#and the most central interpersonal bonds are the family dynamics . and how all of them come together as a Group to heal | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incarnateirony · 4 years

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Can you talk about Cas' relationship with Jack vs Dean? Obviously Cas cares about them both. But given Cas' 10 year profound bond with Dean, I was really surprised when Dabb said Cas' biggest bond is with Jack. After the events of S14 and 15, tho,I did start believing Jack had replaced Dean as the most important person in Cas' life. I even thought maybe Dabb was trying to move away from Destiel except the show keeps shining this neon light on Dean's feelings for Cas. So now I'm just confused!

That’s because children SHOULD be the most important thing in their parents’ lives. I recognize a lot of us come from damaged backgrounds, myself among those, where I was fighting to survive pretty much on my own by the time double digits hit, but that’s like, the point. And it always should be. Every time. Even if it’s alien to many of us that huddle in online communities. The drama of parents should NEVER. FUCKING. EVER. Come before the wellbeing of a child between them.

EVER.

Honestly part of why I hate shipping fandom dialogue, everything has to be a one-up contest, everyone wants to start swinging about who’s bond is deeper, any and everything is a contest over who can invalidate what complex interpersonal relationships more quickly over what buzz line when we should be reviewing, instead, the important family dynamics being built.

It’s part of what leads to this online confusion of “oh no but Jack is more important what about Destiel they’re killing Destiel RIP Destiel the sky is falling this is the end” only for every season to get louder and more central in blatant ass and even textual ways.

Jack gave Cas a purpose in a good way. It’s not to say he had *no* purpose before either, but in teaching and raising Jack, in nursing him through his doubts, Castiel had to espouse and endorse ideas he didn’t necessarily believe himself, until he looked at his son and realized how very true these issues of self worth, purpose, meaning, and life itself meant. Castiel always worried over his usefulness, his power, his ability, and had to sit down and teach Jack -- and believe it, himself, looking at him -- that it’s more than powers or abilities or whatever the hell. It was about family.

This and many other issues are addressed for Cas through his son.

I refuse to pit fathers versus sons or take offense at dedication to a child being the front and center.

As for Dean, just like John with Sam, he had the pain of a widower around the birth of a cursed child causing his wife’s death, if you will. Sam was the dark and cursed boy. It took time to come around. And Dean, not having the best paternal origin, still struggled even once staggering out of his widower arc into Castiel in his arms again. But he tried. In fact, he tried so hard, that when Jack was dying, Dean took him on an adventure -- an adventure that mirrored the dreams of what he wanted with his own father, cited in the episode Baby.

I dream about Dad all the time. It's usually the same one, too. We're all in the car. I'm sitting in the driver's seat, dad's sitting shotgun. But there aren't any shotguns. There's no monsters. There's no hunting. There's none of that. It's just . . . He's teaching me how to drive. And, uh, and I'm not little like I was when he actually taught me how to drive. I'm 16, and he's helping me get my learner's permit. [...]. We pull up to the house -- the family house -- and I park in the driveway, and he looks over and he says, "perfect landing, son." I have that dream every couple of months. Kind of comforting, actually.

This is actually a core of a video I had to pause work on before life got super busy.

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c-ptsdrecovery · 4 years

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“A family is the first and most significant school we attend on how to relate to others. When this learning process, which takes years, is adequate, an individual acquires two abilities. The first is the ability to establish bonds, to engage in interactions with others that, given the right circumstances, may develop naturally into intimate relationships. The second ability is achieving and maintaining autonomy. Like most animals, human beings are utterly dependent when they are born. The process of achieving autonomy is long and complex, and can go awry in many ways.

What is central is that these two abilities, to establish bonds and to achieve autonomy, are complementary; neither can be reached independently of the other since each is the guarantee of the other (Bowlby, 1999). For the purposes of this paper, a dysfunctional family is one that doesn’t teach its members (or facilitate their learning of) how to relate to others, both inside and outside the family so that members can form bonds and achieve autonomy in their relationships with other people.

Two broad areas of relationship to consider in making a comparison between dysfunctional families and cults are distrust and dependence:

...According to Erickson (1950), trust is a basic interpersonal emotion necessary for healthy relationships. Trust in oneself and trust in others usually develop at the same time, with the growth of one encouraging the growth of the other. A deficiency of one also encourages a deficiency of the other. When trust is absent or deficient, relationships will be based instead on subtle or intense forms of control, which clears the way to abusive relationships.

... Both dysfunctional families and cults exhibit perversions of trust—that is, there may be deference or obedience between members, but neither is based on a well-founded belief in the good sense or good will of the other individual. Rather, members have been persuaded that the person in charge, or the controller, is more knowing or deserving or powerful; they also have learned that the consequences of disobedience to that individual may be harmful to them.

Dependence. A dysfunctional family makes its members weaker in many of the same ways that a cult makes its members weaker: In both contexts, members’ autonomy, critical thinking, identity, and dignity are suppressed or distorted to serve the needs of those in control (Langone, 1992). Both dysfunctional families and cults make their members more dependent upon their family or cult, and consequently weaker. Even if members of a dysfunctional family become estranged, there is often a psychological dependence rather than a healthy integration with people outside the coercive environment of which they were part. Similarly, members of a cultic group are dependent on their leader in a way that depletes rather than enhances their own strength; and often this tendency to unhealthy dependence on another continues even if the persons are able to leave the group.

“...When a parent isn’t able to differentiate between her needs and the needs of her child, she is quite plainly violating the boundaries that her offspring needs in order to grow. In addition to being deprived of his own space, the child isn’t allowed to make his own decisions. While one factor underlying such a lack of boundaries is a lack of trust in a child’s ability to make appropriate decisions, another factor often is a lack of trust by the parent in herself. As a consequence, as a psychoanalyst would say, she will project that insecurity onto her child. In families in which members trust themselves and each other, the members are able to differentiate between their own needs and the needs of others, which allows healthy boundaries to develop. In these families, privacy is permitted without being regarded as a threat. When this process of building boundaries is thwarted, members of the family may either become overly dependent on others’ opinions to make decisions, or they may ignore the advice or opinions of others when that input might be necessary or helpful.

...As in a family that assumes only the parents are qualified to make decisions about their child, a cult leader who insists that followers obey a myriad of minor rules throughout the day may implicitly communicate that the followers cannot measure up spiritually without him. The unspoken assumption is that “Without me, you are nothing.” People who have been involved in cultic groups, especially those born or raised in them, often find the very concept of boundaries difficult to grasp. They are so accustomed to another person invading and controlling their emotional and psychological lives that they may find themselves literally unable to make decisions about even the smallest details of daily life, such as what to eat, when to sleep, how to dress, or what to say to others in social situations.

Families who do not grant privacy to each other by means of healthy boundaries (loving distance) also tend not to trust what is outside their family; so they also are often more closed toward the outer world. In such families, all needs must be fulfilled within the family. Family members may view other families and people as threatening or dangerous, and therefore the family limits outside contacts. Thus, a child who has been invited to spend the night at a schoolmate’s home may be discouraged from doing that, or may be allowed only reluctantly and after being presented with a long string of precautions. Or parents may view other families as useless or boring. Consequently, the children in these families will tend to see the world outside as threatening or uninteresting and so remain, whenever possible, within the walls of their family. These families will remain isolated from other families, and therefore will hamper their members’ chances to integrate in other environments.

... Unhealthy families often have rules related to talking about feelings, especially uncomfortable feelings. For instance, a child may grow up feeling that it is shameful to display weakness or show confusion. These unspoken restrictions prevent family members from talking about problems, or even recognizing their existence, let alone taking steps to improve the situation.

...In both dysfunctional families and cults, the definition of who you are depends on whether you behave or feel according to the rules. Because the definition of who you are comes from the group and not from within you, you have to conform to the group not only to be accepted by them, but also to be accepted by yourself. Your identity is always at stake. The price you pay may be to disconnect from your inner being, where the feelings that are deemed bad by the group occur. To be accepted by the group, you must alienate from yourself. Both members of a dysfunctional family and members of a cult dissociate themselves in order to cope with the contradiction between the information that arrives from outside and from within. As a result, both family members and members of cults develop a basic insecurity that causes them to become very vulnerable.

... Thus, in a healthy family, a child with musical talent may be permitted to pursue that passion, even if the parents’ preference was that the child become a doctor, engineer, or farmer. Parents respect their child’s identity as it really is, not as they wish it were. They do not force their child into a role that is unnatural for the child. Nevertheless, in the process of the child and the parents trying to assert their initially different views, some degree of tension will arise. Dysfunctional families are that way to a great extent because they are not able to tolerate this tension, so they suppress it.

... In a dysfunctional family or group, the force of the group annihilates the separateness of the individuals in it. The people who hold the power in the family or the group decide what is good for the individuals in the group, ignoring that it might be bad for the individuals who make it up.

Dysfunctional Outcomes

Fusion or disconnection. Persons who cannot find freedom within a family may feel that the only way to be free is to cut all ties, that the only alternative to being enmeshed is disconnection. Often, they carry this behavior into other life relationships; these individuals will relate to people in other parts of their lives either by fusing with or by completely disconnecting themselves from others.

Controlling or being controlled. Those who leave an enmeshed family or a cult may relate to others in ways that reflect the control dynamic to which they are accustomed:

“I will try to control you. I want to know what you are doing at any given moment, what you are thinking about, what your problems are. I need for you to be dependent upon me.” Interestingly, in this type of relationship, the person exerting control is actually more needy than the person being controlled. This is the dynamic of the cultic leader, who depends upon controlling his followers to support his grandiose sense of himself.

“I will [paradoxically] require you to control me” (this is the complementary position of the previous example): “I will allow you to know everything about me. I will let you know constantly about my actions. I will share with you all my problems and worries and will let you solve them.” People who were taught by their family that being controlled was the condition for being accepted and loved may repeat that behavior as adults in social life and in romantic relationships. Likewise in cults, members are made to believe that the leader’s control over every aspect of their lives demonstrates his love for them.

Rebellion. Similarly, those who leave an enmeshed family or a cult through rebellion may relate to others in ways that reflect this need to rebel: “I will reject you through constant criticism and disdain. I will defensively attack you because I expect you to try to control me.” “I will [paradoxically] communicate that you should reject me because I am unworthy, volatile, and untrustworthy.”

#ouch #cults #dysfunctional family #toxic family #toxic parents

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alexatwood86 · 7 years

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How Do Dysfunctional Families Fuel Addiction?

Families and Addiction: Navigating the Pathways of Dysfunction

By Brian M. Wind, PhD

Do You Come from a Dysfunctional Family?

Many people struggle to answer this question. In the course of having discussions with my patients about their families of origin, I secretly know the real answer to the above question about family dysfunction. Unless the patient with whom I am having this discussion is exceedingly rare, the patient’s honest answer should be,

“Yes, my family was dysfunctional.”

Lest this strike some readers as offensive, a disclaimer should be provided: there is a broad spectrum of dysfunctionality when it comes to families. On one end of the spectrum are families for whom a rather benign level of dysfunction exists, while others on the opposite end of the spectrum have a glaring, pervasive, and damaging level of dysfunction. The difficulty lay in determining where a family falls on the spectrum of dysfunctionality. Many people make the fatal mistake of assuming that the façade of functionality exhibited by one family is fair to compare to their concrete knowledge of the dysfunctional inner workings of their own family.

The truth?

The only perfect family is one that no one knows.

A Hypothetical Case of the Smith’s

Take, for example, a hypothetical family – the Smiths. Mr. Smith is an alcoholic, and Mrs. Smith is severely codependent. The relationship began years ago with a “sizzling” dance of sorts, with codependent Mrs. Smith being drawn toward the exciting, charismatic, and alcoholically predisposed man in her life. As time progressed, Mr. Smith’s predisposition toward using alcohol as a primary method of coping transitioned to his meeting criteria for a diagnosis of alcohol use disorder, and Mrs. Smith’s codependent traits became increasingly glaring.

Together, they make a decision that having children would “fix” their problems, and may serve to stifle the dysfunctional nature of their marital relationship. Much to their dismay, they discover the reality that having children does not, in and of itself, provide a solution to the problems in their relationship.

Over time, and through perseverance in their tumultuous relationship, the Smiths produce four children. Now with multiple children in the home, the chaos in their relationship has reached a climactic point. The alcoholic patriarch of the family is frequently absent secondary to his alcoholic behavior, and when he is present, the family often wishes he were gone. Mrs. Smith has become the “chief enabler” of her spouse, often covering for him, all the while despising his behavior and longing for “the good old days” in which their relationship was exciting and she felt loved.

One of the main tasks in Mrs. Smith’s day-to-day life has become creating the façade that all is well in the family, while maintaining a couple of close friends who hold her up as a martyr for tolerating her alcoholic husband’s behavior. The codependent relationship between this Mr. and Mrs. Smith has become as stormy as ever.

Lack of Bonding Leads to Inadequate Attachment

Along the way, and as a result of the enmeshment of the couple’s turmoil ridden relationship, the Smith children begin to inherently receive a message that they must not be worthy of their parents’ time, attention, and love. After all, the first “fiduciary” relationships we as human beings are supposed to establish is with our parents. In fact, the lack of an established bond that should occur as part of these fiduciary relationships has been shown to be the driving force behind inadequate attachment, a la Ainsworth’s (1964) Attachment Theory.

Establishing a healthy bond is next to impossible when a father and mother are emotionally unavailable for their children, secondary to being enveloped in a tumultuous marital relationship.

Chronic and Toxic Shame Follow

As a result of an inferior bond with their parents, the Smith children feel less than adequate, traumatized, and by way of the adverse childhood experiences associated with their dysfunctional household, these children develop a sense of chronic and toxic shame. Tragically, this sense of shame is likely to remain with each of the Smith children to some degree throughout the course of their lives.

The Development of Dysfunctional Roles

The children begin to develop into dysfunctional family roles, with the oldest child serving as the hero (who can do no wrong), the second child falling into the role of scapegoat (who can do no right), the third adopting the role of the lost child (who is most damaged by the family trauma), and the youngest child serving as the mascot (who deflects the family’s pain with entertainment). Each child adopts a dysfunctional family role, and over time these roles may adapt and change with the changing Smith family dynamics.

As the children progress through their formative years and develop personality traits, a pattern is seen in the traits they develop. Most often, they acquire traits such as:

Hypersensitivity

Hypercriticism

Perfectionism

Emotional liability

The Effects of Dysfunction on Love and Work

As they enter their teen years and transition into early adulthood, these traits seem to impact the Smith siblings in two main areas – personal relationships and professional functioning, consistent with Freud’s idea that humans with psychopathology are impacted most in their ability “to love, and to work” (Glover, 1994).

The Smith children still carry the heavy burden of toxic shame, never feeling that they fully “measure up” to standards imposed by themselves and/or others. They suffer from chronic feelings of inadequacy, and seem to struggle in relationships. They feel most useful at work and may have a predisposition toward “workaholism”, people pleasing, and overachieving, or perhaps they “give up” on trying to demonstrate adequacy, and as a result become underachievers.

They are drawn toward codependent professions in which they are focused on tending to the needs of others, all the while subconsciously towing the heavy line of their adverse childhood experiences.

While the Smith siblings share personality traits, they begin to travel different pathways as part of their attempts to cope with their emotional pain. The dysfunctional pathways lead them in the direction of:

1. Staying the course of codependency – Because of the damage done via adverse childhood experiences, and the codependent traits they carry with them throughout the span of their adult life, these individuals ultimately follow the same course as their mother Mrs. Smith, choosing a mate who is highly dysfunctional;

2. Progression to addiction – Despite a solemn oath to avoid being like their father Mr. Smith, these individuals fall prey to the sense of ease and comfort provided by indulging in mood altering substances, sex, gambling, or a wide range of other high risk behaviors; and

3. Development of “psychopathology” – Secondary to the emotional damage sustained as part of the adverse childhood experiences endured in the Smith family household, these individuals develop mood, anxiety, trauma, and/or other psychological disorders.

Of note, the above-listed pathways are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The Ripple Effect in Dysfunctional Families

Smith siblings may travel one or all of the above pathways of dysfunction throughout the course of the lifespan. At each sibling’s core – a codependent, traumatized child with a sense of toxic shame. This tragic reality is the result of the “ripple effect” of a family disease, and often can be traced back multiple generations.

Treatment is a Blessing

Sadly, many people like the Smith children will never make it to treatment. The prevalence of undiagnosed and untreated addiction and mental health disorders are staggering (NIDA, 2011).

For the fortunate few who make it to treatment, a skillful clinician is provided an opportunity to get to the “heart” of the problem, accurately diagnose the wounded soul entrusted to their care, and design a scientifically based treatment plan to address the core issues stemming from the dysfunctional family of origin. This, in essence, is the art form associated with treating addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders.

A Reintegration into New, Health Relationships

Sufficed to say, the above provides ample evidence that addiction (and co-occurring mental health disorders) is a family disease. As such, addiction must be treated from a family systems perspective, to the degree that this is possible. It has been hypothesized that addiction is the result of a complete disintegration of meaningful relationships, resulting in a sense of disconnect and isolation (Archon, 2017). If this hypothesis is true, then the “antidote” to addiction would be interpersonal connectivity, and responsible treatment of addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders should centrally involve a reintegration into new and healthy relationships.

This reintegration is at the core of the wellness movement for an individual in early recovery, with a recovery friendly network of relationships being of critical importance. Often, the family must be at the center of this network of relationships in order to optimize the chances for long term success in recovery.

At JourneyPure , the family is of central importance to our treatment process. Our family programming involves:

Intensive weekend family programming

Extensive psychoeducation regarding the family disease of addiction and co-occurring mental health disorders

Genogram work to explore the family history

Experiential therapy to provide insight regarding family dynamics

Integration of family members into the Recovery Support Team of JourneyPure Coaching, a unique and innovative recovery coaching software program

Through diligent work, skillful clinical insight, and persistent efforts, JourneyPure’s family programming tools yield a beautiful reuniting of family members, and lay the groundwork for success in family recovery. Our patients return to life with deep, meaningful, and supportive relationships with their family members, and families are provided with the tools they need to heal core wounds, function in a healthy and adaptive manner, and end the cycle of disease that has plagued them for generations.

Reference Sources: Ainsworth, M. D. (1964). Patterns of attachment behavior shown by the infant in interaction with his mother. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 51-58.

Archon, S. (2017). Drugs Don’t Cause Addition. Retrievable

Glover, J. (1994). Freud, morality, and responsibility. In Philosophy and Psychoanalysis, 157. New York: Macmillan College.

National Institute on Drug Abuse (2011). Treatment Statistics. Retrievable

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