Family Ties That Bind. Dr. Ronald W. Richardson

Your spouse’s involvement can only complicate things for you. Your coach must be able to ask you a lot of questions to help you begin to think differently about your family. Spouses are more likely to tell you what to think despite their best intentions.

      You also won’t get very far with this work if you do it with someone (spouse or therapist) who believes that your parents are to blame for all your problems. You’ll just end up feeling justified for your anger or hurt, or whatever your feelings are toward your family. The point is for you to change — and you must do that by looking at your family in a different light.

      One warning: Some people, who are deeply troubled or come from families with severe emotional problems or a history of sexual abuse, should not attempt to do this work without professional help. However, most average people with only the normal complement of problems can do this work without involving a third party.

      In any case, there are two important things to remember as you work your way through this book:

      (a) Keep the emphasis on yourself. Just as no one else is able to make you change, you cannot make anyone else change. So don’t even bother trying. (A nice side effect of your changes may be that other family members change in a positive way, too, but that is not your goal.)

      (b) You need to be motivated. Do you really want to change the way things are in your life right now? Doing family of origin work is hard work, and it is not for everyone. It is not an easy-answer, quick-fix program. It requires a commitment of time, energy, and thought, but the rewards are great for those who hang in there.

      The following story of Sue and her family shows how effective family of origin therapy can be.

       Example

      Sue was going home for the first time in six years. She didn’t really want to make this trip, but she felt she should. Her five younger brothers and sisters had let her know how hurt Mom and Dad were that she never came to see them.

      Sue had left home at the age of 19, after the last of a long series of fights with her parents that had gone on all through her adolescence. Both parents scorned her “radical” political views, but Sue saw Dad as the primary problem and was quick to point out his shortcomings as a parent. Dad demanded she give up her modern ideas and be a “woman” and knuckle under the way his wife had. He did not hesitate to use his knuckles — and fists — to keep the family in line. Sue was the only one who ever openly challenged him. She refused to be controlled.

      After their last fight, Sue announced that she was leaving home. She still vividly remembered walking out the door alone, carrying her own luggage. Dad, in the living room reading the newspaper, barely looked up to say goodbye. Mother was crying in the kitchen, not daring to risk the possible confrontation that might result if she were to see her daughter off.

      There had been a few cards and brief phone calls since then, but nothing else. She knew her parents would be waiting to see if she had changed. Sue realized she had done little since leaving home that her parents would approve of. She had spent three unmotivated years in college because she could think of nothing else to do. She began living with Steve, her boyfriend, while he was still an art student, and when he graduated, they traveled in Europe for a year. After returning they got married, but it was not a satisfying marriage for either of them. In fact, this trip was a way to separate for a while — they had been arguing so much. She was currently working part time at a low-paying job in a group home for teenagers hooked on drugs. Steve worked occasionally as a freelance commercial artist but most of the time he experimented with his painting.

      At the dinner table when Sue arrived home, her sister asked her about her work and the conversation turned to teenagers and drugs. Mom tried unsuccessfully to change the topic. Sue shared her sister’s beliefs about why teens got into trouble. She thought they were victims of uncaring, authoritarian parents, a sick school system, and a corrupt society.

      After trying to control his reactions, Dad was unable to keep quiet any longer. “Damn it, you haven’t changed a bit! You’re still spouting your hippy-dippy, commie junk. You and your worthless husband are wasting away your lives, living off society. Aren’t you ever going to grow up?”

      Sue had hoped to avoid this, but she was not going to let him get away with that kind of remark. She came back at him with her best attacks from the past, honed with more “evidence” gathered over the past six years. The scene ended with Dad walking out, Mother going to the kitchen, and the others quietly disappearing. Sitting alone at the table, Sue decided to go home as soon as she could get a flight the next day.

      Four years later, Sue went home again. She had changed her mind about never visiting again. In fact, she had made three short trips in the previous two years. Her feelings about going home this time were much, much different.

      Shortly after that disastrous trip four years earlier, her marriage became even more difficult. She and Steve were ready to separate, but decided to seek marriage counseling first. As they discussed their marriage with the therapist, both began to see how much their conflicts related to their family backgrounds and the sensitivities developed in those earlier settings. Both were trying to resolve in their marriage the issues that remained unresolved with their separate families of origin.

      The therapist had asked how much they knew about their parents as people, not just as parents, and what they knew about their parents’ own family background, childhood, and parents.

      The therapist encouraged them to seek the answers from family members. After some hesitation, they began to write letters and make phone calls to parents, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, asking about the family. Slowly the pieces began to fit.

      In the process of doing this, Steve and Sue’s relationship with each other began to change. They stopped attacking each other every time they disagreed about something. There was less blame and withdrawal. They still had conflicts, but they were able to think through positions and state them more clearly, without reacting so strongly against each other.

      Each began to find more meaningful direction in work and more satisfaction in life. Both felt they were finally growing up.

      Sue’s experience with her family became more satisfying as well. She began to appreciate them, and feel less shame and anger. She was more receptive to seeing what they had done for her as parents. But more importantly, she began to see them more fully as people who had their own problems.

      On her fourth trip home, Sue’s feelings were very different from that first return trip. On the surface, things didn’t look too much different: Dad didn’t have much to say when he picked her up at the airport; Mom still acted as if her life was relegated to the kitchen. But Sue reacted differently. She told her dad the things about herself she wanted him to know and she no longer felt angry at her mother for being so passive. When her dad disagreed with her and called her the names that used to make her furious, she was able to stick up for her point of view without lashing out at him in uncontrollable anger. Neither of them walked out on the other; instead they “agreed to disagree.” At times, she wanted to say to him, “I love you,” but she didn’t think either of them could handle that much closeness. At least not yet.

      There is nothing magical about the changes that happened in Sue and her family. You can change your experience with your family too. Going home again can help you to finally really leave home, which means growing up emotionally. When you can be yourself in the difficult setting of your family of origin, you can be yourself anywhere, and you will be better able to deal with current relationship problems in a flexible and appropriate way.

      2

      Families Are Strange Creatures

       Though in one sense, our family was certainly a simple machine, as it consisted of a few wheels, yet there was this much to be said for it, that these wheels were set in motion by so many different springs, and acted one upon the other from such a variety of strange principles and impulses — that though it was a simple machine, it had the honour