Meet The Toxic Family

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

After these words, an image of faces twisted with malice is presented, or images from "The Adams Family". But in fact, the toxic family is cute and revealing as the home of North Koreans, where tourists are taken and full of codependencies and Karpman triangles in different combinations.

Such a family can be set as an example, envy and want to repeat. The first bell will be with the amount of cuteness. Those who have had to take a blood test for sugar levels know that one of the stages of the analysis is to drink a concentrated glucose solution. A seemingly sweet drink would be tasty, but in high concentration, the drink seems unbearably painfully sweet and causes very unpleasant sensations in the body. Something like this happens if you are in contact with a toxic family. Their communication and declared values are very correct. The disadvantages are not noticeable. And only intuition suggests that with these people, something is wrong. In their communication, the negative parts are, as it were, hidden behind a "curtain". And the message sounds like "we are all great." It is interesting that the members of this family themselves can sincerely believe in this.

The closeness of the family is beyond the indicative "beautiful" part. As a rule, a toxic family has something hidden from view behind the demonstrative beautiful part. Real and visible only to members of this deep pool. A casual person will most likely be rejected by asking a question about internal topics, or they will be told that everything is fine. “It just seemed like there were screams from the house. We're fine".

Skeletons in the closet. Family secrets … At the same time, the family has "secrets", stories from the past, taboo for stories outside the family, because "to tell them is a shame and shame." There are stories that are told to children from a toxic family in childhood to “open their eyes to the world,” in a sense, to instill in children a birth trauma. Children are emphasized that these topics should not be shared with Others outside of the family. For telling even seemingly innocent events outside the family, a child can be severely punished. The proverb “You can’t take quarrels from the family” is used.

If a member of a toxic family goes to psychotherapy, then it will be extremely difficult for him to open these stories even in adulthood. He will stick to the theme “we have a great family” for a long time and will not understand why he feels so bad at heart.

As a child, his soul at the same time: it was wounded, holding in itself a non-childish story. This is how the child gets accustomed to the fear that after telling “strangers” something bad will happen to him and forming a basic distrust of the world outside “his family”. In the future, it will be much more difficult for such matured children to leave such a toxic system.

From the age of six, Lidochka heard that Aunt Zina “brought at the shroud,” they gave birth out of wedlock. The child turned out to be weak and died quickly. Lidochka has grown up a long time ago, but she lives with her mother and other representatives of her clan, she has learned "that it is shameful, painful and shameful to give birth outside of marriage." She has been working for many years at her first job, where her mother once arranged for her, and never went on a date, because "dating is the evil that started the shame" and "went on those dates and then brought the baby."

Roles are formal and real … In a toxic family, apart from the roles, so to speak, official ones like mom, dad, brothers-sisters, grandparents, there are real roles hidden from strangers. The roles are distributed according to "their own long-established internal" laws - and differ from the formal ones. For example, roles can be reversed where children or grandchildren take care of infantile parents as if they were young children, in the role of parents.

There is Dictator-head. The family has a head who makes decisions, guided by his own and only his own comforts to the detriment of other members of the family. It can be a gray-haired patriarch and one brothers and even a fragile grandmother. These decisions can be inconvenient or distressing for some family members. Therefore, the head has defenders who will help him defend his decision in front of the dissatisfied.

"Power block". Some close relatives, or rather the younger generation, were brought up with a lack of love from the head of the clan. For the sake of praise and acceptance, they will take the side of the head of the family, without hesitation and believing that the head is right.

Eternal competitors … Praise and criticism is common in a toxic family. Competition is a powerful tool, however. Family members are set up as an example to each other, they compare success, earnings and how someone pleases the head of the family. Family members again stop thinking about what will be good for themselves, and compete with each other to do well for the head of the family. Not necessarily competing for moral good, competing for praise, acceptance, or just attention. Competition adds resilience to such a family. The aggression of the participants will be directed not at the head, but at the competitors.

There is a toxic family The keeper. A person who completely sacrifices himself, his desires. He acts as an intermediary between other members of the family clan, negotiates, begs, does for others, if necessary, then takes on guilt, shame, responsibility for the actions of others. Thus, he turns into a "scapegoat" - a person on whom the aggression of the participants is most often projected. In fact, this person, like glue, prevents the system from reformatting into something new. A “rescuer” person who has little sense of his / her boundaries and has been accustomed from childhood to think that his / her role is to save the participants and sacrifice himself for them.

It so happens that someone cannot withstand the difficulties of the system and tries to fight against it, change the conditions and rules. It may be the Guardian who has failed to withstand the stress and burden of complex feelings. And then the family rejects the one who breaks the foundations. So it turns out Outcast.

And since all attempts to change the system are taboo (because they are dangerous for the head of decay and loss of benefits), the rebel is simply rejected. The difficulty is that a toxic family is like a whole organism and a person gets trauma of rejection by the whole clan. This is dangerous due to the loss of family identity and grief. And a person who tried to break free and separate is traumatized for a long time and later pulled back into a toxic family. For him and for other participants, an attempt to clarify or change conditions is dangerous by total isolation.

The "revolutionary" is first sharply criticized by the head and / or most of the participants. Then all contacts with him are broken, he is ignored. This isolation lasts for some time, then the pulling back into the system begins. This can be an invitation from the head of the family, where the person will be offered acceptance and forgiveness (provided that he asks for forgiveness and takes the blame). Or it can be distant relatives, acquaintances who, at the request of the family members, will play on the feeling of guilt, “here you left, and your poor grandmother is so sick, etc.”. The “punished revolutionary” is accepted by the family very tenderly and may feel guilty “my loved ones are so kind, and I am so tough with them…”. After the "honeymoon", when the revolutionary finally returned back, the family model returns to their usual games.

In part, this explains why participants so rarely leave the toxic family system, no matter how bad it was. The system can disintegrate with the death of significant participants, or if the participant still manages to separate and win his own life.

The consequences of living in such a family system may be little understanding of one's own boundaries. The former member separates both physically and emotionally. In doing so, he lives a lot of guilt, shame and fear. Learns to find and shape his boundaries and protects them.

How can separation from a toxic family be helpful? A person learns to understand himself and his desires, regains his boundaries, gets the opportunity to create healthy relationships. Separation occurs when supported by regular psychotherapy. A person receives support from the outside and the strength not to be drawn back into a toxin relationship and to find himself. I often work with separation topics. Please contact.