Book Excerpt: Working with the "Family Story"
What do we do when the mythology does not line up with reality?
Published: 4/2/2021
by Nick Oredson​
Introduction
Many families have a shared family story or family mythology which is a collection of shared stories that characterize the family’s experience, values and identity. This set of stories can often be quite elaborate, sometimes with family classics that are told over and over again, sometimes with one or more family hero stories or one or more family villain stories. There can also be stories like "The best vacation ever" or the "The worst vacation ever" and many other varieties specific to each family. There are also usually stories that sum up the character of each family member that usually start with something like "Dad was/wasn’t very good at…" or "Mom used to always/never do such and such a thing…" All of these stories together becomes part of the unifying fabric of the family and often our family mythology serves as an important ingredient in our identity as adults.
Sometimes, however, as we progress into adulthood we begin to experience a disconnect between the official family story, and what we actually experienced in our family growing up. Challenges can arise if we uncover significant facts or reach conclusions that do not fit the story shared by the rest of the family. Do we speak up and risk the backlash from our family or do we continue going along with things we know to be false, unfair, or just wrong? There can be an enormous amount of pain bound up in the imperfections of our parents or our families, and this process requires tolerating that discomfort long enough to get into contact with the simple facts of what happened. Our family story can also be tightly intertwined with our identity, and anything that threatens the integrity of that story can feel like a personal threat.
As uncomfortable and hazardous as it may feel, however, the family story can be a significant source of difficulty in our lives and can conceal important details and possibly trauma from our upbringing. Questioning our family story can reveal important gaps in our memory, lead us to reconsider judgments against other family members, or illuminate details that have been hidden for decades.
What Happened and How did I Feel?
There are two questions that have proven very helpful in separating apart the lesser details of the story from the relevant emotional information: 1. What happened? and 2. How did I feel?. As simple as these two questions can seem, they can be extremely difficult to answer and it often takes a considerable amount of time and effort to get accurate answers. What actually happened and how we actually felt are questions that rarely get asked, and often family stories actively obscure both the truth of the events that happened and the feelings that were felt. When we finally arrive at accurate answers to these questions, the information revealed can be startling, and can often present significant disconnects between the official family story and our own experiences.
Scripts in Family Stories
Family stories often have certain scripts that are followed as part of the family experience. Some possible examples of this might include statements like "Well, we all know about Uncle Bob – he always was a bit different". or something like "Well, Aunt Jean never really fit in with this family – I can’t figure out what uncle Fred saw in her.." Phrases like this define the family system of values and acceptable behavior in relationship to the actions of the various family members. When these phrases and judgments come up, it is expected that everyone solemnly agree, reinforcing the collective moral position of the family and its members.
Through a re-examination of our family history, however, we might conclude that we actually thought that Uncle Bob was a great guy, and that the family had unfairly judged him for his eccentricities. If, at the next family gathering, we decided to deviate from the family script and speak up about how we felt and said something like “You know, I always liked Uncle Bob, he was always really kind to me and I liked his quirks.” this might be called going “off script” and quickly get us into trouble. Whatever the accepted family story is, it is very important that everyone stick with the story and stay on whatever script or shared agreements support the accepted mythology. If anyone goes off script and starts questioning the story, the other family members can quickly feel threatened.
The Identified Patient
Sometimes a family will collectively decide that a single member of the family is the problem and then load up all of the family’s issues onto that one person. In psychology, this person is called the identified patient. It is often true that the identified patient might be acting out in certain ways that could be called problems, but it is extremely rare for a single person to actually be the problem in a family. It is way more likely that the problem person is the most sensitive in some way, or is the most vulnerable, or is the least able to defend themselves from being labeled the problem. If we review our family history and conclude that the identified patient in the story was actually a myth and that there was much more shared blame for the family’s problems, it could be seen as a big deviation from the family story.
Unsafe Parents
If we uncover memories or events that are not flattering to our parents, it can feel extremely disorienting or dangerous because of how vulnerable we were in relationship to our parents or caregivers growing up. As young people, we are completely dependent on our parents or caregivers for the basic needs of food, shelter, protection and attention. This complete dependency makes it very important to us as children that our parents are, above all, capable in the world. If we perceive that our parents are somehow incapable, flawed, insufficient, abusive, or otherwise compromised, this presents an extremely unsafe situation for us as children. Even in situations with extreme abuse on behalf of the parents, young people will almost always internalized what is going on and find a way blame themselves. On the surface, this self-blame can seem baffling, especially in situations where the parents were obviously flawed or abusive or worse. However, it is almost always a safer choice to blame ourselves as children rather than accept the possibility that our caregivers might be flawed or dangerous. If we blame ourselves, at least there is a chance that we might change our behavior and somehow improve the situation. If we conclude that our caregivers are seriously flawed in some way, there is literally nothing we can do about it, and that puts us in the position of being both unsafe and out of control at the same time – an extremely undesirable reality for a young person to accept.
Because of this, it can feel very uncomfortable to entertain ideas that our parents might have been less than perfect. When we find ourselves firmly attached to the notion that we had a happy childhood, or that our parents were good people, or that they did the best they could with what they had or any of these generalizations or excuses, it is important to remember that it is very possible that on some level we still feel that our life depends on these things being true.
Off-Limits Topics
It is common for a family to have certain topics that were considered off-limits to discuss. Topics usually became forbidden because they brought up family issues that were too painful or difficult to deal with, and these topics were literally banished from the household. However, issues that never get discussed rarely get resolved and often we can be carrying large burdens into adulthood from the issues that were never spoken of. Working with off limits topics can feel very risky and can make other family members uncomfortable, but each forbidden topic often holds in it an issue that needs resolution, understanding or healing.
Defensive Reactions and the myth of They "did the best they could"
Because of the large amounts of upset and threats to identity that can be triggered, defensive reactions often come up when doing this work. These two phrases are common and can derail things quickly: 1. “Our parents did the best they could with what they had” or 2. “Well, it might have been difficult in our family at times, but many kids had it way worse. At least we weren’t raised in such and such a house down the street”. Although both of these phrases are often true, they can be used as an excuse for the bad behavior of parents or caregivers and can block the process of connecting with the basic facts of what actually happened. It is fine to forgive or excuse our parents as a final step in the process, but not before we have fully honored and processed our own experience. Of course our parents did the best they could with what they had and of course we can always find an example of a family that had it worse. The point of this work is not to build a case that either excuses or condemns our parents, or to evaluate our childhood on a relative scale compared with all of the other childhoods in the world. The value of doing this work is to gain an understanding of the truth about our experience growing up, how we felt about what happened, what impact that experience might be having on our adult life. Finally, we are seeking to understand what type of healing, attention, or resolution we might need in order to release ourselves from the bonds of our childhood experience.
The Spinning Bicycle Wheel
Realizations that contradict the family story can feel hazardous to our relationships with the rest of our family because - just like us - other family members can often be heavily invested in one version or another of the story. Because of this, these stories can have a huge amount of energy and investment in them and anything that is perceived as a threat to the story can bring about big reactions. A useful analogy in visualizing the amount of energy involved in these kinds of situations is to think of the family story as a bicycle wheel that is spinning smoothly along at very high RPMs. If everyone is going along with it and supporting the same story, the wheel will spin smoothly in balance and it might not be obvious just how much energy is contained in the system. However, as soon as even one member of the family goes off book and starts saying lines that contradict parts of the story - the hidden energy in the system can quickly become explosive as other family members quickly take action to get everyone back onto the script. Contradicting a judgment against a relative, asking questions about an off-limits topic, or questioning the reality of the identified patient in a family is like putting a stick straight into the spokes of the family system and suddenly all of the hidden energy becomes expressed.
Conclusion
Big losses, tragedies, unexpressed grief, repressed frustration, denied abuse, family secrets, banished relatives and many other elements can all be obscured by a family story that insists that everything is fine. Unfortunately, all of these dark, hidden elements can be working on us emotionally in the background, causing all kinds of problems in our adult lives. Examining and questioning the family story can be perilous and difficult work, but it can be very hard to experience relief or resolution without first opening some doors that say Do Not Enter. When we feel fear or upset when doing this work, it is helpful to remember that beyond the initially difficulty there lies great potential for, relief, reconciliation and the resolution of burdens we have carried for a lifetime, or possibly generations.
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Comments? Questions? I would love to hear from you!
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