These areas usually merit unique informed help for co-parents and their kids:
-
False-self
and
(co-parent
-
Adjusting to divorce-related losses and
family changes;
-
Healthy
and thawing frozen
mourning
-
Family support when a member is
addicted; and...
-
Resolving significant
barriers to co-parenting
teamwork
and
1) Supports for
Inner-wound Assessment and Recovery
In
my personal and clinical experience over
29 years, co-parents only become really
interested in inner-wound assessment and
recovery
if they're weary, scared, and/or hurting "too much"
– i.e. if they have "hit the wall, "or "hit (true)
This
often doesn’t happen until the person's middle age, following at least one
psychological or legal divorce.
Key support considerations:
You can’t make a
co-parent want to do Project 1, no matter how strong the evidence that
they’re significantly ruled by a
. Typical unrecovering
co-parents are unconsciously
and
and will reflexively deny that (reality
So any well-meant suggestion that they ought to
assess themselves for "problems" or "wounds" will probably feel like
an attack or a put-down. Rather than listening, their instinctive (protective)
response will be some mix of defending, arguing, explaining, resenting, justifying,
withdrawing, numbing, and/or counterattacking.
A
viable way to support such a scared, shamed (vs. mule-headed, stubborn,
proud,
self-centered, or wimpy) co-parenting partner is to (a) compassionately avoid
their denials
and distortions; and to (b) do your own version of the wound-assessment project.
The former
guarantees a series of difficult
-assertions. Keep your mate
(and others) objectively informed of what your recovery goals and experiences are like,
and stay ready to support them if and when they become motivated to join you in the
project. If you have the common condition of
you’ll find this
very hard to do!
|
Note:
if one of two wounded partners commits to true (vs. pseudo) recovery and their mate stays "stuck"
in denying their wounds, partnership tension and dissonance usually
grow
over time. Recovering partners see with growing clarity the limitations that their
mate’s inner wounds place on their family relationships, which can cause
increasing anxiety ("worry"), frustration, and dissatisfaction. |
The recovering
partner must eventually answer "Which ranks higher with me: improving my long-term
personal
or keeping short-term re/marital and household
"peace" among us (and giving up some integrity)?" As with all
you can run from this query but you can’t
hide (avoid choosing). Choosing to not choose is a choice.
A second Project-1 support tip:
as you do your versions of this keystone project,
tell your parents and siblings early
on that you are not out to blame them or the people who raised them.
True
assessment is scary, because it eventually reveals agonizing,
unintended childhood
and
and dissolves protective
about "childhood
happiness," and biofamily "normalcy."
Getting Project-1 cooperation and
encouragement from blood-family members is more likely if your caregivers and their
supporters trust that you’re not trying to demean or ridicule their or
your ancestors' parenting
efforts. If your family members are significantly
they'll be ambivalent, distrustful,
or "indifferent" no matter what you say.
Consider that everyone has done the very best wholistic nurturing they could
(including you), with the information, abilities, and
limitations they had. A sign of true recovery is
compassion for those who
weren’t able to provide what you needed, not blame.
This does not
mean that you won’t feel intense emotions of rage, sorrow, and despair about early nurturance deprivations and their toxic
. These are normal grief
reactions. They merit honor, acceptance, and safe expression, until they’re gradually
replaced by unambivalent, compassionate forgiveness, true grief, and eventual acceptance.
Once
you’ve assessed yourselves for false-self wounds, you’ll almost certainly
need four or five kinds of external supports to help you form and work on your Project-1
recovery plan, along the way. These include...
-
One or more professional coaches or
therapists who specialize in helping heal from childhood trauma like significant
emotional neglect;
-
A well-led, ongoing group focused on
facilitating recovery, and/or at least several trusted peers (including siblings)
who are working on real (vs. pseudo) recovery;
-
Possibly a time-limited clinical inpatient
program (e.g. for chemical and/or relationship
-management);
and...
-
A variety of well-grounded educational
materials.
Reread Project 1,
and refer to the selected readings for some educational
supports.
2) Divorce-recovery
supports
Typically, one or both American mates have
psychologically ("broken up") and/or legally at least once before. For
adults who could genuinely
to their partners and their role as mate - specially if children were
conceived - the multi-year divorce process causes major
(broken bonds) and significant personal, family, and lifestyle changes.
Like
any trauma, people (a) accepting (vs. denying) the personal and family
impacts of these stressors and (b) patiently stabilizing from them usually
benefit from high-nurturance family, social, and spiritual supports along
the way.
Recall that support means helping adults and kids fill learn how
to fill current primary needs. So the question here is "What do typical
divorcing women and men and their families need to effectively adjust
to and stabilize from their multi-year divorce process?" Tho every person
and family is unique, some divorce-adjustment needs are universal:
-
Divorce strongly suggests that one or both mates have been (and are)
dominated by a
If any divorcing-family members are significantly
and committed to
they need several kinds of family and social supports concurrent with
divorce-recovery help.
See
this for
perspective. A related possibility is that family members need
addiction-recovery support while they adjust to divorce. See this.
-
all affected adults and kids need to (a)
identify and accept their divorce-related
abstract and
tangible losses, and to (b) help
each other grieve them well, over time. Ideally, the family will have
evolved a healthy
to guide this. In my experience this is the exception, not the
norm, and typical adults need help forging and living by an effective
(consensual) good-grief policy.
-
mate separation and divorce cause a unique
mosaic of family-system changes and losses. These include shifts in
emotional and financial security; personal and family identity; and family
structure, roles, rules, boundaries, priorities, goals, and rituals.
So
effective divorce support includes knowledgeable, compassionate help in
grieving these losses and adjusting to these changes. See the ideas about
effective grief supports below.
-
typical minor kids of divorcing co-parents have a
special set of related losses and adjustment needs to fill. They usually need
informed, empathic adult support to satisfy these special needs and their
normal developmental needs. The needs may coincide with other adjustment needs
if either divorcing parent is dating seriously or has committed to form or join
a multi-home stepfamily.
-
typical parents and strongly-bonded
siblings of divorcing mates have their own losses and adjustment
needs that may merit caring support - specially if they survived
low-nurturance childhoods.
-
all divorcing families need to plan and
implement various concurrent and interrelated changes to their homes,
assets, and lifestyles, over weeks and months - sometime with little
warning. So a valuable kinds of support are helping adults and kids
to...
-
plan their changes, where
practical, and evolve practical strategies for...
-
managing family changes effectively, and...
-
solving significant problems cooperatively -
i.e. helping family members learn and apply the seven
effective-communication skills.
-
A final need most divorcing families
have is to network with supportive people and programs locally and online.
3) Grieving Supports
also usually benefits from special supports. It’s
very likely that several of your adults and kids will need help (e.g. credible
inner and outer
in grieving their
prior and new losses well, as you build your stepfamily. A reality here is that
people
in their grief process are probably burdened with significant false-self
wounds:
-
reality distortion
("No, I’m not sad or angry about ________.");
-
excessive fear
("If I cry, I’m afraid I’ll never stop!"); and...
-
excessive shame and/or guilt ("My Dad told me not to
blubber like a pansy;" or "If I show my feelings, my Mother will
collapse!").
The ultimate early wound from early-childhood
is being unable to form
emotional attachments
– so the child or adult has
nothing to grieve. Do you know how to assess for that wound?
So
don’t encourage or expect a blocked-griever to resume mourning until you and they have honestly
assessed for underlying wounds, and progressed on healing any you find. Human nature, not
will,
sets the priorities here.
As
with inner-wound assessment and recovery, identifying and
thawing frozen grief in your stepfamily members often benefits from special
supports. These can include …
My
hunch is that co-parents who take their stepfamily-building seriously will
want to draft
and use a
that includes a clear description of their
on
supporting members’ needs to effectively mourn their many sets of physical and
invisible losses, along the way.
4) Support for
Addicted Families
Mental-health professionals increasingly view addiction as a toxic family
condition and a symptom of family dysfunction, not a personal "disease."
Typical low-nurturance families of all types have one or more adults and
kids who use addictions as an effective way to self-medicate from
intolerable daily
There are now many effective
community and online supports for addicted families.
Before family adults can seek and accept such support, they must break
protective (false self) denials and admit a family member is addicted and
needs informed help. When that happens, (a) the addicted person has hit true
bottom (usually in middle age), and wants to accept help to manage
their pain, or (b) they need to deny their toxic compulsion and it's family
and social effects, and will not seek or use recovery support.
In both cases, the best initial support family adults can acquire is
accurate information about the nature, causes and management of any of the
four kinds of addictions (substances, activities, relationships, and
mind-body "states.") This educational site provides a
series of informative articles on these
topics. There are now many sources of reliable information
about addictions and addiction management (vs. "cure") on the Web. Use your
favorite search engine to see a selection.
The second best support is for family adults to agree that they all
are responsible for the addict's behaviors, not just the addict. Resistance
to this idea is strong evidence of denied false-self control and wounds.
Then adults can choose among
these options,
starting with honest
for inherited false-self wounds. Then assess for a toxic family
because some of the pain most addicts seek to medicate is often from
The next support is to use professional addictions counseling to decide if,
how, and when to
confront
the addicted family member/s. Finally, addicted-family adults can select lay
and professional help - e.g. participate in an appropriate local
12-step support group like Families
Anonymous, Al Anon, or similar.
Recap - personal
addictions and co-addictions are
a symptom of inner pain caused by significant family dysfunction and
possible genetic predispositions. All addictions reliably reduce current
inner pain - and amplify it. This pain often comes from...
-
unacknowledged
false-self
-
incomplete or blocked
grief and a toxic family grieving
policy, and...
-
family-adults' lack of
knowledge and inability to
Anything that helps family adults recognize, admit, and reduce each of these
factors qualifies as a "useful addictions support."
A final common family dynamic meriting special support follows the legal or
psychological divorce and re-commitment one or more co-parents. Two aspects
of this are (a) divorce recovery and (b)
difficulty maintaining co-parenting partnerships to nurture minor kids
effectively. Let's look at the latter:
5) Supports For
Healing Ex-mates'
Divorce-related Wounds
Roughly 90% of American stepfamilies follow the
of one or both re/wedded partners.
Because a high percentage of divorcing mates and people attracted
to them seem to be psychologically
one or both often carry major unresolved
psychological tensions
about their marriage and divorce for years. This stresses them as persons,
re/married mates, and co-parents.
Several factors can contribute to this: combined false-self wounds, undeveloped self-
and few wholistically-healthy,
stepfamily-aware social supports. The
guidebook
Build a
Co-parenting Team after Divorce or Remarriage explores options for
improving relations between co-parenting ex mates. Here are
several summary recommendations:
Co-parents encourage each other to form cautious trust
that patiently working at all
may
help resolving divorce-related
stressors over time;
Work together for an attitude of
genuine (vs. ambivalent
or forced) compassion toward a
hostile or withdrawn ex-mate.
See
them as a suffering major false-self wounds they must deny and cannot heal (yet), vs. escalating an
endless feud by blaming them.
This does not mean you have to agree with
them or ignore or condone hurtful things they've done.
If wounded ex mates (and their
relatives and your kids) sense that you’re trying genuinely to empathize
with (vs. pity) them, they may start to
build trust, open up, and co-operate more.
Invite your kids’ non-biased biorelatives (if any) to
empathically appeal to the kids’ other parent to stop blaming and/or hiding and explore
healing their psychological wounds - including
. If you feel such
relatives are often controlled by a
I recommend not trying this.
Ex mates take
self-responsibility for
seeking qualified professional
support to heal your own
hurts, and resentments related to your
biofamily breakup. Stepparents support your mates as they take this courageous,
long-range healing step.
Let the other divorced mate and key others know
informationally
vs. righteously, that you’re doing this to help the kids and the stepfamily. When it
feels right, consider forgiving yourself
and making genuine, specific amends to
your ex mate in person or in writing.
The Web address of this
3-page article is
http://sfhelp.org/11/support.htm
4) 