GENERATIONAL FAMILY DYSFUNCTION

“We avoid blame because we are aware of the generational nature of family dysfunction.” BRB p. 157

“So many of us come into ACA blaming our parents for what has gone wrong in our lives. We tell ourselves, “If only I’d had a ‘normal’ family I wouldn’t have so many problems; why couldn’t things have been different?”

There’s no doubt we deserved better; as innocent children we had few choices. But as adults, if we continue to focus solely on blaming our families, we will perpetuate the dysfunction. It’s generational, and it’s the same system in which our parents were raised.

Often we didn’t want to see our role in the continued dysfunction before we started our recovery. Maybe we even told ourselves “I won’t treat my children like that.” But it’s likely we either did some of the same things or maybe we moved 180 degrees the other way, trying to be more of a friend than a parent.

But all children need reasonable parents, just as we did. Until we uncover and deal with our own issues, we’ll continue to repeat dysfunctional patterns. The ACA program gives us the middle ground where recovery lives. And we deserve to live in that space.”

On this day I will remember that family dysfunction is a generational disease. I affirm my choice to break the cycle by working my program.”

My experience:

I never blamed my parents, per se.  I thought my life was “normal.”  I never questioned that what happened in my household was not necessarily normal. My gladiator tendencies allowed me to fight through those difficult times that others may have blamed on their upbringing.  But it was the other side of the coin of the same problem.  I deserved better.  I should not have had to develop gladiator traits in order to survive and fight as I did.  In retrospect, I guess it is sort of blaming my childhood as I clung onto this attitude and survival tactics until I got into the ACA program.  I did attempt to treat my children differently, but my treatment was equally dysfunctional.  In the end I now see that I was not reasonable.  I am now peeling the onion of recovery and learning new ways to walk in my life.  No longer do I see everything as a fight, but as an opportunity to understand and/or coach/mentor.  It’s this understanding that puts me in the middle ground of recovery and the ability to treat people as they need to be treated, very respectfully.  By no means am I saying that I am 100%, but I am getting better one day at a time.

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