It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.
Milton Erikson
From the very beginning, from the moment we are born, the child is born with the first projection of love or of the ideal family.
This archetype, which we all carry inside us when we are born, compels us to do anything to “belong”, to be part of our clan. If we don’t, our unconscious threatens us with exile and with the destruction of our very life, through the threat of non-existence and non-recognition.
The main thing that sets “healthy” families apart is not that they are “perfect”, since perfection doesn’t exist, but that there are no dynamics of manipulation in them, and their members feel protected, receive the love they need and are encouraged to feel free to explore the world around them, knowing they will have support whenever something happens to them.
In “toxic” families, on the other hand, the exact opposite happens. Their members will feel they are not good enough to be loved, will believe that if they get something wrong it will be a failure and, as a result, will show great emotional instability and insecurities, and will develop low self-esteem. These consequences will be especially visible in adult life, in the relationships they build and in the way they get on in society.
Toxic families:
- Families that are unable to respect the personal space of their members will end up turning free emotional dynamics into coercive emotional dynamics.
- We must be “present”, which doesn’t mean close. One ends up becoming a victim of the need for approval and recognition.
- Individuality is limited; people end up taking on responsibilities and burdens that are not theirs, and they feel guilty if they don’t.
- Members adopt extreme attitudes of overprotection or aggression, which hinders healthy social and emotional development.
- The other person’s needs are not taken into account, only one’s own, and they manipulate in order to get what they want. They put their own needs first and play on guilt and victimhood so that their children do what they demand, which will end up turning them into vulnerable adults and very needy, insecure people.
Overprotective families or absent families:
- Overprotection is the opposite of autonomy and creates weakness and emotional dependency. By overprotecting, parents will encourage their children to become extremely dependent, which affects their confidence. As a result, they will constantly need the support and approval of others to do anything at all, since overprotective parents make the people they overprotect dependent and keep every aspect of their lives under control. This is, in a way, a synonym for manipulation, as it creates a feeling of uselessness and low self-esteem.
- The opposite lies in the absence of, or total neglect towards, parenting or emotional contact within the family. This is almost the same as talking about abandonment, one of the great wounds of childhood.
- The sound of silence: a lack of verbal communication doesn’t mean there is no communication: silence communicates. What silence conveys is tension and danger, and at the same time it coexists schizophrenically with the message that nothing is wrong. There is no safe space for communication; what really matters is always left unsaid.
Families with a lack of flexibility and blurred boundaries:
- A lack of flexibility makes it impossible for members to develop and fosters many elements of the personality that remain in the shadow.
- Roles are set through unwritten rules, so anything that threatens the family’s comfort will provoke extreme and dramatic attitudes.
- Interactions within the family are rigid. Authority and demands abound; there is a lot of control and little reflection. When one part of the system wants to move, the others will push in the opposite direction. The “symptom” member appears, the black sheep, who will suffer harmful pressure that sooner or later will explode into drama.
- We can also find an absence of boundaries, which leads to inadequate emotional regulation among members and to abuse from children to parents and from parents to children. Once again, we find the tendency towards drama.
