Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

I'm responsible. I'm the strong one in this marriage. Without me
everything would have fallen apart long ago!"
Figure 7.1. 
Bill's Family

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Page 68
Fortunately for Anita and Bill, the treatment program Bill entered
was aware of family dynamics and co-dependency, and they knew
that it takes two to tango. Anita began to discover things about
herself and her family that she had never examined before, and she
found it to be just as painful and scary as Bill's discoveries about
himself.
She knew all along that her mother had a tendency to rely on
alcohol under stress, but she had never let it cross her mind that
maybe her mother was alcoholic. Her mother had never passed out,
had never gotten "sloppy drunk" in front of her, and had never
seemed to have a problem.
And Anita had always seen her father as the ultimate "Dad". He
was hardworking, responsible, cooked dinner when Anita's mom
wasn't feeling well, played with the children on weekends, went to
school plays and concerts, and was always easygoing and pleasant.
What Anita didn't know was that Dad was very tired inside, and
mildly depressed much of the time, really not the happy-go-lucky
guy that he tried to be on the outside.
And it never bothered her that no one seemed to know anything
about her grandparents on either side of her parents' marriage. All
anyone seemed to know was that they were European, and that
both of Anita's parents had come to America in their early teens,
accompanied by aunts and uncles, or something.
As the oldest child in her family, Anita identified very strongly
with her father and took on the role of the "good girl". When Mom
was tired or "ill", Anita would help Dad do the cleaning and
cooking. She would babysit the other children gladly, even when

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she was a teenager and could have been out with her friends,
learning how to date and socialize. It didn't bother her when Mom
was cranky and irritable, because like Dad, "she understood.'' Mom
wasn't feeling well.
So from a very early age, Anita became a little parent, giving up
her own childhood to take care of domestic chores, do well in
school and stand beside Dad as one of the "adults" in the family.
This became her set-up and her steel trap. With the trap securely set
over years and years of growing up in her family, Anita was ready
to go out into the world and get into her own dysfunctional
relationship.

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Page 69
Figure 7.2. 
Bill and Anita

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Page 70
In Figure 7.2, we have reproduced Anita's family diagram that
grew out of months of her own self-exploration, anguish and pain.
We have set her family next to Bill's so that the entire system can
be viewed at one time. You may want to study this system for
awhile. It is a very common one.
What Bill and Anita discovered in their long journey together
makes so much sense to them now, after many years of struggle,
that it is hard for them to remember that nothing made sense to
them before. The patterns, the early messages, the subtle
conditioning, the unintentional pain that they grew to know, all fit
into a coherent scheme now. They have moved beyond denial,
through anger and blame, and on into peaceful acceptance of what
was. They are living now, not in desperation and in the emptiness
of not knowing what or why, but in the confidence and serenity of
coming to terms with what was, and in the freedom that comes
with putting what was to rest. And if this sounds too good to be
true, believe us, it isn't.
What is difficult to convey is the process that people like Anita and
Bill go through to reach this point of wholeness. The patterns that
they unraveled and put back together were patterns of emotional
denial going back many generations. They were patterns of fear of
closeness with people, of fear of being vulnerable, of addictive
patterns large and small, of individual selves trying to survive, of
little children trying to fit into families and a larger world outside
that weren't always functional.

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Page 71
8 
When Families Get Off Course
What are some of the things that can go wrong as we grow up?
What are some of the dysfunctional patterns that happen in families
and make us vulnerable to addictive patterns of living? Just as a
flower needs sunlight, water and soil to grow up healthy and
bloom, children need certain things from their families to emerge
as adults who have a healthy sense of interdependence. We know
of no families that provide all of these things perfectly, but we
know of many families in which enough of these things were not
provided so that the children growing up in these families entered
adulthood with serious dependencies.
In a healthy family, children's needs for security, warmth,
nurturance and guidance are met most of the time. These children
enter adulthood with a sense of security and trust that is inside of