Family Of Origin Issues
It is not uncommon for the sins of the father to suffer upon his offspring. The family you come from, the environment in which you were raised, can have a profound effect upon your adult life.
Here are a few examples of the types of issues that could stem from your Family of Origin:
– If your father was a drunk, then that will affect how you view others, perhaps by always being on the alert of anyone ready to abuse you.
– If you were raised in a tough neighborhood, then you may keep expecting anyone trying to get close to you has ulterior motives.
– If you were physically or sexually abused as a child, then as an adult you may resort to alcoholism, which in turn passes another problem down to your kids.
– If your parents had a high quality marriage then this will transmit into your own relationships as well.
Becoming aware of how our past effects of present
Family of Origin issues affect not only how we live our own private lives, but by extension, how we engage with others.
How you make sense of your past experiences and adjust to them will influence the quality of your current and future relationships.
Family of Origin issues affect our current emotional needs and attachment styles. If your father was an angry abuser, your mother fearful and controlling, then your problems will most likely revolve around anxiety and fear; you will seek someone who can give you a feeling of comfort and security.
To advance beyond your Family of Origin issues, you first need to become aware of them. Be honest with yourself; take a look at your past and what your upbringing left within you that you may need to work on.
Being unaware of the issues that lie beneath the way you act and respond is like a computer running its program on full automatic; you have no control and are not acting as a fully thinking being. However, by becoming aware of your core issues, of what lies beneath the undercurrent, you can break free of your trap, program yourself, and rise to the ranks of a fully thinking being. You will be in charge of your present instead of being ruled by your past.
An imprint can happen from something in our childhood, a past traumatic experience, or a chronic ongoing influence from our environment. Imprints can affect us subconsciously and change our view of ourselves and the world.
Whatever the perception is, whether we understand it or not, the message gets internalized, digested and becomes a part of our being. What comes next is a sense of not belonging, not being a part of something. The final stage of not belonging is the feeling of being alone.
1) We are affected subconsciously
2) We feel broken
3) The message gets internalized
4) We feel that we don’t belong
5) We feel alone
At that point the genesis of our imprint is complete. We may keep testing different situations to see if the pattern changes our story. But without a new set of tools to fix the cycle, nothing changes. History repeats itself. Our vicious cycle affects how we interact with other people and how we let other people interact with us. Regardless of how absurd or illogical the situation is, what we believe becomes our truth.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Let’s explore an example of a person with early disconnection and rejection.
This individual has a need for security, safety, empathy, and the desire to be accepted. He could come from a background of rejection, abusiveness, or where affection was withheld. These beliefs are internalized as feelings of abandonment, mistrust, emotional deprivation, shame, and social isolation. The individual feels defective or alienated in any relationship. This person’s method of dealing with these feelings becomes internalized as an emotional imprint. The person seeks security, safety, and empathy, but no matter how much security and safety is offered, he fully expects to be rejected sooner or later and so prepares himself for “the inevitable” which he then proceeds to cause to come about.
He becomes the cause of his own rejection.
Invalidation is a big one for most people. Everyone has been invalidated in some way, so there is an expectation that one’s desire for a normal degree of emotional support will not be sufficiently met by anyone and they will thus feel deprived.
There are three major forms of deprivation:
1) Deprivation of nurturance
2) Deprivation of empathy or validation
3) Deprivation of protection
Lacking one of them becomes an internal need to acquire it, to be admired or loved by another. We begin giving to another person to get what we lack in return, but since our lack stems from some unfinished business, that other person can never fulfill our need and so he then becomes the problem. We continue to feel incomplete.
For example, if in our past we had been abused, lied to, humiliated, or hurt in some way, then we have an expectation that the other person is going to do just that to us now; if he happens to do so (even unintentionally) we perceive the harm is intentional and thus our fears are justified. We then have our excuse to break up the relationship because we “saw it coming.”
It is with the same justification that people will decide to remain monogamous or not to their partner. When someone does not feel safe because of past baggage, they do not trust their partner is there for them subconsciously, and will justify infidelity with an excuse.
Can you think of an example of this with someone you know?
FURTHER READING
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base. New York: Basic Books.
Collins, N.L. & Freeney, B.C. (2004). An Attachment Theory Perspective on Closeness and Intimacy. In D.J. Mashek & A. Aron (Eds.), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy, pp. 163–188. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Mashek, D.J., & Sherman, M.D. (2004). Desiring less closeness with initimate others. In A. Aron and Mashek, D.J. (Eds.), Handbook of Closeness and Intimacy (pp. 343–356). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.