Tag Archives: Family secrets

The Unspoken Rules of the Family We Grew Up In

“Whom we are related to in the complex web of family ties over all generations is unalterable by us.”— Elizabeth A. Carter and Monica McGoldrick—The Family Life Cycle

Decisions, decisions. Have you ever wondered about why you do what you do, when you do it, where you choose to do it, and how you do it, with whomever you choose to do it with? (Hopefully this doesn’t strike too many of you as coming from the department of redundancy department). Me neither. But lets just think about this for a minute. How often do we truly make decisions for ourselves based on our own core beliefs and values? I’d suggest not nearly as often as we’d like to believe we do. So what gets in the way? (Round up the usual suspects). The unspoken rules of the family we grew up in.

This inevitable “stuck togetherness”  Murray Bowen first noted as an “undifferentiated family ego mass.” This concept was subsequently refined and expanded into thoughts about the nuclear family emotional system and projection process, and the multigenerational family transmission process resulting in multiple interlocking triangles.

In the process of fusion, an individual anxiously focuses on relationships and gives up “self,” resulting in physical illness, emotional illness or a problem in social functioning. The question that reflects this process is: What do I give up about myself to be part of the family group?

The flip-side/mirror image of fusion is the process of being emotionally “cut-off,” an equally reactive state wherein the question is “What I DO NOT want to give up about myself and therefore detach from being part of this family.” Unfortunately this is a state of an equally low level of differentiation, which often results in over-investment and fusion in new relationships.

So what are these unspoken rules of family togetherness behavior that we reflexively adhere to or reactively reject without due consideration of what conscious responses would be in our own best interest? Here is my top ten list, reduced to five in the interest of time and space.

  • Rule Number 1: What happens in the house stays in the house.
  • Rule Number 2: Don’t talk politics or religion at the dinner table.
  • Rule Number 3: Do what makes you happy as long as it’s what I want you to do, even if I don’t tell you what it is.
  • Rule Number 4: Don’t ask about the things you’re not supposed to know about.
  • Rule Number 5: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Whether you are fused and enmeshed, or conflicted, distant, cut-off and non-communicative, you remain undifferentiated and out of control. If your behavior is reactive, whether positively or negatively, you are not self-directed.

The process of self-differentiation consists of partially freeing oneself from the emotional entrapment of one’s family of origin, while developing a unique, personal, authentic one-to-one relationship with each member of your family. It is then possible to be emotionally connected without fusing into emotional oneness. One can be both connected, and sufficiently self-aware to make decisions on one’s own, regardless of the Invisible Psychological Contracts We Make with Our Families.

This post was written by Ronald B Cohen, MD, a Psychiatrist and Marriage and Family Therapist from Great Neck, NY. Dr. Cohen is a Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and an Affiliate Member of the American Academy of Marital and Family Therapy. As a consultant specialist, Dr. Cohen provides clinical supervision, and confers with individual therapists and other health care professionals and organizations to help them consider how adding family therapy sessions to the treatment program is both restorative and proactive as improvement is long lasting.

Dr. Ronald B. Cohen graduated summa cum laude, from Brandeis University and The Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In addition to his psychiatric residency training, Dr. Cohen was educated at the Psychiatric Epidemiology Program of the Columbia University Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health. Subsequently Dr. Cohen completed the four-year core postgraduate training program in Family Systems Theory and Therapy at The Family Institute of Westchester

Please feel free to comment, request more information and/or schedule an initial consultation contact Dr Cohen at: http://www.familyfocusedsolutions.com/contact/

Or email him at:

RBCohenMD@FamilyFocusedSolutions.com

 

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Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – The Hidden Life of Family Secrets

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Dr. Ron Cohen

This guest blog was written by Dr. Ronald Cohen, a psychiatrist from Great Neck, New York, specializing in Family Systems.

Family secrets impact individuals, and family functioning. Dr. Ronald Cohen discusses four types of family secrets: essential, sweet, toxic and dangerous.

“All human beings have three lives:
public, private and secret.”
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In life, we must respect all three.

What is life like growing up in a family where one of the most firmly adhered to rules is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?” What do you do with significant information when you are inhibited from sharing it, the road block being either in yourself, in your family relationships, or in larger societal constraints? How is a secret different from healthy privacy, a safe and secure “Room of One’s Own?” When is a secret not a secret?

Evan Imber-Black, PhD has spent a professional lifetime investigating types of secrets and their impact on individuals and family functioning. She separates secrets into four, not necessarily distinct, categories: essential, sweet, toxic and dangerous.

Essential secrets create necessary limits and boundaries around a family and its sub-systems, delineating couples, children, parents and friends. They enhance closeness and connection, are protective of self, others, and relationships. By their very nature, essential secrets must be honored. Sharing without permission and/or consent creates devastating attachment injuries and violations of trust. Essential secrets are woven into the “second family” culture of adolescents and young adults. Honestly now, how much did we want our parents to know about our experimentation and indulgence in sex, drugs and rock’n’roll?

Sweet secrets are time-limited, created for someone else’s good, and usually have positive outcomes for the entire family. Sweet secrets are created for the fun of a surprise such as gifts, parties, unexpected visits and other celebrations.

Toxic secrets are often long-standing and damaging to relationships and personal well-being. They become harmful and destructive when they involve keeping information from others that they have a right to know. Over time, toxic secrets corrode relationships, destroy trust and create otherwise unexplained symptoms and increased anxiety. Abundant non-productive energy is expended on maintaining who’s in the know and who is outside the cone of silence. Toxic secrets include current extramarital affairs, irresponsible gambling, concealed illness, and undisclosed plans for divorce as well as an individual or family history of abortions, adoptions, DWIs, psychiatric hospitalizations, and incarcerations.

Dangerous secrets put individuals in physical jeopardy and/or debilitating emotional turmoil. They include plans for suicide and violence, life crippling drug and alcohol dependence, rape and incest, abuse and child neglect. Dangerous secrets require immediate disclosure and intervention to ensure safety and protect the innocent.

Secrets occur in context and live not just inside one individual but exist within the entire family system. For this reason the category and function of a secret depends on its context.

Embedded within, and extending over these categories is the concept of self-secrets, which are shared with no one (paradoxically the concept of a shared secret is not an oxymoron), and engender excessive guilt, shame, and embarrassment as one does not get realistic feedback on the consequences of the behavior and/or its disclosure. Self-secrets include concealed eating disorders (which can also be toxic or dangerous) and the shame of involuntary corporate downsizing.

The safe disclosure of toxic secrets and repair of damaged relationships require careful planning and deliberate behavior. Because of their long standing nature, there is usually no immediate requirement to reveal a toxic secret and there is time to consider how to open the secret in a safe way. Coaching from a well trained Bowen Family Systems Therapist can help one balance caution and candor when evaluating the potential positives and negatives of revealing the secret. It can also help determine where, when, how, and to whom the secret should be disclosed.

This guest blog was written by Dr Ronald Cohen, a psychiatrist from Great Neck, Long Island, New York, specializing in Family Systems. To contact Dr Cohen, please visit his web site: http://www.familyfocusedsolutions.com/ or at his email: RBCohenMD@FamilyFocusedSolutions.com or by phone: 516.466.7530.

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