The Family Energy

Intimacy, love, boundaries and differentiation(24 slides)

creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

The key to energies is to allow them to flow through you so they don’t get stuck.

Stuck energies are caustic and leak out on the wrong people.

There can be rules for allowing the energies to flow, especially for the bad or negative ones.

How we process energies is a function of what happened in our own families and most of us grew up with very dysfunctional models of energy flow from

out of control to slow and simmering suppressed.

Intimacy:

the sharing of feelings.. good and bad.

Love versus intimacy

• Is it possible to love someone and not to be intimate with them? (not share your inner life and energies)

• Is it possible to be intimate with someone and not love them?

• Is love possible without intimacy?

Your identity

• Your identity is a function of the boundaries that you have experienced in life.

• If you were enmeshed or abandoned or allowed respectful individuality your personality will show it.

• The dynamics all come together to manifest the intimacy you have with self and others in your family system.

Differentiation

• The ability to be in a relationship and not giving up your identity in the process.

• Allowing the energy flow in another without it threatening you or you trying to shut them down.

• Being different from another and still embracing them in love is possible.

• Having conflict but negotiating the differences and maintaining intimacy is possible too.

Family energy

• Energy in family is a bonding force and power.

• Negative energy bonds and positive energy bonds.

• Traumatic bonding occurs when energy is overwhelming and dangerous.

• Families have rules regarding energy expression.

Typical family rules about energy expression(some examples)

• Could not express anger towards parents.

• Could not cry and sent to your room or threatened with punishment if you did.

• Affection stopped when the child got older.

• You were to keep problems to yourself

• Teasing, sarcasm, kidding, mocking of siblings were allowed.

• Could not raise your voice.

Children and energy

• Children absorb the energy they are around.

• Children also absorb the voices associated with that energy.

• The messages sent when the energies were high are most easily absorbed. (that’s why we often sound like our parents when we become parents)

• The cyclical nature of abuse is played out through this energy.

• If children are not allowed to let the energy flow through them then it gets stuck and they carry it around before it spills out on their own children years later.

The energy of family secrets...

• There is a tremendous amount of energy surrounding

family secrets and shame is the name of that energy.

• Even though children are not “privy” to the contents of the

family secret, they do feel its energy and in that way, the energy of the secret is passed on to the next generation.

The silent tyranny of secrets

• “In my family, as in many, secrets provided a temporary aura of safety, but eventually they outlived their usefulness and tyrannized those they originally protected. Like tiny film monsters projected on giant screens, secrets appear to have a power far in excess of their actual content. In my family, as in most, it was fear and a brooding imagination that made the secrets toxic, that gave them their most damaging legacy. Now uncovered, the secrets seem far more ordinary, more humanly understandable and benign than the dark shadows they cast over generations of my family.”

Michele Martin

Family “energy pockets”

• Money

• Rigid religious paradigms

• Sexual issues: bodies, education, feelings, behaviors

• Addictions: substances, processes, people

• Power, control, respect of elders

• Fantasy bonds

Rules

• Implicit rules: rules that are obvious and go without stating. (sassing your father)

• Explicit rules: rules that are spelled out and stressed time and time again. (sassing your mother)

• Examples: challenging mom, challenging dad, asking questions about sex, money, etc...

Systems can get into trouble when they become explicit about implicit values

for example: The difference between demanding respect You will respect me!

and being respectful to your offspring and reminding children to be.

• Here is an example of a family system, which is not a healthy family system because it focuses too much upon the emotional needs of the parents.

• It is not oriented towards the children but is more concerned in getting them to role play their parts.

The ten commandments of a real-life dysfunctional family

• 1. Thou shalt be cheerful

• 2. Thou shalt come when called and obey cheerfully.

• 3. Thou shalt be on time for devotionals

• 4. Thou shalt not hit, fight, or quarrel

• 5. Thou shalt not eat outside the kitchen

Ten commandments continued...

• 6. Thou shalt be home by 4:00

• 7. Thou shalt keep all the belongings put away.

• 8. Thou shalt not say unkind or sassy words.

• 9. Thou shalt do all chores and practicing during the week.

• 10. Thou shalt have your room clean before school.

A healthier family

• Would allow a safe place to express energies, to make mistakes, to have negotiated conflict, to be grounded in what was being experienced, to share power with the members of the family (i.e. the parents), to have faith and respect for the children, and to see the children as good and worthy of trust.

10 principles of family systems

• 1. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

• 2. What effects one, effects all.

• 3. The components of a family system are not the members but rather the relationships between the members.

• 4. The marriage relationship is the life source of the family system.

• 5. Family relationships are bonded together by information and energy.

• 6. Rules control the system and result from habituated and redundant relationship interactions.

• 7. Dynamic homeostasis keeps the system in balance: rules, roles, energy and secrets all have interplay to accomplish the balance.

• 8. Family systems get their meaning from myths and organizing principles.

• 9. Denial, fantasy bonds, secrets, rules are the forces which create the pain and dysfunction of family systems.

• 10. The family system is intergenerational and the legacy of the system will live on into succeeding generations.

The dynamics of the family system

• When a family system is set up and becomes established, it will fight any changes.

• The system will blame and scapegoat any of the children who

try and change it.

• It maintains it balanced homeostasis by whatever means possible and will reject members who cause discomfort by “rocking the boat”.

If there are things you want to change in your family system you can do it slowly.

First announce the changes you want to make and focus on yourself and what is within your power to change concerning yourself.

The nature of systems will respond by slowly changing in response to your changes.

Do not and I repeat do not demand others to change to meet your agenda.

If your change is honest people will see and feel it and overtime the system will change to accommodate the hopefully healthier changes that were

initiated by your desire to be a healthier family.

the end