How to survive in a family system?
There are family systems in which one or more of its members have to resort to various types of destructive or self-destructive behavior. This is necessary in order to preserve both the family system itself and the person’s belonging to it.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not trying to shift responsibility for a person’s behavior to his environment.
It’s just that the degree of tension in family systems is such that there’s nothing else.
People can cope with this tension in different ways. Depending on personality traits, past experiences, and other factors, people choose different behaviors. Someone will go into the world of books. Another will begin to overeat, the third will fall into workaholism.
“When I’m “tipsy,” sex with my husband is more or less bearable, it doesn’t cause such disgust. And my husband doesn’t irritate me as much as when I’m sober.”
“As soon as I get sick, they leave me alone for a while, I can at least rest a little.”
“I console myself with delicious food. Because I am not at all happy with my life, my marriage.”
We are social creatures and depend on our family systems more than we realize.
And as a psychologist, it is joyful for me to observe how, in the process of therapy, a person first gains the strength to see his usual ways of coping with this tension. Gradually, a person begins to look for more suitable options for himself to somehow deal with those emotions and feelings that are born in contact with significant others.
And the situation does not always end in a break in relations with the environment (although it happens). This may be the choice of the optimal distance, which allows a person to preserve himself. Or more direct ways of communication. Or another way. Finding a new way to interact with the system is always a creative process for a person in therapy.
Sometimes the family system resists changes in one of its links and tries to return the person to his usual state. Thus, the system tries to maintain the status quo, even if this stability is destructive for all parts of this system.