How family dynamics & roles shape your life
@Kevindelvecchio
“If you think you’re enlightened, go spend a week with your family.” -Ram Dass
Question: How aware are you of your family dynamics? How about how your family roles influence your current relationships, behaviors and overall well-being? Most people don’t spend time thinking about it in depth. For some, it can be too painful.
Let’s take a look at family dynamics… I’ll be immersed in mine next week when I go home to Sweden for two months. My upcoming trip seems like a PhD in awareness training : ) One thing that I do to manage anxiety and other less pleasant feelings is to dive into them and then educate myself. It’s how I went from feeling anxiety to excitement about my trip. Now I’m looking forward to the experiences/ lessons. Hopefully, this will be informative to you as well.
Family dynamics are the patterns of relating, or interactions, between family members.
Each family system and its dynamics are unique, although there are some common patterns.
Family dynamics often have a strong influence on the way people see themselves, others and the world.
Family dynamics include family alignments, hierarchies, roles, ascribed characteristics and patterns of interactions within a family.
All families have some helpful and some unhelpful dynamics.
One of my “intake questions” when working with clients might be to describe your mother, your father, their relationship, and yourself growing up in your household in 3 adjectives each. Simple (not always easy)…yet the answers paint a very telling story. A few examples of what I learn from my questions:
nature of the parents' relationship.
having a particularly soft or strict parent.
personalities of family members.
an absent parent.
the role or function you were ‘assigned’ to play out (read about roles here )
This helps me gain further insight to how you currently operate in your world. Now, how does this help you and what can you do with this awareness?
Well, powerful, positive change starts with awareness…so become aware of yourself; get curious and study your patterns and behaviors -without judgment. Perhaps answer my intake questions and notice what comes up. Start there.
To be continued…
To Powerful, Positive Change…Cheers!