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:

• 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  may become rebellious, withdrawn, a relationship nomad, “ruggedly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.  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.