The Influence Of The Experience Of Life Of Spouses In The Parental Family On Building Their Own

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Video: The Influence Of The Experience Of Life Of Spouses In The Parental Family On Building Their Own

Video: The Influence Of The Experience Of Life Of Spouses In The Parental Family On Building Their Own
Video: Stages of Family Life: Crash Course Sociology #38 2024, March
The Influence Of The Experience Of Life Of Spouses In The Parental Family On Building Their Own
The Influence Of The Experience Of Life Of Spouses In The Parental Family On Building Their Own
Anonim

Becoming adults, independent, a person gains the opportunity to choose. We are free to do as we see fit, all roads are open. We can admire our parents and strive to be worthy of them, or we can renounce treading on the path on which they stumbled and stumbled all their lives. And having breathed deeply into the heady air of freedom, we set off on our unique, magical path. This is the beginning. The discovery happens unexpectedly: we find ourselves knee-deep in the mud at exactly the point to which we swore to approach. How did we get there?

“It has been established that about 60 percent of daughters of alcoholics marry men, either already sick or for those who become ill with alcoholism. The trend is not violated, even if the mother divorced her daughter's father”(Moskalenko, 2009). This fact has not the slightest rational explanation. After all, the daughters of a person dependent on alcohol, like no one else, know the hardships and hopelessness of the struggle. She knows best of all about the pain and hopelessness that children experience in such a family. There is no reason to believe that her life will turn out differently, but she does.

As a rule, in childhood, this woman desperately lacked love and care. Mom was busy with dad, she had no time for her daughter. Perhaps the parents were tough and critical, perhaps indifferent and detached. No matter how hard the daughter tried, no matter how well she studied, no matter how much she helped, she could not achieve praise. Both parents turned out to be emotionally unavailable for her: dad, because he drank, and mom put all her mental strength into dad. In addition, the girl played the role of a peacekeeping contingent in the inevitable conflicts between parents. She had to be on the alert all the time. She entered the world with extremely low self-esteem, alertness, anxiety, overcontrol and an unquenchable thirst for love. She swears to herself and others that this nightmare will not happen again in her own family. Despite the negative nature of attachment, she remained not free from the scenario of the parental family, she has every chance to reproduce it. As a child, the girl turned out to be powerless in front of her father's drunkenness, now she is strong, energetic, adult and she will be able to prove to the whole world, and especially to her mother, that a fairy tale is possible, that love and devotion work wonders. This is her chance to gain self-respect, become the hero of her own novel and relieve herself of responsibility for her own life (Moskalenko, 2009).

Incomplete separation generates the transfer of incomplete processes in the parental family to their own family. This applies not only to alcoholic families. According to the theory of Murray Bowen, unprocessed, unreacted conflicts that have developed in the parental family are reproduced in relations with their own spouse. The age of the conflict does not matter (Cleaver, 2015). A situation is possible when a mother and daughter, between whom there was a conflict, do not communicate for many years. However, the conflict is repeated in the relationship with the husband. The death of parents does not destroy the stereotype, but, on the contrary, strengthens it. Now he, as A. Varga aptly put it, “is carved on tablets” (Varga, 2001).

The parental family provides us with all the components of the family system: interaction stereotypes, family rules, family myths, stabilizers, history and boundaries. Interaction stereotypes are “stable ways of behavior of family members, their actions and messages, which are often repeated” (Malkina-Pykh, 2007). For example, in some families it is customary to address each other as "you", in others they usually make fun of each other, etc.

Family rules “establish the distribution of family roles and functions, certain places in the family hierarchy, what is generally allowed and what is not, what is good and what is bad” (Varga, 2001). The internal content of family rules is not so significant, the decisive importance in determining the functionality or dysfunctionality of the rules is their flexibility, the ability to change in accordance with the requirements of life circumstances. As an example of contradictory family rules, borrowed by spouses from the parental family, one can cite various ideas regarding the distribution of the family budget. A wife who grew up in a family where it is customary to spend money on entertainment: theaters, clubs, restaurants, indulge in pleasure, will be unhappy with her husband, who borrowed from the parental family the rule to save money for a rainy day, darn socks and buy new things only when old ones will turn into rags. In such a situation, the husband will regard his wife as a spender, and the husband's wife as greedy. A conflict will arise.

Family rules form the basis of family myths. A myth is a complex family knowledge, which is, as it were, a continuation of such a sentence: “We are…” (Varga, 2001). There are such myths as “We are a very close-knit family”, “We are a family of heroes”, “We are the bearers of European values”, “We are free artists”, etc. The coincidence of family myths is one of the most important foundations of family well-being. It will be difficult for a man from a family with the myth “We are free artists” to find happiness with a woman from a “friendly family”. These myths are mutually exclusive, since the supposed rules of a "close-knit family": "The teacher (boss) is always right," "Everything should be decent," etc. fundamentally contradicts the rules accepted among "free artists".

We also inherit ideas about the next parameter of the family system - family boundaries - from our parents. It will be difficult to find mutual understanding for a husband from a family where guests came occasionally, on a special occasion and by special invitation, and for a wife who grew up in a house whose doors are always open to neighbors, friends and relatives.

The next parameter of the family system is family stabilizers. It is extremely common for children to become family stabilizers. Parents are absorbed in raising their children, which allows them to ignore the problems of marital relationships. It is not for nothing that so many conversations and theories are being built around the situation of an "empty nest". In fact, this is a situation when spouses are forced to face the problems that have accumulated in their relationship. In such families, vertical coalitions are formed that are dysfunctional in nature. For fear of being left alone with their problems, parents may try not to let the child into an independent life, keeping him in the family. Separation in such a situation is very difficult to implement.

The most important parameter that most clearly illustrates the consistency and interconnection of family behavior in many generations is family history. It can be traced using a genogram (family diagram). The genogram reveals stereotypes of behavior that are repeated from generation to generation (Bowen, 2015; Varga, 2001).

Working with the family system is complicated by the fact that the listed parameters are not recognized by the participants in the relationship. It is not easy to put a vague sense of dissatisfaction into words. “A problematic family with anxiety usually presents itself to the therapist in its most subjective form … Clients actively blame each other and themselves. Each family member strives to make the therapist their ally, or is afraid that the therapist will become an ally of someone else”(Bowen, 2015).

At the end of the excursion into the history of relationships, in a series of repetitive scenarios, it seems that the future is predetermined, that fate is painted for us to the point by our ancestors, and our contribution is limited only by passing the baton to children. But this is not at all the case. As adults, conscious and responsible people, we can get rid of dysfunctional coalitions, abandon outdated myths and stories, and set boundaries and rules that are acceptable in our families. It is important to take back responsibility for your life.

Bibliography:

  1. Bowen M., Kerr M. Family Assessment // Murray Bowen's Theory of Family Systems: Basic Concepts, Methods and Clinical Practice / Per. from English - M.: Kogito-Center, 2015.-- 496 p.
  2. Varga A. Ya., Drabkina TS Systemic family psychotherapy. Short lecture course. SPb.: Rech, 2001.-- 144 p.
  3. Cleaver F. Merging and differentiation in marriage // Murray Bowen's theory of family systems: Basic concepts, methods and clinical practice / Transl. from English - M.: Kogito-Center, 2015.-- 496 p.
  4. Malkina-Pykh I. G. Family therapy. M.: Eksmo, 2007.-- 992 p.
  5. Moskalenko V. D. Addiction: a familial illness. M.: PER SE, 2009.-- 129 p.

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