Why Family Drama Keeps Repeating - and How to Break the Cycle

Episode 168: Why Family Drama Keeps Repeating – and How to Break the Cycle

Are you stuck in the same frustrating arguments with your adult child or other family members? In this episode, we uncover how automatic family patterns keep you trapped in unhealthy dynamics and show you how to break free. Learn how subconscious programming influences your reactions, why awareness is the first step toward change, and four powerful strategies to transform your relationships.

You’ll discover:

• Why family conflict patterns repeat across generations.
• How to wake up to automatic reactions and choose healthier responses.
• The key to managing emotions and staying grounded during difficult moments.
• Why developing your sense of self improves relationships with your adult child.

Ready to stop reacting out of fear and start responding with intention? Tune in to learn how small shifts can create lasting change.



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. 

Click Here to Download the Guide

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 coaching your family relationships Podcast. I'm Tina Gosney, your family conflict coach, and I am so glad that you're here today. If you're feeling stuck in frustrating family relationship patterns, then today's episode is made just for you. Last week, the episode that I released last week talked about how families handle stress. That was episode 167 - "The Most Common Ways Families Handle Stress." Often those responses are automatic. They're very deeply ingrained, and they're unhealthy, they keep us stuck in frustrating dynamics, and those patterns might feel normal, they might feel comfortable, even if they're unhealthy, because we've seen them play out for years and we've done them over and over again. Anything that we do over and over again feels comfortable, even if we don't like it. But when we do these things, they don't service, we play out those unhealthy patterns they do not service. So if you missed that episode, I'm going to encourage you to go back and listen, because it sets the stage for what we're tackling today. Is how to wake up to those patterns and break them. Everybody wants to know. Well, okay, now that I see them, how can I do something different? How do I stop doing that before we get into those patterns? I want to really give a shout out to those who have recently left reviews on Apple podcasts. I have been asking just the last couple weeks for reviews, and you guys have stepped up. Thank you so much. I read all of the reviews, and I really appreciate that time that you are going and taking to go to the main page of this podcast and to leave a review that is so kind of you to take that time out of your day, and it really helps to boost this podcast in the ratings, so that other people can find the podcast. So there's one recent review that I would like to highlight, and this is by Susie. She said,"I'm loving this podcast. I'm also a coach and a podcaster, so I love to hear what others are doing in this space. I keep coming back because Tina shares such life lessons and actionable tips that help me in my marriage and with my adult children too. Thank you so much." Well, thank you, Susie for the review. I really appreciate that. Now. I love to get feedback about the podcast, even if you don't leave a review, I will often have people email me through the website, through the Contact page of my website, and they let me know how my podcasts are helping them to change the way that they are showing up in their family, and it's having a positive impact that makes all the effort to record and edit and release this podcast worth it. If it's having a positive impact in your life and in your family, and if you feel so inclined, I would love to have you go leave a review, and maybe it will even share your review on the podcast next time. I also want to remind you about the free download that I have for you. This is to help you heal the relationship with your adult child. More adult children than ever are cutting ties with their parents, putting in boundaries, cutting ties being just kind of ghosting, and the parents are left stunned, confused, sad, grieving. You know, if this is you and you're not sure where to go from here, I want you to go download this guide, because it's going to give you a good place to start. It helps you to walk through some things that you might not have thought of before as you approach your adult your adult child from a different frame of mind. The link is in the show notes, and this guide is going to be an eye opener for you. So please, if this is your situation, go download that guide. Now onto today's content is how to wake up and break unhealthy relationship patterns. Have you ever felt like you know you're living the same family arguments on repeat, or the same things keep popping up, different details, same situation, if that's you, then this episode is really going to help you to understand why that's happening and how to start making some meaningful changes in your family. Here is the challenge. We are not always aware of the patterns that we are stuck in. In In fact, we are very rarely aware of the patterns that we're stuck in, because these patterns are like dances that we've been doing for so many years that we know them by heart. One person does one thing, the the other person does another thing, right? We know what each person is going to do, and how we react to those dance steps. These steps feel automatic. We don't even think about them anymore. It just becomes the way things are. But I wish you think about this. If we don't wake up to what we're doing, those patterns will stay automatic, on autopilot, and when we are on autopilot, we are reacting out of fear, and we are not responding from love. Anytime we react from fear. We are operating from the from the more primitive parts of our brain. And this is not the brain that is relational, that part of the brain, the primitive part of the brain, is fantastic at keeping us alive in emergencies. It's terrible at maintaining healthy relationships. Let me give you an example. Do you remember when you learned how to drive? At first, you had to think about everything. Do you remember how overwhelming that was? You had to think about which pedal is the gas, which pedal is the brake, how much pressure do I use? When do I start pushing on the brake? What's the how do I adjust the mirrors? How and when do I turn on my turn signal? And you had to understand the rules of the road, and you had to maneuver and try to drive that car with other drivers on the road. It can feel overwhelming. Do you remember that feeling? You probably even had a parent, a very nervous parent, or a teacher yelling at you from the passenger seat, which I'm positive did not help you at all in that stress and overwhelm. But what is driving like for you now? You are exhausted trying to manage everyone else's life. There are problems, there are emotions, there are decisions. You're the one that manages all of it. Or you're saying yes when you should be saying no, and you know that you're a people pleaser and you don't know how to stop, Or you're finding yourself in really frequent arguments, saying things that you let her later regret. But this is just the way that you do. Things You guys never go back and apologize, but you argue frequently. Or maybe you've cut off contact with a family member because you didn't see any other weight, it was the only way that you could protect yourself and your peace and your sanity is for you to cut off contact. But how do you break free from automatic patterns when it feels like it is so automatic that it's in your biology. It's in your DNA. It's just split second from something happens and you react to it. I want you to imagine that you're driving to the store. You are lost in thought. You're thinking about what you need to buy at the store, making sure that you get it onto your list, and then suddenly, a child runs out in front of you into the street. What do you do? In an instant you snap out of autopilot, and you react. That kind of awareness that jolted awake awareness is what we need in our relationships. But you know, unlike driving, there's probably no one that's going to run out in front of you and force you to pay attention to what you're doing. It's something that you need to cultivate intentionally. So we're going to talk about four key areas to focus on as you wake up to these patterns. The first one is, I want you to really think about developing a strong sense of self. This is what we do. This is what we usually repeat, because it's been modeled for us, and we're just copying what we've seen. We are in codependent relationships. We are enmeshed with our families. We try to get our value from others. We don't see our own worth, and we try to get it by what other people think of us, how they treat us, whether they approve of our choices. We are trying to extract that value from other people. And I can't even tell you how much codependency, enmeshment shows up in our families, because it's just like the air that we breathe. We don't even see what we're doing. It's just everywhere. So we need to develop a strong sense of self and stop trying to validate ourselves by extracting it from the other people around us. Here's number two, managing your own emotional responses. I want you to learn how to manage your emotions. Emotions are not bad, no matter what you've been taught, no matter what you've believed in the past, they are not bad. They are signals. They are flags waving in the wilderness. Something needs your attention, but if you are constantly riding an emotional roller coaster, it's really, really, really hard to make thoughtful, grounded choices, because those emotions are in charge, and they are taking you for a ride. And if you have tried to control your emotions in the past and you have not been able to do it, you are not alone. Because the key is we're not trying to control them. We're trying to be aware of them. We want to accept them. We want to allow ourselves to feel emotions without judging what we're feeling. And when we do that, when we allow ourselves to move through the emotion instead of shame it, or push it away, or judge it, we are actually able to get off that emotional roller coaster. We actually learn how to respond instead of react. And this is definitely, definitely a skill that takes practice, but it is an incredibly powerful skill. The fourth thing that I want you to pay attention to and to break that cycle, is to commit to the long term. This is not a sprint. It's not a quick fix. This is uncomfortable. Your brain will resist the change. But I want you to remember, especially if you don't remember anything else from this podcast, that discomfort that you feel when you are trying to break a pattern is a sign of growth. It is a sign that you are on the right track. And you remember that you are not trying to change your whole family. You are working on yourself. You are not trying to get other people to change their patterns. You are changing yours, because when you change your steps in the dance, it ripples out and it changes the patterns it has to something has changed. We need to find a new equilibrium, and it will ripple out. The effects of you doing this over time will shift your relationships in profound ways. So just to recap, today, we talked about how family relationships patterns can keep us stuck. How do we wake up to those patterns? And four areas for you to start making those changes. If this episode has resonated with you, I would love to hear about it. Go leave a review on Apple podcasts or on Spotify, or reach out to me on social media or and send me a message there, a private message there, or just get on my website and click that contact email, and you can email me directly, and if you know someone who needs to hear this, I want you to share this episode with them. And don't forget to download that free guide to help you reconnect and heal that relationship with your adult child. You do not have to stay prisoner to the way things are right now. You can affect change. Thank you so much for listening to the coaching your family relationships podcast. Until next time, I want you to take care and remember that change starts with awareness, and it is in your power to become aware you.