Understanding Family Dysfunction

I have worked in the field of psychology and social services for a very long time and have worked with a great deal with dysfunctional families. It is always interesting to me to see how family dysfunction can be passed down from generation to generation and what shapes the dysfunction can take.

One of the greatest questions I get is how do we deal with family dysfunction? I should be the expert on this as I came from a long line of dysfunction. I, like most people, feel my family puts the D in dysfunction, however, I am not terminally unique and know that many people have families that are dysfunctional.

I suppose it would be important to try to understand what family dysfunction is. Text books have been written about it, however in a quick nutshell, family dysfunction is a family where there is an abundance of conflict, but not just conflict but where these conflicts create misbehavior. These behaviors can turn into abuse, addictions, such as substance abuse, alcohol, drugs, prescribed medication, and very often an untreated mental illness. Dysfunctional families often live with lies, anger and confusion. There is often dysfunction in a family, however too much dysfunction turns into problems that can have a profound impact on family members.

In a functional or healthy family, you will find respect between all the family members. Treat the children with respect and the children treat the parents with respect. In a dysfunctional family respect is hardly ever found. So let’s look at what dysfunctional family.

* A parent and or child will show lack of empathy, understanding, and sensitivity towards certain family members.

* Denial such as refusing to acknowledge abusive or addictive behaviors.

* Lack of boundaries.

* Conflict such as verbal, spiritual, physical or sexual abuse.

* Unequal or unfair treatment of one or more family members due to their birth order, gender, age, sexuality.

* Using such as a destructively narcissistic parents who rules by fear and conditional love.

* A parents who use physical violence, or emotionally, or sexually abuse their children.

* Dogmatic or cult-like parents who are harsh and inflexible discipline with children not allowed, within reason, to dissent, question authority, or develop their own value system.

* Inequitable parenting such as going to extremes for one child while continually ignoring the needs of another.

* Deprivation is very abusive and is done by a parents using control or neglect by withholding love, support, necessities, sympathy, praise, attention, encouragement, supervision, or otherwise putting their children’s well-being at risk.

* Appeasement (parents who reward bad behavior—even by their own standards—and inevitability punish another child’s good behavior in order to maintain the peace and avoid temper tantrums.

* Loyalty manipulation giving unearned rewards and lavish attention trying to ensure a favored, yet rebellious child will be the one most loyal and well-behaved, while subtly ignoring the wants and needs of their most loyal child currently.

* Role reversal parents who expect their minor children to take care of them instead.

* Münchausen syndrome by proxy where the children are intentionally made ill by a parent seeking attention from friends, family, physicians and other professionals.

So how do you protect yourself from family dysfunction? It is important to understand that family is your first and most influential bond in your life so to start setting boundaries and taking care of yourself may seem difficult at first, but it gets easier. It is important to realize that when you were a child, you were helpless and that helplessness made you dependent on the people closest to you for survival even if those relationships are destructive instead of supportive. The family that supports you and gives you your needs already had certain tendencies before you even came to them. They had beliefs and attitudes and you grow, going along with these tendencies gives you what you need to survive, so you adapt and fit in to get your needs met.

As you grow older and more independent, you begin to realize the dysfunctional tendencies of the family no longer conducive to your lifestyle. By now, you might have learned that the dysfunctional family harmed your self-esteem and confused you. You come to terms that it causes havoc in all relationships in your life. The idea is not to get discouraged. Know that you can make change and this change will not happen overnight, but it will happen. It is vital that you keep in mind as you make the changes that it does not mean you are going to get along much better with your relatives. It simply means you are going to learn how to deal with their dysfunction and feel good about who you are. You will begin how to unravel the dysfunctional.

One of the first steps you need to take is to admit and accepting the family dysfunction and how it tends to take on a life of its own. The family remains dysfunctional because the family remains in denial of the dysfunction. Members and friends may make excuses for the dysfunction and enable family members. a So by accepting the family dysfunction, you admit that there is a problem.

One of the next steps is to realize that you will not be able to change your family. You will run in circles if you try. It’s impossible to change other people so focus on your own feelings and coping mechanisms. Look at how you want to change, what you need to change and how you want to change that. You can create these changes by setting boundaries.

Don’t deal with a dysfunctional family by yourself. See a counselor, life coach, psychospiritualist or support group to help you with your journey to deal with the dysfunction. It is important to know and learn you are not the only one and you may need a third party to help you sort things out and help you begin to build a tool chest for healing.

Finally start building your self esteem. Dysfunctional families have a tendency to rob people of self worth and esteem. Make sure you work on this by doing esteemable acts for yourself. In addition, make sure you show yourself compassion. Often there is no compassion in dysfunctional families and it is key to understanding the root of healing is through compassion of self and others.