ROOTS

DO YOU KNOW YOURSELF?


Extracted from: Healing Wounded Emotions: Overcoming Life's Hurts
Author: Rev. Martin H. Padovani

One area of our lives we seem to take for granted is our past, especially our family of origin. We all recall incidents connected with our family background that surface feelings of joy or sorrow. But that doesn’t mean that we fully comprehend the meaning our roots have for our present life. We should aim at an understanding that assembles all the puzzle pieces of our past so that we can come to a better understanding of ourselves, of who we are, why we behave, think and feel as we do, and where we are going. In other words, we can’t possibly know ourselves, as we should without a fuller understanding of our family history, our heritage, and our roots.

We just can’t cut off the past or deal with it lightly as an antique piece of furniture. The tragedy is that many families repeat what has happened in the previous generations, even though they are appalled by what those generations underwent. Others fail to utilize the wealth of the past. Both groups of present day families are connected to the past.

People have to deal with the unresolved conflicts of the past at some time or they will remain and become even worse, so much so that the family background resented and rejected can actually become part of one’s lifestyle. It reminds me of an inscription over the gates of Dachau concentration camp: “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.”

What is your recollection of your own family of origin? How realistically do you look at it? Are you able to put it in perspective? For various reasons, a great many people have blocked out all or part of the past. Very often it is because it is too painful to recall it. Those who remember only selected experiences while repressing others do themselves a disservice. Those who have a distorted picture of their family background have not examined their background realistically.

There have been countless misinterpretations of the past that have been carried from childhood and never clarified. The denials and distortions of the past are heavy weights that hold a person down; they not only prevent a realistic understanding and acceptance of the past but also prevent meaningful growth and understanding of oneself as a person.

We need to actually acquaint ourselves with the wholesome and unwholesome patterns and scripts of living that we have carried with us into adult life; with the balanced and unbalanced attitudes and perceptions by which we now view the world; with the needs and longings never satisfied in our family of origin, needs and longings that affect positively or negatively our search for intimacy as adults.

In his “Eight stages of Psycho-Social Development” Erik Erikson calls the last stage “integrity,” wherein a person is able to integrate the full picture of her life, “roots” included, into her present life. This means that a person can look back at her past, her parents, and see that history and those parents as they were and accept them for what they were.

God’s gift of ourselves is formed out of the clay of our families of origin. How we accept who we are depends on how we accept where we came from. It is always a rewarding experience to witness a person unraveling the elements of the personal, unresolved conflicts of the present by looking at the unresolved conflicts and distorted images of the past. In fact, people who unravel a present martial problem at the same time usually resolve conflicts in the family of their origin, conflicts they have neglected to deal with previously, especially one with a parent with whom they had a poor relationship.

Indeed, the roots of every martial problem are embedded in the unresolved problems that people bring along with them from the families of their origin. That’s why I stress so emphatically with those preparing for marriage: “What you see is what you get.” In other words, how does your future spouse deal, relate, and communicate with his or her own family? Patterns that you see there are and the patterns and the behavior that he or she will bring into the new relationship that will be formed in the marriage. But, sorry to say, in the heat of romance, lovers look only into each other’s eyes and conveniently block out the view into each other’s family of origin. There is much truth in the statement “Love is Blind”.

Why do we block out the past? One reason is a distorted notion of loyalty: we don’t criticize our past. There is an illogical guilt that translates such criticism as disloyal; genuine loyalty is based on the fact that we can be realistic about our families and still accept them for who they are. Sometime in life everyone has to take responsibility to resolve the tension between loyalty to family and being his or her own person. There is a big difference between reflecting on our family and being realistic in our criticism of it and condemning that family. Socrates’s often-quoted insight, “The unexamined life is not worth Living,” is still true.

Another reason that people fail to examine their past is that they think they won’t be able to handle the pain and anger that may be buried there. Again, if one perceives anger toward a parent as wrong, then the resulting unhealthy guilt locks a person into a dark prison cell, stunting all growth. True love and acceptance take people as they are or were, not the way we imagine they should be or have been. But if we can look calmly and critically at our family of origin and accept it as it was, this, in turn, facilitates self-acceptance, self-love, and a healthy acceptance of our family, warts and all.

It takes courage to look at the family of our origin, but it also takes courage to take a look at the way we are. In either case, we can be prevented from doing this by fear of the painful reality. But reality brings health, albeit painfully, while fear chokes off growth and maturity.

Even though we all need to examine our family of origin, this is even of greater importance for those who have emerged from damaged families. For example if there was an alcoholic parent in the family of origin we should no longer say merely that that the parent was alcoholic, but that there existed an alcoholic family and that everyone suffered and was injured in that family. Since all have been affected, all must be dealt with the consequences of having been bruised in such an atmosphere, if they hope to get beyond the resulting hurts and scars. It is common to trace family disorders and problems back to two and even three generations. No one in the past faced and dealt with the issues that needed to be addressed, and no one recognized (or worse, they denied) the problems in the family of origin, and therefore the problems persisted.

Let us examine two areas of our life where our experience of our family of origin has a great impact: identity and communication. First, our identity. The unique person I am has its roots in my family background. The basic male/female identification takes place there. The family from which we are sprung or derive our identity provides certain characteristics to family members, but also shapes unique individuals. Even though we see many similar traits in family members, we also see differences in the family members as they develop into unique persons.

The three types of families in which we fashion our identities are the enmeshed family, the disengaged family and the engaged family. 

The enmeshed family is rigid. It doesn’t allow family members to be different; it seeks absolute conformity and control. People are meshed or lumped together in such a way that individual identity becomes difficult to develop; there is no allowance for individuality. It’s a controlled and controlling situation. The underlying law is “conform!” There is no space, no tolerance for one to develop individually.

In the disengaged family, the members are distant from one another. There is a lack of interaction and cohesiveness. The family is fragmented, with the members going in different directions. Such families often include emotionally disturbed persons, or persons with addictions. Enmeshed families and disengaged families have destructive patterns of relating.

The engaged-family achieves a better balance between conformity and irresponsible individuality. In this type of family there is much interaction among family members. Even though there are problems and destructive patterns, which may emerge at times, a healthy family will correct these. The engaged-family members have a sense of security, trust, and self-worth. They don’t avoid appropriate anger and fair conflict. They know how to love and how to forgive; they relate in a healthy manner. Are these not also the characteristics of a Christian family? This indeed is a family that has experienced redemption. This is a family that reflects and has integrated into its life the characteristics that Jesus teaches: love, respect, kindness, forgiveness and understanding.

The members of enmeshed and disengaged families are prey to excessive anxiety, self-doubt, mistrust of self and one of another, feelings of worthlessness and low self-esteem. The enmeshed family doesn’t provide the atmosphere for individuals to develop or expand their unique personalities. They therefore suffer from emotional suffocation and remain unsure of themselves and immature. The disengaged family members don’t nourish one another because they are emotionally distant and alienated from one another, with no sense of being loved by the others. Such families have not experienced redemption or healing.

The basic sense of identity of each child in any family is influenced by the sense of identity that each parent reflects as a person. Does the father feel good about himself as a man, the mother as woman? Do they feel whole, secure, and confident about themselves? How do they relate and interact with each other in their roles as husband and wife? What is the quality of their relationship with their children? Implied in all these questions is the fact that the healthy or unhealthy identity of the children as persons is formed according to the characteristics the parents manifest. These are the traits that the children carry into their own lives and live out in their own relationships. Thus the roots of each individual’s identity, whether whole or fragmented, begin to develop at an early age in the family of origin.

Another important area of family life that affects our development is the quality (not the quantity) of the communication in the family. Communication is without doubt, the key to a healthy family and personality development. Conversely the lack of communication is the basic cause of martial and family problems as well as of personality deficiencies. It’s not a question of which family has problems and which doesn’t, but which family can communicate about these problems and which cannot. The healthy family can discuss problems and differences and thus resolve them or learn how to live with them. If the family can communicate then it can grasp the opportunities to live, to be, to become, to relate.

We learn to communicate in the family. But the crucial questions are: How did our parents communicate with each other? Did we, in our families, speak our own thoughts and feelings freely, openly and honestly? Did we easily express our affection for one another? Were we allowed to disagree with one another? Was fair conflict appropriately expressed? How did we communicate our anger? The way we communicated with the members of our family of origin will determine how we communicate with people outside the family, especially in close relationships.

When we consider the make-up of the human person, we realize that the person’s physiological and psychological being is directed towards communicating. Physiological we are created with a mouth, tongue, facial muscles, voice box and ears- all part of our human communication system. We are prepared to express whatever thoughts and feelings generated within us. Psychologically we seek closeness to others by sharing openly and honestly the deepest levels of our emotional world.

But why is that need to communicate so often thwarted, or not developed, or held in check, with the result that a healthy family life cannot be achieved? We were made for revelation; God has revealed himself to us, so we also are to reveal ourselves to one another.

It takes a lifetime to develop the art of communication. It can never be taken for granted; it needs continual practice and continually needs to be re-evaluated. It means speaking from the heart and the head, so that what a person feels about himself or herself is formulated for the earliest years in the family through communication system. How family members speak to one another, what unpleasantness they convey to one another, and how they listen to one another rightly or wrongly determine how I feel, think and perceive myself. My image and feeling about myself may be negative or positive, but this depends on the quality of communication in my family.

From what has been said it is clear that we have to sharpen our awareness of the importance of our family of origin and how the behavior of our family members has affected us in both healthy and unhealthy ways. It is important to think beyond the superficial dimensions of our past family history so that, among other things, we will be able to banish the fears and the guilt’s that keeps us away from knowing ourselves more fully and appreciating our past more joyfully and realistically.

I don’t mean that we should condemn family members but that we be able to understand them and thus accept and love who they are all the more. My intention is that we surface and then clarify and make right the countless misinterpretations that have accumulated in all of us through the years of family living, misinterpretations that have separated us from one another and have prevented us from one another and prevented us from knowing ourselves; then we take on the responsibilities for our lives and move on.

Just as the Bible respects people’s backgrounds (notice how frequently the Scriptures describe the genealogies of individuals), we too must respect and appreciate our own family heritage, which is a gift from God. Our heritage, although ravaged by sin and failure, is also full of goodness, talent and human potential, which is still untapped because people have failed to recognize it and so have not grown beyond themselves for generation after generation.

After reading these few thoughts some may become pessimistic or fatalistic and conclude. “What’s the use? We are trapped and determined by our past.” No, we are not. The challenge we face is to grow beyond our background by understanding and learning about our families. Indeed we can move beyond that background. We can develop its untapped riches and resources. It is a matter of motivation. This is what the Bible and Jesus call us to do: grow beyond ourselves. To the person of faith it is possible. We hold in earthen vessels treasures far beyond our comprehension. This is what it means to be a people of hope, to be willing to meet this challenge. Isn’t this what the spiritual life is all about, the willingness to grow beyond ourselves? To grow into the fullness of Christ?

As Franz Werfel writes in the Introduction to The Songs of Bernadette, “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.” As a biblical people we are called to change and we believe we can. Then let us not hesitate to examine the successes as well as the failures of our family of origin, whose influence lingers on in the depths of our hearts and minds.