Thoughts from Family
The past few days has had me reflecting a lot on my family. I’m not sure how many people are familiar with Dr. Murray Bowen and his theories on family systems, but a very abbreviated and summarized version of his overarching theory is that problems in an individual or in a family cannot be attributed to any one person. Instead, the whole family system must be examined and investigated to understand how such problems arise. A classic example is when one person in a couple has an affair. It would be easy to villainize the one who committed the affair, saying that they are evil, they are terrible, they are fully to blame for the problems in the couple. However, upon closer examination, you might find that the other person in the couple has been away from home for weeks on end for work, has been entirely engrossed in work with little energy and time reserved for maintaining the partnership, has rejected all of their partner’s efforts for intimacy, physical and otherwise, and has also been emotionally unavailable when their partner has tried to engage them in meaningful conversation about their relationship. The point here is not to villainize any one person or put the blame on any one person, nor is it to say that the one who committed the affair is not responsible for their actions, but to understand that actions and behaviors should be examined in the context of the system of dynamics between all of the individuals involved. The idea is that everyone has a part to play and has contributed to the resulting problem.
I’ve been thinking about my family quite a bit using the lens of Bowen’s family systems theory, and it has become increasingly clear to me that both of my parents have contributed to the dysfunctional family dynamic that we’ve maintained over the years. While my father is absolutely responsible for his abusive behavior towards my mother and myself, my mother has simultaneously been contributing to the dysfunction. She allowed her and myself to remain in that abusive environment, and has continued to allow my father’s dysfunction at the cost of a healthy family atmosphere. I think everyone was doing the best they could in the environment that we were in, AND we all also contributed to building that environment itself. I am currently trying to break that cycle, and Bowen theory has shown that when one person in the system begins to change, even without forcing change on the other members of the system, the system itself often begins to become healthier. Hope remains!
Thinking about my family has had me considering the attribute of courage. I’ve mentioned before that courage is a core value of mine, and that I do my best to not allow fear to make any of my decisions for me. But one thing that I deeply believe about courage is that courage is not a personality trait inherent in some people and not inherent in other people. I believe that courage is a choice that each of us make every day, and that there is no such thing as being courageous without making the decision to be such. I don’t think that people “have” courage as if it’s an inborn trait. It is not something we always possess or don’t. I believe our choices are courageous or not, and I believe deeply that we choose courage each time we make a choice to stick to our values, whether that’s in standing up to an abuser, taking a risk without knowing the consequences but doing it because it’s the right thing to do, or defending the less able. I had a conversation recently where someone told me that they just didn’t have the courage to take a risk that could potentially lead to amazing results that are also simultaneously necessary for the health of the people involved. It struck a chord in me, because courage is something that we choose to be, just like kindness is something that we choose to demonstrate. Maybe with some people it’s more easily accessible than for others, but it is there for all of us, and we all have to make the decision to be courageous, whether or not it’s easy. It’s easier for some people to be kind than others because either they were born that way or they were raised that way; for others it is much harder because it wasn’t a value that was ingrained to them when they were young. But each of us, when we become adults, are faced with the decision of deciding who we want to be, and courage, like kindness, is one of those necessary choices if we are to live meaningful and fulfilling lives.
Another thing that reflecting on my family has me considering is the way illness and support are linked in my family and in society at large. Growing up, being sick was the only time that I was afforded tender care and gentle attention. As soon as I was healthy again, that loving attention and support dropped away, and the focus was on putting out a different fire occurring in the family dynamic. The same is true today in my family – when I am doing especially poorly with my mental health, my parents tend to drop everything to help me be okay. But when I am doing a little better and am a little more stable, that attention is immediately rescinded, and I have difficulty getting my parents’ attention and time and energy again because now a different fire needs to be put out. And while I do think that it is natural and normal and healthy for people who are in need to be given extra care, I think it can be a slippery slope that goes from normal and healthy to pathological very quickly. One of my key problems is that I have the tendency to magnify and display my distress to the ones who care about me in the hopes that it will get their attention and they will come and support me. And maybe you think that’s just manipulative, but for me it feels necessary because I was never taught a different way to ask for help, and even if I had asked for help in a normal way when I was a child, I wouldn’t have gotten any attention, at least not in the caring and supportive way that I hoped for. And if you think about it, society tends to reinforce this kind of behavior. When someone you love is sick, you’re more likely to head over to their house and drop off a meal, or help them with an errand, or something of the kind. It’s very easy to go from sending the message that you’re there for someone when they’re in need, to sending the message that you’re only available when they are in need. And that’s a slippery slope. If we showed up for each other regularly, if we were always making an effort to be available for our loved ones, then maybe some of us wouldn’t feel so alone when we’re not in crisis. I think it’s important that we continuously show up for each other, that we do our best to consistently be there for each other, so that we don’t accidentally send the wrong message, that we’re only there for each other when someone is suffering.
One last thing that I wanted to mention is that I have gotten some feedback from people that have read the blog that they are worried (with the best intentions) about the extent of the detail that I am sharing about my personal struggles. And while this is fair and I am absolutely grateful for the concern, at the same time, I want to clarify that this is a decision that I have consciously made for the benefit of my audience. One person mentioned that they knew people who blogged about mental health, but that the other people who did so usually were quite general about their own struggles and were working to generally inform their audience about mental health so as to destigmatize it. And that’s their decision, and I respect that. But from my perspective, it is difficult to destigmatize something when you don’t understand the humanity of it. And it’s hard to know the humanity of mental illness if only general information is being shared. I specifically and consciously wanted to share the details of my daily struggle with mental illness because I want people to see what it’s actually like to live with mental illness and struggle with it and strive to live a healthy and fulfilling life anyways. I want people who are also struggling to know that they are not alone, and for the ones who aren’t struggling with it currently, I want them to know what it really looks like from an inside perspective, because only then can they start to understand it. It’s easy to have stigma about something you don’t know personally. It’s much harder to maintain that stigma when you know the humanity of the issue.
If you have thoughts about this, I would love to hear them. Do you think it’s beneficial to go into such detail? Do you also have concerns? What do you think?