Is that the reason why our family does
not communicate well?
by Jef Gazley, M.S., LMFT
Learn how to overcome the effects of a dysfunctional family

This paper is about the dysfunctional family and the child within.  Both, unfortunately, are buzz phrases. Whenever one tries to describe a very complex concept, they tend to use buzz phrases, but that often causes simplification, and it also tends to cause backlashes, eventually.  When I use the word dysfunction or dysfunctional families, what I mean is abusive families.  When I’m discussing abuse, it means ab-use, or not useful.  In other words, there is something that is not helpful occurring in the family system.  It is much more accurate to think and talk about a continuum of any problem, rather than either a problem state or a non-problem state.

Any family is going to be somewhat abusive or somewhat dysfunctional.  Everyone could become a more sophisticated and quality parent, and that’s the way that I would ask you to view this.  Historically, the whole idea of dysfunctional families emerged in the very early 1980’s and it came out of chemical dependence education.  At first, the only person who was being treated was the chemically dependent person, and the theory was that if the staff would just fix them and return them to their environment that things would be fine, which was a very naïve and simplistic way to view the problem.  It is more accurate to perceive problems in a systemic fashion.  There are a number of people involved in any difficulty, and one can’t take the person out of their milieu and expect to fix the problem, as if the problem was only inside of the individual.  In other words, the interaction is often the problem. 

Eventually, treatment was broadened to include the codependent or the enabler, the person who was overly focused on the alcoholic, and began to address their being addicted or caring too much about the chemically addicted person.  It took us several more years to realize that if there were two very immature people who were over-involved with each other, their kids grew up in essentially what would be a parental power vacuum, and those children would become what’s termed adult children of alcoholics, or parentified kids.  These children suffer from varying degrees of post-traumatic stress disorder because their childhood needs had to be suppressed, and only later would those childhood needs erupt in very often immature ways when they were adults. 

Old Shame Bound Family Rules

It was also realized that the families of alcoholics tended to operate under particular rules, some of which were stated outright, and most of which were understood silently by everyone in the family.  When therapists began moving out of working with chemically dependent families, and started to work, or returned to work as I did, in the early 1980’s with families that were devoid of chemical addiction who displayed regular family problems, they became startled by the similarity of the family rules.  The family rules for so-called “normal families” with problems were very much the same as alcoholic families or chemically dependent families. The reason for the similarity is that in our particular culture of Western society, these rules are the norm. These old shame bound rules are imbedded in the culture.  These are the “good old family values” that are discussed so often in politics. While reading these rules remember how it was to be a child growing up. Think of the culture, or TV, the way that people act, and I think the similarity will be readily apparent.

The first rule in a shame bound family system is always to be perfect.  That “always” is just as crazy as the “perfect.”  No one who is human is consistent.  It just simply cannot be done.  All one can do is try to do the best they can.  Intellectually, I think most people understand that.  But what occurs in many dysfunctional families, for example, is a child under the age of six will drop their milk, and the parent will scream, “Why did you do that?”  That means that the parent subconsciously thinks that there was some intentional behavior of the child to misbehave or that the child really can and should be perfect, which is a totally crazy thought.  The child didn’t wake up and decide, “You know, it would really be nice to get yelled at this morning before I have my breakfast.  I think I’ll throw my milk on the table.”  Nobody does that.  Our society tends to be riddled with perfectionism. 

A number of years ago, I was watching a Ball State/Indiana football game, just at the end, there was nothing to do and I was just kicking around, turning channels.  Ball State won, and two of the players came up to the camera and screamed, “We’re Number One!”  “We’re Number One!”  I feel very confident that I will die before Ball State is number one in football in this country.  And there is no need for them to be number one.  It is fine to be simply good or simply trying.  The problem that this society has is that it doesn’t value human beings for whom and what they are, which is fallible.  Should people try to be as good as they can?  Yes, absolutely.  But people have got to be accepting about common human frailties.

The second family rule is about control, and not only control of oneself, which is impossible enough, but somehow the child is supposed to control somebody else.  That is absolutely impossible.  If a person tells another person what to do, the tendency is that person is going to want to do exactly the opposite.  There is no way that somebody can control somebody else, but in this culture, people are told that if they really love people, they’ll make sure they’re okay, they’ll make sure they don’t drink.  Then they’re angry at themselves and at the other person if they don’t succeed.

That failure to be perfect and in control is the third rule in a dysfunctional family system.  If someone is not perfect, and if they’re not in control, they’ve got to blame someone else or blame themselves.  This is the main shame trilogy.  If one follows these rules, he or she will be incredibly unhappy, because at that point, a person feels they should be perfect, but knows they’re not.  They believe that others are, and so the person cannot tell anyone about their own personal weaknesses, leading to an incredible amount of isolation in a family system and a sense of unreality. 

This is only a small sample of this Dysfunctional Family and the Shame Cycle self-help book. If you would like to buy this book, Click here...