Does Your Family Drive You Crazy? Next Time Try This.

Surviving the Holidays During a Global Pandemic, Political Upheaval, and Anything Else…

If you just spent Thanksgiving with your family, you may already be dreading the next holiday visit—whether it’s for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or New Year’s Day. The idea of dealing with all the crazy family drama again is exhausting, and you are doing your best to think of reasonable excuses to leave early this time.

One thing you can do next time you are with your family is to carefully observe the family dynamic. With a little information about family dynamics in general (hint: you’re in the right place!) you can learn a lot about why you are who you are today.

When my clients regard their family from this observer viewpoint, they understand more about their own struggles and challenges as an adult. It is a lot easier for them to cut themselves some slack, instead of beating themselves up for doing things the way they do. It clears the way for them to learn the new patterns and new responses that can get them closer to the goals they are trying to achieve.

Let me explain:

I am an attachment-based therapist. Attachment theory says that when we were very young, we learned patterns of responding to life that still stick with us as adults. Those patterns were actually very adaptive when we were young. It’s why we are funny, or easy-going, or assertive. Those are some of our greatest strengths. And our greatest weaknesses.

We use our habitual way of being, like “funny” or “easy-going” or “assertive”, to become successful or well-liked, and it works! But sometimes it goes overboard, and we don’t know how to respond differently or are uncomfortable in situations that might be better addressed with a different style. For example:

• You need to be assertive to get that promotion, but you have been easy-going all your life, and assertiveness is way out of your comfort zone.

• There are some things you would like to talk about with your partner, but you’re used to just brushing uncomfortable subjects off with a joke.

• You are used to being assertive to be successful, but you need to be more attentive and understanding in order to connect with your partner.

• You are used to laying low and staying under the radar, but you never get your needs met at work or in your relationship and you are getting awfully tired of that.

If you are heading back home for the holidays, why not use this opportunity to see if you can gain some insight into why you are the overachiever, or the clown, or the people-pleaser, or even the trouble-maker?

Here are some of the reasons I usually see for various roles in the family.

Keep in mind that almost all families have some dysfunctional aspects—your family may be mostly great; I’m just trying to help you understand your own personal style a bit better. When you understand why you have the role you do, it is so much easier to break free of the stereotype and to develop other parts of your personality. (Though maybe not so much when you are back home—that’s always the final frontier. Just about everybody feels like they are 12 years old when they go “home” for the holidays!)

The Overachiever

Overachievers come from families who value success in one arena or another—often schooling, business, or marriage. They have been praised all their lives for what they do, over who they are.

We Baby Boomers created a lot of overachievers due to our own insecurity about having kids who didn’t win. We gave everybody a ribbon. Everybody was praised just for participating, however lackluster their enthusiasm. We sent a strong message that “You can be anything you want to be” without realizing that the corollary was “…and you damn well better be your best!”

We continued with injunctions to “Follow your passion!!” without first considering that many people don’t know what their passion is until later in life. Most of us (again, I speak for Boomers) found our passion only after many years of just following our interests, until they grew into a passion.

I see a lot of high-achieving young people in my therapy practice, and they are all struggling with a lot of anxiety about doing well enough. And they are all amazing already! Exploring how they got these messages from their “Family of Origin” helps them understand why they feel this way, and helps them generate some self-compassion to relieve their anxiety.

You can do this on your own when you are home by carefully observing the subtle messages your family sends. Hopefully this will help you cut yourself short the next time you start beating yourself up for not doing something “right”.

The Easy-Going One

This category is also referred to as the “people-pleaser” and sometimes is similar to the “family clown”.

This is the person who gets along with everybody. They are pleasant to be around and they never rock the boat. They are agreeable and caring. All great qualities to have!

If you are the easy-going one in your family, you are probably tired of never getting your needs met, never having people consider your feelings. If you have done this long enough, you are Just. Plain. Tired. But you don’t know how to speak up without offending someone, and that is so opposite of the way you usually think—always about the other person’s feelings first. You wonder, though, “when is anyone going to consider my feelings first?”

It will be interesting for you to watch how other members of your family talk about what they want, and just assume it will be okay with you. This is probably a long-standing pattern. It will help you understand why you struggle to speak up at work or in your relationship—you were trained to be this way! But you can learn to be assertive when you want to, it just takes practice and the support of loving friends and partners. Your family will probably be surprised and not-so-happy about this; save them for last after you’ve practiced with easier targets!

The Troublemaker

A lot of families have a trouble-maker, or “black sheep”. In psychology we call this “the Identified Patient”, or IP. The idea is that a family will tend to focus on one person, the IP, in order to avoid addressing all the other family dysfunction. The poor IP takes on all the blame, and plays their role out well. They learned the lesson early on that they are the screw-up, and they struggle in their life the most of all the other roles.

Maybe you are in some ways the black sheep of your family. Are you the one the family always says “causes all the drama”, when everyone else is getting along? This kind of black sheep might be successful in school or in business, but when they go home they take the blame for everything that goes wrong. They often have siblings that are over-achievers and/or people-pleasers, and their parents don’t hesitate to point out how much happier they are with the siblings.

When an IP walks into therapy, we often suggest family therapy, because this is the type that most needs a systemic approach. Alcoholics and addicts are nearly always IP’s (though all IP’s are certainly not addicts) which is why family therapy is part of every rehab program.

Family therapy is often not possible though, and IP’s can heal emotionally on their own. Therapy is still important for support and tools to deal with problems without drama or substances. Families create IP’s; if this is you, it’s not your fault! You can begin to find the way back to emotional health any time (but you might need to avoid your family for a while. Families often trigger IP’s more than any other role).

In Conclusion:

Going home is always complicated. Being with your family of origin is going to bring up all kinds of old feelings and behaviors; it’s practically inevitable. You can, however, use this as a chance to learn something about your younger self, and to understand more about why you are the way you are. Take advantage of this opportunity to be an observer of all the different roles played by the people in your family. Is your mother a people-pleaser? Is your father an over-achiever? Whom do you resemble? What role does everyone in your family play in the “family dance”? How did this incubator create the person you are today?

Observation and awareness are the first steps in breaking free of the unconscious patterns that drive your behavior when you least want them to!

Read more in Surviving the Holidays Part 2.

Could You Use Some Extra Support Over the Holidays?

Therapy can help you sort out issues that have been affecting you since you were a small child, and are getting in the way of who you want to be now, as an adult. Therapy can also give you the skills to keep your calm over the holidays spent with a less-than-perfect family! If you could use some extra help getting through the holiday season, or starting 2020 off with a bang, please call me at 323-999-1537, or email me at amy@thrivetherapyla.com for your free in-office or phone consultation. I look forward to talking to you soon!