Power of Family Stories

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The Power of Family Stories© Dick Rauscher - Issue #10

We are once again approaching the Holiday season; the time of year when sadness, unhappiness, and depression are at an annual high. Therapists and mental health experts tell us that unrealistically high expectations are a major cause of holiday depression; especially in the letdown days following the holidays.

There is certainly no shortage of newspaper articles or television specials this time of year focused on holiday depression, however, most of them fail to discuss two of the most important insights or factors that lead to holiday depression.

The first is the realization or self-knowledge that each of us has a six to seven year old "inner-child" living in our unconscious mind. Our inner-child contains all the memories, emotions, and learning's of childhood. Its most important function is to keep us safe. To accomplish this task, our inner child uses a primary survival skill from childhood called "splitting" to divide the world into black and white categories such as good or bad, and right or wrong.

Because of splitting, there is seldom an emotional middle ground for our inner-child. The holidays for our inner-child are experienced as either perfect and very exciting or awful and very disappointing.

The bright colored lights, the background sounds of holiday music that fill the stores, the inspirational stories and TV movie re-runs of forgiveness, love, reconciliation and healing are all used by our inner-child to magically turn the ordinariness of everyday life into a few days of perfection and wonderful excitement.

Unfortunately, neither magical thinking nor belief in the illusion called perfection are helpful. In the real world, the holiday season too often tends to bring emotional stress, anxiety, fatigue, financial stress, endless shopping trips, impatient crowds, routine upsetting houseguests, and the sadness of knowing there are friends and family that will not be with us.

These holiday stressors are significant emotional factors that tend to cause or encourage over eating, the consumption of too much alcohol, and exhaustion from trying too hard to make everything "wonderful". Instead of the perfection and magical wonder our inner-child was anticipating, the world is actually experienced as bad and awful. We find our selves feeling overwhelmed, disappointed, sad, and mildly depression.

Intense all-or-nothing inner-child feelings are normal, but they are rarely helpful. The insight and self-knowledge that our inner-child often controls our emotional state is very important; especially if we want to maintain realistic expectations around the holidays.

In other words, if we can remain consciously awake and aware that we have an idealistic inner-child as we approach the holidays, it will much easier to avoid the emotional rollercoaster that leads to feelings of disappointment and emotional letdown after the holidays.

The second insight that can be helpful in reducing or eliminating post-holiday "blues" is a conscious awareness of the regressive influence that the "stories from our past", that family members and friends seem to delight in telling about us, can have on the emotions of our inner-child.

Story telling is common when family and friends gather to celebrate holiday meals together and these stories from our past, and especially stories about our childhood, can be great fun to listen to, but they often stimulate the emotions our unconscious inner-child and regress us back to the powerless feelings of childhood.

These stories are rarely told to intentionally ridicule or harm us, but they can be emotionally painful for our inner-child. When the laughter fades away, the mood of our inner-child can quickly slide into sadness, shame, or depression.

It is important to remain conscious of the feelings and emotions that the stories generate inside us. For example, the stories might be funny, but do they tend to be shaming? Do they portray us as competent or incompetent? Who is the "hero" or "heroine" in the story? Is it you or is it someone else? Are the stories affirming your strengths or are they embarrassing incidents from the past?

Staying grounded in our present-day "adult-self" and paying conscious attention to the emotional "tone" of the stories being told about us can help us care for the vulnerable child within. We may need to intentionally remind ourselves that we have grown; that we are significantly wiser and more competent than we were when the "funny" event in the story took place.

Separating the intense feelings of a sad or unhappy inner-child from the adult emotions of the present moment will be very helpful in maintaining our happiness and our over-all sense of well-being as we move through the coming holiday gatherings.

(Readers can go to http://www.stonyhill.com for in-depth articles and past Newsletter discussions on the subject of our inner-child's primitive ego, happiness, and authentic spiritual growth.)

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

In my 25-year career as a pastoral psychotherapist, it was common for client's to wait years before beginning therapy to deal with traumatic childhood "wounds" and feelings. An anticipated family gathering or the emotional fallout immediately following contact with family members was often the event that precipitated them coming into therapy. This was especially true following family contact over the holidays.

In other words, they were regressed or "hooked" in the painful emotions of childhood that had been stimulated by their contact with family members.

Over time, through the healing of therapy, they would begin to see that the feelings they were experiencing, although real and very hurtful, belonged to an earlier time in their lives. This was a difficult concept for many clients to internalize, but eventually they began to see that it was it was the "child" psyche within that was re-experiencing the pain, not the adult sitting in my office.

As we explored together the source of their painful feelings it would often become clear that the feelings were connected with the roles that they had been encouraged to take on as children in their family of origin.

For example, they might have been blamed for all the pain in the family; responsible for all the negative feelings that others in the family were experiencing. This is a very common role in alcoholic families and in families where sexual abuse is occurring. After years of shame believing that there was something wrong with them, it was very insightful and liberating for them to discover that they had essentially been acting out a role in their family of origin.

Other clients came into therapy angry and exhausted from years of playing the role of "caretaker" in their family of origin. They were tired of being the person responsible to take care of everyone else even when they were struggling emotionally or physically themselves.

Some had experienced a lifetime role as the "sunshine" in their family of origin; the person who was always expected to be smiling and cheerful regardless of how they might have been feeling inside.

The relationship between a client's role in their family of origin and the regressed feelings they were experiencing after contact with family members were often directly connected. The stories told during family gatherings, especially during the holidays, were how the family "role" was emotionally reactivated.

Family stories have great power to re-wound our vulnerable inner-child so it is important to stay conscious and alert to the feelings that they stimulate. The stories do not create the painful emotions, they simply remind us of how it was emotionally in our childhood.

Blaming others for "our" feelings is like asking the neighbor across the street to take an aspirin because "we" have the headache. We have to learn to own our own feelings and then heal them from within. Projecting them onto others and blaming them for how "we" feel only makes us powerless.

The holidays are a good time to stay conscious and awake to the emotional work we may need to undertake. Therapy can be very helpful on our spiritual journey toward self-knowledge and self-awareness.

3) SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Pay attention to the stories that family members tell about your childhood.

They can be very helpful in developing a deeper self-awareness. They can give you important clues regarding the role you may have been encouraged to play in your family of origin.

What was your role? The caretaker who always had to focus on others? The "adult" child that had to be perfect? The always cheerful smiling child? The "baby" of the family who wasn't supposed to grow up? The "black sheep? All of these are common family roles.

Were you were the one blamed or "responsible" for everyone else's pain? This is a particularly common role in alcoholic families and in families where sexual abuse is occurring.

The "roles" we were invited to play in our family of origin, and the stories that family members tell about us when we were children are very useful when our goal is self-awareness.

The emotions and behaviors of childhood can then be understood as the "past", not the "present" moment. In other words, we can re-experience the feelings of childhood and learn from them without having to "become" those feelings.

We can move from having our inner-child controlling our adult life, to having our observing adult be in charge of our life. When this shift happens, we can begin effectively caring for, healing, and loving the child within.

Authentic spiritual growth is always growth in self-awareness.
StonyHill Institute

GOALS OF THE STONYHILL NEWSLETTER

We live in a world filled with conflict and violence. Almost everyone agrees that something has to change. There is an urgent need to develop a more compassionate global spirituality.

At Stonyhill, we believe it makes no sense to profess the values and morality of peace and compassion while continuing to manifest the primitive ego's paradigm of vertical power called survival of the fittest; a paradigm of power, control, and violence.

We must learn how the unconscious judgments of the primitive ego bring the seeds of conflict, and a sense of "otherness" into the world. If our personal goal is to do no harm to others or the world, then our thinking must consciously evolve and become more conscious or self-aware.

We will become what we think about and authentic spiritual growth is achieved only when we grow in self-awareness.

Traditional mainline religions are based on primitive pre-modern and violent tribal metaphors written during a time when our human consciousness was still very primitive. Until our mainline religions remove the violence contained in their scriptures and come to understand that most of the wisdom in their scriptures is metaphoric and should not be interpreted literally, they will be unable to offer the moral and ethical framework needed to create effective global solutions to the challenges facing us in the 21st century.

We will evolve as humans only as we become more self-aware and intentionally increase our ability to love unconditionally. A compassionate global spirituality is no longer just an interesting philosophic idea; the future of the human species may very well depend upon our ability to create it. The danger that we could destroy ourselves as a species has never been greater. The creation of a compassionate global community is the most important goal of human consciousness in the 21st century.

The Stonyhill Newsletter explores the insights and spiritual practices required to achieve the authentic spiritual growth that comes from deep self-awareness, understanding the primitive ego that resides in each of us, and the intentional evolution of our species consciousness.

The Stonyhill newsletter is written each month for counselors, therapists, clergy, and individuals interested in authentic spiritual growth, intentional growth in our human consciousness, and the formation of a compassionate, non-violent global community that openly embraces radical inclusiveness and diversity.

Namaste
Dick Rauscher

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

The Stonyhill Newsletter is written and published by Dick Rauscher, M.Div., Fellow AAPC. For past issues of the Stonyhill Newsletter and other in depth articles on authentic spiritual growth and the Primitive Ego Theory of Human Development written by Dick Rauscher go to www.stonyhill.com
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2007

There are many article on spiritual growth, the middlepath and the primitive ego on the Stonyhill web site at www.stonyhill.com. If you would like to read an in-depth article on The Primitive Ego Theory of Human Development and the relationship between authentic spiritual growth and the growth in self-awareness that comes as we better understand the primitive ego that dwells inside each of us, you can go to the Awakening article #26 on the web site or just click on this link: http://www.stonyhill.com/articles.htm - awakening

Visit the STONYHILL INSTITUTE website at http://www.stonyhill.com/articles.htm for additional articles on the integration of spirituality and psychotherapy.

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QUOTES

The secret of life is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you. Norman Vincent Peale

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