Emotional Recovery from Your Troubled Family

By Richard Schwindt

In the seventh book in his Emotional Recovery from… series Richard Schwindt M.S.W., R.S.W. turns a therapist's eye towards the source of our greatest joys and challenges – the family. Basing his thoughts and observations on more than thirty years of clinical experience, Richard explores family life and the most common struggles that afflict family members. He addresses:
The family life cycle
When and how things go wrong
How are we effected by family problems?
What is resiliency?
What is my responsibility towards myself and my family?
How do you find help?
The other families in your life
Physical illness in the family
Death and Loss in the family
Husbands and wives
Children, adolescents and young adults
Ageing parents
Abuse in the family
Mental illness and addiction in the family
Highly readable, written with knowledge and compassion, Emotional Recovery from your Troubled Family is filled with quotes, humour and case vignettes. When you are finished you will understand your family - and yourself - better than you ever have before. This is a book that prepares you to move forward into a healthier life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780993861079

Book preview

Author

Introduction

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

The quote above is quite famous, though not completely true. There are common themes in unhappy families; things that are often defined outside of the context of family. In some ways this is easier to understand but reveals less about what is really happening.

No context:

Joseph had an alcohol problem. He typically drank up to a dozen beers a day. He would rant and yell about life when drunk, storm out to the car and drive off until he sobered up. One night, shortly after he left he drove straight into another car at a nearby intersection. While no one was injured Joseph was charged and convicted of multiple offenses to do with driving while impaired and reckless endangerment. He went to jail for six months, was banned from driving for five years and ordered to attend an alcohol treatment program.

Unfortunately, this is a common enough story. But let’s add some more meat to the bone.

Growing up Joseph and his brother, Mark had regularly witnessed their father’s violent drunken rages. Joseph was the more sensitive of the two and would cower in terror as his father lashed out at his mother. Life day to day was terrifying and he soon learned to lie to authorities in order to protect his dad. He left home at sixteen and lived briefly on the streets, where he was beaten and molested. With a great deal of help from workers, extended family, his brother and a church community Joseph was able to train as a welder, find a job and ultimately get married. He still had traumatic memories of his early life and habitually told lies. Alcohol masked his pain and when he was drunk and angry would flee the house in order to avoid hitting his wife.

Now we begin to understand why Joseph is the way he is. Here are some key understandings that will help us.

1. Joe is not responsible for coming from an abusive alcoholic home. Nor is he responsible for the sexual abuse he experienced while a youth on the street and the resulting trauma.

2. No matter the source of his trauma Joseph is an adult and responsible for his alcohol use, yelling, and driving while impaired.

3. Joseph has a responsibility to be the best father and husband he can be.

4. Joseph is responsible for addressing his emotional and addictions issues.

This book will be about a context that most of us can relate to, and help us to understand why we are the way we are, and what we can do to live a healthy life. Understanding family enriches our understanding of our lives. It also is about what we find when we take a different view of family life. For example, let’s look at Mark, Joseph’s brother:

When Joseph left home Mark decided that he did not want to live a crazy life. He looked around his world and noticed that his Uncle Mike was a good man who treated his family with respect. He also noted Ms. Emmson at school who warmly supported her students and encouraged Mark to aim high. He left home after High School, went to University and worked hard at various jobs to get by. He was a moderate drinker, attended a support group for kids of alcoholics and married a woman with good values. He had a strong base that he used to try and support his troubled brother.

So we now see that Mark came from the same place as Joseph but somehow turned out differently. So now let’s go to another universe where the story is a little different.

Mark and Joseph came from a good family with strong values. They were well raised and grew into handsome and healthy young men. Joseph, however, had a predilection for alcohol that led him into a number of scrapes, starting his High School. He was finally arrested for driving the family car into the side of a post while drunk. While his family bailed him out his alcoholic behavior continued for a few years until he finally sought treatment and quit drinking.

So what does this story tell us? Family doesn’t matter? All it tells us is that people are troubled for many reasons. And while Joseph is still troubled by alcohol issues in the second universe he has a loving family behind him. That is a good thing.

My own family, my family of origin, my wife’s family of origin, and my daughter’s family are all a combination of good and imperfect. I am fortunate in that I love everyone in all of these families. That isn’t mandatory; just my good luck. I do know that I am deeply affected by the families in my world. Whether you hold your family tight or avoid them like the plague you probably are as well.

I don’t intend to sanctify or vilify the family unit. Families can be wonderful and supportive (though never perfect), or highly toxic. Most families have good and bad qualities. If you are reading this book you probably are associated with a family that is troubled in some way. While many families change some don’t change much or put another way; some family systems fail to adapt.

In this book I will look at ways that families change and ways that you can change. The easiest piece of a family system to change, of course, is you. The hardest (or impossible) thing to change is someone else. However there is an axiom in family systems theory that suggests that, "when one part of a family system changes the other parts are forced to change".

When Kyle came out as gay he announced that he was engaged to a man he had met at work. The reaction around his family was mixed. His parents supported him but his grandfather stopped talking to him and became furious at his parents for what he perceived as an immoral stance towards Kyle. This was especially painful because Kyle had always been close to his grandmother who was ordered not to talk to him.

This can go in different ways. There is now a rift between the older generation and the ones below. It challenges some of the tasks that lay ahead. As Kyle’s grandparents age will they accept support from their kids? Will Kyle lose his relationship with his grandmother? Or will the grandparents soften their stance at the prospect of losing contact with their grandson? Is it possible to reason with Kyle’s grandfather or is he someone who never changes his mind once it is made up? What we do know is that a previously stable situation has changed, starting with Kyle’s disclosure and his grandfather’s inability to accept it.

The grandfather may not be a terrible human being