As an organizing principle we can describe dysfunctional families in terms of the ABC's, where the letters in this case stand for Attachment, Boundaries and Communication. As a subheading we'll talk about the three R's, in this case, Rules, Roles, and Resulting Relationships. The ABC's of unhealthy, or dysfunctional, families include insecure attachment, poor boundaries (either enmeshment or disengagement), and closed communication. Psychologists distinguish three forms of insecure attachment.
In avoidant attachment the parents are emotionally unavailable, unresponsive, and rejecting. The children, not surprisingly, tend to avoid parents and caregivers. When they grow up, avoidantly attached children sacrifice intimacy for an exaggerated form of autonomy and display a dismissive attitude toward attachment. When you see an adult who never seems to connect in an intimate relationship, you may well be looking at the product of avoidant attachment.
In ambivalent attachment the parents are inconsistently available-sometimes distant, at other times intrusive. Children in these circumstances tend to be wary. When they grow up, ambivalently attached children give up autonomy for the sake of a dependent form of intimacy. They lack independent self-esteem and display a desperate need for others and the fear that their needs cannot be met.
Disorganized attachment is the worst of all since parents, to whom children instinctively turn for protection, act as figures of both fear and reassurance. Abusive parents fall into this category. The children seem dazed or confused. When they grow up, disorganizedly attached children have radically unstable relationships and experience a sense of being unreal or internally fragmented.
Dysfunctional families display poor boundaries. There may be boundary violations, such as a father who shares confidences with his daughter about his relationship with the mother, or an adolescent boy who becomes a quasi-spouse to his mother after the death or disappearance of the father. Physical, sexual and emotional abuse all constitute boundary violations. In these situations there is no personal privacy. Or there may be ambiguous boundaries: it's not clear, for example, whether a new step-parent is a "real" parent with authority or just the spouse of the real parent. Where the healthy family occupies the middle ground, unhealthy families fall at the extremes. In an over-attached, or enmeshed family, children have difficulty achieving autonomy. In an under-attached, or "boarding house" family, with a neglectful or absent dad and a neglected mom, children are treated as invisible, and often have difficulty trusting others. In another form of poor boundaries, known as triangulation, one family member may be used as messenger between two others as a substitute for direct communication, or two family members may align against a third. All of these boundary problems prevent a family from functioning in a healthy way.
Dysfunctional families also display poor communication. At one extreme we find no expression of emotions, either verbally or physically. At the other extreme we find an excessive display of emotions, a family in continual turmoil, its members in a constant state of anxiety. Where families deny their problems, children learn to distrust their feelings and their senses. Dysfunctional families tend to maintain an atmosphere of secrecy within the family and isolation from the outside community.
Not every dysfunctional family displays all of these characteristics, but they are the places where one looks to understand what makes a family dysfunctional.
Arthur Wenk, a psychotherapist practicing in Oakville, Ontario, combines cognitive-behavioral therapy (discovering techniques for producing immediate changes) with a psychodynamic approach that helps make changes permanent by addressing the root causes of mental health problems. Art is certified by OACCPP (the Ontario organization for psychotherapists) and EMDRIA (the EMDR International Association). Art's website, http://www.arthurwenk.com/, contains one-page summaries of recommended books on personal growth, brief explanations of common mental health issues, and lectures on parenting, the psychology of families, and the functioning of the brain.
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