“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
This week’s blog is a guest post by Ronald B Cohen, MD, a Psychiatrist and Marriage and Family Therapist from Great Neck, NY.
“The problem a patient or couple or family walks in with is less important than the relationship obstacles that keep them from working to resolve it”. — Guerin & Fogarty
What is it about family gatherings, holidays and life cycle celebrations that often bring out the worst in their participants? Where do the 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, come from? How do they thwart “growing in the ability to be fully responsible for my own life while being committed to growing closer to those I love”?
To begin to answer these questions, we turn to three more of Murray Bowen’s eight interlocking concepts, Nuclear Family Emotional Process, Family Projection Process and Multigenerational Transmission Process. The former addresses systemic patterns of response to marital “we-ness,” while the latter traces this process vertically through the generations. Family Projection Process connects the two as it is the only one of the four nuclear family patterns that crosses generational boundaries, and is the foundation upon which the Multigenerational Transmission Process develops historically from generation to generation.
Nuclear Family Emotional Process develops family distress in one or more of the following four patterns:
Family Projection Process describes the mechanism whereby parental anxiety is transmitted to children. Initially children are passive recipients. As they grow older, they quickly become participants.
The Multigenerational Transmission Process describes how the Family Projection Process operates from generation to generation. “Any set of parents, however, is merely the current embodiment of forces or processes that have been active for many generations before them” (Papero 1990). Over time and through multiple generations, small differences may progress to significant divergence in functioning and solid self amongst descendent lines.
Awareness of these natural processes helps calm anxiety and improve self-focus which in turn leads to decreased emotional reactivity and more productive decision making, thereby increasing the probability of higher social, emotional and physical functioning.
Attention to one’s own level of self-differentiation helps us modify and change our behavior at times of family life cycle transitions and unexpected crises. The task is about resolution of unique one-to-one relationships with each and every family member. This in turn leads to larger system-wide changes in family functioning.
Maintaining both autonomy and emotional connectivity is the both/and (Yin/Yang) goal. Whether you are fused and enmeshed, or conflicted, distant, cut-off and non-communicative, you remained undifferentiated and out of control. If your behavior is reactive, whether positively or negatively, you are not self-directed.
When seemingly inescapably caught in reciprocal family processes remember, “What you resist, persists.”
Rather recognition, acceptance and attention to improving functional levels are life sustaining and enhancing.
When all else fails, consultation with a well-trained Bowen Family Systems Theory coach or therapist can help keep the process moving forward in a positive direction.
Best of luck on your unfolding journey of a lifetime.
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
This is part two of a guest post written by Fred Haas, a recovery coach from Texas. His post presents information about the use of Kundalini yoga as a resource for recovery from addiction.
Kundalini yoga can be part of the core strategy in a recovery plan or it can be an added tool to supplement and enhance 12-step recovery. Last week in the first part of this blog, Fred provided background information on Kundalini and Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. This week is the second part of the article that provides information on Kundalini yoga and addiction recovery, Kundalini yoga meditation, Kundalini yoga Kriyas and additional resources for further exploration of the topic.
Kundalini Yoga as a treatment modality
Kundalini Yoga began as a treatment modality when 3HO ashram staff members in Washington, D.C. took in two heroin addicts and fed them. 3HO was an ashram founded by Yogi Bhajan. 3HO stands for Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization. 3HO started offering recovery services by keeping these heroin addicts in a controlled environment for two weeks and put them into a program that centered on Kundalini Yoga and meditation. Both of these male addicts experienced an amazing transformation.
SuperHealth, the country’s first alternative health center for the treatment of addictions in Tucson, Arizona was created from this Washington DC experience. SuperHealth developed into a systematized program with customized treatment plans for behavioral addictions including stress, substance abuse, other unhealthy habits and emotional disorders. The program included three Kundalini Yoga and meditation classes each day, providing a specific detoxification and rehabilitation diet complete with fresh juices, vitamins, an herbal regime, therapeutic massages, humanology sessions (applied psychology from the perspective of Kundalini Yoga) and individual, family and spiritual counseling.
SuperHealth earned the prestigious western medical accolade of accreditation from JCAHO, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations in 1978 and eventually received its highest commendation. SuperHealth distinguished itself as being in the top 10% of all treatment programs throughout the United States in 1978.
From these pioneering efforts of the Kundalini yoga community, yoga and meditation began to be incorporated into mainstream treatment facilities. Today, it is increasingly more common for yoga and meditation to be integrated into treatment programs in hospitals, sober living houses and county treatment centers. From the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California to programs in prisons, yoga classes are presented as either electives or mandatory therapeutic experiences. Kundalini Yoga advances the spiritual quest that Alcoholics Anonymous finds integral to recovery so it serves as a good supplement to the 12 steps.
In 2004, a lifelong goal of Yogi Bhajan, that his teachings to be brought back to India, became a reality. The Punjab government invited SuperHealth to conduct a 90 day pilot project for drug users in Amritsar, India. In October of that year, with a team of professional volunteers, the program opened to serve ten clients. The experience profoundly changed their lives.
Kundalini Yoga Meditation
In addition to the general benefits associated with meditation (remaining calm and centered, achieving peace of mind, self-discipline, increasing self-esteem, greater awareness and higher consciousness), each Kundalini yoga meditation creates a specific effect. Examples of specific effects that are created by Kundalini yoga meditations that help people in recovery include a meditation to shield us from negativity or a meditation to free us from guilt, blame, shame, resentment and bitterness.
The Medical Meditation for Habituation (also called the Meditation to Break Addiction) is one of the best meditations to specifically promote recovery from drug dependence. This is a quote from the book Sadhana Guidelines for Kundalini Yoga by Gurucharan Singh that serves as the commentary for this meditation.
“The pressure exerted by the thumbs triggers a rhythmic reflex current into the central brain. This current activates the brain area directly underneath the stem of the pineal gland. It is an imbalance in this area that makes mental and physical addictions seemingly unbreakable. In modern culture, the imbalance is pandemic. If we are not addicted to smoking, eating, drinking or drugs, then we are addicted subconsciously to acceptance, advancement, rejection, emotional love, etc. All these lead us to insecure and neurotic behavior patterns. The imbalance in this pineal area upsets the radiance of the pineal gland itself. It is this pulsating radiance that regulates the pituitary gland. Since the pituitary regulates the rest of the glandular system, the entire body and mind go out of balance. This meditation corrects the problem. It is excellent for everyone but particularly effective for rehabilitation efforts in drug dependence, mental illness, and phobic conditions.”
We can change our destiny by changing our habits
The effects of meditation are mastered when they are established as part of a Sadhana, which translates to ‘daily practice’. This ‘daily practice’ develops a life promoting habit. Humans are habitual creatures so we can actually change our destiny by changing our habits. According to yogic science, the human mind works in cycles. We can use various cycles to help replace unwanted patterns of behavior (mental or emotional habits), with new, more positive ones when we commit to a particular meditation or kriya for a specific time. It takes 40 days to change a habit. It takes 90 days to confirm the habit. In 120 days, the new habit is who you are. In 1000 days, you have mastered the new habit.
A duration of practice that lasts 40 days lets the meditation provoke your subconscious (mind) to release any thoughts and emotional patterns that hinder you. A good meditation will break your old patterns, put in a seed for a new pattern, and clear the subconscious.
The length of the Sadhana meditation has an associated affect. Three (3) minutes affects the electromagnetic field and blood circulation. Eleven (11) minutes affects the nerves and glandular system. Twenty two (22) minutes balances the three minds (Negative, Positive and Neutral) and they begin to work together. Thirty one to thirty three (31-33) minutes affects all the cells, the rhythms of the body, and the layers of the mind’s projections. Sixty two to sixty six (62-66) minutes alters the ‘grey matter’ of the brain – subconscious and outer-projection are integrated. Two and a half (2.5) hours alters the psyche in relation with the surrounding magnetic field to firmly hold the subconscious mind in a new pattern.
Kriyas
In Kundalini yoga, a kriya is an exercise or group of exercises that have a specific purpose. It is a technique that produces an altered state of consciousness. Practicing a kriya launches a succession of mental and physical changes that affect the body, mind and spirit.
Choosing a kriya to support the recovery process is simplified because each kriya makes a claim to its specific effect. Examples of kriyas that can apply to recovery are the kriya for conquering sleep, the kriya for conquering depression, the kriya for liver detox, the kriya to get rid of anger and fear, or the kriya to be rid of internal anger.
Additional resources pertaining to Kundalini Yoga and Recovery for further exploration:
• http://super-health.net • A reprint from their website: Super-health is on the cutting edge of breaking habits and addictive behavior. It is at the forefront of yogic therapeutic technology that is precise and proven effective. The system addresses alcohol, drugs, smoking, food issues, co-dependency, gambling, work, and computers. It also includes stress, depression, fatigue and anxiety.
• http://www.wholeselfrecovery.com • A reprint from their website: The Whole Self Recovery Program facilitates journeys of healing and rejuvenation that purify, strengthen and merge the body, mind, heart and spirit. Whole Self Recovery offers an alternative to those who seek something other than the traditional recovery program styles as well as something alternative to the most popular 12 step programs. The program immerses the individual in a lifestyle where optimum physical, mental and spiritual health can be achieved and maintained using Kundalini Yoga, Acupuncture, Chiropractics, Ayurveda, Cleansing, Psychology, Addiction Counseling, massage, numerology and other elective therapies.
• http://www.totalhealthrecoveryprogram.com/ • A reprint from their website: Total Health Recovery Program is a world class international holistic drug and alcohol residential-like treatment center and rehab program using master healers and innovative diagnostic and treatment technology to treat drug and alcohol clients. Total Health Recovery Program uses Kundalini Yoga and meditations because it has thousands of exercises available to the practitioner. It is one of the most powerful of all yogas. It is great for releasing stress.
• http://www.kundaliniyoga.org/kyt11.html • Reprint from their website: Food, diet, weight loss, eating disorders, and other addictive substances and behaviors-whatever our specific issue, every day we are all confronted with what to put in our mouths and how the decisions we make affect our well-being. My approach is to use our addictive tendencies as a path to empowerment. In the process we can claim “the gifts from the garbage.”
