children. But, I was still perpetrating uncreative correction upon my children, and the of the matter is, those tools didn’t really work all that effectively. In fact, they didn’t work at all on my oldest child, what it did do was instill fear, and angry rebellion in a young child.
Very early in my parenting journey, I decided to work on healing my many “issues”, I didn’t even know what all of them were, the easiest to see and find were the physical and some of the psychological. Those were also the easiest to heal: they were obvious. It was the insidious manipulation, verbal and psychological, that was the hardest to pinpoint, because they were by far more socially acceptable, and more common in our everday behaviors.
I studied abnormal psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other forms of psychology (especially Adlerian, and Rogerian), in order to come to grips with “what was wrong” with me. Instead of just staying there with a diagnosis, I wanted to be better, healthier and felt my children deserved a far healthier childhood than I was giving them.
As I point out in Fearless Motherhood…a contradiction in terms, in 2001 (by which point I had already improved greatly in my parenting skills by reading many books and taking what I felt worked, and tossing what didn’t) I was asked to take a Developing Capable Young People (DCYP)10 week session course. All volunteers at my local resource center were asked to take this class, and it just so happened that it answered so many of my questions about communications, how to do effective problem solving and corrective action that did not involve denigration, nor excessive unthoughtful (unloving) punative action. From there I was asked to become a facilitator of the course, and was lucky to recieve my training from the creator the late H. Stephen Glenn Ph.D. He changed my life.
More than assisting me as a parent, more than seeing what I could do differently in my own life and world of relationships. I learned some of the reasons (not excuses) for why parents (including my own) have these learned behaviors that don’t work other than to instill fear, rejection, rebellion, passive agression, etc, etc, etc. It is not about no consequences, that’s important, corrective action is required, but there are better ways.
Back to the basic premise of the post.
If you can imagine what life was like before the middle of the 20th century in the Western Hemisphere (and parts of the Eastern Hemisphere), we (humans) operated on a survival level. We were so busy surviving as a species, having to work so hard to find the food for each meal (unless you were of the upper social classes, then you were fighting for position and political gain), shelter for ones family. There were manifold reasons for the harshness of the human condition.
With the current economic conditions, we are faced with a difficulty of survival not experienced by many in the West for generations. That doesn’t excuse us to revert to, or continue the old social patterns.
The reason why we’re in the situation to start with, is that Einstein’s axiom of “Our technology has superceded our humanity” is a reality. As we evolved our technology we did not evolve socially. The top/bottom approach to living, to having betters and lessers (parents/children), not valuing the human condition, and having those who do value the human condition mistaken kindness for lack of real and meaningful consequence is exactly why we are here.
Families are the microcosm of society, which is the microcosm of humanity. Point blank.
If we can alter our family relations, our adult/child relationships, our inter-generational relationships, we can have real and meaningful change in the world.
I try to do this with my children and extended relationships. Some days I’m more successful than others, it doesn’t mean that I don’t still occasionally loose my temper, or say something hurtful. It’s not about perfection, it’s how we deal with our imperfections that matter.
To see how something very simple could really help make your life easier, your relationships easier, and possibly make the world a better place, check out the video clip from DCYP. (It doesn’t cost anything,and I’m not trying to sell anything, it’s just a new way of looking at the world.) If you are interested in taking a DCYP course or taking the training, there is information on the website. I am not affiliated with Capabilities Inc. in anyway, other than I took training from H. Stephen Glenn, Ph. D, he was a wonderful, loving, intelligent, compassionate, and thoughtful human being, his work and research changed my world, and my children’s world, and I am forever grateful for that!
If you would like to contact me about taking a class, and you live in the Pacific Northwest, please contact me with questions etc.
