Dysfunctional Families

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family, and have been untangling the threads of my family's belief systems and behaviors for years in search of my own truths.

One of the hallmarks of dysfunctional families is secrecy, and I hope that by sharing these stories I can offer insight and validation for others who may be involved in dysfunctional relationships. We can only figure out what the problem is and how to change things when we shine the light of clarity and truth on the situation.

Blog Posts:
Being There for Yourself
Maybe It's Not You
Finding My Own Rhythm
The Drama Addiction
Beyond the Drama Addiction
What's Under the Anger Pile

Being There for Yourself
Growing up in a dysfunctional family, I learned that I had to be there at any time for whoever needed me, but that I could never expect anyone to be there for me. For much of my adult life, I didn’t expect others to support me, because I didn’t know it was an option. My life’s work seemed to be taking care of others. Because of my history, most of the people I connected with wanted my attention without giving anything back. I was a dedicated codependent, and I attracted needy people.

Many self-help books and lots of self-examination later, I realized that since I’d grown up in a family where everyone expected support and encouragement to come from outside themselves, I’d never learned how to support and encourage myself.

So I embarked on a journey of learning how to be there for myself. Instead of pushing myself to do more and more and more, even when I was tired, I allowed myself to rest, and told myself I’d done enough. Instead of jumping down my own throat and blaming myself when things didn’t work out the way I wanted, I began accepting that sometimes life throws us a curve ball, and we grow by figuring out how to deal with difficult situations. I even gave myself mental gold stars when I finished complicated projects or moved forward in a positive direction. Over time, encouraging myself made a difference, and now I know I can be there for me, no matter what.

Oddly enough, once I started encouraging myself, I found that other people began encouraging me, too. I have a great friend now who’s even better at encouraging me than I am! And as I’ve started feeling more supported, I’m more willing to offer my gifts and talents to the world, which means I’m getting even better at everything I do, and receiving even more encouragement. It’s a win-win situation.

Even small steps, like saying “That’s the way,” as we would to a child, can build up over time to create more confidence and self-esteem. It feels funny at first, but that's only because it's unfamiliar. Letting go of blaming ourselves and discovering our competence also makes it easier to drop the codependent habit, because then we don’t feel like we have to make others happy or meet all of their expectations in order to be liked and respected.

You can learn to be there for yourself, even if no one has ever been there for you. You’re the only person who you can truly count on to be with you for the rest of your life.

Maybe It's Not You
My parents were often critical of me. And it got worse as they got older.

They judged my values, my beliefs, my abilities, and most of my actions to be deficient or incorrect, unless I was doing exactly what they thought I should do. They often reminded me that their way of doing things was the right way, and unless I followed their lead, I was wrong. This is a major pattern in many dysfunctional families, and it left me with very little self-esteem.

It wasn’t until my parents were gone that I could start taking a clear look at the whole situation. For one thing, they were grounded in a lifestyle that worked for people sixty years ago. Their generation saw more world change than any other to date, and they had a hard time keeping up with the times. They did the best they could, but the strain was obvious.

And as they aged, they needed to exert more effort to feel like they were in control of themselves. One of the ways they did that was to put me down. It made them feel powerful and more in control.

Along the way, I developed the belief that I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t know how to cope with life, that I wasn’t very smart, and that I did everything wrong. But that was only because I thought they must be telling the truth. After all, they were my parents.

When people age, and it seems like their bodies are letting them down and their minds are not as sharp as they used to be, they sometimes turn to criticism as a way to feel like they still have some power in life. It doesn’t always mean that the people they’re criticizing are doing anything wrong; sometimes it just means the criticizer is desperately trying to hang on to his or her own sense of self. In fact, people of any age may resort to criticism to gain a sense of power when they’re feeling weak or lacking themselves. But criticizing someone doesn’t take into account the fact that none of us can walk in each other’s shoes. No one knows what it’s really like inside another person, or what’s best for someone else.

So if you’re struggling under the weight of a lot of criticism, do some reality checks with trusted friends or other family members. Ask them if they see the same kinds of issues in your life. You might discover that maybe the real problem is not you after all.

Criticizing is easy. Looking within, coping with the ambiguity of life in a mature way, and growing into your potential is not. Some people prefer the easy way.

Finding My Own Rhythm
When I was small, my mother was always moving: cooking, cleaning, talking, asking questions, wanting agreement, making suggestions, demanding attention, going here, going there. And when I was an adult, she was always controlling the conversation: making statements, changing the subject, asking questions, changing the subject, directing the conversation this way and that, changing the subject, until I couldn’t think. She smoked and drank a lot of coffee, and the tempo at which she lived her life was too fast for me. I’ve recently figured out that my own best rhythm of living life is quite a bit slower.

When I was small, and moving at a pace that was too fast for me, I didn’t really have time to process everything that went on. I never learned how to develop my own rhythm. I still tend to get caught up in everything there is to do, in all the learned lists of how things are supposed to be and the demands and shoulds that I grew up with, and often I try to do it all according to the rhythm I learned instead of my own innate rhythm. Sometimes, I manage to slow down and find some peace, and that’s when I realize that most of the time, I’ve still been living life in my mother’s rhythm.

It’s taken quite a bit of conscious effort to break the old habitual rhythm, and find my own. I have to really pay attention to what’s going on when I feel overwhelmed, and stop and ask myself what I need in order to get back into my own rhythm. Usually, all I need to do is sit down for a few minutes and do nothing, and that gets my body-mind-spirit reconnected. Then I can get back to whatever I was doing, in a much more comfortable way.

The world goes so fast now, it’s more important than ever to find our own rhythms so we don’t get lost in the chaos of too-much-too-fast. Getting lost in the chaos and going too fast often results in getting close to the end of life and then finding ourselves wondering whether we truly lived..

The Drama Addiction
When I was a child growing up in the Midwest, I learned that life was about drama. My mother was very impulsive, and our daily life changed a lot depending on her whims. Some days she was up, and life looked great. But when she was down, everything was a catastrophe. Spilling a bit of milk wouldn’t make her cry, but it sure sent the mercury on the irritation thermometer up about 50 degrees.

As an adult, I’ve had to “unlearn” the habit of dramatizing every little difficulty in my life. The problem with being addicted to drama is that even when things are generally going well, I end up focusing on some small detail that’s out of place or slightly off, and by keeping my focus on problems, pretty soon I have more of them. Then I’m back in the place where everything is a catastrophe, and the cycle starts all over again.

Having a life like a soap opera provides a certain high, a certain thrust of energy, sometimes even the motivation we need to keep moving forward. It gives our brains something that they love: a problem to solve! Even if all you really want is peace, when you’re used to drama a peaceful life can seem dull and boring.

The first step in achieving peace and letting go of the addiction is to notice when you’re spiraling into it. If it doesn’t involve death or a visit to the hospital, tell yourself it’s not worth getting upset about. It takes practice, like any skill, but you truly can make your way to a peaceful life if you work on breaking your addiction to drama.

Drama addiction is a hallmark of dysfunctional families. Dysfunctional families often catastrophize in order to avoid dealing with the real underlying problems of the family’s dynamics. There are many excellent books on codependence and dysfunctional families. An easy and informative read to start with is The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self by Alice Miller.

The number one benefit I discovered is that I have much more time and energy to start creating an exciting and fulfilling life because I’m not spending all my focus and attention on drama.

Here’s a comparison: Sally, a Drama Addict, consistently creates tension in her life by getting upset over any event that doesn’t turn out the way she expects it to. She grew up in a drama-addicted family, so that’s all she knows. She and her partner are going out for a nice dinner and dancing, and on the way to the restaurant, they get stuck in a snarl of traffic caused by work that’s being done on a burst sewer pipe. After two minutes of sitting in a long line of traffic, Sally begins to feel frustrated and angry, as if the world is out to get her, and the feeling escalates into an assertion that nothing ever goes her way and she never gets anything she wants. Her partner picks up on her energy, and the evening starts to get tense. Three minutes later, they’re on their way, but the evening has been ruined by Sally’s unconscious tendency to dramatize everything. Dinner is not very much fun, and they decide to skip the dancing. By the time they get home, Sally is exhausted after focusing all evening on her anger and frustration.

Contrast that picture with Anna, who is not addicted to drama. (Anna grew up in a relatively functional family.) In the same situation, Anna and her partner use the five minutes in traffic to talk about possibilities for a day trip they want to take the next weekend. There are few distractions, so they are able to be focused and listen to one another’s ideas and desires, and by the time the traffic moves again, they’ve decided on a destination. When Anna gets home, she’s energized and excited, and starts to plan the trip.

Another major benefit of giving up dramatizing is that it reduces stress and allows more room for moments of contentment and peace. It’s also easier to overcome problems because they won’t seem so huge, and your thinking will be much clearer as well. Most people who are addicted to drama grew up with a lot of drama in their families of origin, but sometimes people dramatize because they’re afraid of stepping out and creating a truly exciting life. If this is true for you, remember that small risks often have to be taken in order to grow. If you don’t have any supportive people who encourage you to reach out and take some risks and grab life on your own terms, find some. Get some new friends or a new community, or find a good counselor.

And when you find yourself getting overly upset about some small thing, remember that it’s only a habit, and consciously turn your attention to something you’d rather have in your life. Instead of dramatizing, you could try cooking a new food or going to a new restaurant to add some spice to your life. Is there something you always wanted to explore, but felt you never had the time to try? If you stop dramatizing, you’ll find the time. Take a dance class, visit a museum, learn a language, plan a trip. Write your life story. Start to integrate some real excitement into your life, and you’ll begin to drop the drama habit. On the way, you’ll be creating a much better life for yourself.

What's Under the Anger Pile
A few days ago, I woke up angry. It happens sometimes. As I process some of the old memories from my dysfunctional childhood, my psyche lets some of the feelings attached to those memories bubble up into my conscious mind. If I let my body express them by stomping my feet or jumping around or punching the couch pillows (I dust them off and plump them up afterwards so nobody knows), the anger fades, and I get a little bit more clarity about where I want my life to be. The old stuff doesn’t get in my way so much anymore.

I’ve been doing this work for a lot of years – almost twenty now – in and out of therapy, and working on my own to sort through all of the emotions I never got to express as a child. My mother was the only one in our family who could have feelings. No one else was allowed, and so an awful lot of stuff got stuffed inside, and once it started coming out, I couldn’t stop it.

Nor did I want to. The stuff I repressed got in the way of relationships, work, earning money, and feeling good about myself. It wouldn’t let me succeed, it wouldn’t let me be happy, it wouldn’t let me be me. So I did the work of uncovering all the old stuff, and I found out what’s under the anger pile.

What’s under it is me. The real me that never got a chance to grow, to explore, to love, to be free. Under all of the anger and sadness and pain attached to the past, there’s a happy, healthy person beginning to emerge.

The work of overcoming a dysfunctional childhood is so very hard. But it is so very worth it in the end.