Familiarity breeds….
Those who study family patterns have long suggested that humans are prone to repeat family patterns. There are a couple of reasons for this tendency:
If one is lucky, one learned the above at a fairly young age and began to shop for tools to adopt new ways of thinking and behaving in relationships. Perhaps one was shocked to learn that abuse has nothing to do with love to learn that healthy individuals and families do not get drunk or high every weekend. One may learn that healthy families consider the needs of all family members before making decisions.
Most of us learn a mixture of healthy and unhealthy ways of taking care of ourselves in our family of origin. For example, in my family of origin I learned:
I also learned:
Obviously, I learned a lot more about how to behave as an adult and what it meant to be a husband, father, and worker. I learned from my parents, other adults, peers and the limited media which was then available – books advertisement, and occasional magazines and the radio.
No one suggested to me that once I reached adulthood much of what I was learning needed to be carefully examined and then consciously retained or discarded. Thus, I did not have a non-judgmental self- examination system and I blindly went about pretending to be an adult while using my very mixed bag of survival tools. In some area of life, I was relatively successful.
In the most important aspect of my life – personal relationship with self and others – I was a dismal failure. I tended to repeat the most unhealthy patterns of my family of origin - -particularly that of my immediate family.
I said to a client last evening, “Oh, you married your mother.” He was shocked, but as we began to compare his mother and his wife it was obvious that their survival tools – positive and negative – were very similar. Although it was painful and a bit embarrassing for him to accept this fact, he is now in a position to begin to sort through what he learned as a child; what he now needs to retain and what he needs to discard. He can also share this process with his teenage son. Although he may still, at times, feel emotionally attracted to those who would duplicate his family origin he will learn how to separate those initial emotions from the reality of the dynamics of a future relationship. He will not need to judge members of his family of origin. They did the best that they knew how to do.
Written June 19, 2018
Those who study family patterns have long suggested that humans are prone to repeat family patterns. There are a couple of reasons for this tendency:
- Humans will always find a way to take care of themselves. How us humans take care of ourselves may promote the sabotage or the health of an individual and a new family.
- Humans can only use the tools for taking care of themselves that they have learned from their family of origin or which they have consciously shopped for as adults.
- Humans learn to associate dynamics of family of origin with love and emotional health. Many who grow up in an abusive family setting think that abuse is a normal part of love.
- Humans may focus on selecting partner and friends with superficial differences from members of family or origin, but core characteristic will often be the same.
If one is lucky, one learned the above at a fairly young age and began to shop for tools to adopt new ways of thinking and behaving in relationships. Perhaps one was shocked to learn that abuse has nothing to do with love to learn that healthy individuals and families do not get drunk or high every weekend. One may learn that healthy families consider the needs of all family members before making decisions.
Most of us learn a mixture of healthy and unhealthy ways of taking care of ourselves in our family of origin. For example, in my family of origin I learned:
- One does not think about doing chores. One just does them. The fact that I grew up in home which depended on well water, wood for heating and cooking, and the growing and often canning of food did not allow the “luxury” of procrastinating about chores. If one did not do chores one did not eat, bathe, drink, cook, or have heat.
- One has to be creative about learning and even play.
- What one person in the system did or did not do affected everyone in the family system.
- Neighbors shared and helped each other.
I also learned:
- Punishment trumps teaching. If one made a mistake one was severely punished.
- Pretend as if all is okay even if there is serious abuse in the family.
- Love equals anger, blame, and disappointment.
- One was defined by one’s mistakes and not by one’s achievements.
- Adults did not have to like each other to love each other. In fact love meant that one could be very mean to each other.
- Children were a burden to parents and ruined their lives.
- Women were not to be respected. The work of males was always more important then that of females.
- God was very disappointed in one’s humanness.
Obviously, I learned a lot more about how to behave as an adult and what it meant to be a husband, father, and worker. I learned from my parents, other adults, peers and the limited media which was then available – books advertisement, and occasional magazines and the radio.
No one suggested to me that once I reached adulthood much of what I was learning needed to be carefully examined and then consciously retained or discarded. Thus, I did not have a non-judgmental self- examination system and I blindly went about pretending to be an adult while using my very mixed bag of survival tools. In some area of life, I was relatively successful.
In the most important aspect of my life – personal relationship with self and others – I was a dismal failure. I tended to repeat the most unhealthy patterns of my family of origin - -particularly that of my immediate family.
I said to a client last evening, “Oh, you married your mother.” He was shocked, but as we began to compare his mother and his wife it was obvious that their survival tools – positive and negative – were very similar. Although it was painful and a bit embarrassing for him to accept this fact, he is now in a position to begin to sort through what he learned as a child; what he now needs to retain and what he needs to discard. He can also share this process with his teenage son. Although he may still, at times, feel emotionally attracted to those who would duplicate his family origin he will learn how to separate those initial emotions from the reality of the dynamics of a future relationship. He will not need to judge members of his family of origin. They did the best that they knew how to do.
Written June 19, 2018
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