Have you ever felt that your family unit'due south dysfunction is so bad that no one else'southward tin compare? If so, you lot are not lone. Paradoxically enough, information technology'south very normal to believe that your specific family unit is the biggest mess. Subsequently all, this belief goes mitt-in-hand with the thought that you, yourself, are the most messed up … and that's the kind of farthermost thinking that characterizes habit.

Peradventure the most famous line ever written nigh family unit life is Leo Tolstoy'south, in the iconic opening to Anna Karenina: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

We all experience our particular family'southward unhappiness as unique. And while no two unhappy families are alike, such families exercise share certain characteristics in common. In fact, at that place's a whole arm of psychology called family systems theory that's devoted to this topic.

In this mail service, we'll talk virtually what family unit systems are, and why they thing in terms of addiction and recovery. We'll explore the link between certain types of family dysfunctions and addiction. Finally, we'll also cover a few family-based addiction prevention approaches, so that you every bit an private are empowered to create healthy family relationships and environments going forrad.

What is Family Systems Theory?

Family Systems Theory – conceived past psychiatrist Murray Bowen in the 1950's – is almost looking at the limiting beliefs and behavioral patterns that were handed down to you from your family of origin. It involves taking a close look at how your family operates, and how those dynamics impact your daily life.

Lest this audio grim or fatalistic, know that the goal of working with Family Systems is to assistance you identify your issues, then work to resolve and heal them. Ultimately, it's about condign your own person. You can love and honor your family while nonetheless charting your own course in life.

Learning near Family unit Systems also empowers you to encounter that your dysfunction doesn't start and terminate with yous. Instead, you come up to realize that nowadays-day dysfunction is one consequence of hereditary, multi-generational limiting patterns.

Permit's exist clear: this isn't nigh pointing fingers and assigning arraign on your ancestors. Rather, information technology's about realizing that you're merely one part of the big, interconnected web that is your family. Understanding this tin help to set y'all free from cocky-recrimination and regret.

Family Systems and Addiction

We now know that certain types of family dysfunction are linked with addiction. For example, as the authors of the New Zealand-based study Family functioning in families with booze and other drug habit observed:

"… the bulk of [addicted] participants had experienced painful and traumatic childhoods in their families of origin, which contributed to their subsequent addictive behavior and which they felt had affected their current familial relationships."

The report goes on to list several types of traumatic events that tin contribute to the evolution of addiction, including corruption, chore loss, divorce, chronic illness, and having a parent struggle with substance abuse themselves.

Child abuse in particular is highly correlated with addiction. Why? Because when you have a family unit of measurement in which physical, sexual, mental, and emotional abuse occurs, you'll also take family members trying to cope with the trauma.

As 1 National Institute on Drug Corruption (NIDA) report notes, "Every bit many equally two-thirds of all people in treatment for drug abuse study that they were physically, sexually, or emotionally abused during childhood, research shows."

Addiction is one dysfunctional response to unhealed trauma. Substance corruption is a way of numbing out against the mental and emotional pain of what yous experienced in your family system.

As author, speaker, sexual abuse survivor, and recovering overdrinker Laura Parrott Perry noted in a 2017 interview, The Story Yous're Not Telling, "If yous're unwilling to deal with that original wound, you will seek out voluntary pains left, right, and center."

Family Systems and Recovery

Healing Yourself

Understanding Family unit Systems Theory also empowers you to accept the next pace into addiction recovery. Once you grasp how your unhealthy family relationships have shaped your unhealthy, compulsive behaviors, the fashion forward becomes clear.

In order to heal your addiction, you demand to heal your relationships: with reality, with others, and with yourself. Every bit Murray Bowen himself said, "That which is created in a human relationship tin can be ?xed in a relationship."

So, healing from addiction is about getting continued with salubrious relationships and learning a healthier way of being. Where should y'all start? If you lot have a dual diagnosis – an addiction and a mental wellness issue such as depression or anxiety – a well-trained, compassionate therapist is a must.

Healing Your Family Dynamics

One fascinating aspect of Family Systems is that it emphasizes the interconnectedness of family member's emotional states. According to Family Systems, when i person shifts their emotional country and changes their level of emotional operation, anybody else in the family unit automatically makes a shift likewise.

This is exciting because it frees people to focus on their ain beliefs. In that location'southward no need to try to control others; rather, equally we become healthier and more centered within ourselves, we precipitate changes in our family system. This happens naturally, without force or coercion.

So, if you lot're the 1 dealing with addiction, know that facing down your fears and healing your hurts will do good the remainder of your family unit besides. Likewise, you take a spouse or sibling or parent who is resisting handling for their addiction, the changes you lot make in your own inner life may eventually help to set your loved one on a healthier path.

That said, a word of circumspection: sometimes relationships go worse earlier they get better. As you brainstorm to get healthier, the change y'all're making will disrupt the previous balance in your family system. There will be an adjustment period, as people get used to the new you. But if you hang in there, staying the course and resisting "alter back" attacks, you'll reap the benefits on the other side.

Family unit Systems and Addiction Prevention

Of form, the best way to stop habit in its tracks is to prevent it from happening in the first place … and that's where Family Systems meets Addiction Prevention.

If you want to prevent drug corruption in your family, where should yous beginning? Mind to these wise words from Dr. Gilberto Gerra, an addiction good who runs the Drug Prevention and Health Co-operative for the United nations Function of Drug and Law-breaking (UNODC). He'south ane of the world's foremost authorities on how to use Family Systems Theory to prevent the development of drug addiction.

In a 2017 interview on Family-Based Prevention, Dr. Gerra outlined three unproblematic approaches parents can take to foreclose the development of drug addiction in their children:

  • Sharing your undivided attending (merely start small): "Spend an afternoon together … Joking with the parents, joking with the kid. I always say to parents, don't spend 2 hours with them in the beginning. They never encounter yous and they're going to be sick of you! I advise [starting] with something smaller, then scale upwardly. Play Lego or to play something together or to set a homework for tomorrow."
  • Model support and relational appointment (particularly when a child fails): "[If a kid says], "I'thousand afraid of the test in school. What can I exercise?" Instead of blaming, you can say, "We can work together and so next time y'all tin can practice better …. You are not to consider this existence defeated. You are non diminished considering you failed a examination. You can practice better next time."
  • Provide real supervision, and don't surrender when it gets tough: "Supervision means, Where are you going? To do what? What time will y'all come up back? With whom will you go? When the kid is saying to you, "Become to hell, Daddy. I practice not want to reveal to you where I go with whom to do what with at what time" … they say this with the cortex, with the conscious brain. Only their amygdala, the storer of emotion and hippocampus and the unconscious brain, is saying, You know why my father and my mother are bothering me so much? Considering for them I am of value. They are very interested in me and taking care of me.

Conclusion

Hither's the almost important point to retrieve about family unit systems: no matter what family system shaped your life in the past, you lot have the power to choose your present and future.

Exploring and understanding family systems is not almost going into victim way. Rather, it's about taking a clear-eyed look at what relationships influenced you lot, and discovering how yous can use that influence for good in your life today.

Information technology's not always like shooting fish in a barrel. In fact, it's probably going to exist a challenge of the highest society. To put it in the wise words of Glennon Doyle, recovering alcoholic, drug user, and bulimic, "Family is the final frontier."

Information technology'southward worth it, though. Yous can practise the work of building salubrious relationships inside your own family unit…and when you do, future generations will thanks.

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