People in families usually have patterns of behaving. In our families, we develop routines and rituals and we react to similar things in similar ways each time. For example, it could be that children are expected to get up by themselves for school, make their own breakfast, pack their lunches and walk to school or get the bus while their parents are getting ready to go to work. Or it could be that, whenever the family sits down to eat, the father is the one to talk about his day and, if one of the kids tries to talk, he is shushed or told not to be so selfish and to listen to his father. Or maybe, when a child comes home from school, Mom is there to welcome her with a snack, listening to whatever happened that day.
Each of these habitual patterns of behavior create feelings and beliefs in children. In the first family, maybe one child will feel "everything is up to me; I can't expect anyone to be there for me or help me." Another child might feel free to create her own routine and feel "my parents trust me to do this; they don't limit me." In the second family, one child might become afraid of the father while another becomes angry that he is not allowed to express himself. In the third, one child might feel taken care of and listened to while another feels intruded upon.
Family Nature
Whatever the reaction, it is created by a combination of the parents'/siblings'/relatives' habitual behaviors and the child's interpretation of these behaviors and the beliefs that the child develops as a result of these interpretations. Most parents don't deal with children in consistently positive ways. Many parents actually cause pain in their children and in some families, there is emotional abuse, physical abuse or sexual abuse.
Childhood Family Patterns Create Adult Relationship Patterns
Our childhood family patterns seem to follow us around as we get older, whenever we're in close relationships or in groups. For instance, the main problematic patterns of our childhood often recur when we are part of a couple. The grown child in the first family above may get together with someone who is kind of distant or super-independent and doesn't take her into account when making decisions.
In groups at work or social groups, similar patterns often show up too. For example, in the second family above, the grown child's boss might be authoritarian and everyone is afraid to call him on it.
One thing that seems to be true is that these patterns happen over and over again in one's life. When they are painful patterns, people's relationships are negatively affected and they feel alone or angry or hurt much of the time.
What to Do to Heal Dysfunctional Childhood Family Patterns
One way to look at the recurrence in adult life of painful childhood patterns is to see that they are opportunities to relate to the same patterns in new ways, which transforms the patterns and creates healthier ways of relating. There are various methods and techniques that can transform these patterns.
Process Work Role Play
Process Work is a larger modality, in which role play is one technique. Using this technique, you pick the family member you had the most trouble with as a child. You remember a typical painful event, or a specific painful event. If there's another person there with you (say, a therapist), decide which of you will start out being you and which the "troublesome" person. Each of you speak from that viewpoint, and then you switch roles and speak from the other viewpoint. You try to get as much down to the essence of what was really going on as possible, saying things that are deeply true (even though the actual people never would have admitted these thing nor would they admit them now). If you're alone, you can switch back and forth between the roles yourself, though this is a bit harder.
Creating Therapeutic Stories and EFT
Childhood family patterns often hang on stubbornly and keep showing up in our work lives and adult family relationships. One creative way to begin the transformation to a different pattern is a creative combination of EFT and Process Work. The way this works is to note down in detail the pattern that keeps happening, and the way it affects you. For instance, someone may grow up in a family where the parents left the children to fend for themselves-from a young age, they had to make their own meals, dress themselves and get themselves to school. The way this might have affected one of the children is to become super responsible for his siblings. As an adult, the pattern might repeat itself so that he would find himself living with roommates who rely on him to shop for food, keep the place clean and also find themselves regularly short on money because they are unable to budget, thus leaving him paying for more than his share of the bills. At work, he may find himself a peer of other employees, but doing most of the work with little credit nor adequate remuneration.
Combining EFT and Process Work, we use the pattern of behavior and the way it affects the person to create a metaphorical story-a fairy tale outlining the problem pattern-using fairy tale characters. We use EFT to focus on each part of the story; EFT Tapping helps the story to unfold and it helps a solution to emerge. Using all of what arises, we then translate the story back into the person's current life and explore how the new pattern can be brought into the person's life.
Healing Dysfunctional Childhood Family Patterns
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