FamilyDIFFERENTIATING FROM
YOUR FAMILY OF ORIGIN
You may handle family pressure by trying to conform or by divorcing yourself emotionally. However, there is an alternative. You can learn how to express your differences or differentiate without getting caught in conflicts or abandoning your significant others. Once you’ve left home, the best place to reclaim the freedom to be yourself is with the family that raised you because:1
• When you are away from home, you will have time to evaluate your interactions with family members, regain a sense of yourself, and plan future strategies.
• Attachments to spouses, bosses, and associates often mimic early entanglements and will automatically change as you develop a new style of being with your parents.
• Your ability to be your own person is determined by how well you have resolved issues with your parents and the degree to which your parents are differentiated.
METHODS FOR DIFFERENTIATING WITHIN YOUR FAMILY
1. Separate, person-to-person relationships: Develop an individual relationship with each parent instead of dealing with them as a unit.
• Correspond with each parent separately instead of writing Dear-Mom-and-Dad letters.
• Have individual telephone conversations instead of talking with both parents on extension lines.
• Balance the time you spend with each parent alone during family visits. Talk about subjects of interest that do not involve others. Stories of past family history, ancestry, philosophies of life, and beliefs are all good topics: “What was it like for you when we were little and Daddy was gone a lot?” “What was your most embarrassing or proudest moment?” “What upset you when you were a child?”
2. The I position: When conflicts emerge in the family, your goal is to state your position and underscore the fact that there are differences in the family. There are few opportunities to take the I position during periods of calm. Deaths, serious illnesses, family gatherings, weddings, divorces, and disclosure of secrets often spawn issues that are fertile opportunities to differentiate. Openly define where you stand on an issue, what you want, and what you intend to do without defending yourself, attacking, or withdrawing:
• “I won’t be getting a prenuptial agreement, even though that may be unwise.”
• “I don’t agree with your position on premarital sex, and I’ll be glad to keep the details of my weekend plans private if you find them too disturbing.”
• “When you give me unsolicited advice, I feel too resentful to consider it.”
3. Neutralizing attacks: After stating your position, it helps to anticipate a series of reactions from your family. This backlash is so important that if it does not happen, you may not have made a successful attempt at differentiation! Initially, family members may be surprised, hurt, or angry and label your ideas crazy, irresponsible, or immoral. Then they will do their best to convince you to change your mind. When this does not work, they may threaten to disown you, but these accusations will probably reach a peak and then subside. Finally, the family will come to respect and appreciate your convictions. “Surviving” expressions of individuality will help all family members differentiate. The hardest part of this task is to maintain contact while under fire.
1 Murray Bowen’s ideas on differentiation are summarized in Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (Jason Aronson, 1978).
Making a casual, empathic response will empower you and can defuse nonstop tirades. For example, if you are told that you are ungrateful, you can:
• Agree (in theory): “I could be more grateful.”
• Act as if you’ve been complimented: “Is that a bad thing?” or simply say, “Thank you.”
• Exaggerate the attack: “I’m very selfish as well.”
• Use reverse psychology: “Maybe you should try harder to reform me.”
• Label feelings: “You sound very disappointed in me.”
• Validate feelings: “It makes sense that you’d think I’m ungrateful because I do not call as much as you’d like.”
• Sympathize: “My ways sound difficult for you.”
When you truly give up seeking approval, other’s judgments will not hurt you. However, if you cannot remain calm, state that you will revisit the discussion later. It is important to resume contact as soon as you are able to show that asserting independence is not the same thing as rejection.
4. The neutral stance: Even when you are not involved in a conflict between two family members, you can use their disagreement as an opportunity to differentiate by simply understanding the difference in each person’s position. This takes you out of a judging position, demonstrates tolerance for varying viewpoints, and minimizes the chance for alliances to form. The following situations suggest ways to stay neutral without retreating:
• Practice the neutral stance in circumstances that are not emotionally charged: Start with conflicts between young children or siblings before the challenge of staying neutral with your parents or when you have strong biases toward one person.
• If you find yourself reacting negatively to one party, spend time alone with that person until you can understand his or her position.
• Handle gossip by breaking confidences: Ask the “gossipee,” “Why do you allow such stories to be told about you?” This will anger the gossiper, force the family to deal more directly with each other, and give you an opportunity to make a casual comment to any attacks: “With a little bit of practice, I’m sure you could develop as big a mouth as mine.”
• Avoid alliances by exposing them when you sense someone is trying to get you to take sides: “Mom and I have been plotting how to get everyone over this impasse.”
Rehearsing possible interactions and writing a script for taking the I position or the neutral stance can help. However, discussing your plans with a family member establishes an alliance and hinders efforts to differentiate.
Tag: Family
UNDERSTANDING YOUR FAMILY DRAMA
Do you ever feel as if you’re trapped in the web of your own personal family soap opera, unable to make a move without inviting disapproval or “wounding” someone? Have you ever thought you escaped your past, only to find yourself caught in dramas with spouses, children, friends, or coworkers? Expressing your individuality or differentiating while remaining close to your family can break this distressing cycle, but this is not easy. Recognizing how expressions of individuality become stalled can help you avoid problems:1
• Early in life, you have an outer, false self that keeps you attached and in harmony with those on whom you depend. This false self is capable of acting, pretending, and doing whatever is necessary for the sake of survival.
• Beneath the outer layer is a solid self that strives to be unique and self-governing. When your caretakers are threatened by differences, you may feel unsafe shedding your outer, false self. Your priority becomes maintaining the bonds of survival by fusing or acting as though you are one with others.
• At some point, the desire for independence pushes from within. An emotional cutoff can happen in an impulsive burst. At this stage, you may become rebellious, withdrawn, a relationship nomad, “ruggedly independent,” or you may move a great distance from home.
• Surprisingly, attempts to fuse with the first appealing person often follow an emotional cutoff. Initially, the new relationship masquerades as freedom. Eventually, the desire for independence surfaces, causing another emotional cutoff. The more intense the cutoff, the more likely it is that a cycle of fusing and cutting off will repeat itself in other relationships.
DIFFERENTIATION IN MARRIAGE
Courtship is usually the most open period in a relationship, when people express many of their thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. However, after marriage, each spouse becomes sensitive to subjects that upset the other and avoidance of differences begins. When the urge to merge conflicts with the reality of differences, problems develop. Clinging, pleading, helplessness, aloofness, rigidity, arguing, and possessiveness, all indicate anxiety about differences. There are three ways that friction in the struggle for oneness is handled:
1. Dominance/yielding: One spouse becomes dominant and appears rigid, and the other adapts and becomes pliant. Neither person is in touch with his or her true needs. One is constantly giving up self-awareness and the other is overextended. In times of stress, the yielding spouse loses the ability to function and becomes physically sick, depressed, or acts out impulsively. If the dysfunctional spouse dies or takes a healthy stance, the rigid spouse can collapse into the dysfunctional position. In a healthy marriage, the dominant and yielding roles are not fixed. Spouses can alternate roles with ease, and both are comfortable assuming the leadership of the family.
2. Marital conflict: The outer, false selves of both spouses are rigid and resistant to differences. The couple alternates between periods of intense closeness and periods of distance and conflict. During the latter, divorce can occur. Sometimes, conflict evolves from dominant/yielding patterns. The compliant spouse refuses to continue in the role and becomes rigid. The couple may be able to bypass a divorce crisis if one spouse begins to express individuality without being influenced by the other’s distress about changes in long-standing patterns.
1 Murray Bowen’s ideas on differentiation are summarized in Family Therapy in Clinical Practice (Jason Aronson, 1978).
3. Triangulation and projection: Spouses avoid differences and conflict by forming alliances with children or by focusing on “disturbances” in a vulnerable third party. The conflict between the parents is then displaced or projected onto the emotional state of the child, as the following examples show:
• A mother who does not feel sufficient levels of closeness with her husband tries to meet her emotional needs with her child. The child exhibits the mother’s rejection anxiety by being fearful of school.
• If a father is missing intimacy, he may overfocus on his daughter. The mother supports this bond, as it enables her to avoid anxieties that closeness triggers. At puberty, “Daddy’s girl” takes drastic action to break away through an unwanted pregnancy.
Sometimes, all three patterns of domination, conflict, and triangulation can operate to form a very complex system. When tension is great, other people get involved to form interlocking triangles. Social service agencies can even become entangled with a family during crises.
DIFFERENTIATION IN “RECREATED” FAMILIES
Those who cut off from parents and later from spouses often seek intense relationships at work and in social settings. These environments can provide a “safe” means for satisfying emotional needs without the demands of intimacy. Gossiping, alliances, and coalitions in these groups imitate the triangles that occur in families. Expressing opinions by saying “I agree with . . . that . . .” or siding with one of two conflicting parties suggests that triangulation is taking place. You can differentiate in such organizations by having some differing views while remaining involved with the group.
BECOMING YOUR OWN PERSON
Despite an obstacle course of emotional cutoff, conflict, and projection, there are young people who find a way to develop their own views and make independent decisions. In adolescence, some denial of attachment to parents and fusion with peers is necessary, and the more differences a family tolerates, the smoother the journey out of the nest will be. In adulthood, the differentiated individual can have close, intimate relationships while pursuing outside interests. Regardless of the group or relationship you are in, you can avoid alliances and triangles so that you can be tethered to loved ones without being tied.