family help..?

Parents Forum
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<p>Bananapancake hasn't posted since the original post, but I would ask if he/she feels the family is seriously broken, or if they have just in recent years drifted apart. To me, it sounded like the latter.</p>

<p>You know Banana, sometimes life is NOT a soap opera. Sometimes problems are NOT monumental. While counseling is clearly helpful in some situations, it is not always needed.</p>

<p>I am not a mental health professional, nor am I a counselor. I am just a mom with a loving extended family that is supportive and works (usually!). But we have our bumps in the road, too, because that is normal. So, with nothing but practical experience, here's what I think:</p>

<p>Sometimes families do drift apart. It's not because they are angry or dysfunctional in any way, but because they get wrapped up in their own lives. A new habit of isolation emerges and it is awkward to go back to the old way of interacting. This is why I suggest at least trying to engage your family in some activity where you can laugh and talk together. <strong>Break the ice.</strong> Maybe it won't be enough, but it sure can't hurt to try. I think you have a better chance of getting together with a fun activity than you would with dragging everyone to counseling. If there are not serious underlying problems in your family, they may just need an excuse to have fun together again. But, that's just practical old me. </p>

<p>(BTW, Drosselmeier, you talk of your ice cream nights, camping in the living room and hikes in the rain. Those sound like family activites to me. Not so different from my suggestion of camping or a ballgame or a game night. Not everybody has the "ideal" in place, but they just have to start somewhere.)</p>

<p>Good luck to you Bananapancake. Your problem is common, unfortunately, but not insurmountable. Take the lead! :)</p>

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<p>Yeah lkf:</p>

<p>Actually, I was in agreement with you from the beginning. But I guess my position on all this is that the solution is not exactly the activity, but what causes the activity to naturally come forth.</p>

<p>In any family you are gonna have a several personalities, oftentimes they will even be in natural conflict with one another. Some will be easy going and interested in constantly doing stuff. Others will mostly want to watch movies or sports. Others will tend to enjoy quiet and solitude, while others will be energized by parties and crowds. We probably tend to all share all of these traits, but I am talking of general and conflicting tendencies.</p>

<p>Pressures can affect our personalities, suppressing some of their attributes, and causing us to act more of one way than the other. We might eventually even lose the desire to do the things we once were prone to do. The conflicts can increase so that if they aren’t managed, the family lives in this ugly explosive environment all the time. Or, if you get a family with a heavy mixture of one kind of personality, and all members of this family are being affected by the same pressure, you may have a family that over time gets in serious trouble because everyone is responding to the pressure in the same dysfunctional way. Everybody may go his separate way to basically live quiet, desperate and independent lives.</p>

<p>I think you hit the thing right on the head when you said this may not be monumental. But oftentimes if we don’t deal with the underlying issues causing these problems, the patterns of behavior that we don’t like will fail to change. Yeah, we might start out doing a family activity and we may even have fun, but since the pressures that caused us to grow distant in the first place are still present, they will eventually cause us to lose touch yet again.</p>

<p>So what to do? I am saying that it may be that, as you say, rather than dragging everybody off to counseling, many families may benefit from a slight but GENERAL change in perspective. By GENERAL, I mean everybody is expected to share the same vision. And everyone holds everyone else (especially the parents and ESPECIALLY the dad) accountable for maintaining the vision. With a united vision underlying a family, all of these disparate personalities and conflicting tendencies can be controlled so that a lot of fun naturally comes forth.</p>

<p>I hate crowds. I am just drained by them. So I tend to avoid parties and crowds. But I love my wife and I love to see her in a crowd. The woman is positively energized by it. Because of our vision of what family is, I make deliberate attempts to go against my natural tendency so that I can work to please my wife. I benefit because I get to see her pleasure. But also, it makes me grow. I am put in a crowd where I am forced to act in new ways, perhaps mimicking my wife here, creating some new technique there, learning, experimenting and discovering that in fact I really enjoy parties and getting together with lots of people. I am trying very hard to live for someone else and what happens is that I get a lot out of it. As my wife sees me working our vision on her behalf, it endears her to me. On the other hand, I learn to appreciate the stuff about her that I otherwise would completely avoid.</p>

<p>And the thing just goes on and on.</p>

<p>I read my posts here on this issue to a few of my children this morning to get their impression of them, to make sure I wasn’t just making this stuff up. My oldest son remarked that people will think them sappy because they don’t know how real it can be. That may be true, but I can’t just not say these things when I believe them and think they can help others. It is not that hard and there is nothing really that special about it. All I am saying is that a “family” is not just a bunch of individuals each living for himself. It is a bunch of individuals all living for each other. I am saying if you buy this, then sit down together and put this vision right out there so you all can see it. THEN make your plans and activities with this in mind.</p>

<p>I think without this slight change in perspective, you run the risk of looking at family activities as a way to get fun for yourself, and that when it doesn’t happen for you, you just give up over time. With this perspective, you realize that someone in your family may love such and such a thing, and you want to do it as best you can so that you can see that person gaining fulfillment. I know it sounds sappy. I’m sorry about this. I just don’t know how to say it any cooler than this. But I know it works no matter how silly it sounds.</p>

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<p>Lfk, I'm the one who critiqued your superficial helplist, appearing on the heels of Drosselmeier's philosophical approach which, as is often true of his posts, left me responding with an 'amen'. Although he tends to be more forgiving than I, try not to direct your unwarranted anger toward him. </p>

<p>Mombot, a big 'you are not helpful' bully-to-you shout-out. You need to be re-programmed. Success should not be assigned to the shadows,..</p>

<p>Fried ice cream. Mmnnn.</p>

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<p>dross, your pm box is overflowing and unless you want me to post embarassing revelations you ought to start tossing,..</p>

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<p>Oops. So sorry. Can't keep up. I'll get on it. :)</p>

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<p>There is a wonderful book by Gary Chapman called "The 5 Love Languages." While it's written for people in romantic relationships, the principles also hold for other relationships.</p>

<p>Basically, Chapman says that people feel loved by different types of activities. Some people like the OP experience love when they share quality time with their loved ones. Others experience love through gifts, words of affirmation, having acts of service done for them or by receiving physical touch.</p>

<p>Anyway, it could be useful for the OP to take a look at the book and to see if he can find ways of getting his "love tank" filled at home while also helping meet the needs of his other family members by expressing love in the ways that they appreciate and recognize.</p>

<p>Often when people don't understand that there are different love languages, others' efforts to express love go right by them. For instance, my love language is words of affirmation. People whose love language is other things can think of words of affirmation as empty flattery. However, people like me whose primary love language is words of affirmation really do know the difference between empty flattery and real words of affirmation that come from the heart.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, my husband and younger son's primary love language is quality time. Husband is perfectly happy if I'm sitting silently next to him while he's watching a sports game. I despise sports and that is not my idea of a loving act. In fact, I completely missed it that he is experiencing love with me in that kind of situation.</p>

<p>Son's idea of quality time is just hanging out in an informal way and having some nonintense conversation. ("Nonintense" doesn't mean that I'm trying to help him with career/school/college plans!).</p>

<p>Anyway, I hope these examples help, and I hope you'll take a peek at the book, which you can do using the "look inside this book" feature on Amazon.</p>

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<p>
[QUOTE]
Bananapancake hasn't posted since the original post, but I would ask if he/she feels the family is seriously broken, or if they have just in recent years drifted apart. To me, it sounded like the latter.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>It's actually the former.</p>

<p>thanks for your responses; but i think my family needs more than that. we're in need of serious damage control. I read over my initial post, and noticed that it pretty much skimmed the topic. here are a few more (badly organized) dettails of my family dynamic (or lack thereof)</p>

<p>-my parents have not slept in the same bed since we moved to our new house a year ago. my dad has a busy job at a gov't agency about 5am-9:30pm (bc he commutes from 2hrs away). my mom works part time, but at a job she's overqualified for. my dad gets easily angered by things when they dont go his way. if the trash isn't emptied when he comes home, he throws a $hit fit and complains that no one knows how much he goes through, to come home to a messy house. </p>

<p>-my older brother is a man of few words; when we all are together, he's rarely the one to keep the convesation. he pretty much has to be pushed to converse. (he lives at school)</p>

<p>-i am the recognized family **** up. my parents say im manipulative and dont care about anyone, not even myself. ive had a mediocre first year away at school </p>

<p>-my younger brother is the golden child of the moment. he's going to like 5 conferences this summer, and so far has a stunning resume for college. he's also a jacka$$ who shuts down everything i say, unless hes actually in the mood for conversation</p>

<p>---->>> now how do i fix THAT?</p>

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<p>
[quote]
---->>> now how do i fix THAT?

[/quote]
What you are describing here is basically estrangement, and not a simple loss of closeness. The situation is way above your pay grade. I think mombot is right and that your folks, perhaps the whole family, should see a counselor.</p>

<p>Probably what you CAN do is suggest this to them. But I don't think activities or anything much else will help unless some fundamental changes in perspectives take place.</p>

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<p>bananapancake,
Unfortunately, you don't have the power to fix your family. It would be great if you did, but no individual person in a group, including a family group, has that kind of power. To think that you can only places an unfair burden on you and will make you miserable.</p>

<p>What you do have the power to do is to make your life in that family happier. If you want more quality time with your family members, you can probably achieve that through some of the means that have been mentioned by me and others. You don't, however, have the power to get your entire family to be happy together or to be the happy family that you remember from earlier days. You can, however, have some good times with either individual family members or perhaps sometimes with several family members.</p>

<p>You also need to take care of yourself and your own needs. I strongly suggest that you get counseling at your college or at home. Do whatever it takes to get counseling. Tell your parents that you're concerned about your grades and you feel that counseling will help you. Do NOT say something to your parents like, "You don't sleep in the same bed. Everyone blames me for this family's problems. I need counseling because this is a dysfunctional family." Some of this actually is probably true, but it won't help you or your family if you attempt to get counseling by blaming others.</p>

<p>Getting counseling will also help you break out of being the family scapegoat. I believe you in how you describe how your family views you. All families have roles for individuals, but dysfunctional, unhappy families tend to use one person as a scapegoat. Incidentally, depending on the family, the scapegoat can even be the person who's most academically successful!</p>

<p>It may be that your parents are headed for divorce. If so, you can't stop it. What your taking steps to heal yourself can do, however, is allow you to have good relationships with all family members and to know how to break out of the negative role that your family is pushing you in. If you take some steps to help yourself, that also will change the balance of the family dynamics, making things easier, too for the others.</p>

<p>Even your golden child brother probably isn't very happy being locked in a role in which he must be perfect. If one person -- you-- takes some steps to heal, regardless of whether your parents stay together, it will help the other family members be more free to connect in healthier ways.</p>

<p>I know that this isn't what you hoped to hear. It would be a wonderful world if you had the power to fix completely your family. You do, though, have the power to make life better for yourself, and I hope that you'll use that power.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Basically, Chapman says that people feel loved by different types of activities. Some people like the OP experience love when they share quality time with their loved ones. Others experience love through gifts, words of affirmation, having acts of service done for them or by receiving physical touch.

[/quote]
Interesting. Yeah. I suspect I “understand” some of all of these “languages”. But for me, the main language is probably touch. I have known for a very long time that my wife’s “language” is acts of service. She gets a lot out of my doing stuff, whether it is going places, building things or whatever. So I think there really is something to this.</p>

<p>I have a son who also speaks touch. A few daughters also. I have two sons who don’t speak much touch at all, but are very understanding of affirmation. My oldest son is NOT a toucher. Recently he discovered he was accepted to this summer thing he really wanted and when he read the notification he stood up and gave me a hug. It felt strange coming from him. LOL. Humans are weird.</p>

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<p>?
[quote]
---->>> now how do i fix THAT?

[/quote]

Oh, I'm so sorry Bananapancake. It does really sound serious, and you must realize that you personally can't take responsibility for the mess, nor can you fix it alone. You really need a professional counselor. An alternative would be a clergyperson. They are usually skilled in dealing with relationships, they are free, and you could easily start there. </p>

<p>It sounds like your parents have never been happy after the move. Perhaps it did not work out as they hoped? Your mom sounds unhappy and distant and possibly unfulfilled in her job. Your dad is either working his butt off 12 hours per day plus a 4 hour commute, or else he is avoiding coming home. Probably they both are lonely. I'm thinking that your siblings are really peripheral to the problem, as they are coping with parental stress in their own ways such as living at school, scheduling 5 trips over the summer, withdrawing from family conversation, etc.</p>

<p>Your parents need marriage counseling. Your family could benefit from family counseling. And if nobody else wants to go to a counselor to heal, YOU GO YOURSELF. It is not your fault. The situation probably can be improved, but nobody on this board can offer the degree of help you apparently need. Even if nobody else changes, you can save yourself by learning healthy coping methods. Please try!</p>

<p>I have a friend whose parents lived together (on a farm yet) without sleeping together or even talking to eachother. It started with an argument. This went on for years, and maybe it still is going on today. Sad, but true. When my friend was home from college, she coped with her situation by forming relationships with each parent individually. I guess it was the best it was going to get.</p>

<p>Just curious, and don't answer if you don't want to, but are you a girl or a guy?</p>