The Most Common Ways Families Handle Stress

Episode 167 – The Most Common Ways Families Handle Stress

Families are not a group of individuals living side by side – they are connected through the intricate web of relationships. When one person becomes stressed or anxious, it sends ripples through the entire family system. When this happens, we have typical patterns of managing that stress, and these patterns don’t solve the anxiety, it just passes from one family member to another. 

This episode shows you the typical family patterns of managing stress, and how to begin breaking those patterns.

If you have a relationship with an adult child that is suffering, download this free guide:

5 Steps to Reconnect with Your Adult Child

You’ll begin healing the hurt you’re carrying, and your heart will feel lighter and more hopeful. You’ll begin taking a different road to building that precious relationship instead of walking on eggshells and riding the roller coaster of disconnection and frustration. 

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Tina Gosney is the Family Conflict Coach. She helps her clients move past contention in their homes and move into connection. Developing healthy family relationships can change lives.
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Tina is certified in family relationships and a trauma informed coach.
Visit tinagosney.com for more information on coaching services.

Transcript

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Tina, welcome to the coaching your family relationships podcast. I'm your host. Tina Gosney, the family conflict coach. This is where we talk about how messy our family relationships can be. Have you ever felt like your family is stuck in the same arguments, same behaviors, same emotional loops, same patterns over and over and over again. Maybe you've tried to change things, but it feels like nothing works. Well, this is why today's episode is so important, because we all keep repeating the same patterns until we realize that we're repeating them. You can't change what you don't know is happening. Awareness is always the first step to breaking these cycles. And the ways family manage stress and anxiety usually don't solve anything. They just kind of move that stress and anxiety around the family system. Because families are not just groups of individual peoples living side by side, we are all very deeply connected, like this intricate web of relationships. Imagine a mobile hanging in a baby's crib. Each piece of that mobile represents a family member. When one person and one piece starts swinging wildly, that entire mobile is affected, and it's trying to find its balance again. But that's exactly what happens in families when one person brings stress and anxiety into the system. Everyone feels it. But the good news is, is that when you recognize these patterns, you can begin to change them. When you become that steady, calming presence in your family, the entire system begins to stabilize. But you have to see first, how you are adding to the anxiety and stress in the family system. Today, I'm introducing a concept from Murray Bowen's work on family systems. It's called Bowen family systems theory that explains how families handle anxiety, and he said they do it in very predictable ways. And unfortunately, none of these ways actually solve the problem. They just shuffle it around. So the four main ways that families manage anxiety are conflict constant arguing or tension triangles, which is bringing in a third person to mediate or deflect or to buffer the anxiety between two other people, over functioning and under functioning. One person takes all the responsibility while the other one just kind of avoids it and pulls away and then distancing that's pulling away emotionally or physically to escape the anxiety. So we're going to explore each one of these with some examples. And if I don't give examples that are applicable to your family, ask yourself, What's in it? What could be an example of this in my family? Because it's probably there. So the first one is conflict, constant arguing or tension. This happens when unresolved anxiety in their relationships lead to frequent disagreements or emotional outbursts, like a parent and adult child frequently arguing about that child's career choices, and the parent is expressing disappointment that their child hasn't lived up to their expectations. Maybe disagreements about, how about boundaries, like, how often can a parent call or visit? And maybe are they allowed to, you know, show up unannounced. Maybe that can escalate into a heated exchange. Maybe the parent criticizes their child's parenting style with their own children, and then that sparks that defensiveness and arguments, and it can feel like you're stuck on repeat. When you get caught in conflict with that tension that's always there, you just feel like you keep repeating it over and over and over again, and that pattern just erodes trust. Both parties feel defensive and like no one's listening to me and nobody understands me. And why do we have to yell at each other all the time to be heard? Right? So we get stuck in this constant arguing and tension. It's just you can feel it in your body, and your body holds that tension. It's just uncomfortable. But we pass that tension around from one person to another. And then we have triangles. We bring in a third person to mediate or deflect tension. You know, this happens really often in ways that we don't even notice. If we're not looking for it, we're probably not going to notice it. You know, two people might be having a conflict. They might have some sort of tension between them, and they involve a third party. Bring a third party into that like a parent might vent to their other kid about their sibling, and they say things like, I don't know why your brother never calls me baby. You should talk to him. Can you talk to him and see why he doesn't want to talk to me? Maybe your adult child complains to your spouse or to a friend about how demanding you are, instead of addressing it with you. Or maybe a parent uses a grandchild to buffer the tension. The tension, right? Maybe they are bringing extra gifts or lathering a lot of attention to create a connection with the grandchild while they're avoiding the direct conflict with their own child. These triangles can feel more stable to us than just a tension with a second person, because think about a stool. A stool has has two legs, it's pretty unstable, but when we add a third leg on that stool, all of a sudden, well, that got a lot more stable. So when we add a third person, it can feel like we're putting some stability into our into our relationship, like I'm I have to find my grounding here by going to another person, but it constrained the relationship, and that sometimes that third person gets caught in the middle. They don't know what to do because they're kind of between two people. Then we have over functioning and under functioning. You know, when one person takes on more responsibility than it's really healthy for them to do, while the other person becomes just dependent on them, or they start disengaging in their own life, like a parent offering unsolicited advice or making decisions for their adult kid or financially supporting them in ways that hinder their independence. Maybe that adult child becomes overly dependent on their parent for emotional or financial support, and they just don't even know how to take responsibility for their own problems, and so they just kind of leave it and hand it over to the parent, even when they're an adult and they should be taking care of it themselves. Maybe a parent becomes overly involved in their child's life by, you know, managing their schedules and reminding of them of their important appointments and making sure that they're getting their school assignments in on time. You know, when they're well beyond the age that they should be having to be reminded, or maybe like waking them up so to make sure that they get to work on time, and meanwhile, that child gets to become increasingly passive and disengaged in their own life because their parent is managing their life for them over time, the over functioning parent is going to get resentful, and the under functioning child feels stifled. They feel incapable. Is actually produces a stifled self esteem in them, they're not able to develop into a mature version of themselves because they don't have to do hard things. They're never going through that pressure of having to figure things out for themselves. So it stifles growth in both the over functioner and the under functioner, and it perpetuates unhealthy dependency. And then we have distancing, you know, one person pulls away to avoid dealing with the tension in the relationship. It doesn't have to actually be physically pulling away, though sometimes you could just, you know, give someone the silent treatment after you're feeling disrespected, and so you refuse to talk to them, or maybe sometimes you avoid visiting or calling your parents because you feel judged or overwhelmed by what happens when you talk to them. Maybe the parent stops offering invitations to a certain family, a certain of their children to family gatherings after they feel like they've been repeatedly rejected, and they just think, well, they don't want to be a part of our family anymore. So I guess I'm going to stop reaching out. We can also distance by just the way that the atmosphere that we put into our home. So we can distance by leaving the TV on all the time, or some loud music, or by staying very busy, or by keeping topics and conversations a very surface level. Those are another way of distancing, and this really provides some temporary relief, but can lead to a lot of feelings of rejection and misunderstanding, and over time, that emotional gap just gets deeper and deeper and it gets harder to repair. So those are our four patterns, and what they look like. Did you find one that resembled your family? And if not, then what is that version in your family? Because you have one, at least one, I know I've seen in my family that I grew up in, and the family that I have raised every single one of those. So what's the what is your family patterns? What do they look like? When these patterns persist, they keep us stuck in this anxiety cycle, this dysfunction cycle, we don't get to the root issues, and it pushes stress and anxiety. It just changes from, you know, we push it from one person to another, and we just kind of pass it around the family, and that creates resentment, emotional disconnection, long term damage to the relationships prevents personal growth. We stay in these outdated roles that we don't need to be in anymore. So recognizing that these patterns are in our relationship dynamics is the first step to breaking free and creating more healthy relationships. Once you see them, you can start to change how you respond and when you respond differently. It's like a ripple effect positive change into your family system. You have to really open your eyes and see what's really happening, and you do that by noticing yourself and the way you contribute to these patterns. Remember that mobile one piece remains calm and steady, it starts to balance the entire system, so that power of becoming a calming, grounded force in your family can be coming from you, but you've got to pay attention to your own behavior and how you react in stress, you have to focus on changing yourself, not other people, because you're actually not able to do that for anybody else. You're the only person that you have control over, and you have to be committed to this for the long haul. This is change takes time. It's think of it as a lifestyle shift, not a quick fix. And when it comes to breaking our family patterns, it's really natural to you know, feel be listening to me right now and have a healthy dose of skepticism or resistance to something I'm saying. So I'm going to address some of the common objections that I hear and why they don't have to stop you from creating change. So the first one is, you know, I've tried this before. I've tried to be that calm, grounding force, but nothing ever changed. And this is actually one of the most common frustrations you're putting in the effort you're doing, changing all these things about yourself, so much effort, but it feels like your family didn't even notice, or they didn't respond in the way that you hoped. Why does this happen? Well, change in a family system is a very rarely immediate just like a mobile doesn't instantly settle when one piece stops swinging. Your family needs time to adjust to your new energy. If you've been having a pattern of reacting with stress and criticism and avoidance for years, then your family has learned to respond to that version of you when you shift your behavior, they may test it. They might resist it because it's unfamiliar. So this is what you do, be patient and consistent. Think of it as planting seeds. You don't see a seed grow overnight, but with time, effort and just consistency, the results will come. Remember, change is not about controlling others. It's about maintaining your own calm presence, regardless of their behavior. Number two common things that I hear like this has been going on for ever in my family. My dad was like this, my mom was like that. Their parents were like that, and their parents were like this. You know, it's just been it's like in our DNA. How can I possibly change it? So that is actually very valid, because generational patterns can feel like these immovable mountains. And you might just think, you know, this is just the way my family is, and I'm doomed to repeat what I grew up with and what my parents grew up with. And it feels like this is really true, because family systems do get very deeply ingrained behaviors like avoiding conflict or over functioning or distancing, we're probably modeled by your parents and grandparents and even earlier generations. It's easy to feel powerless when those patterns just seem like they're written into your DNA, like it's just a biological thing that I can't change, but you can do something while you can't change your past, you can be the one that breaks the cycle for future generations by recognizing the patterns. You're already doing something that so many people before you did not do, you are being aware of what's happening. That awareness is the foundation of change. Every small step that you take is a ripple. It creates a ripple in your family, mobile in your family system, and that influences not just your family now, but future generations. The third thing that I usually hear is, this is too hard, and I don't even know where to start. We're such a mess. And, yeah, I get it. You know, the thought of overhauling years or decades or generations of patterns can feel big and overwhelming, and we don't even know where to start, because family dynamics are complex. You might think that you have to fix everything all at the same time, and when you're emotionally invested in those relationships, even the small conflicts can feel big like really big challenges, and your brain will want to sabotage you by saying, I don't know what to do and getting overwhelmed. And then, if it's feels too big, you won't do anything. And that's what your brain is hoping will happen. It hopes that you don't do anything because change is hard, and it doesn't like to do hard things. But here's the good news is that you don't have to listen to your brain. You can talk to it and calm it down by starting with a small steps. So focus on one thing that you can change about how you show up in the relationship. For example, if you tend to act and react defensively, I want you to focus on pausing and taking a breath before you respond. If you are an avoider and you avoid difficult conversations, I want you to commit to having one small, open, honest discussion about something that's been on your mind. And it doesn't even have to be like your biggest thing that you want to talk about. Have it be like on a scale of one to 10? Have it be like, you know, a four or a five. Just start there. If you tend to over function, practice stepping back and letting your other the other person handle their own responsibilities, just to try it one time, see what happens. I can tell you what's going to happen. You're going to get really uncomfortable, and you're going to want to take over, but you could handle that discomfort. Okay, what else do I hear? It's well, what if nobody notices and no one appreciates all this effort that I'm putting in. I know it's frustrating to pour your energy into changing, to feel like nobody even noticed that I changed. Nobody has acknowledged it. No one said anything. And you know they might not immediately recognize your efforts, especially if they're used to you acting a different way. They might resist the change, not because they don't like you, or they don't want you to change, or they're have some malicious intent, but because it disrupts what they have come to expect from you, and that becomes uncomfortable for them. So what do you do if this is happening? I want you to remember that this is not You're not doing this so that other people will validate you and acknowledge you there. You're doing it for your own growth and own peace of mind. It's not for that external validation, because this change is about living with integrity, about being true to your values and creating your life that you want to lead, and over time, when your efforts aren't acknowledged by somebody else, it doesn't matter, because the stability and the calm that you're going to bring will positively impact your family over time. Sometimes people come to me and they're afraid of upsetting the status quo. So they say, What if I do this? But it just makes things worse. And the truth is that you when you make change, it can temporarily stir up tension. That that is most likely to happen, because when you shift how you respond to stress, it disrupts the family's equilibrium. Other people try to push back or try to put you back into old patterns, because that's what they're used to. And when you anticipate that resistance, you can actually see it as a sign that you're on the right track. Growth feels uncomfortable, but it's necessary to create meaningful change, so just stay consistent. Remember that temporary discomfort is part of the process. The last thing that I hear maybe it might be the most this one big and I know that I hear it the most because I always see myself and where I used to be. And when somebody says this to me, but they say, you know, why is it all my job to change? Why do I have to do all the work? I feel like everything comes back to me changing. Why doesn't anybody else have to change? And it and when we think this way, it's very easy to feel resentful. If we're like, I'm the only one putting in any effort. This is not fair. It's really common for our brain to look outside and see that person needs to change and that person needs to change, but what it was doesn't, but what it doesn't want to do is look inside of us and see how we're contributing to the situation. The truth is that other people do need to change. Most likely they do need to change and they have. Things to work on. And the truth is, so do you, and you don't have control over what other people do or don't do, but you do have control over what you do and what you don't do, if what you want is really to feel better. That comes from the inside, not from the outside. We have to start inside and then move out, not from the outside, and then go in. So instead of thinking this is all on me and it's not fair, and why do I have to do this? I want you to view your efforts as a gift to yourself and to your family. You are setting a super powerful example of courage and growth. Other people might not immediately follow you, and that's fine, because your change paves the way for them to do that when they're ready. When we try to change our family dynamics, it is not easy, but it's possible. You know these objections are valid, but they don't have to stop you. So I want you to remember you are not alone in this journey. Every small step, you're creating a stronger, healthier and more connected family. If you have found yourself and your family and anything that I've talked about today, then I want you to stay tuned to this podcast, because I've been working on something that I think is really going to help you. We're going to start working on breaking these patterns in your family and moving towards healthier patterns, and we do that from the inside out, working on helping you to be the one that calms the mobile that helps the change to ripple out into your family. If you are interested in that, I want you to stay tuned and keep listening to the podcast, and in the meantime, I want you to go sign up for a new free download. I have for you the five steps to reconnecting with your adult child, and that's a new guide that I have for you that I think is really going to be helpful if you're experiencing some disconnection in that parent, adult child relationship. There's a link in the show notes that you can click to download that free PDF. Thanks for being here with me today, and I will see you next time