Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

by John Friel

  There is also a need for autonomy or separateness. A healthy family will allow its members to be largely self-determining (depending upon the age of the family member). Children will be allowed to find out what they like and don’t like about the world, what they want to do for a living. They will be allowed to have privacy and a sense of uniqueness as well as belonging. Parents will be able to change their minds about things like careers, roles and so on as their needs change or as their personalities develop over time. Parents and children are allowed to love each other without having to be enmeshed and tangled up in each others’ lives.

  Families also function to promote self-esteem or a sense of worth in each family member. This is done by praise, rather than criticism, and by healthy skill-building, rather than relentless pushing and demanding of perfect performance. We believe that each person truly does have value and truly does have something important and worthwhile to offer to the world and to the family. A healthy family will let each person find and have that sense of personal value, dignity and worth.

  Families also get to make mistakes. That’s right! Healthy systems have room for human error and imperfection. We get to be naughty now and then, and it’s okay. We might call this the “blowing-off steam function.” Think of a steam-heating system without a pressure-release valve! That wouldn’t be too good, would it?

  Families get to have fun. We get to be silly, playful, creative and “let our hair down.” This is the “primary process” kind of thinking that Freud spoke of, and which the Transactional Analysts call The Child. Families that allow play to be an important function tend to be much more creative at solving their own conflicts and stresses.

  Families have spirituality, too. Whether we know it or like it or not, spirituality is a very important function that a family provides. We aren’t talking about formal religion here because we know some very spiritual people who do not belong to a formal religion, and some very spiritual people who do (and vice-versa). By spirituality, we mean our relationship with creation, with the universe, with the ineffable, unexplainable around us, with a Higher Power, with the cosmos, however you describe it. People who learn to let go of what isn’t important, and to persevere with what is, very often can do so because of their spirituality.

  There are other functions that a family can provide for its members, but let’s stop here and see what happens when a family is dysfunctional. What happens then is that we get stuck in dysfunctional roles.

  Dysfunctional Roles

  Those needs and functions just listed are things that each family member should be getting. In a dysfunctional family, those functions are often divided up separately and delegated to one specific family member. Let’s take a look at some of the dysfunctional family roles that develop (Wegscheider-Cruse, Satir, Kellogg).

  The Do-er

  The Do-er does a lot of things. The Do-er provides most or all of the maintenance functions in the family. The Do-er makes sure the kids are dressed and fed. The Do-er pays the bills, irons the shirts, cooks dinner, takes the kids to baseball practice and violin lessons. The Do-er does a lot. But because it is a dysfunctional family, that’s about all that the Do-er has the time or energy to do. So the Do-er feels tired, lonely, taken advantage of, neglected and empty. But the Do-er gets a lot of satisfaction out of being so accomplished at his or her tasks, and the family encourages the Do-er either directly or indirectly. And the Do-er’s own unhealthy guilt and overdeveloped sense of responsibility keeps him or her going.

  The Enabler/Helper/Lover

  The Enabler provides all of the nurturance and sense of belongingness in the family. Sometimes this person is also the Do-er, and sometimes not. For the Enabler/Helper/Lover, keeping everyone together, preserving the family unit at any cost (including physical violence or even death) and trying to smooth out ruffled feathers and avoid conflict is the ultimate goal. Fear of abandonment and fear that other family members cannot stand on their own two feet are what often motivates this role.

  The Lost Child/Loner

  As identified by Wegscheider-Cruse, The Lost Child deals with the family dysfunction by means of escape. But actually, in a sense, this child (or parent) is taking care of the family’s needs for separateness and autonomy. This is the child who stays in her room alot. Or is the one who is out in the woods, playing by himself. He or she is alone, but it is not a healthy aloneness. It is a deep loneliness that pervades those who have this role.

  The Hero

  The Hero provides self-esteem for the family. He goes to law school and becomes an internationally known attorney, but secretly feels awful because he has a sister in a mental hospital and a brother who has died of alcoholism. But he carries the family banner for all the public to see. He makes the family proud; but at a terrible price in terms of his own well-being.

  The Mascot

  Often one of the younger children, the Mascot provides the humor and comic relief for the family. He or she gives the family a sense of fun or playfulness, of silliness and a distorted type of “joy.”

  The cost to the Mascot is that his or her true feelings of pain and isolation never get expressed, and he remains an emotional cripple until he gets into a recovery program of his own.

  The Scapegoat

  The Scapegoat gets to act out all of the family’s dysfunction and therefore takes the blame and “the heat“ for the family. He gets drug addicted or steals, is the “black sheep,” gets in a lot of fights, acts out sexually, etc. The family then gets to say, “If little brother weren’t such a delinquent, we’d be a healthy family.” The cost to the Scapegoat is obvious.

  Dad’s Little Princess/Mom’s Little Man

  This role, as we will discuss later, is a severe form of emotional abuse which many professionals call emotional or covert incest. This role feels good to a child, who gets to be “a little spouse” to one of the parents in the system. This child does not get to be a child, though, and is actually seduced into the role by a parent who is too afraid and too dysfunctional to get his needs met by another adult. Those of us who were given this role usually wind up getting physically or emotionally abused by others in our adult relationships, because our boundaries were not respected when we were little.

  The Saint/Priest/Nun/Rabbi

  This is the child who expresses the family’s spirituality and is expected to become a priest, a nun, a rabbi or a monk, and not to be sexual. Often the expectation is never a spoken one. It is implied, and is subtly reinforced and encouraged. This child is unconsciously molded into believing that he or she will only have worth if they act out the spirituality for the family. And if they don’t, they will have little or no worth.

  There are many other dysfunctional roles that we can identify, and many of us “cycle-through” different roles as we grow up in our families. A Lost Child can also be a Scapegoat. A Mascot can become a Hero later on.

  People often ask us, “But aren’t these roles present in a healthy family, too?” Our answer is always “No!” What does exist in a healthy family is different personality types. Sure, one person may be shy while another robust and gregarious. Recent research suggests strongly that this is due to genetic differences between family members.

  But does being shy mean being isolated and alone? Isn’t there a way for a healthy family to provide all of those needs for a shy child? Of course there is. A shy child can still feel loved and feel like he belongs. He can certainly have a sense of acceptance and worth. He can make mistakes without being abused for them. He can be a separate person without being lonely. He can be spiritual. He can have fun. Don’t shy people have fun?

  What makes these roles dysfunctional is the very fact that they are roles. Healthy families don’t pigeon-hole us into one tiny script. If a “shy person” (as Garrison Keillor of Minnesota Public Radio fame calls them) gets “loud” now and then, who’s going to shame her for it? Who’s going to say, “Hey, kiddo, your role is to be shy and quiet. So shut up and be quiet so you don’t upset the mob
ile.” Would a healthy family do that to a shy child? Not on your life! Only a dysfunctional family would do that.

  Boundaries

  We are talking about psychological and social boundaries here, although in principle they are the same as the physical boundaries around one’s property, city, state or country. For our purposes, we will look at three types of boundaries:

  1. Individual boundaries

  2. Intergenerational boundaries

  3. Family boundaries

  Within each type, we can have three boundary states:

  1. Rigid boundaries (too strong)

  2. Diffuse boundaries (too weak)

  3. Flexible boundaries (healthy)

  Each individual human being should have a clearly defined boundary around himself/herself, which is like a psychological fence around us, defined by us. This individual boundary lets certain things into our lives and keeps certain things out of our lives.

  Figure 6.1. Individual Boundaries

  Rigid Flexible Diffuse

  When someone asks me to help them paint their house on Saturday, and I decide that I want to use Saturday for rest and relaxation, I am setting a boundary for myself. When they continue to ask, and then resort to guilt and manipulation, they are trying to violate the boundary that I set. They are trying to invade my boundary. This would be an individual boundary invasion.

  Likewise, if someone tried to make love to me when I said I didn’t want to, this would be an individual boundary invasion.

  If my boundaries are too weak, I will always let anyone do to, or with me, what they wish. I can never say no. If I do this long enough, I will develop serious emotional problems; and eventually I will swing to the opposite extreme and set up completely rigid boundaries, in which nothing gets in to me and nothing gets out from me to other people. I become an emotional hermit living on an island totally alone. No one can invade my boundaries now, but then who cares? There is no one in my life at all.

  After months or years of subtle boundary invasions by a friend or lover, I might scream in desperation, “No, you selfish, manipulative s.o.b., I won’t help you paint your house this Saturday or any Saturday, for that matter. In fact, I don’t want your friendship anymore and I don’t want you coming near my house again!”

  This rigid boundary will protect me for a while, but the cost will be too great. Eventually I will become so lonely and isolated that I will allow the swing to the opposite extreme to occur when I least expect it. I will jump at the chance to help someone again someday out of sheer loneliness, with the hope of making a new friend, butwith my own growth stifled, that person is likely to use me until I blow up again.

  In dysfunctional families, we swing back and forth, back and forth, between rigid and diffuse boundary states, hoping to find some kind of balance. The only true balance, though, happens when we are in the middle of this swing, when we have flexible boundaries. With flexible boundaries, we might say, “You know, I’d love to help you sometime but this has really been a tough week for me. I’m going to have to decline.”

  It sounds so simple. But it isn’t. How many times have you put someone else’s needs before your own, only to reach the burnout point soon after that? How many times have you come up with a good excuse for why you don’t have to take care of yourself first?

  “Yes, I’m exhausted, but after all, he is my best friend.” Well, if he truly is your best friend, he’ll understand and respect you for setting your own limits.

  It is our belief that the underlying reason that we can’t set these healthy limits is that we are desperately afraid that we will be abandoned if we say “No.” Fear of abandonment is the primary dynamic beneath most dependent and addictive behavior, in our estimation, and how we get this way has a lot to do with the other two types of boundaries we spoke of.

  Intergenerational boundaries are those invisible lines between the parents or other adults in the family, and the children in the family.

  Figure 6.2. Intergenerational Boundaries

  Children Children Children

  Rigid Flexible Weak

  If our parents have difficulty expressing feelings towards us, if they don’t know how to show love, if their own individual boundaries are too rigid, then this intergenerational boundary will be too rigid also. We will always feel alone as children. Our parents will never be “there” for us, either physically or emotionally or both. They will never play with us. They won’t empathize with us. They won’t seem to care. It will feel like they are distant and detached from us. It will feel cold and empty in our families. In some families these intergenerational boundaries will remain rigid most of the time. In others, they will swing to the opposite extreme at times. In still others, they will be in the opposite extreme most of the time, i.e., there will be weak intergenerational boundaries.

  With weak intergenerational boundaries, the line between adults and children is very unclear. This is very common in dysfunctional families and is most blatant where incest occurs. When adults have sex with children, the children’s individual boundaries are certainly violated, but so is the boundary between adults and children. Whenever we put our children in an adult role, we are crossing this boundary.

  Emotional incest is more common than actual physical incest. With emotional incest, we make our children into “little spouses” for us. We lean on them for support. We share our deepest problems with them. We may call them “Mommy’s Little Man” or “Daddy’s Little Girl.” We ask them to fill emotional needs in us that we can’t get met on our own. The very thing that they, as children, need from us, we ask them to give to us. Sound crazy? It not only is, but it makes for very sick little children, too.

  We see this kind of intergenerational boundary invasion happening right after divorce, for example. Moms and Dads cling to their children for the emotional support that they needed from their spouses. And because it makes children feel so important and powerful, and because they are so vulnerable themselves, children become the perfect victims for this kind of emotional incest. It robs the child of childhood. It robs the child of a sense of safety and security, and it teaches the child that the only way he or she can get important needs met is to be a victim. Above all, boundary violations teach us to be victims.

  Figure 6.3. Family Boundaries

  Rigid Flexible Diffuse

  Family boundaries are those which surround the family as a whole unit. With a closed family system where the “No Talk” rule is in full force, we speak of rigid family boundaries. It’s “us” against the world.

  When little Suzy races home to tell Mom how much fun she had at Karen’s house because Karen’s mom just taught them how to bake bread, Suzy’s mom replies coldly or angrily or sarcastically, “If you had so much fun with Karen’s mother, why don’t you just go live there!” When we see all our friends getting together for a “sleepover” or “slumber party,” we want to have one at our house, too; and, of course, with rigid family boundaries, this is not possible. We seldom see any other people in the house. It is as if the entire family lives alone on an island. It becomes very lonely, and eventually very unhealthy.

  With diffuse family boundaries, the family has no sense of unity at all. People flow in and out. No one seems to be “in charge.” There are no clear limits or rules. It doesn’t feel like a family at all. It’s more like a bunch of molecules wandering aimlessly about, occasionally bumping into each other but never being able to define where the family ends and the rest of the world begins. “Chaotic” describes this situation well.

  Think about your own family when you were growing up. Then think about your pattern of family and friends now. Do you see any parallels?

  As we move on to the next chapters, keep in mind these principles of family systems because they tell us about the traps from which we must escape if we are to truly recover from the symptoms of being Adult Children.

  7

  The Traps Get Set

  Is it enough to be able to label our symptoms? We don’t th
ink so. We don’t think so because we know that it isn’t enough just to have this information. Our clients don’t get better with just information. Denial systems don’t change with just information. Feelings don’t get out with just information. What we also need to understand is the process by which these symptoms were acquired. They didn’t happen overnight. We don’t just wake up one day and find that we are now living a painful life. It is a process that takes a long, long time to happen.

  Bill’s Story

  Bill Hopkins entered treatment for sexual addiction1 at the age of 38, after an intervention that was attended by his wife, his two partners in the accounting firm that he founded, his sister and a friend of his.

  Two years prior to the intervention, Bill’s wife became concerned about his sexual acting out. She started to make regular comments to him soon after that. As is often the case, Bill dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand at first, saying, “Dear, if I really had a problem, I’d do something about it. Really, honey, worry about something else for awhile.” Anita kept worrying, though.

  Several months later the situation escalated to the next stage. Bill’s involvement with pornography and masturbation increased as the pressures from expansion of his business increased. He took on a junior partner, but it didn’t help his addiction. Bill grew distant from Anita, and their interactions became either cool and perfunctory, or heated battles and debates. The friction in their marriage became more and more intense, until one Friday night when the trap snapped completely around them.

  Anita had been out with a friend for dinner, which she had begun to do more and more out of frustration and helplessness. When she walked through the door at 9:30 that evening, Bill told her that he had contracted a venereal disease and that he couldn’t have sex with her for awhile. Anita packed a suitcase, went back to her friend’s house, and spent the weekend with her. On Monday morning she filed for a separation. The next day, Bill called her, apologized, and said if she would move back home, he would stop acting out immediately.