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7 Types of Toxic Family Dynamics
I found a wealth of information that I felt compelled to share. The video can be found here but since it is about thirty minutes long, I thought to condense it a bit and make it readable for those who would rather read when wanting to absorb the information.
Patrick Teahan is a therapist who specializes in group therapy. In his practice, he noted that people tend to have more in common than they think when it comes to family dynamics and trauma. He also noted that one’s family dynamic can even predict the problems one faces as an adult.
However, although he listed seven (and one bonus) dynamic, it is common for people to have a little bit of several different dynamics occurring in their family. So if you see your family falling into a number of these dynamics, you aren’t alone.
1. Looks Good on Paper
This family dynamic is about crafting the image of perfection for the world to see and admire while sweeping emotions under the rug. Their lawn may be immaculate but the marriage is falling apart. The kids get good grades but they are emotionally stunted. The kids must be perfect in order to make their parents proud, despite the fact that human can be perfect and their parents certainly aren’t perfect.
Being authentic is not a value because having any problem is seen as a weakness to cover up or compensate for, not something to share. So if you are a child in such a family and you don’t naturally conform to what your parents want, you will feel pressured to be just like your parents and even your siblings if they naturally gravitate to the values of the parents.
But whether you fit in with your parents or not, you will always be your own person with your own thoughts, feelings and goals. So it’s difficult to branch out on your own without the looming fear of being rejected or abandoned, which will then lead you to reject or abandon yourself, which then leads to identity crises.
Another issue that can come up is the belief that achieving a certain goal will fill the emptiness they feel inside.
If you grew up with this dynamic, Teahan suggests that in therapy, consider taking a look at how conditional the love was and how one’s parents focused on the wrong things, which in my…
