Conference hydra::dejavu

    In addition to Adult Children Of Alcoholics, which is fairly well
    publicized, there are also several other types which are mentioned 
    in John Bradshaw's book entitled "Bradshaw On: The Family". 
    
    They are:
    
    	- Adult Child Of Alcoholics (ACoA)
    	- Adult Child of A Physically or Sexually Abusing Family
    	- Adult Child of An Emotionally Abusing Family
    	- Adult Child Of Any Dysfunctional Family (Co-dependence)
                                     
    It's interesting that Bradshaw prefaces each of the chapters with
    the following words "Checklist for How You Lost Your SELF And Became
    An Adult Child Of ........"
    
    Cindy

    {From: Bradshaw On: The Family, p.3-4}
    
    On Shame and Guilt

Shame is a being wound and differs greatly from the feeling of guilt.
Guilt says I've done something wrong; shame says there is something 
wrong with me.  Guilt says I've 'made' a mistake, shame says I 'am' a 
mistake.  Guilt says what I 'did' was not good; shame says I 'am' no 
good. The difference makes a profound difference.

Our parenting rules have not been seriously updated in 150 years.  The 
high divorce rate, teenage disorders, massive drug abuse, epidemic 
incest, eating disorders and physical battering are evidence that 
something is radically wrong.  My belief is that the old rules no 
longer work.  Our consciousness has changed as has our view of the 
world.

Shame Through Abandonment

Our parenting rules primarily shame children through abandonment.  
Parents abandon children in the following ways:

1. By actually leaving them.
2. By not modeling their own emotions for their children.
3. By not being there to affirm their children's expression of 
   emotion.
4. By not providing for their children's developmental dependency 
   needs.
5. By physically, sexually, emotionally and spiritually abusing them.
6. By using children to take care of their own unmet dependency needs.
7. By using children to take care of their marriages.
8. By hiding and denying their shame secrets to the outside world so
   that the children have to protect these covert issues in order to
   keep the family in balance.
9. By not giving their time, attention and direction.
10. By acting shameless.

Children's needs are insatiable in the sense that their need their 
parents continuously throughout childhood.  No five-year-old ever 
packed his bags and called a family meeting to thank his parents for 
their support and guidance as he leaves to make his way into the 
world.  It takes 15 years before nature will awaken these urges 
toleave home and parents. Children need their parents to be there for 
them.  

In abandonment the order of nature is reversed.  Children have to take 
care of their parents.  There is no one to take care of them.  The 
preciousness and uniqueness which every human child possesses is 
destroyed through abandonment.  This child is alone and alienated.  
Abandonment creates a shame-based inner core.

Emergence Of The False Self

Since one's inner self is flawed by shame, the experience of self is 
painful.  To compensate, one develops a false self in order to 
survive.

The false self forms a defensive mask which distracts from the pain 
and the loneliness of the true self.  After years of acting, 
performing, and pretending - onne loses contact with who one really 
is.  One's true self is numbed out.

This crisis is far worse than anyone knows because the adults who 
parent their children were also abandoned and are separated from their 
own true inner selves.  The adults who parent are covering up their 
own shame-based inner selves.  so the crisis is not just about how we 
raise our children; it's about a hundred million people who look like 
adults, talk and dress like adults, but are actually adult children.  
These adult children run our schools, our churches and our government. 
They also create our families.  This book is about the crisis in the 
family today - the crisis of adult children raising adult children who 
will become adult children.
                                          

    	I can assure you that I had no intention whatsoever to rub
    	anybody's nose in anything and I'll not apologize for
    	trying to inject a bit of light and love into a subject
    	which could easily turn negative.
    
    						Carla
    

    
    
    Ah, yes, try like crazy not to repeat the process with our
    own children!  THAT is the most significant impact of my
    childhood!  I remember, most of all, the times my mother
    lost her temper with me and resolved 'disciplinary problems'
    with a belt or a slap across the mouth.   While I don't con-
    sider myself an abused child, my style of parenting is com-
    pletely different.  My son is NEVER, and will NEVER be, spanked
    or physically punished.  I guess in some perverted way, my mom
    made ME a better mother!
    
                      Deborah
    

    	I'm not in the mood to be criticized or called naive (which
    	I'm most definitely not) for putting something positive in 
    	here so have deleted .3.
    
    						Carla
    

    Not being a psychiatrist, psychologist, or having read any of the
    books, I am going to offer advice.  (this is a caveat {;-)  Here
    goes:
    
    	1)  Realize it was not *your* fault
    
    	2)  Write off _as_much_or_all_ of the past (as is necessary)
    	    as a bad experience.  Keep the good, trash the bad.
    
    	3)  Become the *best* person you can be (Sorry, you have to 
    	    define "the best person", I can't do it for you!)
    
    	4)  Design and build a better future.  Live for it and in it.
    
    This sounds great doesn't it?  And so easy! {;-)  Just take a small
    step each day and make sure it is in the right direction.  You will
    get there and be glad you made the effort!
    
    Stan

    I'm not sure how appropriate this topic is to Dejavu - there is
    a notes file for ACOA/ACDF.  However, many ACDFs have developed
    mind-reading skills as a way of surviving.
    
    I didn't get to read .3, but presume it was about someone's happy
    childhood.  It's kind of part of the syndrome to hate "Leave it
    to Beaver" (and other people in happy families), and at the same
    time wish you were one of the Cleavers.
    
    Elizabeth

    
    Please, let's try to get back together here.  I know all too well
    that it's an emotional subject, since it hits home with me also.
                          
    My intent was to make more people aware of this in hopes that there
    might be someone out there in DEJAVU-land might be helped either
    directly or indirectly by the entries.    
    
    Carla - I'm glad you grew up in a positive environment.  It's stories
    like yours that have helped me to see that there can be a better
    way, and for that I thank you.  I think that perhaps for now it
    might be best to listen to the side of the AC's to get a better
    perspective of where they're (we're) coming from for the moment.  
    It's so hard to talk about this kind of thing, and please also 
    understand that any envy or bitterness is not aimed at you directly
    It may seem so, but it's not really.  If you can bear with us for
    a few more notes, the real sources may become more clear to you.
    And then when we work through the initial ice-breakers and begin
    to get more into the topic, it would be nice to hear from you.
    
    Cindy

    
    	Define "Adult children of ...". Well, you're an adult now, but
    when you were a child you were of a ..., right?
    
    	I see two lovers expressing affection and wish I was in love.
    But, aww gee, I cant have that for myself right now, so I get all
    offended and pissed off about it, right?
    
    	I see two young siblings playing together intimately, crawling
    all over each other as they do and being very close. But, aww gee, I
    was an only child and will *never* experience that kind of closeness,
    (the opportunity being long gone) so I get all offended and pissed off 
    about it, right?
    
    	You hurt yourself (and others)
    		Just as much
    			When you take offense
    				As when you give offense.
    
    	You have hurt a friend of mine, through your choice to take
    offense to an entry of her's that had no offensive intent. I am
    angry with you about that, and wish that you'd keep the results
    of your personal choices to yourself. I personally believe very
    strongly in the above 4 lines, and will repeat this message to
    the noting community at every instance I encounter. This is nothing
    personal, but rather a world wide misconception.
    
    	Joe Jas

< Note 688.2 by SCOPE::PAINTER >

    {From: Bradshaw On: The Family, p.3-4}
    
    On Shame and Guilt


I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A COPY OF THIS SENT TO MY MAIL NODE SO I CAN
PRINT IT OUT - I REALLY COULD USE THIS TO EXPLAIN SOME THINGS.

CAN YOU KINDLY FORWARD THIS TO MY MAIL NODE - MRMFG1::K_POTTRATZ

THANK YOU.

    re: .15 (Fran)
    
    >>	No one here is pissed off or offended.
    
    	Oh yeah?
    
    	C.

Okay, this is going to be a tough file to keep sane.  There is alot
of us out here that are adult children of some sort family neglect,
abandonment, abuse, whatever.  I am one of these adult children -
and hopefully I believe after much hard work am becoming myself. It is
awfully scary.  You just constantly feel you are going to be pounced
upon - and always guilty, angry, fearful to do what you really believe
is right because you have to protect your parents - then you go thru
rationalizing what they did - and somehow convincing yourself you must
have been bad in order to deserve that behavior.  And don't let anyone tell
you to forget the past, you are not going to - you childhood years are
the most impressionable years of your life.  They make you form belief,
morals, ideas.  And for alot of us we were robbed of normal happy "leave
it to Beaver" type childhoods.  I am also sure if you are like me you've
fantazised (i can't even spell) about growing up in one of those happy
families and bawl your eyes out wondering why me - what did I do to 
deserve this.  I have had one thing after another happen to me since
birth.  I am not sure that I can share everything with you right now
but trust me I know how a lot of you feel.  In order to "find yourself"
you really need to "want to". Keep reminding yourself that no one is
going to hurt you anymore - that what you've gone thru can only make
you stronger - more wise and understanding - you can help so many other
people by what you know.  SURVIVAL IS THE KEY during your childhood 
years - now healing is key.  Talking to a psych or someother trained
professional or a group (which I think would be great also - people
you can relate to) But you need to talk with someone that will be able
to show you that you are not a bad person - what ever you did in child
hood you did not deserve the treatment you got.  

I am really yakking too much here - I don't know it I am even making 
sense.  Am I in the ballpark for this note subject?

kim

I think what Cindy is saying is that our present is a result of our
past.  Our present attitudes reflect the evironment in which we
have lived, and are made up of others' attitudes which we have
internalized.    Attitudes such as "man is warlike,"  or  "you
can't change things"  may in fact be (and probably are) just 
reflections of the attitudes of our parents, neighbors, and
other influences of our childhood.  

If we can look back and see how some of these attitudes may
have developed, we may be able to change them to attitudes that 
are much more positive for our own lives and for the universe
around us.

I think Carla's note about a positive home environment was
especially encouraging, because there are people who value
love and caring, and are passing these values to the next 
generation.

If we believe that man is warlike, and that that fact is unchangable,
that's the attitude we will pass to the next generation.  
We can't expect them to be different.  Change begins NOW.

	bruce
    

    Re. last couple
    
    Kim - YES!  
    
    Bruce - correct!
    
    Elizabeth - I think it belongs here for the reason Bruce gave.  
         
    Request for article - when you're on that note just type 'Extract'
    <carriage-return> and then type in the output file name of your 
    choice.  If this doesn't work, then contact me offline directly.
                                                                      
    Everyone - please, let's not fight.  Can we all shake hands and
    make up?  It's too much wasted energy we could be spending making
    things better.
    
    Cindy

{From - Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.4-7}

"The Family Rules

The rules about raising children are the most sacred of all rules.  
They are authenticated by religious teaching and reinforced in our 
school systems.  To even seriously question them is considered 
sacrilegious.  This is why the crisis is far worse than most people 
realize.

The house is on fire, but like the story of the emperor who has no 
clothes, we are not supposed to look.  We are to share a collective 
denial and a 'cultural no-talk rule'.  this 'no-talk' rule is rooted 
in the rules which govern parenting.  Children are to speak when 
spoken to; children are to be seen and not heard; children are to obey 
all adults (any adult) without question.  To question is an act of 
disobedience.  and so the rules are carried oby the obedient child in 
all the adults who are raising families.  The hidden child in every 
adult continues to obey so that the rules are carried 
multigenerationally, and 'the sins of the fathers are visited on the 
children to the third and fourth generation'.

The crisis is far worse than we realize because one of the rules 
comprising the sacred rules is that we can't question any of the 
rules.  We are not supposed to talk about the rules.  That would 
dishonor our parents.

We have no alternative.  We must break the Rule and question these 
rules for unless we talk about them, there is no way out.  We must 
evaluate them in light of our new found knowledge of families as 
systems.  

We must examine these rules in order to come to terms with our 
compulsiveness.  Shame with its accompanying loneliness and psychic 
numbness fuels our compulsive/addictive lifestyle.  Shame is like a 
hole in the cup of our soul. Since the child in the adult has 
insatiable needs, the cup cannot be filled.  As grown-ups we can't go 
back as children and sit in Mom's lap or have Dad take us fishing.  
And no matter how hard we try to turn our children, lovers and spouses 
into Mom and Dad, it never works.  We can never be children again.  No 
matter how many times we fill the cup - the hole remains.

Shame fules compulsivity and compulsivity is the black plague of our 
time.  We are driven.  We want more money, more sex, more food, more 
booze, more drugs, more adrenalin rush, more entertainment, more 
possessions, more ecstasy.  Like an unending pregnancy, we never reach 
fruition.

Our dis-eases are about the things of everyday life.  our troubles are 
focused on what we eat, what we drink, how we work, how we sleep, how 
we are intimate, how we have orgasm, how we play, how we worship.  We 
stay so busy and distracted that we never feel how lonely, hurt, mad 
and sad we really are.  The hole in our soul marks the ruins of what 
Auden calls 'our ranches of isolation and our busy griefs.'  Our 
compulsivities tell us of a lost city - a place deep inside of us 
where a child hides in the ruins.

       Sorry to not have more time to more fully state what I'd
    like to, but several things come to mind real quickly.  
      
       One, to Carla...do as you wish, of course, but we are 
    always aware that there are those among us who are doom
    and gloomers or who cannot handle positive thinking/feeling.
    This does not mean that those who have the more positive
    thoughts/feelings should retreat into some sort of shell.
    Especially not to the extent of placating them while depriving
    others who may benefit from what you have to say.
      
      Two, if someone is saying that the past creates the present then
    I am going to disagree.  The future creates the present.  The 
    present creates the past.  The past is only useful as a point of
    reference. (This concept has all been discussed elsewhere in these
    notesfiles.)
      
      Lastly, I think that this topic's title is misleading, in a sense.
    "Adult children" in the sense that it is being discussed is simply
    another way of saying that there are "grown-ups" who are acting
    either as the disruptive child WITHIN or the destructive adolescent
    WITHIN or the critical parent WITHIN.  I do not at this moment have
    time to look over some applicable notes, but the CHILD, ADOLESCENT
    and ADULT are viable components of the SELF and exist forever.
    It is up to each of us to deal with that component to bring out
    its positive aspects instead of its negatives as indicated both
    above and in your replies.  I entered a note somewhere late in 
    358, I believe, that covers this more accurately than expressed
    here.  The point is that a person who acts as a child is not an
    ADULT (to use these definitions) but simply a grown-up person.
    
    
    Frederick
    

    I wouldn't define this as "acting like a child" more like an ADULT
    responding to some grown-up situations in a manner which reflects
    the negative emotional effects of the child.  To reply to this subject
    has not been easy for me.  It's extremely painful.  The one thing
    that has given me the courage to write is remembering how alone
    and lonely I felt.  I want others to know that they're not alone.
    
My father died when my brother and I were 9 years old.  I also have an 
older brother.  I lived with criticism, negativism as a child.   Nothing 
I ever did was right.  I bent over backwards so as not to make waves or 
'cause' my mother to be angry, yell at me, criticize me; nothing helped.
And, God forbid I had an opinion on something.  It was her way or no way.  
This carried on into my teen years and long into my marriage.  And, 
guess what I did?  I married the same kind of person, dominating, 
know-it-all, negative, critical, verbally abusive and eventually physically
abusive. 

By the time I turned 30, awareness started creeping into my mind.
They were defining me and I was allowing them to do this.  I went into
therapy for 2 years, but as I look back now, the real issues were not
uncovered.  So, a few years more went by.  I was still trying to deal
with a mother who would phone me and say I didn't care about her and
why didn't I phone her everyday and I'm listening to this holding a baby
wondering what the other 3 are up to, hoping the house is clean when
_he_ gets home.  I'd say to her, Ma, I _do_ love you and I know you're 
alone, yet I've had doctor appointments with the kids, this and that and 
I haven't had chance to call.  I'd ask her to try and understand.  Oh no, 
the next day I'd hear it all over again.  This is just one example; 
there were hundreds.

He used to call me almost every from work.  Sometimes the interaction
was ok.  Sometimes, he'd be ranting and raving and I would have no idea
why; he'd never tell me.  Then, SLAM, hang up on me.  Again, I tried
everything to keep peace; don't yell when he's yelling maybe that'll
stop him; yell back; that made him more angry;  I was no good, I was
always wrong, whatever I felt was stupid, he was the only one who was
right about everything, why wasn't the supper on the table, what did you
do all day, you can do this cause you have nothing to do all day.  And,
God forbid, if I said no in the bedroom.  There'd be more stuff, like
his jumping out of bed in the middle of the night, taking off in his
car and phoning me aside the areas local canal and threaten to jump.

Seven years ago, I was nothing (shame.)  My nerves were hanging on by
a thread, I was depressed, and could hardly function in life.  I went
into therapy again because it didn't _feel_ good to _feel_ bad.
I was in therapy for 5 years, one on one and then in group therapy.
I struggled and struggled.  It was a slow, painful process.  During
this time, my mother had died, I became separated, was being treated
for anxiety attacks, had major surgery, and finally was divorced. 

I found my "self!"  I was there all along and had allowed others (and
here's the kicker) others being two people I loved, define me.  This
writing is only part of the story as it would take a volume to tell it
all.  I just want you all to know that I'm here for support.  This
is one of the most difficult times in my life to talk about without 
opening terribly painful wounds.  

Sometimes, the only way to 'know thyself'is to make a total break from the 
past.  My brother's lives, in my opinion, are affected as well even now.  
They are emotionally trapped in the past and were/are unable to offer me 
any support.  I closed the door behind me and left them as well.  It was
the most difficult thing I've ever had to do in my life.  I knew in my
heart and soul that this was the only way I would survive.  

I'm whole today.  I feel good.  I'm warm and compassionate and loving and 
giving and honest and caring and ....7 years ago I was nothing.  

Charlene
    

    
    Hi Charlene,
    
    That was superb - thank you for sharing that.  Congratulations for 
    all of your hard work - you deserve to be happy.  You just wrote
    about parts of my life as well.
                                
    Frederick is correct, I believe, when he says that the past doesn't 
    create the present, however the problem is that until one actually 
    realizes this truth, then there is no way to make the switchover,
    and when you're in the victim's shoes, about all you can see is
    the trap with no way out. 
    
    Hopefully these and other entries will show others that there is
    a better way, and that they deserve the happiness and love that
    they didn't get in childhood - and that it was REALLY NOT THEIR
    FAULT.
    
    Cindy

{From - Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.5-6}

Compulsive/Addictive Behavior

Compulsive/addictive behavior has been defined as "a pathological
relationship to any mood-altering experience that has life-damaging 
consequences."  Such a definition helps us move from our stereotyped 
pictures of the dives and back alleys of drug and alcohol addiction to the 
respectable corporate and religious lives of work and religious addicts.  
It also helps us to see the effect of the broken relationship with our 
original caretakers which produced shame.  Because our original dependency 
bridge with our survival figures has been broken, we are set up for 
problems with dependency and with relationships.  In the abandonment 
relationships with shame us, our compulsivities are set up.

Our families are the places where we have our source relationships.  
Families are where we first learn about ourselves in the mirroring eyes of 
our parents, where we see ourselves for the first time.  In families we 
learn about emotional intimacy.  We learn what feelings are and how to 
express them.  Our parents model what feelings are acceptable and family 
authorized and what feelings are prohibited.

In our families we adapt to the needs of our family system.  We take on 
roles necessitated by the dynamics of the system.  Such roles demand that 
we learn certain feelings and that we give up certain feelings.

When we are abused in families, we learn to defend ourselves with ego 
defenses.  We repress our feelings; we deny what's going on' we displace 
our rage onto our possessions or our friends; we create illusions of love 
and connectedness; we idealize and minimize; we dissociate so that we no 
longer feel anything at all; we numb out.

Our addictions and compulsivities are our mood alterers.  They are what we 
develop when we numb out.  They are our ways of being alive and our ways of 
managing our feelings.  This is most apparent in experiences that are 
euphoric, like using alcohol, drugs, sex, carrot cake, adrenalin rush or 
the feeling of ecstasy and righteousness.  It is not as obvious in 
activities which are used to distract from emotions, such as working, 
buying, gambling, watching television and thinking obsessively.  These are 
mood-altering nonetheless.

Addiction has become our national lifestyle (or rather death style).  It is 
a death style based on the relinquishment of the self as a worthwhile being 
to a self who must achieve and perform or used something outside of self in 
order to be lovable and happy.  Addictions are pain-killing substitutes for 
legitimate suffering.  To legitimately suffer we have to feel bad as well.

The lives of over 60 million people are seriously affected by the 
painkilling use of alcohol alone.  This says nothing of the car murders and 
domestic violence related to alcohol.  Alcohol is the leading killer in 
this country.

Next comes heart disease and cancer.  Major contributions to heart disease 
are obesity, stress and smoking.  Smoking is itself an addiction, as is 
obesity.  Cancer, it has been discovered, has a correlation to emotional 
repressions.  [See "Love, Medicine and Miracles, by Bernie Siegel]

Americans are killing themselves with food through overeating, starving, 
vomiting and improper diet.  Eating disorders are addictions based on the 
denial of emotion, especially anger.  A commentary on this condition is the 
fact that around 60% of women and 50% of men in this country have eating 
disorders.

The fastest-growing problem in our country is sexual addiction.  Some 
estimates say that the number of sex addicts is equal to the number of 
chemical addicts.  Grave social consequences have arisen from this problem. 
 While all sex addicts are not child molesters, most child molesters are 
sex addicts.  A 'Life' magazine article estimates that 34 million adult 
women have been sexually abused.

Another major factor in family dysfunction is the addiction to power and 
violence.  Battered children and battered wives expose the horror of 
physically abusing families.

Violence itself is an addiction.  An essential component in any abusing 
relationship is the addiction to being 'victimized'.  Traumatic bonding, a 
form of learned helplessness, is a true addiction which enslaves and 
soul-murders.

    Is it possible that these feelings could stem from siblings instead
    of parents?  I feel this is what happened to me.
    
    

    re.27
    In my situation my siblings had a big impact on my feelings but
    there were other major factors of our family life that seemed to
    have a chain reaction from my parents - to them - to me. That I
    am doing much better having broken contact with my sisters tells
    me that they did in deed have a strong (negative) impact on my life.
    But, again, in my case, their were other factors as well.
    

I'm just getting caught up on NOTING because I've been away the past couple of 
days, working on some inner stuff, and sharing some of the deepest experiences 
I've ever had.  I don't know what happened in .3 and .4, but Carla, I've never 
seen you this angry, or offended; come back, come back, wherever you are; can I 
buy you a Bud?

Funny you should bring up this topic now; I just signed up for a Co-Dependency 
Seminar offered at CXO through EAP.  My EAP therapist is leading the seminar. 
The demand for this seminar is so great that this is the second time in two 
months that it is being offered.  I can't recommend Sandra highly enough; she 
suggested long ago that I attend such a seminar, even though its name indicates 
that it is for "Children of Substance-Abusive Parents."  Even though my mother 
never abused substances, she sure did abuse me...as if I was a substance...and 
in her reality, I probably was that.  I have yet to tap in to the knowledge of 
why I can't seem to control my weight; the only year I didn't have any trouble 
was the year my "friend" from Denver had me on that starvation diet.  Now, my 
metabolism seems *really* screwed up.  As a matter of fact, Sandra has 
indicated to me that the reason I got involved in this brainwashing in the 
first place relates back to how I was raised!  My mother, too, told me who I 
should and shouldnt' be, and I, too, bent over backwards to the point where I 
was no longer in contact with the real Me, which was inside, all the time, 
hiding.

Frederick, sure, the past is the past, but every moment of the past effects 
what and who we are at this moment.  Anything can be overcome, but when the 
past has led one to self-alienation, one has no self-understanding.  Without 
self-understanding, one doesn't know *how* to overcome, to change, to let go. 
Finding the self as buried beneath the layers of being chameleon to everyone's 
expectations is necessary, albeit extremely difficult; more so for some, than 
others.  I'm lucky to have gotten inroads in to my real Self.  I almost lost 
everything I had and everything I was during this last round, but those first 
threads of Self did appear, and I was saved from not being here.  I am telling 
you that I could have become an empty shell.  Dramatic, yes; true, yes.  In 
order to overcome present pain and further loss-of-self, I have had to go back 
in to the past to see the root of certain behaviors; how they led to today; in 
order to gain self-understanding.  I was absolutely humiliated at having let 
that Denver lady brainwash me.  I felt that I *should have been* stronger; 
*should have* seen it coming, *should have* this, *should have* that...and yes, 
I have learned from it now, and can avoid things now, but the point is, had I 
not traced it back (with Sandra's help) to my mother, and realized what that 
relationship did to set me up for this one, there exists a possibility that I 
would not have learned as deeply as I did.

I will share notes from the seminar, which will take place April 14-15, in the 
mornings of those dates.

Meredith

{From - Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.4-7}

Poisonous Pedagogy

On the old rules.....Alice Miller in her book, 'For Your Own Good', has
grouped these parenting rules under the title "poisonous pedagogy."  The 
subtitle of the book is, "Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of 
Violence".  She argues that the poisonous pedagogy is a form of violence 
which violates the rights of children.  Such violation is then re-enacted 
when these children become parents.

The "poisonous pedagogy" concept exalts obedience as its highest value.  
Following obedience are orderliness, cleanliness, and the control of 
emotions and desires.  Children are considered "good" when they think and 
behave the way they are taught to think and behave.  Children are virtuous 
when they are meek, agreeable, considerate and unselfish.  The more a child 
is "seen and not heard" and "speaks only when spoken to", the better that 
child is.  Miller summarizes poisonous pedagogy as follows:

1. Adults are the masters of the dependent child.
2. Adults determine in a godlike fashion what is right and wrong.
3. The child is held responsible for the anger of adults.
4. Parents much always be shielded.
5. The child's life-affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic
   parent.
6. The child's will must be 'broken' as soon as possible.
7. All this must happen at a very early age so the child "won't notice"
   and will not be able to expose the adults.

If followed, these family system rules result in the absolute control of 
one group of people (parents) over another group of people (children).  Yet 
in our present society, only in extreme cases of physical or sexual abuse 
can anyone intervene on a child's behalf.

Abandonment, with its severe emotional abuse, neglect and enmeshment is a 
form of violence.  Abandonment, in this sense, I have defined it, has 
devastating effects on a child's belief about himself.  And yet no agency 
or law exists to monitor such abuse.  In fact, many of our religious 
institutions offer authoritarian support for these beliefs.  Our schools 
reinforce them.  Our legal system enforces them.

Another aspect of "poisonous pedagogy" is to impart to the child from the 
beginning, false information and beliefs that are not only unproven, but in 
some cases, demonstrably false.  These are beliefs passed on from 
generation to generation ("sins of the fathers").  Again, I refer to Alice 
Miller who cites examples of such beliefs:

 1. A feeling of duty produces love.  
 2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it.  
 3. Parents deserve respect because they are parents.
 4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children.
 5. Obedience makes a child strong.
 6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful.
 7. A low-degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic.
 8. Tenderness is harmful.
 9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong.
10. Severity and coldness toward a child gives him a good preparation
    for life.
11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.
12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are.
13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended.
14. The body is something dirty and disgusting.
15. Strong feelings are harmful.
16. Parents are creatures free from guilt.
17. Parents are always right.

Probably no modern parents embody all of the above.  In fact, some have 
accepted and imposed the opposite extreme of these beliefs with results 
that are just as abusive.  But most of these beliefs are carried 
unsconsciously and are activated in times of stress and crisis.  The fact 
is, the parents don't even have a choice about such beliefs until they have 
worked through their relationships with their own parents.

>I will share notes from the seminar, which will take place April 14-15, in the 
>mornings of those dates.

I was wrong; it's April 21-22,.,,seeyalater

{From - Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.9-10}

Children's Belief Patterns

The greatest paradox in child-parent relationships is that children's
beliefs about parents come from the parents.  Parents teach their
children the meaning of the world around them.  For the first ten
years of life, the parents are the most important part of a child's
world.  If a child is taught to honor his parents no matter what they
do, why would a child argue with this? 

The helpless human infant is the most dependent of all living
creatures. And for the first eight years of life, according to the
cognitive psychologists, such as Jean Piaget, children think
magically, non-logically and egocentrically.  If you ask a
four-year-old who has a brother if he has a brother, he will answer
"yes".  But if you then ask him if his brother has a brother, he will
usually either be confused or answer "no". 

Another example is to stand across from a pre-five-year-old child who
knows his right hand from his left.  Hold your hands out and across
from him. Ask him which is your right hand and your left hand.  As his
right hand will be opposite your left hand, he will say that your left
hand is your right hand.  His mind is immature and has not yet
attained the ability to completely differentiate or separate himself
from objects around him.  The child projects his own view of the world
on everything.  His viewpoint is the only viewpoint.  Winnie-the-Pooh
has exactly the same feelings the child does.  Little matter that
Winnie is a toy bear.  This egocentricity contains a survival value
for the child. 

Survival value has to do with self-preservation.  The magical part of
the child's thinking deifies the parents.  They are gods,
all-powerful, almighty and all-protecting.  No harm can come to the
child as long as he has parents. 

This magical idealization serves to protect the child from the terrors
of the night, which are about abandonment and to the child, death. 
The protective deification of the parents, this magical idealization,
also creates a potential for shame-binding predicament for the child. 

For example, if the parents are abusive and hurt the child through
physical, sexual, emotional or mental pain, the child will assume the
blame, make himself bad, in order to keep the all-powerful protection
against the terrors of the night.  For a child at this stage to
realize the inadequacies of parents would product unbearable anxiety. 

In essence, children are equipped with an innate ability to defend
their conscious awareness against threats and intolerable situations. 
Freud called this ability an ego defense.  He identified ego defenses
as denial, repression, disassociation and idealization, to mention a
few.  The defenses are archaic and function automatically and
unconsciously once formed.  It is this unconscious quality of these
defenses which potentially makes them so damaging. 

Robert Firestone's recent book, "The Fantasy Bond" elaborates on
Freud's work.  According to the author, the fantasy bond is the core
defense in all human psychological systems, ranging from those of
psychotics to fully-functioning individuals.  The fantasy bond is the
illusion of connectedness we create with our major caretaker whenever
our emotional needs are not adequately met.  The fantasy bond is like
a mirage in the desert that enables one to survive. 

Since no mother, father or other parenting person is perfect, all
humans develop this fantasy bond to some degree.  In fact, growing up
and leaving home involves the overcoming of this illusion of
connection and protection.  Growing up means accepting our fundamental
aloneness.  It means that we face our terrors of the night and grapple
with the reality of death on our own.  Most of all, it means giving up
our parents in their illusory and idealized form. 

The more emotionally deprived a person has been, the stronger his
fantasy bond.  And paradoxical as it sounds, the more a person has
been abandoned, the more he tends to cling to and idealize his family
and his parents. Idealizing parents means to idealize the way they
raised you. 

Not only is the fantasy bond set up in the core of the person's
selfhood, but several additional layers are added in his psychological
defense system. 

    re: Adult Children
    
    
    Cindy, are you a friend of Bill W.'s. My mother is an "Adult Child"
    and I wanted to know if your description of an Adult Child is the
    same.
    
    re.

    
    Re.-1
    
    Sorry, I don't know the person you mention.
    
    Contact me offline if you like.
    
    Cindy

{From - Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.12-13}

Development of the False Self

No child, because of his helplessness, dependency and terror, wants to
accept the belief that his parents are inadequate, sick, crazy or
otherwise imperfect.  Nature protects the child by providing an
egocentric, magical and non-logical mode of cognition.  to be save and
survive, a child must idealize his parents and make himself bad.  He
then projects his own split and forbidden self onto others.  These
split-off parts are actually his parents rejected parts.  Others are
strangers who are not of one's clan. He then introjects the parent's
voices.  This means that the child continues to hear internally the
shame dialogue he originally had with the parent(s). 

The child parents himself the way he was parented.  If the child got
shamed for feeling angry, sad or sexual, he will shame himself each time
he feels angry, sad or sexual.  All of his feelings, needs and drives
become shame-bound.  This inner self-rupture is so painful, the child
must develop a 'false self'.  This false self is manifested in a mask or
rigid role which is either determined by the culture or by the family
system's need for balance.  Over time, the child identifies with the
false self and becomes totally unconscious of his own true feelings,
needs and wants.  The shame is internalized.  Shame is no longer a
feeling, it is an identity. The real self has withdrawn from conscious
contact. 

Even after the magical period has passed, when around the age of eight
the child moves into a more logical way of thinking, nature continues to
provide an egocentric idealization of the parents.  The youngster begins
to think in a concretely logical manner and to assume the point of view
of others. 

He "gets it" that Santa Claus cannot be in six department stores at the
same time.  At this time he begins to cooperate better in games and
play. He is less magical (stepping on a crack doesn't really break Mom's
back). He begins to really appreciate rules. 

Even so, the logical child will remain egocentric and undifferentiated
until early puberty.  Only then will he have the capacity for full
other-centered love and understanding.  He will make a hypothesis and
then cast it in bronze.  If new data emerges to refute this hypothesis,
the child will revise the data to fit the hypothesis. 

One such hypothesis carried around by children (because taught at the
magical age) is that adults, parents especially, are benevolent and
totally good.  Parents are good and no amount of evidence to the
contrary will convince them differently.  In addition, the emotional and
volitional reasons for which the child clings to this belief is that
children love their parents and are emotionally bonded to them.  Abused
children are more powerfully bonded.  Abuse creates intense bonding
because as a child is abused, their self-worth diminishes and their
choices are limited.  The more one feels worth-less the more one feels
powerless to change.  The more one feels power-less - the fewer choices
one feels they have.  And the more one accepts the rules and introjects
parents voices, the more one idealizes these rules so as not to separate
oneself from one's parents. 

In other words, in order for a child to reflect on parental rules and
find them wanting, he would have to separate and stand on his own two
feet. This, no eight-year-old is going to do, in fact, cannot do. 

Once in adolescence, most of the child's energy is directed toward
leaving the family, and often it appears as if adolescents are rejecting
their parents' rules.  In fact, the more fantasy-bonded an adolescent
has been, the more bonded he will become to his peer group, which serves
as a "new Parent".  However, once this identity crisis is over, most
adolescents return to the fantasy bond with their families.  This
becomes especially evident when a person settles down and starts his own
family.  What was famil(y)iar comes back and feels right and this
includes the rules for parenting.  The poisonous pedagogy is transmitted
multigenerationally as a sacred body of truth, 

       I wanted to reply to these a few days ago but DMATE2 was unavailable
    and then I got involved with something else.
     
    re: .0
        We all need to recognize our uniqueness.  This does not mean
    specialness (in either a positive or negative sense.)  It means
    that no two of us are alike.  No one is cosmically special.
    Specialness comes subjectively (i.e., you may be special to me
    but not necessarily to anyone else.)  Uniqueness comes universally.
        As for exploring the mind, that is a fairly good suggestion,
    as long as it isn't spent dwelling on the past.
    
    re: .11
         I think that advice is fairly sound.  A tendency we all seem
    to have is the tendency of BLAMING.  Blame is simply a way of avoiding
    responsibility.  "It ain't going to work."  It is more important
    to recognize responsibility in each situation.  Blame is for those
    who haven't quite learned how to deal with reality.  If that is
    all that they can handle it's all right, it simply isn't the greatest
    "truth."  Along these lines and something that also ties in with
    another note, there is someone who has just written a controversial
    book about alcoholics.  By calling alcoholism a disease, individuals
    are able to avoid their responsibility in their addiction.  Anyway,
    this is a bit off the topic, but it serves as a related example.
    
    re: .13
        What you stated *is* interesting.  We always root for the underdog
    until they enter the top position.  Why is that?  Doesn't this make
    us all look like "liars" when we say we want happiness for all?
    What happens then if we find ourselves on top?  What happens is
    that we have THE BELIEF that being on top will eventually lead to
    being bumped off, therefore, since BELIEFS are responsible for our
    reality, we manifest a reality in which we never are on top, and
    if we are, we don't stay there.  Masochism in the truest sense of
    the word!
    
    re: .24
        You are correct...I should have used the proper jargon.  The
    appropriate jargon in this case would have been to say that the
    individuals "are IN child" or "being in child" as opposed to acting as one.
        I also concur with your "breaking with the past" statement.
    Sometimes it is the "best" thing to do.  To dwell on it, moreover,
    is really quite fruitless.  Whether that past is seen as positive
    or negative.  Which is again why we need to recognize that the future
    creates the present.  The present simply creates the past.  Trying
    to come from the past is simply not helpful and is one reason why
    people get stuck in it and stuck in their "prior errors."
    
 re: .27
        Sure, you can blame anything you want.  If blaming your siblings
    is appropriate for you, then that's the route for you.  Actually,
    what it probably means is that you gave your "personal power" to
    your siblings who then, in their search for their own, played the
    domination/victim game with you...giving you the victimhood you
    allowed and the dominating ego which they "suffered" from (knowingly
    or unknowingly.)  Recognizing that you did or have done or are doing
    this is the first step towards ending it, though, so you can be
    (self) congratulated for that.
    
    re: .26 and .30
       Yes, I think that sounds probable.
    
    re: .29
        Every moment of the past affects the present only if you allow
    it to.  It is not axiomatic or automatic that one is affected by
    the past.  I believe that one's ENTIRE past can be recreated...it
    probably requires too great a change in belief systems to enact
    the change in that scope, however, and even if you changed *EVERYTHING*
    about the past you would have no memory of that prior past.  It
    is much easier to see small events being changed "at will" than
    large events.  For example, it is much easier for us within our
    beliefs to change an attitude about a past event than to change
    a missing appendage.  Since I believe that it is all illusionary
    anyway, then I also believe that all past events are changeable.
    This ties in to the concept of having "probable pasts" (as opposed
    to "fixed" or concrete, objective pasts.)  
         As in .24, you can "give yourself credit" for recognizing a
    problem and then taking responsibility not only for the problem
    but for the effective change you desired (so stated by you when
    you said you were humiliated at "HAVING LET"...)  A reality you
    allowed...
    
    Frederick
    
    

    
    Just a short suggestion.....(;^).....(and I intend on revising my
    own style with this note also) - if one is responding to notes in
    days gone by, especially to multiple ones, it might be easier if
    the name of the person were included next to the 'RE:' reference
    (something like re.0 (Painter), etc.)
    
    Cindy

    Re .37 (Cindy):
    
    Some of us have been doing that for _years_.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    I have just arrived back at work (well, for a couple of days), and
    tripped into this note.
    
    For what it's worth, my two cents bit of advice is.....
    
    In my opinion, (and having gone through most of what has been mentioned
    earlier), I still feel we select our parents, siblings, etc for
    a reason.  To learn, or to gain, in an educating way, an experience
    where we haven't learnt a particular lesson.
    
    After reading all the notes, and trying to remember them, most of
    us have worked through a lot of problems.  I still have to work
    through some fears, but we are all on this particular path.  
    
    Think back a few years - before we knew anything relating to
    new age (I am referring to those like myself that are new and blocked
    anything and everything but our negative thoughts).  Don't any of
    you wonder why you kept making the same mistakes in life, marriage,
    relationships, family etc.
    
    I did, and kept blaming everybody else, until the penny dropped
    for me.  Now I know why I went through what I did.  I can also see
    why my daughter is doing what she is and why - but cannot do anything,
    because she has to see the light herself.
    
    I must admit, my mum and I get on brilliantly now, and she and I
    both feel we are best friends, but she also has gone though a cleansing
    and that does make a difference.  
    
    Reading back over this note I apologise if its a bit disjointed
    and not easy to understand, but I'm doing it in a hurry.  
    
    I still have to understand how to work some of my fears and then
    I guess my last problem, the weight, will go poof like a puff of
    smoke.  Some of you are very lucky to have come to terms with a
    lot of *stuff* at a relatively early age.  At 40, its taken a lot
    of time for me.
    
    ...dale
      

Today, I attended the first of two classes, titled "Co-Dependency; Adult 
Children of Substance Abusers", which covers, also, those who have been abused 
in many manners and have developed co-dependent behaviors, as a result of that 
abuse.

What Is Co-Dependency?

Definition;  Emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition developed from 
prolonged exposure to a set of unspoken and oppressive rules that prevents free 
expression of feelings.

Notes;

The person with the problem/abusive pattern has the world revolving around them 
so that your needs are not met.  Think of a mobile hanging; when you weigh down 
one of the parts, all of the other parts must adjust before hanging correctly. 
The child often feels that rules (using male gender for grammatical convenience)
for survival are; don't talk, don't trust, don't feel.  These feelings develop 
at a young age.  Children bury their feelings to such a point that they become 
unaware of what are their feelings.

One defense mechanism used is _denial_.  ("I thought that the way I was being 
raised was normal.  I thought what my mom did was normal.  I thought that 
having gallons of alcohol around was normal.")

Abuse is a disease.  You get caught up in the behavior.  It becomes a family 
disease.

Your feelings are seldom validated, so you learn to stuff them, and may later 
turn to chemicals to push them down.

Roles.

There are many roles which you may assume as your defense system.  While the 
behaviors may be normal, the motivations behind them in a co-dependent person 
are not.

Clown - Use your sense of humor, be the center of attention, so that no one 
really gets to know you.

Scapegoat - "I'm responsible for all the problems".  The dumping ground.  Lots 
of anger, not hidden; "I can't show my sensitivity, so since they said I did 
it, I'll go and do it, and they can be right."

Placator - You take care of everyone's emotional needs.  "See how warm and 
sensitive I am.  You like me now, don't you, and you approve of me."

Adjustor - You take pride in being flexible.  You are the chameleon.  The 
danger is, you get walked on easily; not paying attention to how *you* feel 
about what you're doing, which leads to no sense of power or control over your 
situation.  More females than males take on this role.

Ultra-Responsible - You either feel above or below another person; rarely 
equal.  You've taken responsibility that is not yours (you think that the fact 
that the person got abusive or took a drink is because you did something 
wrong).  "If I don't do that, I won't be liked; I won't be acceptable.  They 
must perceive me as good; I take care of everyone but myself because I have to 
be liked."

Inter-Psychic - You're so preoccupied with the abusive person that you begin to 
know them better than you know yourself; you know what they are going to do, 
before they do it.  You want to predict them because you will do anything to 
avoid their abuse.

You learn to keep the lid on your emotions so that you won't be abused;
a) don't express yourself
b) don't let them effect you/don't take them in.

You can measure your recovery from these defensive behaviors of the past by
your ability to make choices; you no longer have to "react", but you can feel, 
experience, think, and Make Choices; bring your feelings and thoughts together 
to make choices.

Symptoms of being abused - Compulsions.  Gambling, sex, eating - We want to be 
too busy to pay attention to our feelings.


ENMESHMENT.

(Sandra drew a diagram at this point, which I will explain as best I can.  
Please pretend that the diamonds are circles.)


   /\  /\	normal			/\ /\	co-dependent relationship;
  /  \/  \	relationship-	       /  \  \	you take on the other person
 /   /\   \	two separate	      /    \  \	to the extent that not much
<   <  >   >	entities who	     <      >  > of you exists, even if it
 \   \/   /	share	              \    /  /	appears to you the other 
  \  /\  /			       \  /  /	person is getting help from
   \/  \/				\/ \/	you/leaning on you (denial).


Denial in the co-dependency model means that you are unaware that your taking 
over of the other person is exactly what they want to not have to change...
you deny that you are giving too much of yourself away.  If that other person 
leaves the relationship, there is so little of you left that you feel lost.

Criteria for Identifying a Co-Dependent

a)	Continued investment of self-esteem.  You invest your own self-esteem
	in to the abusive/dependent person.

b)	Assumption of responsibility - You feel that your behavior caused
	them to abuse.

c)	Anxiety and *boundary distortion* (as in the diagram above) around	
	intimacy and separation - Losing sense of who are you.

d)	Three or more of the following;

	1. Excessive reliance on denial.
	2. Constriction of emotions (with or without outbursts, unable to feel)
	3. Depression
	4. Hypervigilance (constant need to know what's going on everywhere)
	5. Compulsions
	6. Anxiety
	7. Substance Abuse
	8. Has been or is the victim of recurrent physical or sexual abuse.
	9. Stress-related medical illnesses.
       10. Has remained in a primary relationship wiht an active substance
	   abuser for 2+ years without seeking help.

You re-experience thoughts and feelings - they may seem to get in the way - but 
when you are recovering, this is necessary.

Continued intrusive thoughts.

Psychic numbing.

Guilt.

You learn to hide your feelings/feel embarrassment/always seek approval/feel
powerless/develop guilt for not being able to control situations/think that
conflict, chaos, and hiding feelings are norms of behavior.

Evaluate your feelings of pride, shame and doubt; for what are you *really* 
responsible?

Sandra said that when you first start to recover, you may find that you are 
flogging yourself; are hard on yourself.  When you move past this stage, you 
will do better.

Children who are well-adjusted don't feel guilt and fear when they talk about 
their feelings.  You may feel lonely, separated (not connected), fearful and 
anxious (although your anxieties may not make sense to you); may have 
difficulty maintaining close relationships; feel that "something is missing" in 
your relationships; use drugs and/or alcohol, yourself; feel helpless and 
desperate; you will want to keep peace and not rock the boat at all costs. 
Repeated humiliation, judgements, embarrassment, and putting you down leaves 
you with no trust/confidence/reliance/faith in others.  You feel as if you must 
do everything, yourself.

The first time a co-dependent actually has fun, he may be scared because he 
feels like he's lost control.  He must learn that it's ok to be out-of-control 
sometimes.

End of first class.  Next week, we talk about how to overcome using defenses in 
an environment where they are not helpful, because co-dependents use the same 
defenses as they were taught at home, and therefore might set themselves up for 
repeated abuse.

    RE: 40 by GENRAL::DANIEL
    
    Thank you for sharing all this with us.  I'm looking
    forward to your next class.
    
    Charlene
    

Class #2 - CoDependency

How you coped with abuse is all for which you need to take responsibility; you 
are not responsible for the other person's behavior; cannot "make" them better; 
cannot, by your behavior, "make" them not drink, or take their drug, or abuse.

These people did not provide us with accurate information about ourselves.

SELF-CONFIDENCE VS. SELF-ESTEEM

Confidence; You know you can do things; you have confidence in your abilities.

Esteem; You feel like you deserve things; feel good about yourself.

CoDependents have confidence, but often lack esteem.  You try to build up your 
esteem by being a hero, or ultra-responsible, but it doesn't work.

What do you deserve?  Are you a good person?  If you deserve X, then put in 
motion a plan to achieve X.

"what happens if they find out I can't do it?" Low esteem.

FEAR OF INTIMACY

Problems with trusting and letting others get close may well keep codependents 
from sharing in the positive group dynamic of the workplace.  Because the 
background does not include the more common, ordinary experiences needed to 
develop relationships, they may have trouble identifying with their own needs 
as well as judging what is normal or appropriate behavior on the part of 
others.  Additionally, society's high value on successful job performance 
permits employees to use the demands of the job as a way to distance themselves 
from close, personal relationships at home.  Problems in interpersonal 
relationships at work and possibly at home can play a critical role in job 
performance, promotion and achievement.

It's like a dance in a relationship; they back off; you get close; you back 
off; they come closer.

INFLEXIBILITY

As a result of the desire to maintain control and thereby be safe, employees 
may cling with rigidity to instructions and deadlines.  Once plans are mapped 
out, they may find it difficult to roll with the punches as modifications are 
introduced.  Inflexibility can also lead to overcontrol and "turf" problems 
where boundaries become so delineated, they are set in stone.  Once a plan is 
set in motion, it is hard for an adult codependent to consider other 
contingencies and options which arries commonly in normal business practices.

OVERRESPONSIBILITY

A super-coper, work-driven individual is no longer considered the best of 
employees because his behavior often results in burnout or personal and family 
problems when energy is totally invested in the workplace.  A lack-of-balance 
characterizes overresponsibility and often leads these adults to set impossibly 
high goals of personal stamina and abilities to get the job done.

EXCESS NEED FOR APPROVAL

The need to play it safe, keep quite, and refrain from taking risks can stifle 
creativity and growth.  It can inhibit employees from making the best 
contribution of their talents and skills.  It can be hard for a codependent to 
offer suggestions, have a two-sided talk, and certainly, to disagree.  Some 
feel impelled to have every instruction mapped out; even upon successful 
completion  of a task, they often do not believe well-deserved praise.

DEPRESSION

Although many codependents excel in work, they might not get real enjoyment 
from success.  They often feel depressed, disillusioned and dissatisfied, as if 
nothing they do will make a difference, or can fill the empty hole inside.  As 
a result, increased stress is suffered, and preoccupation with anxiety may 
happen.  No matter how well they do, codependents can feel the negative effects 
of abuse, in many cases.

Book suggestion; _When You Have It All, and it's Not Enough_

Healthy Model					CoDependent Model

-----------	-------------			-----------	-----------
|	  |	|	    |			|	  |	|	  |
|Emotions |<--->| Intellect |			|Emotions 	|Intellect|
|	  |	|	    |			|		|         |
-----------	-------------			--------	--------^--
							(hole)    	|
							-----------     |
							|Walled-Off|    |
							|Emotions  |-----
							|__________|

There's a hole in the codependent's emotions; you can get *some* information 
regarding your emotions back, but are not utilizing the full potential, because 
your emotions were shut down, or no one responded to them at all.  Intellect 
tries to connect with emotion, but bounces off of walled-off emotions.  When 
the emotions are walled off, this causes depression.

Hurts happen; you get a "glob" in your emotions, so when something happens to 
you and an insecurity gets triggered, it attaches to a place where you've been 
hurt before, and you give back not just waht the person said, but all of those 
hurts that came before.

When someone finally helps you to access these "feeling globs" it can feel like 
you're being messed with, but you need to get that "junk" cleaned out, so that 
when something passes through, you can give cleaner feedback to the situation.

Depressions will continue if you don't get it cleaned out; face what you've 
been pushing back.

When you clean out, your energy comes back to you; your self-esteem increases; 
you are more sensitive (and sometimes recognize for the first time) things that 
aren't healthy; things sound different to you because you're not buffered any 
more!

What you don't know-you don't recognize-you don't feel - Take the blinders off.

Let the pain happen, and know that you're still going to be safe.  Pain is 
healing.  When you were in pain before, no one came around to say it would be 
OK - pain went on and on.  Good to find a friend or therapist who will 
understand.

(More tomorrow)
Meredith

Class #2 - CoDependency - continued

WILLPOWER VS. WILLINGNESS

Willpower; Many codependents believe that is is possible to control their lives 
by sheer force of will.

Willfulness; control anything if willpower is strong enough and focused enough. 
Failure results in feelings of inadquacy.

Willingness; recognized determination where possible to exercise influence or 
control while accepting the fact that there are some things a person can not do 
anything about.

Codependents; "If I would just do _______, everything would be okay."  The 
truth is, we're all doing the best we can do; coping as best we can.

ASIDE ON DRUGS

Drugs that effect the central nervous system DO change the brain.  This 
includes alcohol, cocaine, marijuana.  There are proteins and enzymes in neural 
synapses - synapses are formed in "cups" (the Lock Key theory); each enzyme has 
its own personal cup.  They enable us to think, talk, move.  Cocaine, in 
specific, starts to build up in the lock - alcohol does the same thing *only in 
alcoholics*.

There are two theories on what happens in the synapses to compensate for the 
buildup/blockage in the "cups":

1. You grow extra "cups" to accomodate more cocaine/alcohol.  Recovered cocaine 
addicts remain hyper because they've grown extra "cups" in the brain, and this 
is irreversable.  

2. Extra proteins and enzymes have no place to go = Brain damage.  Proteins and 
enzymes don't fit in right.  

Cocaine doesn't start out being physically addictive, but it ends up being that 
way.

The substances to which we can be addicted, change the brain.

The other piece of recovery for the codependent is letting that 
abusive/addicted person, Go.  Book recommendation; _Outgrowing the Pain_.  Be 
willing to recognize and determine where it is possible for you to exercise 
control.  Be aware of your own Identity.

DENIAL

When you're around an abuser, it's hard to recognize that they have a problem; 
you either feel like it's your fault, or that everything is OK.  That person 
may not be a bad person, but their behavior, is bad.  Recognize this.

CRACKING DENIAL, or RAISING THE BOTTOM (from being bottomed-out)

Once you know that denial has existed, you're already coming out of it.  There 
is the first step to get sober yourself/to recover, yourself; you have to have 
faith, and release yourself from the addicts-supplying-addicts methodology 
(example, you deal with that person's alcoholism by having a few drinks, 
yourself).  Codependents have to learn/relearn what is normal and what is 
healthy.

Give up your perceived power over people and things - "I am powerless.  The 
only place I have power, is Over Myself."  Win-by-losing (losing power you 
never really had to begin with).

Watch out for PRIDE - "The other person is doing well now because I did good 
work!"  WRONG.  The other person stopped being addictive/abusive becuase they 
decided to do so.  The converse is also true - "He didn't get sober because I 
am awful."  Codependents tend to maintain an unchallenged core belief that they 
ought to control or change their partner's behavior.

LOW SELF-ESTEEM

Codependents often disguise themselves as sincere, caring, loyal people but 
before long, it becomes clear that the codependent is saying, "Tell me how you 
feel; when you feel sad, I'll feel sad. My feelings and esteem are in your 
hands."  Codependents, therefore, often end up with narcissistic people who 
have a strong need to feel "special".

ANXIETY AND BOUNDARY DISTORTIONS

Codependents equate closeness with compliance, and intimacy with fusion.  Ther 
are rapid swings in how the partner is perceived as Good or Bad by the 
codependent.  Feelings fluctuate between feeling totally inadequate to feeling 
in-control of matters.

STAGES OF RECOVERY

RE-IDENTIFICATION STAGE

Denial is shaken.  Codependent becomes aware of increasing pain.  Critical 
facets of this phase are 1) acceptance of codependent label; 2) acceptance of 
limitations (willpower/control).

CORE ISSUES STAGE

Learn to integrate powerlessness into life.  The paradox of "win-by-losing".
KEY - Learn to respond honestly to feelings with healthy and appropriate 
behaviors.  Learn to detach yourself from struggles because of prideful and 
willful efforts to control things and people beyond your control.  (Of course 
this is not what my Magic Mirror theory says, with the exception that the 
"control" of the outside starts with the inside...)

RE-INTEGRATION STAGE

Reclaim your personal power.  Danger; Over-confidence.  Maintain integrity with 
awareness, not denial; honesty, not secrecy; awareness of spiritual self, not 
arrogance.  "I made it!"  During the first phases of recovery, get support 
systems around you who will confront you if you get cocky.  Feel the life force 
inside of you; your depression will ease; maintain your integrity, awareness of 
your "stuff" (emotional areas that still need work; these tend to pop up when 
you think you've "got it licked") - Keep working; don't get complacent.  "Oh 
wow, like, I'm over it all".  Oops.  

Secret-keeping is damaginc because it feeds denial.  Not talking about the 
addiction, the abuse, feeds denial.

You define your reality - what keeps you alive - awareness of spiritual self - 
what is the life force that keeps you going, piece in you that helps.  Warm 
comfort, peace that is undescribable, sense that there's something besides 
words, thoughts, feelings.  Nurture that sense.

TENDENCIES

-Codependents "guess" at what's normal, and;

-may have trouble completing a project from beginning to end, because when 
you're in a chronic stress situation, completing projects is rare, and you 
never figure out how to finish things - chaos in your life never gets resolved.

-Lie when it's just as easy to tell the truth.

-Judge selves too harshly.  Be nice to yourself.

-Have difficulty having fun - loosen up, give self time to have fun, relax.

-Take themselves very seriously - give up some of the power and control you 
think you have over others, because you really don't have it

-have problems with intimate relationships - breaking through the above 
tendencies will help with that; you'll be more pleasant to be around and you 
will find that more pleasant people want to be around you

-overreact to changes over which they have little control - Let go of pride, 
shame and doubt.

-constantly seek approval and affirmation; learn to do that for yourself - keep 
a diary or journal that keeps track of good things you did that day.  POint out 
3-5 good things you did, without saying "but" or including any negatives.

-feel different than other people - if you break from the tendencies, you will 
begin to feel less-isolated, and will tend to not isolate yourself, as well.

-are super responsible or irresponsible - Permission to back off being ultra-
responsible.  The irresponsible ones are the ones who became scapegoats; "I do 
everything wrong, so I might as well just face it, and try to not do anything 
at all so that nothing will be my fault".  Break that pattern.

-are extremely loyal even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is 
undeserved; " I'm going to stick with him through thick and thin."  Must decide 
where is the point for your own health.  YOU set your boundaries, not anyone 
else.

-are impulsive, locking themselves into a course of action without serious 
consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.  Stop and 
think.  Be responsive, not reactive.  


BARRIERS TO RECOVERY TO WATCH OUT FOR

-Belief in the scarcity principle.  "If I quit this job, I'll never get another 
one.  If  I leave this person, I'll never find another good relationship."

-Guilt.  "If I start feeling better, I'll pull away and Mom will get worse." 
Deal with it - don't let it hold you back.  How much control do you have - how 
much esteem is wrapped in the other person...

-Fear of risking - Decide what's OK to risk, and what isn't.

-Unfinished business - (toughie) - You'll think you're doing OK and then you'll 
feel something and not want to go back and do all the feelings release and pain 
again - Be willing to go back and "clean it up".

-Over-extension; too tired, hungry, blue and down, out-of-it, lonely; always 
check yoursel fto see if you're isolating yourself or not caring for your 
physical health.

-Defiance - "I know I should work through this, but I don't want to."

-Secret Recovery - I'm not going to let anyone know I'm getting better.

-Emotional Binges - danger of staying in discharge state - getting rid of 
strong emotions, fearing tears, can get stuck - fear response, body can't turn 
off tears - physiological changes noted

-Avoiding change - Making change involves ACTIVELY ENGAGING in new behavior.

-"Living" by mottoes or frameworks; not involving inner self in recovery.  One 
day at a time - let it go - helps in cognitive change.

-Other pitfalls;
fatigue		workaholism		dishonesty		self-pity
frustrations	impatience		relaxing recovery	^OK to feel
								but don't
								get stuck
setting unreachable goals.	forgetting gratitude		righteousness.

Good Luck!
Meredith

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw}

A Parable - The Tragedy of Tragedies - The Story Of Hugh

Once upon a time a Royal person was born.  His name was Hugh. 
Although I'll refer to Hugh as 'he', no one actually knew what his sex 
really was and it didn't really matter.  Hugh was unlike anyone who 
had ever lived before or who would ever live again.  Hugh was 
precious, unrepeatable incomparable, a trillion-dollar diamond in the 
rough.

For the first 15 months of life, Hugh only knew himself from the 
reflections he saw in the eyes of his caretakers.  Hugh was terribly 
unfortunate.  His caretakers, although not blind, had glasses over 
their eyes.  Each set of glasses already had an image on it.  So that 
each caretaker only saw Hugh according to the image on his glasses.  
Thus, even though Hugh's caretakers were physically present, not one 
of the ever actually saw him.  By the time Hugh was grown, he was a 
mosaic of other people's images of him, none of which was who he 
really was.  No one had really ever seen him, so no one had ever 
mirrored back to him what he really looked like.  Consequently Hugh 
thought he was a mosaic of images.  He really did not know who he was.

Sometimes in the dark of the night when he was all alone, Hugh knew 
that something of profound importance was missing.  He experienced 
this as a gnawing sense of emptiness - a deep void.

Hugh tried to fill the emptiness and void with many things: power, 
worldly fame, money, possessions, chemical highs, food, sex, 
excitement, entertainment, relationships, children, work - even 
exercise.  But no matter what he did, he never felt the gnawing 
emptiness go away.  In the quiet voice that said: "Don't forget' 
please don't forget me!"  But alas!  Hugh did forget and went to his 
death never knowing who he was!

The book "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw"

A bit about the author of the book the excerpts will be coming from:

John Bradshaw is host of the nationally televised PBS (Public
Broadcasting System) series on "Bradshaw On: The Family" as well as 
the previous "Eight Stages of Man".  He was born in Houston, Texas, 
and was educated in Canada where he studied for the Roman Catholic 
priesthood, earning three degrees from the University of Toronto.  For 
the past 20 years, he has worked as a counselor, a theologian, a 
management consultant and a public speaker.  John Bradshaw is married 
and has three children.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From the back of the book:

Based on the television series of the same name, John Bradshaw focuses 
on the dymanics of the family, how the rules and attitudes learned 
while growing up become encoded within each family member.  As 96% of 
all families are to some degree emotionally impaired, the unhealthy 
rules we are now living by are handed down from one generation to 
another and ultimately to society at large.  Our society is sick 
because our families are sick.  And our families are sick because we 
are living by inherited rules we never wrote.

John Bradshaw, through this positive life-affirming book, guides us 
out of our dysfunction to wholeness and teaches us that bad beginnings 
can be remedied.  Families can be healed as we individuals can be 
healed.  An when we heal ourselves, we heal the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Table Of Contents:

o  Foreward By Carol Burnet

o  Preface

o  A Parable

	1. Overview: The Crisis

	2. What Almost No One Knows About Families:
		The Family As A System

	3. Profile Of A Functional Family System

	4. Profile of a Dysfunctional Family System

	5. Compulsive Families:
		Checklist For How You Lost Your SELF And Became
		An Adult Child Of An Alcoholic Family

	6. The Persecuted:
		Checklist For How You Lost Your SELF and Became
		An Adult Child Of A Physically Or Sexually Abusing 
		Family

	7. The 'Bad' Child
		Checklist For How You Lost Your SELF and Became An
		Adult Child Of An Emotionally Abusing Family

	8. The Most Common Family Illness - Co-dependence
		Checklist For How You Lost Your SELF and Became
		An Adult Child Of Any Dysfunctional Family

	9. Roadmap For Recovering Your Disabled Will
		Stage I - Willing To Risk A New Family Of Affiliation

       10. Roadmap For Uncovering Your Lost Self:
		Stage II - Breaking The Original Spell

       11. Roadmap For Discovering Your True Self:
		Stage III - Spiritual Awakening and Empowerment

{From: Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.13-16}

Sociological Poisonous Pedagogy

From a socialogical perspective, we can see another reason why the
rules of the poisonous pedagogy go unchallenged.  Sociologists
describe th interplay of individuals and society.  In truth,
individuals create societies. A bingo party at the church begins to be 
considered the 'annual' bingo party.  In five year's time, 
parishioners will be angry and resentful if the "traditional" annual 
bingo party is not held.  Rules and rituals which originate somewhat 
arbitrarily become habituated in peoples' consciousness.

The next step is to legitimize the rules and rituals.  They then 
become part of what sociologists call the "consis reality" - the 
reality to which all the people consent.  Caught up in the terrible 
dailiness of our lives, decades later we forget that these legitimized 
rules were really relative and circumstantial.  Once legitimized, they 
become sacred.  They are absolute.

Then the following paradox emerges:  Individuals create societies out 
of circumstance and the need for structure.  These societies then 
become legitimized "consensus realities", which in turn create 
individuals.  So it is with our conceptions of the family, marriage 
and parenting.  These beliefs govern the matrix of our lives.

I stated earlier that these parenting rules are out of date.  I 
contend that our consciousness and way of life have radically changed 
in the last 150 years.  The poisonous pedagogy worked 150 years ago 
for several reasons.

First, life-expectancy was much lower.  Families were together a much 
shorter period of time.  Divorce was a rarity.  The average marriage 
was 15 years and there was no adolescent family conflict as we know 
it.  By age 13, most children had lost a parent.  By 15 formal 
schooling was over.  Puberty for women occurred at about age 17.

Economically families were bonded by work and survival.  Father lived 
at home.  [INTERESTING!- CP]  Boy children bonded to their fathers
through work-apprentice systems.  They watched and admired their
fathers as they transformed the earth, built homes and barns and
created wonderful goods through manual labor.  Today the majorities 
have lost their fathers to the new world of work - automation and 
cybernetics.  Fathers have left hwome (someone estimated that the 
average executive father spends 37 seconds per day with his newborn).

Most children do not know what their fathers do at work.  Mother 
bondiing and the inability to break that bond due to absentee 
fathering has caused severe marital and intimacy problems.  'Women Who 
Love Too Much' and 'Men Who Hate Women' are the products of this 
father loss.

Children, especially males, were once the greatest asset to a family.  
The old Chinese proverb underscores this: "Show me a rich man without 
any sons and I'll show you a man who won't be rich very long.  Show me 
a poor man with many sons and I'll show you a man who won't be poor 
very long."

Today children are one of our greatest economic liabilities.  
Supporting children through the completion of college costs a pretty 
penny.  It also necessitates close interaction between parents and 
children for 25 years.

The rules which governed parenting and personality formation 150 years 
ago were the result of a scientific, philosophical and theological 
view of human nature that has changed drastically.  One hundred and 
fifty years ago democracy, social equality and individual freedom were 
new concepts which were not yet tested by time.

(to be continued)

{From: Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.13-16}

Sociological Poisonous Pedagogy (cont'd)

The world was simpler then.  Isaac Newton had mapped out the laws of
nature.  He conceived the world much like the machines which were 
emerging from the Industrial Revolution.  Thinking and reasoning were 
what progress was all about.  Man was a rational animal.  Emotions and 
desires had great power to contaminate and therefore were very 
suspicious.  Emotions needed to be subjected to the scrutiny and 
control of reason.  Men were content to enjoy the security of a fixed 
order of things.  God was in his heaven and all was right with the 
world as long as men obeyed the laws of nature.

Those laws were also written into the hearts of men (and occasionally 
in women's hearts).  This was natural law.  It was based on unchanging 
eternal truths.

Mothers and fathers carried God's authority.  Their task was to teach 
their children the laws of God and nature and to be sure they obeyed 
these laws.  Emotions and willfulness had to be repressed.  Children 
were born with an unruly animal nature.  Their souls, although made in 
God's image, had been stained by original sin.  Therefore, children 
needed discipline.  Great energy had to be spent in breaking their 
unruly passions and their unbridled spirit.  Spare the rod and you 
spoil the child.  As Alice Miller reports, one 19th-century writer 
said:

	"blows provide forceful accompaniment towords to intensify
	their effect.  The most direct and antural way of
	administering them is by that box on the ears, preceeded by
	a strong pulling of the ear...It obviously has symbolic
	significance as does a slap on the mouth, which is a
	reminder that there is an organ of speech and a warning to
	put it to better use...the tried and true blow to the head
	and hair-pulling still convey a certain symbolism, too..." 

					'For Your Own Good (p.44)'

Any reaction to punishment was deemed obstinate.  Obstinate meant
having a mind of one's own. 

The world of Einstein ended this world view.  The quantum theory 
replaced Newton's clockwork deterministic universe and its 
billiard-ball-like elements.  Quantum theory challenged the basic 
notions of space and time.  Everything in the universe became relative 
to everything else.  Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty was soon to 
follow.  He showed that while we can know the infinitesimal parts of 
matter exist, we cannot measure them.

Quantum physics brought a revolution in our way of viewing the 
universe.  "Because of this," Dr. L. Dossey writes in 'Space, Time and 
Medicine, "we can expect it to wreak astonishing transformations in 
our views of our psychological self."

Others have expressed their authoritarian vioces.  Neils Bohr writes:

	"The great extension of our experience in recent years has
	brought to light the insufficiency of our simple mechanical
	conceptions, and as a consequence has shaken the foundation
	on which the customary interpretations of observation was
	based." 

			Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature

The old world view definitely ended with World War I and 15 
million dead.

Mankind (humankind) has been basking in the illusion of inevitable
progress.  Rationalism and technological advances had assured everyone
that progress was inevitable.  Where were reason and enlightenment
now? 

Stunned, the believers still espoused the faith.  The League of 
Nations, the Weimar Republic were safeguards that this could not 
happen again.

Less than 20 years later, it did happen again.  This timme the modern 
world was shocked beyond any reason.  Hitler and his foloowers were 
the agents of death for over 50 million people in the space of six 
years.  His regime programmatically exterminated over six million Jews 
in gas chambers and death camps.  The heinousness of these crimes far 
exceeded anything known to human histyr, their cruelty and inhumanity 
lay beyond imatination.  What would make a person want to gas millions 
of people?  How could millions of others acclaim and assist him?

(to be continued)

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw}

How Could Hitler Happen?

Germany had been a citadel of Christianity, the birthplace of the
Protestant Reformation.  Germany was a philosophical, theological and 
artistic giant among the nations of the world.  How was it possible 
for all this to happen?  How was Hitler possible?

Many answers to this question have been offered.  None is 
satisfactory.  Nevertheless it is essential that we try to find such 
an answer.  For at the end of the Nazi era came the new development of 
nuclear weapons with their capacity for the annihilation of the human 
race.

How could Hitler happen?  Certainly part of the answer lies in 
politics and economics.  It has to do with self-interest, greed, the 
"haves" and "have nots".  Part of the answer is sociological, having 
to do with special interest groups and the laws that govern groups.  
It has to do with the shared focus and shared denials that group 
loyalty demands.  And part of it is psychological, having to do with 
families and rules that govern family structure.

The family is the place where persons are socialized.  The rules 
governing the prototypical German family were almost a pure caricature 
of poisonous pedagogy.  Indeed, obedience, rigidity, orderliness, 
denial of feelings taken to the extreme led to the "black miracle of 
Nazism".

Erik Erikson voiced this powerfully in an article on the legend of 
Hitler's youth.  He writes:
	
	"It is our task to recognize that the black miracle of
	 Nazism was only the German version, superbly planned
	 and superbly bungled of a universal contemporary
	 potential.  The trend persists; Hitler's ghost is
	 counting on us."

The potential for this to happen again resides in the ever-present 
existence of the poisonous pedagogy.  Obedience and corporal 
punishment are still highly valued as the crown of parental discipline. 
Our Television Evangelists preach this often.

In the twenties it was argued that the Weimar Republic would not 
succeed because of the totalitarian structure of the German family.  
The authoritarianism which gave the father such unequal rights over 
the mother and children did not provide a climate in which democracy 
could be learned.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family, by John Bradshaw, p.17-19}

Hitler - Obedience Above All

Added to this was the Lutheran mandates, which formed the religious
grounding for authoritarian parental power.  The belief of the 
mandates was that all authority was from God and must be obeyed as a 
divine command.  Catholic doctrine was often interpreted the same way. 
In its extreme form, this meant that one must obey authority, even if 
it is judged wrong.

Alice Miller has presented convincing evidence that Hitler was 
emotionally and physically abused as a child.  His father was in every 
sense, a totalitarian dictator.  It is conjectured that his father was 
half-Jewish and illegitimate and acted out his rage on his children.  
Hitler was re-enacting his own childhood, using millions of innocent 
Jews as his scapegoats.

But Hitler could never have done this alone.  What seems beyond all 
human logic is the fact that one madman could corrupt an entire 
elitist nation like Germany.

Erik Erikson has suggested that Hitler mobilized the dissociated rage 
of millions of adolescents.  He was an adolescent gang leader who came 
as a brother and offered a matrix which institutionalized their rage.  
This rage was their unconscious response to their cruel upbringing and 
was neatly denied in the myth of the "Master Race".  The scapegoated 
Jews represented the victimized part of themselves as they identified 
with their aggressive totalitarian parent.  This national "acting out" 
was the logical result of an authoritarian family life in which one or 
two persons, the parents, have all the power and can whip, scold, 
punish, humiliate, manipulate, abuse or neglect their children, all 
under the banner of parenting and pedagogy.

In the autocratic German family, mother and children were totally 
subservient to the father's will, his moods and whims.  The children 
had to accept humiliation and injustice unquestionably and gratefully. 
 Obedience was the primary rule of conduct.

Hitler's family structure was the prototype of a totalitarian regime.  
His upbringing, although more severe, was not unlike that of the rest 
of the German nation.  It was because of this similar family structure 
that Hitler could entice the German People.

Alice Miller has said that a single person can gain control over the 
masses if he learns to use to his own advantage the social system 
under which they were raised.

At the Nuremberg war trials, murderer after murderer pleaded innocence 
on the basis of obedience to authority.  People such as Adolph 
Eichmann and Rudolph Hess were trained to obedience so successfully 
that this training never lost its effectiveness.  To the end that they 
carried out orders without questioning the content.
		   -------------------------------

They carried them out just as the "poisonous pedagogy" recommended, 
not out of any sense of their inherent rightness, but simply because 
they were orders.
----------------

"This explains, "writes Alice Miller, "why Eichmann was able to listen 
to the most moving testimony of the witnesses at his trial without the 
slightest display of emotion, yet when he forgot to stand up at the 
reading of the verdict, he blushed with embarrassment when this was 
brought to his attention."

Rudolph Hess' strict Catholic upbringing is well known.  His very 
religious father wanted him to be a missionary.  Hess writes:

	"I...was as deeply religious as was possible for a boy of
	 my age...I had been brought up by my parents to be 
	 respectful and obedient toward all adults...It was 
	 constantly impressed on me in forceful terms that I must
	 obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents,
	 teachers, priests, and indeed all adults, including
	 servants, and that nothing must distract me from this
	 duty.  Whatever they said was always right.
                -----------------------------------

I believe that Nuremberg was a decisive turning point in poisonous 
pedagogy.  Obedience, the star in the Christians' crown of glory, the 
metarule of all modern western family systems, the glory of the 
Lutheran Mandates had reached its zenith of disclosure in terms of its 
potential for destruction.  Suddenly the childhood idealism of the 
family structure was exposed as devastatingly destructive and with it 
the whole substructure of life-denying rules.

Hitler and black Nazism are a cruel caricature of what can happen in 
modern Western society if we do not stop promoting and proliferating 
family rules that kill the souls of human beings.  Nazism marks the 
end of an epoch.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p19-20}

The Insidiousness of Total Obedience

Mine is an urgent, even frantic, cry for people to understand how
insidious are these rules which form the poisonous pedagogy.  Not 
insidious in themselves, they become insidious as absolutized and 
totalistic law of human formation.  Obedience and orderliness are 
essential to any family and social structure.  Law as a guide to human 
safety through its protective structure is essential to human 
fulfillment.  Learning to be agreeable, cooperative, unselfish and 
meek are useful and valuable.

However it was obedience without critical judgment an inner freedom 
which led to black Nazism, Jonestown and Mylai.  It was obedience 
absolutized and cut off from human sensitivity and natural law.

Similarly, cleanliness and orderliness without spontaneity lead to 
obsessive enslavement.  Law and intellectualism without vitality and 
emotions lead to mechanical coldness and inhuman, heartless control.  
Considerateness, meekness, unselfishness without inner freedom, inner 
independence and critical judgment lead to "doormat," people-pleasing 
type person, who can be ruled by almost any authority figure.

Soul-murder is the basic problem in the world today; it is the crisis 
in the family.  We programmatically deny children their feelings, 
especially anger and sexual feelings.  Once a person loses contact 
with his own feelings, he loses contact with his body.  We also 
monitor and control our children's thoughts and desires.  To have 
one's feelings, body, desires and thoughts controlled is to lose one's 
self.  To lose one's self is to have one's soul murdered.

"To live and never really know who I am" is the greatest tragedy of 
all.  It is this tragic sense which releases the rage that dominates 
our world.  This rage is either directed by means of projections 
against the _strangers_ or it is directed against ourselves as the 
shame which fuels our addictions, or is "acted out" in crimes and 
violence.

My contention is that most families are dysfunctional because our 
rules for normalcy are dysfunctional.  The important issue is to find 
out what species of flawed relating your family specialized in.  Once 
you know what happened to you, you can do something about it.  If 
Thoreau was right when he said that the mass of mankind lives lives of 
quiet desperation, then most people do not know what happened to them.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.23-25}

Chapter 2 - What Almost No One Knows About Families - The Family
            As A System

	"The image of self and the image of family are
		reciprocally interdependent."
						N. Ackerman
			  The Psychodynamics of Family Life

In 1957 a researcher named Christian Midelfort working at Lutheran
Hospital in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, published his findings.  He had been 
working with the relationships between his depressed, paranoid, 
schizophrenic and neurotic clients and their families.  He concluded 
his study with the words: "This study substantiates the idea that all 
mental illness develops in a family and is present in several members 
of the family."  (The Family in Psychotherapy)

Almost simultaneously in 1957, John Howells in Ipswich, England, after 
working extensively with families concluded:

	"In family psychiatry a family is not regarded as a
	 background to...help the present patient along.  
	 Family psychiatry accepts the family itself as the 
	 patient the presenting member being viewed as a
	 sign of family psychopathology."
					   Family Psychiatry

This type of research reached a zenith in the work of Margaret Singer 
and Lyman Wynne at the National Institute of Mental Health at 
Bethesda, Maryland.  Wynne and Singer suggested that schizophrenia is 
not just an entity associated with certain clinical personalities but 
is caused by the manner in which a person is socialized.  Wynne began 
to see schizophrenia in terms of the family system.  He boldly stated 
that it was a gross oversimplification to see the schizophrenic child 
as isolated in his sickness.  Rather he writes:

	"All family members, offspring and parents, are caught
	 up in reciprocal victimizing - and rescuing processes
	 in which they are all tragically enmeshed."

				Exploring the Base for Family Therapy

In 1951, Gregory Bateson began work which would engender an 
interpersonal notion of schizophrenia based on faulty and crazy-making 
communication.  Commanding children to be spontaneous or telling them 
it is their duty to love their parents came to be known as 
'double-binding'.  To command one to do something that by definition 
cannot be commanded is crazy-making.

Virginia Satir aided Bateson in the development of a theory of 
emotional illness based on a faulty and paradoxical pattern of 
interpersonal communication.  Satir later elaborated her own theory of 
family system pathology.  Others followed in research and thinking on 
the relationship between the individual who is considered emotionally 
diseased and the family from which he came.  Murray Bowen and Warren 
Brodey added a multigenerational focus.  Bowen established the role of 
the grandparents as significant in several cases.  In one case he 
writes:

	"The grandparents combined immaturities were acquired by 
	 one child who was most attached to the mother.  When this
	 child married a spouse with an equal degree of immaturity
	 it resulted in one child (the patient) with a high degree
	 of immaturity."
				A Family Concept of Schizophrenia

Basically Bowen saw the following scenario as the dominant pattern in 
producing emotional illness.  Two people, carrying unresolved 
conflicts with their parents, get married.  As the intimacy voltage 
rises in the marriage, these conflicts become more intense.  The 
partners try to settle these issues with an emotional divorce, "a 
marked emotional distance".  Very often both agree not to disagree and 
establish a pseudo-intimacy.  The marriage looks good on the outside.  
There is a facade of happiness.  But beneath the surface there is 
struggle, pain, and loneliness.

When a child is born, it is "triangled" into the system.  The child 
becomes the focus of the relationship.  The child is locked into the 
system and finds it virtually impossible to leave the family.  This 
child often becomes emotionally disturbed and is the identified 
patient who is sent to therapy.  Actually the identified patient is 
only a symptom of the emotionally disturbed marriage.  And the 
patient's so-called emotional illness can be seen and understood only 
in relation to the emotional system of which he is a part.  There is 
emotional contagion in the whole family.  The one who is labeled 
"sick" is the symptom-bearer of the whole emotional system itself, 
which is sick.

Many brilliant and innovative therapists began to put these theories 
into practice with some extraordinary results.  Salvadore Minuchin, 
Carl Whittaker, Jay Haley and Virginia Satir are notable examples.

Family system thinking is grounded in the fact that we humans are 
inextricably social.  My first beliefs about myself were formed from 
my mother's feelings and desires about me.  My self-definition 
literally began in the womb.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.25-27}

The Shaping Of Our Lives

Data now shows that from the sixth month on, the fetus lives an active
emotional life.  In his book, 'The Secret Life of the Unborn Child", 
Dr. Thomas Verny summarizes the current data on the "Life of the 
Fetus:"
	1. The fetus can hear, experience, taste and on a primitive
	   level, even learn and feel in utero.
	
	2. What the fetal child feels and perceives begins shaping
	   her attitudes and expectations about herself.  These
	   attitudes results from the messages she receives from her
	   mother.  

	3. What matters if the mother's attitude.  Chronic anxiety
	   or wrenching ambivalence about motherhood can leave a
	   deep scar on an unborn child's personality.  As also joy,	
	   elation and anticipation can contribute significantly to 
	   the emotional development of a healthy child.

	   [Thought I'd vary the pronouns a bit....(;^)]

	4. The father's feelings are also significant.  How a man
	   feels about his wife and unborn child is one of the most
	   important factors in determining the success of pregnancy.

Thus our lives are shaped from the beginning by our parents.  After 
our birth our self-image comes from out primary caregiver's eyes.  How 
I see and feel about myself is exactly what I see in my caregiver's 
eyes.  How my mothering person feels about me in these earliest years 
is how I will feel about myself.  If my parents are shame-based and 
dysfunctional, they will feel inadequate and needy.  In such a state 
they cannot be there for me.  They will need me to be there for them.

Our reality is shaped from the beginning by a relationship, we are we, 
before we are I.  Our "I-ness" comes from our "we-ness".  Our 
individuality comes from the social context of our lives.  This is 
basic foundation for the new thinking of the family.

Vincent Foley in his "Introduction To Family Therapy" uses Tennessee 
Williams' play, "The Glass Menagerie", to illustrate the family 
system's viewpoint.  If one separates Laura from her family system 
(mother, brother), she appears to be a girl living in a fantasy and 
unreality.  She could be judged schizophrenic.  She is sick and the 
labled patient.

However, if we look at Laura from a system's viewpoint, we get a very 
different picture.  We see her interacrtion with her mother and 
brother as crucial to keeping the family together.  She is no longer 
the sick, frumpy sister waiting for a "gentleman caller", but a person 
who is critical to the balance of the family system.  The tensions 
between the son, Tom, and the mother, Amanda, are only tempered and 
kept in check by Laura.  When the voltage of these tensions gets too 
high, Laura steps in and gets Tom and Amanda to focus in on her.  This 
distracts them andlowers the voltage.  Thus, Laura performs a crucial 
and critical role.  She keeps the family together.

The family system functions precisely because of Laura's intervention 
and not in spite of it.  One could argue that it is blatantly false to 
label Laura sick.  One could even call her the caretaker and 
unity-preserver of the family.  More precisely, one should say that 
the Winfield family system itself is sick and Laura is only a symptom 
of that system.  The shift from the person to the interpersonal is not 
just another way of viewing pathology, but a totally new and different 
concept of pathology.

{From: Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.27-28}

Families as Systems

The family as a system is a new reality.  Only 35 years old, the
concept of families as systems helps explain a bewildering array of
behaviors.  The very notion of mental illness is no longer useful, 
since it implies some intrapsychic phenomena.  The family systems 
model shows how each person in a family plays a part in the whole 
system.  Family systems help us understand why children in the same 
family often seem so different.  And seeing the family as a system 
helps us to see how the poisonous pedagogy is carried from generation 
to generation.

Mental illness is never and isolatable, individualistic phenomenon.  
The theory of family systems accepts the family itself as the patient, 
with the presenting member being viewed as the 'sign' of family 
psychopathy.  The identified patient then becomes the symptom of the 
family system's dysfunctionality.  The family itself is a symptom of 
society at large.

Over and over again, I have seen this family systems reality in my 
work.  In our teen-age drug-abuse program in Los Angeles, some 50 sets 
of parents (with drug-abusing teenagers) have been through a special 
clinical enrichment series.  As they see themselves in this seminar, 
they own the dysfunctionality of their marriages.  They help us focus 
the drug behavior of their kids as an "acting out" to take the heat 
off their parents' marriages.  In a certain sense, these kids have 
kept their families together by being drug addicts.  They are  the
identified patients.  But their systemic function is to get the 
family some help, and indeed, they have succeeded.  Each of these 
families bears the scars of the poisonous pedagogy.  Each operated 
their families on the basis of these rules.  Each parent had been 
brought up in families using these rules.

Systems were first studied in biology.  The German biologist Ludwig 
von Bertalanffy defined systems as "complexes of elements in 
interaction".  He went on to study systems and to deduce a set of 
principles which apply to all systems.  His position is called general 
systems theory. 

I shall spend the rest of this chapter summarizing in simple terms how 
his general system theory applies to families as systems.

Wholeness

The first principle of systems is that of wholeness.  The whole is 
greater than the sum of its parts.  This means that the elements added 
together do not produce the system.  The system results from the 
interaction of the elements.  Without the interaction, there is no 
system.

The system of the family in 'The Glass Menagerie' is not the sum of 
the individual personalities of Amanda, Laura and Tom Winfield, but 
the vital outgoing interaction between them.  Von Bertalanffy uses the 
term 'wholeness' to characterize such interaction.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.28-30}

Families as Systems (cont'd)

Relationship

The second characteristic of a system is 'relationship'.  Any family
system is composed of connecting relationships.  To study the family
as a system, one must see the various connections between the 
individualized persons and how they interact.  Each person in the 
system relates to every other one in a similar fashion.  Each is 
partly a whole and wholly a part.  Each person within the system 
has his own unique systemic individuality as well as carrying an 
imprint of the whole family system.  I am my family as well as 
whatever uniqueness I have actualized as a person.  I am individual 
and group simultaneously.

A good way to grasp this property of relationship proportionality is 
by looking at a new kind of photography that deals with what are 
called "holograms'.  A hologram is a three-dimensional picture made 
from interference patterns of a certain kind of light beam.  If a 
hologram is divided, each half contains the whole picture.  If cut in 
quarters, the whole picture is retained, etc.

Many researchers believe that all organisms are holograms, that the 
human brain and the universe itself is holographic.  The hologram is a 
good way to grasp the family system.  If I am taken away from my 
family, all the realities of that family exist within me.  My deep 
unconscious has been totally related to all the persons in the system 
and my reality has been formed by my relationship with each person in 
the system.  The notion of wholeness is a way of expressing the deep 
organismic unconscious unity of any system and the blood-connected 
family system especially.  The connection of blood which is never 
undone is more profound than those of friendship.

An example from my own counseling practice may make this clearer.  
Several years ago a couple came to me because of their son.  Both 
parents were highly achieving professionals.  They were extremely 
intellectual and had almost a disdain for emotions.  They would fit 
most models of work addiction.  They were sexually dysfunctional in 
their marriage.  They had not engaged in intercourse in five years.  
Each, however, had a fairly elaborate secret fantasy sex life.  Their 
marriage was non-intimate and lonely.  The only thing they really 
enjoyed doing was eating out at good restaurants, which they did at 
least four times a week.  The nine-year-old by was their only child.  
He was the reason they came to see me.  He was failing in school and 
at least 100 pounds overweight.  He was unchildlike.  He was somber, 
reclusive, had almost no affect and acted like an old man.  Over 
several months I learned that he was compulsively masturbating.  He 
revealed this with great shame.  He had a secret ritual for 
masturbating, which was also a source of shame.

What was clear to me was that he was the symptom bearer of his parents 
marital dysfunction.  He made overt their loneliness, their 
non-communication, their secret sexual shame and he balanced their 
intense drive for achievement by underachievement.  They liked to eat 
and he was grossly overweight.

Since he had started counseling, their relationship had improved.  He 
had been taken to several counselors before me.  Each had treated him 
differently.  One therapist had put him on anti-depressant drugs.  
None had treated him as the symptom bearer of his family system's 
dysfunction.  My work was also unsuccessful because the parents 
refused to cooperate in seeing their marriage as the child's problem.

Family systems can be either closed systems or highly flexible open 
systems.  In closed systems the connections, structures and 
relationships are fixed and rigid and the process patterns remain 
essentially the same.  This is useful knowledge when examining the 
family's problems.  Whether the subject is money, sex, children or 
in-laws, the pattern will be the same.

Family systems, like all systems, relate through a process called 
feedback.  It is the feedback loops that maintain the systems 
functioning.

For example, in the While family, Dad is an alcoholic.  He gets drunk 
and can't go to work the next day.  Mom calls in sick for him.  The 
children don't ask questions and pretend to believe that Dad is sick.  
While they purportedly do all this to save his job and the families 
economic security, they in fact are enabling him to remain an 
alcoholic.  He doesn't have to bear the consequences of his 
irresponsible behavior.  He will go through a period of remorse and 
begin drinking again.  Soon the exact same sequence will take place.

In closed systems families the feedback loops are negative and work to 
keep the system frozen and unchanging.  This is called dynamic 
homeostasis.  The more one tries to change it, the more it stays the 
same.  These rules can be overt, such as "children are to be seen and 
not heard", or covert, such as father's loud and boisterous chauvinism 
with its covert message that women are to be feared and controlled.  
These covert rules are often a form of negative feedback.  The 
poisonous pedagogy is carried both overtly and covertly.  The 
poisonous pedagogy produced shame-based people who marry other 
shame-based people.  Each had idealized their parents and their 
parents' rules.  They raise their children the way their parents 
raised them.  The children are shamed in the same way their parents 
were shamed.  The cycle goes on for generations.

    re: -.1
    
        This is easily seen as a Pavlovian response-type cycle.
    Clearly there is "reinforcement" here...actually, it is more 
    correctly considered a "payoff" for the individuals involved.
    Unless and until someone decides to break the cycle, the reasons
    will always remain the same.  "Reasons" or blame or excuses, as
    I have pointed out in other notes, are simply a cop-out method
    of avoiding responsibility.  If one wants to be free of the ties
    that keep one from joy, etc., then responsibility is the way to
    do it.  So, what I am not taking the time here to elaborate on,
    which I have done before in other words, is to say that responsibility
    is the greatest freedom.  In the example listed in your note, 
    it is up to the parents to take responsibility for the child(ren)
    until such time as he/she/they can do it themselves.  It then becomes
    the child's responsibility to make the changes necessary to remove
    the payoffs from the negative reality creation.
          Believe it or not...the "systems" concept you presented applies
    to more than just families.  It applies just as easily, with less
    clear impact usually (probably,) to the "extended family", i.e.,
    co-workers, clubs, organizations, governments, the world...
    This is another way of saying that our thoughts, etc., hold these
    "extended family" members precisely where they are.  Another way
    to put it is that if we take responsibility for change, then the
    reality will be different.   Why? Because we have "freed" them from
    their place in the "system."  Blowing up whaling ships to prevent
    whaling can be seen as an example of this.  How?  By recognizing
    that simply by acknowledging the position they have in the system,
    by battling them "on their turf", the reinforcements (or payoffs)
    that *they* hold are able to remain intact.  In order to change
    them, we must first change.  
         I recognize that this example is not clearly delineated, and
    I do not wish to gather controversy here, but perhaps the point
    has been made clearly enough to recognize the extension of the
    thoughts applied in -.1 to the thoughts I offered.
    
    
    Frederick
    

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.30-31}

New Belief Systems

Positive feedback can break up the frozen status quo of a system. 
Positive feedback challenges destructive and unexamined rules, both 
overt and covert.  Positive feedback comes in the form of new belief 
systems which precipitate new ways of acting by making old positions 
untenable.  Challenging the assumptions of the poisonous pedagogy is a 
way to give positive feedback.

It is not this or that person who needs to be isolated and labeled 
"sick".  It is in looking at the way the whole system operates by 
initiating movement through the use of feedback which changes how the 
system works.  

On my television series, I attempted to visually represent families 
with a six-foot stainless steel mobile created by a wonderful artist 
named Trudy Sween.  To illustrate the dymanic homeostatic principle, I 
would touch the mobile at the beginning of the program and point out 
later on how it always came to rest in exactly the same position it 
had started.

I also illustrated the inter-connecting inter-relational principle by 
showing that when I touched one part of the mobile, every part moved.

An open family system could be illustrated by keeping the mobile 
gentle motion all the time.

Family Rules

Family systems fail, not because of bad people, but because of bad 
information loops, bad feedback in the form of bad rules of behavior.  
The same is true of society.  This is important.  Our parents are not 
bad people for transmitting the poisonous pedagogy.  The rules are 
bad.

Families have a wide range of governing rules.  There are financial, 
household, celebrational, social, educational, emotional, vocational, 
sexual, somal (sickness and health) and parenting rules.  Each of 
these rules has attitudinal, behavioral and communicational aspects.

A household rule may be:

	1. Attitudinal: the house should be neat and clean.
	2. Behavioral: dishes are cleaned after each use.
	3. Communicational: Dad verbally reprimands if dishes are
			    not washed.

Working out a compromise between each one's family of origin rules is 
a major task in a marriage.

All systems have principles and rules like the ones we have been 
discussing.  Likewise, all systems have components.  In a family 
system the chief components are the mother's relationship to herself 
and her relationship to the father and the father's relationship to 
himself and his relationship with the mother.  The status of these 
relationships dominates the system.  If the marriage is functional, 
the children have a chance to be fully functional.  If the marriage 
component is dysfunctional, the family members are stressed and adapt 
dysfunctionally.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.31-32}

Fulfilling The Family's Needs

Like all social systems a family has basic needs.  The family needs: a 
sense of worth, a sense of physical security or productivity, a sense 
of intimacy and relatedness, a sense of unified structure, a sense of 
responsibility, a need for challenge and stimulation, a sense of joy 
and affirmation and a spiritual grounding.  A family also needs a 
mother and a father who are committed in a basically healthy 
relationship and who are secure enough to parent their children 
without contamination.

Suppose Mother is a hypochondriac who obsesses on her every ailment, 
is often bedridden and uses illness to avoid responsibility.  Because 
Mother is unavailable, the marriage has an intimacy vacuum. The family 
system needs a marriage.  Someone in the system will need to be an 
equal partner with Dad in order to make a marriage.  One of the 
daughters will get the job.  She becomes the Surrogate Spouse.  
Another child may take over the parenting function while Dad is busy 
working.  This child becomes Super-responsible and a Little Parent.  
Another person in the system may be the one who adds joy to the family 
by being cute and funny.  This person relieves a lot of the tension 
between Mom and Dad.  He is the Mascot.

Another child will take the role of Saint and Hero, becoming a 
straight "A"" student, becoming president of his class and winning 
honors.  This person gives the family a sense of dignity.

Another child may take on Dad's unexpressed anger about Mom by acting 
antisocially.  He may use drugs, get into trouble at school or start 
failing his courses.  This offers Mom and Dad a distraction.  They may 
actually become more intimate by becoming concerned over this child.  
This child becomes the family Scapegoat.

in fact, like Laura Wingfield, this child is the symptom bearer of the 
family's dysfunction.  The Scapegoat is often the service bearer for 
the family.  Out of the problems the Scapegoat causes, the whole 
family is often drawn into treatment.

I've capitalized these roles to show that they are rigid.  They result 
from the needs of the system, not from anyone's individual choice.  
Nature abhors a vacuum.  The children automatically work to provide 
for the system's overt and covert needs.

Everyone in the family is affected by Mom's and Dad's relationship.  
As each adapts to the stress in a particular role or roles, each loses 
his or her own true identity.  As a role becomes more and more rigid, 
the family system closes more and more into a frozen trance-like 
state.  Once this freezing occurs, the family is stuck.  And the more 
each one tries to help by playing the role, the more the family stays 
the same.

In healthy family systems there are healthy roles.  The parental role 
is mainly to model.  Parents model:

	How to be a man or woman.
	How to be a husband or wife.
	How to be a father or mother.
	How to be in an intimate relationship.
	How to be functional human beings.	
	How to have good boundaries.

Parents also play the role of nourishing teachers, giving their 
children time, attention and direction.

Children especially need direction at their role to be learners.  They 
are curious and filled with wonder.  They need to learn how to use 
their powers to know, love, feel, choose and imagine.  They need to 
learn to use these powers effectively and creatively to get their 
basic needs.

In healthy family systems the roles are flexible and rotating.  The 
mobile is gently moving.  There is healthy role reversal and flexible 
interchange.  Mom may be the scapegoat one month, Dad the next and one 
of the children the next.

    
    I found this ina Science of Mind magazine and I think it
    relates to this topic.
    
    The Evolving Relationship - Addictive Relationships in an
      Addictive Society
    
    by Jordan Paul, Ph.D.
       Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
    
    Reprinted without permission.
    
      The belief that we're responsible for other's feelings makes
    addicts out of all of us.  As long as we operate from this belief,
    our ability to feel good is tied to the feelings of others.  We're
    stuck being protected, unable to learn, and therefore unable to
    move into our Higher Selves.
    
      We have been well trained to become addicts.  As children, very
    few of us were taught how to rely on ourselves for our happiness.
    instead, we were raised to be dependent on things outside ourselves
    for good feelings.  Everything from advertisements to love songs
    taught us that someone or something will solve our problems for
    us - whether they be loneliness, alienation, unpopularity, or
    unhappiness.  Or we discovered on our own that we can blot out the
    reality of our feelings by overeating, mindlessly watching 
    television, having sex, or popping a pill.
      
      At the root of all addictions are the many false, self-limiting
    beliefs we have about ourselves.  These are beliefs about our
    unlovability, inadequacy, inability to know what's right for us.
    The years of being told that what we want and feel is wrong have
    left us lost, seeking answers outside ourselves, running from
    one pursuit to another, and searching in all the wrong areas
    for answers regarding how to find happiness, satisfaction, peace,
    joy, intimacy, intensity, passion, and a love of life.
    
      Almost everyone believes that happiness comes froma connecting
    to another person, and connection is truly a wonderful experience.
    But when you are dependent on another for happiness, that's not
    love.  When you _need_ that person to make you feel whole, worth-
    while, and happy, you are not being personally responsible and
    not in your Higher Self.  What happens with most people is that
    they don't know how to find themselves on the inside, so their
    happiness is not coming from the lack of connection with the
    other person, but from a lack of connection with themselves.
    
      The false promise is that another person giving you love will
    solve your problems, make you happy, give you the security you
    desire, make you feel good about yourself, give you the aliveness
    and clarity that you need to conquer the world.  Love does have
    that power, however the power comes not from getting love but
    from being loving.  

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.33-35}

Birth Order Characteristics

One current model of family process work illustrates another aspect of
family systems thinking.  This model has to do with birth order; is 
predicated on the needs of any social system, rather than the specific 
needs of dysfunctional systems.  The latter is the basis for Role 
Theory.

One the Bach Model every social system has four basic needs:
	
	1. The need for productivity.
	2. The need for emotional maintenance.
	3. The need for relationship.
	4. The need for unity.

As children are born into a family, these needs will be taken 
accordingly to their birth order.

First Child

Usually the first child bears the family's conscious and explicit 
expectations.  The first child carries more performance expectations 
than any other child due to the productivity needs of the system.  The 
first child carries the family's dominant values and themes and will 
react to and identify most with father (the productivity manager).  A
first child will make decisions and hold values consistent with or in
exact opposition to the father.

The behavioral patterns of first children tend to be:

a. They are other-oriented and socially aware.  Firsts will be most
   conscious of social norms and images.
b. Firsts thrive on the explicit and obvious.  They want detail and 
   tend to go by the letter rather than the spirit.
c. Because of the expectation and pressure due to parental youths
   and overcoercion ("first child jitters"), first children often
   have trouble developing high self-esteem.


Second Child

Second children naturally relate to the emotional maintenance needs of 
the system.  Seconds respond to the covert and unconscious rules in 
the family system.  A second child will normally bond with (react to 
or identify with) the mother.  A second child will make decisions and 
hold values vis a vis the mother.

The behavioral patterns of second children are dominantly as follows:

a. They will act out the unconscious expectations and needs of others
   as well as their own.  Seconds will often be an extension of 
   mother's unconscious needs or desires.  A male second may become
   just like mother wished she could have married.  A female second
   may become promiscuous because the mother secretly wanted to be.

b. Second children carry the covert emotional issues in the family and
   so often have trouble putting together their head and their hearts.
   What this means is that seconds will often be intuitively aware
   that something gamey is going on without knowing what or why.  They
   will pick up "hidden agendas" immediately but not be able to 
   express clearly what they feel.  Because of this, second children
   often seem naive and puzzled.  Subjectively the second child often
   feels crazy.


Third Child

The third child hooks into the relationship needs of the system.  In 
the family system's process, thirds will identify with the marriage 
relationship.  They will be the best symbol of what is going on in the 
marriage.  In the example I previously gave of the highly achieving 
professional couple, the son is an 'only child'.  Only children will 
often carry all the family process functions.  In a healthy functional 
marriage this can be excellent.  And in healthy familys' only children 
fare well.  In dysfunctional marriages, the only child carries the 
covert dysfunction.  My client, the nine-year-old boy, was an almost 
perfect readout for what was going on in the parent's marriage.  He 
was overweight; their only couple interest was eating.  He was 
sexually secretive; they had sexual secrets.  He was lonely and showed 
little emotion; they were lonely and had almost no feeling in their 
relationship.  He was non-communicative; they had almost no 
communication in their marriage.

The third child is the best purveyor of the marriage tensions and has 
a hard time establishing a separate identity.

Third child behavior patterns are generally as follows:

a. Has relatedness as his main concern.
b. Appears very uninvolved, but is actually very involved.
c. Feels ambivalent and has trouble making choices.


Fourth Child

Takes on the unification needs of the family system.  The fourth child 
will catch and collect the unresolved family tensions.  This might be 
any relational tension in the system.  A fourth is like a family radar 
picking up and identifying with every action and interaction in the 
family system.

From a behavioral pattern point of view, fourth children feel very 
responsible yet powerless and helpless to really do anything about 
what is going on in the family.  Fourths will often resort to cutsey 
mascot-like behavior to distract pain and take care of the family.  
Fourths will often appear infantile and indulged.  They may often be 
disruptive and scapegoat the family in order to take care of it.  

The Bach material is still very much theory and certainly _should not_ 
be adopted in any rigid fashion.  This analysis can be useful in 
helping one identify certain personality tendencies that are more 
systematically induced than part of one's natural endowment.

Any child beyond the fourth repeat the sequence.  Fifth child operates 
like a first child, sixth child like a second child, etc.

Each family system is part of a larger system called a subculture.  
This involves nationally and religious preference.  Each subculture 
has its principles, its rules and components.  Subcultures are part of 
cultures or nations.  Each subculture and culture have an impact on 
the formation of rules and how rules are enforced.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p36-37}

The Family Trance

Another way to think of a family system is to think of a group of
people in a hypnotic trance.  Actually trance is a naturally occurring 
state.  Most of us go in and out of trance many times during the 
course of a day.  We daydream, we get absorbed in future fantasies, we 
relive old memories from "the past", we watch television, read novels 
or go to movies.  All of these affect a state of trance.

In a trance a more holistic state of conscious absorption exists.  
Children are natural trance subjects because of their naivete and 
trust, as well as the powerful interpersonal bonding with their 
parents.  Once a trance state is affected, all that one learns in that 
state operates like a post-hypnotic suggestion.  If Mom tells you you 
will never be as smart as your sister, this message will operate until 
the trance is broken.  It is broken by leaving home, growing up and 
breaking the bond with Mother.

The trance also functions in a circular feedback fashion.  Each person 
is impacted by everyone else's behavior.  Like a mobile, you touch one 
part and all the other parts are affected.

The family trance is created by both parents' individual interactions 
with the children and by the marriage itself.  Father's behavior 
impacts Mother, who responds or reacts with behavior that impacts 
Father.

For example, Mom may nag at Dad because he won't talk.  When Dad is 
asked why he won't talk, he says it's because Mom nags and bitches.  
So Mom bitches and nags.  A circular loop is thus created.  The 
children eat, breathe and are formed out of this dyadic trance action. 
So the whole is the trance that all the parts participate in.

Part of every family trance is the way each person learns about his 
emotions.  The family dictates what feelings you can have and express. 
The parents model this.  I call this the original family SPELL.  SPELL 
stands for our Source People's Emotional Language Legacy.  The fantasy 
bond is also part of our original SPELL.  We all start our lives in 
our family SPELL.  We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in 
early infancy.

The role of bonding is especially important in trance process.  The 
children bond with one or both of their parents.  This bonding is a 
powerful form of rapport.  Rapport is the name for the process of 
becoming another person.  In rapport we enter the other's model of the 
world.  We take on the other's map of reality.  Bonding is the process 
by which the children are drawn into the trance created by their 
parents.

In dysfunctional systems this bonding has severe and disastrous 
consequences.  A child who is physically, sexually, emotionally, 
intellectually or morally abused will form a "traumatic bonding" to 
such abuse.  He will experience the abuse as normal, since he doesn't 
know anything else or any other way to be in a family.  Often he will 
identify with the persecuting parent.  The child does this as a way to 
feel powerful.  Once identified, the child carries the parent's 
feelings and beliefs.

For example, Jill, one of my clients in Los Angeles had a violent and 
verbally abusive father.  He shamed and humiliated her in front of her 
boyfriends.  He constantly accused her of being seductive and 
prophesied that she would be raped.  Jill hated her father and had 
repressed anger for him.

When Jill married, she found a Caspar Milquetoast type of man who she 
criticized, maligned and verbally abused.  She copied her offender 
father's behavior and vented her rage at her father onto her husband.  
One of her daughters was raped four times!

The same kind of dynamic operates in children who have been victimized 
by the poisonous pedagogy.  They identify with their abusing parents 
and reenact the same abuse on their children by vehemently adhering to 
their parent's way of parenting.

Traumatic bonding and identification with the abuser explains the 
multigenerational carrying of diseased attitudes.  Such identification 
is an ego defense and allows the child to survive.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.37-38}

The Family Trance Cycle

1. Family systems function through feedback loops which are cybernetic 
   and circular, rather than casual.  Therefore, in a family system 
   everyone is responsible but no one is to blame.  

   This organismic approach avoids labels, such as "sick" and "mentally 
   ill".  It sees dysfunction as an organismic holistic imbalance due to 
   inadequate rules or belief systems, which result in frozen feedback 
   loops and circularity.  This approach eliminates the need to blame 
   the scapegoat with diagnostic labels.  It eliminates the belief that 
   illness is the breakdown of the person's intrapsychic machinery.  it 
   is the family that is diseased and not the individual person.  The 
   individual does however, behave in a dysfunctional manner.

2. The whole is the behaviorally induced trance.  In an open family 
   system, the trance can change because of the flexible choices 
   afforded by the healthy environment created by the marital dyad.  In 
   a closed family system, the trance becomes rigid and frozen, so that 
   any member can start the induction by his own particular role 
   behavior.  This is why one can leave his family and still be in it.  
   People from dysfunctional families tend to stay in their rigid roles 
   and carry dysfunctionality into their later life.
   
3. The family is an incorporation of the subculture and culture of one's 
   upbringing.  Subcultures and cultures are created by individuals.  
   They form the social construction of reality which is called the 
   "consensis reality".  This "consensis reality" is what all agree to.  
   Families are created according to the rules of the consensus reality. 
   The current consensus reality rules for parenting are the poisonous 
   pedagogy.
   
4. Systems theory explains how the poisonous pedagogy can be passed on 
   for generations.  It is in understanding your own family system that 
   you can rediscover how this poisonous pedagogy sets you up to play a 
   role or act out a script.  Connecting with your family history you 
   can rediscover how this poisonous pedagogy can be passed on for 
   generations.  It is in understanding your own family system that you 
   can rediscover how this poisonous pedagogy sets you up to play a role 
   or act out a script.  Connecting with your family history, you can 
   discover what happened to your true self.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.41-42}

Chapter 3 - Profile Of A Functional Family System?

	 	 "If I am I because I am I
	    And you are you because you are you,
		   then I am and you are.
	     But if I am I because you are you,
	      and you are you because I am I,
	       then I am not and you are not."

				- Rabbi Mendel

Consider this the beginning of your quest for new and fruitful
self-awareness.  Let your major focus be on your family of origin.  
Your original family was the unit from which you came.  If it was a 
functional unit, that family was the source of your individuality and 
strength and emotional buttress.  Your family of origin, if 
functional, gave you a permanent conviction of belonging.  Your 
original family is where you lived out the most passionate and 
powerful of all your human experiences.

As you examine what a functional healthy family is, you can focus also 
on the family you are now in or the one you are creating.

There are healthy and fully functioning families.  To say that 
something is functional is to say that everything works.  My car, for 
example, may have rust spots on the trunk, but if it drives well, then 
it is fully functional.  It works.

A functional, healthy family is one in which all the members are fully 
functional and all the relationships between the members are fully 
functional.  As human beings, all family members have available to 
them the use of all their human powers.  They use these powers to 
cooperate, individuate and to get their collective and individual 
needs met.  A functional family is the healthy soil out of which 
individuals can become mature human beings.  This involves the 
following:

  a. The family is a survival and growth unit.
  b. The family is the soil which provides the emotional needs of the
     various members.  These needs include a balance between autonomy
     and dependency and social and sexual training.
  c. A healthy family provides the growth and development of each
     member including the parents.
  d. The family is the place where the attainment of self-esteem takes
     place.
  e. The family is a major unit in socialization and is crucial for a
     society if it is to endure.

If the family is the soil for mature peoplemaking, what does it mean 
to be a mature person?

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.42-43}

What Is Maturity?

A mature person is one who has differentiated himself from all others
and established clearly marked ego boundaries.  A mature person has a 
good identity.  Such a person is able to relate to his family system 
in meaningful ways without being joined or fused to them.  This means 
that one is emotionally free and can choose to move near without anger 
or absorption and move away without guilt.

For example, one of the grown-up children in a family may decide to go 
on a Christmas holiday trip with their own family or network of 
friends.  In a functional family, this would probably occasion some 
sadness in the other family members that the family member would not 
be home for Christmas.  But the parents and other family members would 
be glad that their fellow family member is happy and has a network of 
friends.

In a dysfunctional family the other members would be angry.  The 
parent would more than likely be manipulating with guilt and the 
person staying away for the holidays would surely feel guilty.  Let's 
say they felt so guilty that they canceled their plans and came home 
for the Christmas celebration.  They would be resentful and angry 
while they were there.  This latter scenario is common in 
dysfunctional families.

The process of differentiation of self is essential to us all.  The 
difference between individuation and belonging is one's place on a 
continuum.  We are all somewhere on the continuum and all in need of 
becoming more differentiated.  Our individuality is equivalent to our 
identity.  Having a good identity means having a good sense of worth 
and having a significant other or others who affirm that sense of 
worth.  We cannot have an identity all alone.  We need at least one 
significant other who verifies our sense of worth.  Our identity is 
the difference about us that makes a difference.  It must always be 
grounded in a social context - in a relationship.

Identity unites our self-actualizing needs with our need for 
belonging.  Good identity is always rooted in belonging.  In fact, the 
individuation drive and the need to conform and belong are always in 
polar tension.  We cannot have one without the other.

For individuation and differentiation to take place the family must be 
stable and secure enough so that one can get one's needs met.  A 
healthy family environment provides the opportunity for all members to 
get their needs met.

Each person needs self-worth, self-love, self-acceptance and the 
freedom to be the unique and unrepeatable one that they are.  Each 
person needs to be touched and mirrored.

Each person needs a structure which is safe enough to risk growth and 
individuation.  Such a structure will change according to the stages 
of one's development.  Each person needs affection and recognition.  
Each person needs their feelings affirmed.  Each person needs 
challenge and stimulation to move through each stage of development.  
Finally, each person needs self-actualization and spiritualization.

Spiritualization involves the need to love, to care for, the need to 
be needed, seek truth, beauty and goodness.  Spiritualization means 
living for something greater than oneself, which most call God.

Each person is born with the power to get those needs met.  The power 
to know enables us to find out about ourselves and others and to get 
enough knowledge mastery to survive and meet our basic security needs. 
The power to love enables each of us to love ourselves and others.  
Love, according to Scott Peck "is the willingness to expand and extend 
my boundaries for the sake of nurturing my own and another's spiritual 
growth."

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.45-46}

What is E-motion?

The power to feel allows each of us to know our own unique spontaneous
reality.  Emotions are tools that allow us to be fully aware of where 
we are in fulfilling our needs.  An E-motion is an energy in motion.  
This energy (say the beating of my heart and the tensing of my muscles 
in anger) allows me to prepare to meet and resolve any threat to my 
basic needs.  Without my energy (called anger), I am powerless to 
uphold my dignity and self-worth.

FEAR is the energy of discernment.  It allows one to assess danger and 
be aware of danger zones in terms of satisfying one's basic needs.  

SADNESS is the energy of saying goodbye and completing.  Life is a 
prolonged farewell.  It is a continuous saying goodbye and completing 
of cycles of growth.

GRIEF and sadness give us the energy to complete the past.  Saying 
goodbye to infancy and toddlerhood is essential in order to grow into 
the latency period of school age.  Saying goodbye to school is 
essential in order to make one's way and take one's place in the 
world.  Growth demands a continual dying and being reborn.  Grief is 
the 'healing feeling'.

SHAME is the energy that lets us know we are limited and finite.  
Shame allows us to make mistakes and lets us know we need help.  Shame 
is the source of our spirituality.  [This is very different from the 
neurotic shame induced by the poisonous pedagogy.  That shame is no 
longer an E-motion.  It has become the core of our identity.]

JOY is the energy that signals that all is well.  All needs are being 
filled.  One is becoming and growing.  Joy creates new and boundless 
energy.

Each person has the power to want and desire.  This energy we usually 
call the volitional faculty or will.  Our will is the power of desire 
raised to the intensity of action.  Our choices shape our reality and 
life.

Finally, we have the power to imagine, which allows us to look at new 
possibilities.  Without this power, we become rigid conformists.  
Human imagination is the power that has forged new frontiers and given 
the world innovation, advancement and progress.  Our national art 
galleries and museums are monuments to the power of imagination.  
Without this power we would gradually become hopeless since hope 
always involves seeing new possibilities.

A good family matrix provides a solid ground upon which one can 
exercise the powers to know, love, feel, decide and imagine.  Such a 
ground needs to be developmentally proper.  This means that a person 
needs to have the freedom to exercise his powers to get his needs met 
in a way proportional to the stages of his development.

The power to know, for example, develops gradually over the first 16 
years, going through the phases of symbolic, pre-logical, concrete 
logical and finally abstract and symbolic thinking.  One needs 
parenting sources who understand the specific way one thinks at each 
stage of development, so that parental expectations are balanced by 
healthy challenge and awareness of the child's cognitive limitations.  
I outlined the magical pre-logical stage in the introductory chapter.  
A mature person updates the magical child within himself.  he comes to 
see his parents as the real finite human beings they are.  He updates 
their parenting rules with reason and logic and personal experience.

I believe we are all of us born with a deep and profound sense of 
worth.  We are precious, rare, unique and innocent.  We are born with 
all the powers and needs I've mentioned.  We are, however, immature 
and totally dependent on our caretakers or survival figures, a 
billion-dollar diamond in the rough.  Our early destiny is shaped to 
an awesome degree by those caretakers.  To continue to feel precious 
and unique we have to see our uniqueness and preciousness in the eyes 
of our caretakers.  Our belief about ourselves comes from their eyes.

The foundation for our self-image is grounded in the first three years 
of life.  It comes from our major caretaker's mirroring.  Our sense of 
ourself needs to be mirrored by significant others who love and care 
and who are self-actualized enough not to be threatened by each new 
cognitive threshold with its expanding spontaneity and freedom.  The 
more our major caretakers love themselves and accept all their own 
feelings, needs and wants, the more they can be there to accept all the 
parts of their children - their drives, feelings and needs.

Parents who have good self-worth and self-acceptance are getting their 
own needs met.  They do not have to use their children to have a sense 
of power, adequacy and security.  Each parent partner is in the 
process of finishing their own business with their own family of 
origin.  Separation from mother and father is being accomplished.  
Each is complete in the sense of having finished the past.  Each has 
updated the destructive aspects of the poisonous pedagogy.

    Hi Cindy,
    
    You know I know, there has been enough off-line dialogue to establish
    that.  I want to acknowledge your courage in the face of what a
    few of us have been through.  The AC syndrom is a case in miniature
    compared to having man's natural ability to communicate with his
    universe buried deep in the ordinary.
    
    Yes, this note is applicable to DEJAVU and it may take a generation
    or more for it's realization.  It is an idea whose time has (just)
    come.
    
    Some three years ago, I started in this notesfile and said some
    things which I took some heat for.  Yes, I was disappointed about
    some narrowness and reacted in a narrow manner.  What I have found
    though out these few years is the courage of a few individuals to
    say the confronting and unpopular.  People who can stand the heat
    in the kitchen....and keep on cookin'
    
    A word about the dysfunctional family and psychism: they are
    identities.  There is a condition, by whatever cause, which separates
    our natural knowing, our natural ability to create, our nature to
    be in communion which is part of our agreement to be human.  I suggest
    we have the power and the right to be full citizens of the universe
    with all the ability and responsibility it contains.
    
    Nobody said it was going to be easy!
    
    Larry Christensn

    
    
    Larry...nice to have you back :-)
    
    Carole

               
    Hi Larry,
    
    Thanks for the kind words.  It is ironic that you should write what
    you did because this exact same topic was shut down in CHRISTIAN at 
    the applause of some of the members because they couldn't see how it
    related to what they were discussing there.  
    
    The sad part is that, I believe, this is all there is.  It is times 
    like these that I have a slightly better understanding of why it is 
    that Jesus wept.
    
    Cindy

Cindy, I understand about why Jesus wept...

Larry, it was great to read your note.  I haven't encountered you before this, 
I don't think...or have I??  ;-)  Hope you contribute more.

Love and Light
Meredith

    Since I don't have a printer yet, I havn't been able to throughly
    read all these entries so this might be covered ground.
    
    One letter I wrote to Cindy had to do with recovering one's childhood
    and that for many AC's, growing up meant the selling of one's soul.
    In a larger sense, I believe we all have the natural ability to
    communicate at the level of being and we "sold" that ability in
    order to become human.
    
    I related a regression where I was an infant only a few days old
    and saw myself hovering over the crib.  I had the ability to
    exploe my world in a way I am just now recovering.  This is as
    real as TV or a telephone call to me.  I had at one time the ability
    to leave my body at will and travel, quite literally anywhere I
    chose.
    
    Larry C.

>    I related a regression where I was an infant only a few days old
>    and saw myself hovering over the crib.  

Larry, these regressions can be incredibly healing.  I reached a real almost 
turning point when I, the Adult, went back to me, the child; I was three years 
old and suffering from bronchial pneumonia.  The adult had trouble getting 
through to the child because Mother was blocking the way.  She was full of 
guilt over my having pneumonia; somehow translated it in to her having allowed 
germs in the house; she couldn't face her guilt and so did another translation 
which amounted to throwing all of her guilt on to the child Me, and hovering 
over me punishingly the entire time I was ill.  (problems with breathing had a 
lot to do with the feeling of suffocation and of being an imposition, not a 
daughter).  The adult I broke through Mother, finally, and did a healing on the 
child myself.

    There is this saying "You will always be your mother's child".
    I wonder what it takes to become a person who has been born of
    a mother?
    
    One of the most fascinating things seen recently on TV was one
    of the Infinite Voyage series which stated that our bodies
    are actually made up of expended star-matter.  Maybe what
    we are is a little more complex.  eh?
    
    Larry C.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.47-48}

What is a Healthy Functional Marriage?

As I pointed out, the family is a system.  It has components and
principles that govern the system.  The chief component is the marital 
partnership.  If their relationship is healthy and functional, the 
children have the opportunity to grow.

A healthy functional couple commit to each other through the power of 
will.  They decide and choose to stand by each other no matter what 
(for riches or poorness, in sickness and health, until death parts 
them).  A good relationship is based on unconditional love.  It's not 
some maudlin feeling - it's a decision.

A healthy functional relationship is based on equality, the equality 
of two self-actualizing spiritual beings who connect at the level of 
their beingness.  Each is a whole person.  Each grows because of the 
love for the other, which by definition occasions spiritual growth.

Each partner in a healthy functional marriage knows that in the final 
analysis they are responsible for their own actions and happiness.  
Happiness cannot be the fruition of a mature process if it is 
dependent on something outside itself.  Life is a process of moving 
from environmental support to self-support.  From puberty on, growing 
up and becoming mature means standing on one's two feet and being 
independent and self-supporting.  No relationship is healthy if it is 
based on incompleteness and neediness.  Healthy relationships are 
mature, which means equal and self-responsible.

The mature relationship image I like best is two people making music 
together.  Each plays her/his own instrument and uses his/her own 
unique skills, but they play the same song.  Each is a whole and 
complete.  Each is independent and committed.

Furthermore, in a healthy and committed relationship each partner has 
a commitment to discipline.  Each is self-disciplined and is willing 
to apply discipline to the relationship.  Discipline involves the use 
of four basic techniques of easing the suffering of life's inevitable 
problems.  Scott Peck, in his book, The Road Less Traveled, outlines 
these techniques.

They are:

	1. Delaying gratification.
	2. Accepting responsibility for self.
	3. Telling the truth and being dedicated to reality.
	4. Bracketing ego needs for the sake of spiritual growth.

Discipline is fueled by the commitment of love and is part of the 
commitment.


Who Are Healthy Functional Parents?

When two people in a healthy relationship decide to be parents, they
can model this self-discipline and self-love for their children.  They 
accept having children as the most responsible decision of their 
lives.  There is commitment to being there for their children.

When such a relationship forms the foundation of a family, each child 
in the system has the safeguard of needed age specific dependency, as 
well as the security to grow through experimenting with his unique 
individuality.  In fact, the more stable and secure the parental 
relationship is, the more the children can be different.  As long as 
Mom and Dad satisfy their own needs through their own powers and with 
each other, they will not use the children to solve these needs.

Functional parents will also model maturity and autonomy for their 
children.  Their strong identity leaves very little of their 
consciousness unresolved, repressed and unconscious.  The children, 
therefore, do not take on their parents' unresolved unconscious 
conflicts.  The parents are in the process of completeness.  They 
model this process and do not need their children to complete 
themselves.

The children are then free to grow, using their own powers of 
knowing, loving, feeling, deciding and imaging to get their own 
individual self-actualization accomplished.  The children are not 
constantly judged and measured by their parents frustrated and 
anxiety-ridden projections.  They are not the victims of their 
parents' "acting out" their own unresolved conflicts with their own 
parents.

Each person in this kind of system has access to his natural 
endowment.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.49-50}

The Five Freedoms

Family therapist Virginia Satir calls this endowment the five
freedoms.  These freedoms are:

1. The freedom to see and hear (perceive) what is here and now,
   rather than what was, will be or should be.

2. The freedom to think what one thinks, rather than what one
   should think.

3. The freedom to feel what one feels, rather than what one 
   should feel.

4. The freedom to want (desire) and to choose what one wants,
   rather than what one should want.

5. And the freedom to imagine one's own self-actualization,
   rather than playing a rigid role or always playing it safe.

These freedoms amount to full self-acceptance and integration.  
Enormous personal power results from such freedoms.  All the person's 
energy is free to flow outward in order to cope with the world in 
getting one's needs met.  This allows one full freedom.  This amounts 
to full functionality.

The five freedoms are opposed to any kind of perfectionistic system 
that measures through critical judgment, since judgment implies the 
measuring of a person's worth.  Fully functional families have 
conflicts and differences of opinion, but avoid judgment as a 
condition of another's worth.  "I am uncomfortable" is an expression 
of feeling - "You are selfish, stupid, crazy" is an evaluative 
judgment.

The 'poisonous pedagogy' is based on inequality - a kind of 
master/slave relationship.  The parental authority is vested by virtue 
of being a parent.  Parents are deserving of respect, simply because 
they are parents.  Parents are always right and are to be obeyed.

In a family governed by such rules, critical judgment is not only 
okay, it is a duty and a requirement.  Even the most mature parent 
will not be able to avoid the "I'm uncomfortable" - "You are stupid, 
weird, crazy" syndrome.  Consequently, much emotional energy that 
belongs to the parent will be communicated as if it belonged to the 
child.

A client of mine felt terrible because she had come home from work 
feeling frustrated, angry, and hurt.  Instead of saying to her 
children - "I need time alone.  I'm angry, frustrated, and hurt" - 
she looked at the children's unkempt rooms and began screaming at them 
and telling them that "they never think of anyone but themselves".  
She made them responsible for her frustration, anger and hurt.  This 
is abusive judgment.  It attacks the children's self-esteem.

The issue of judgment underscores what is perhaps the major process in 
functional families, viz, the ability of each member to communicate 
effectively.  In fact, some theorists have looked upon good 
communication in the family as the ground of mental health and bad 
communications as the mark of dysfunctionality.

    re: .73
     
          You mention Virginia Satir...so I offer the information
    that she died about two months ago.  She had many good insights,
    I believe.
    
    
    Frederick
    

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.50-52}

Effective Communication

Good and effective communication centers around highly developed 
individual awareness and differentiation.  A good communicator is 
aware of both internal processes in themselves and external processes 
in others.  Self-awareness involves my perceptions, my 
interpretations, my projections, my feelings and my desires.  Other 
awareness involves skill in sensory observation, as well as the 
ability to translate words into sensory based experimental data.  
Sensory observation involves real contact with the other at the 
neurological level.  Sensory observation involved seeing the other's 
accessing cues and hearing the other's words.

Accessing cues are things like breathing, facial expression and 
movement, voice tone, temper and inflection.  Every neurological cue 
is an indicator of an internal process that is going on at the level 
of lived experience.

The ability to translate words into sensory based experience involves 
listening both to content and the process involved in speaking.  This 
is called active listening.  Active listening is a listening for 
congruence.  Congruence has to do with a match-up between content and 
process, i.e., does their body match their words?  Saying I'm not 
angry in a loud and aggressive voice is incongruent.  If one is not 
angry, they won't sound angry.

The aforementioned client failed in her awareness of her own feelings. 
 She is, in fact, highly dissociated from her feelings.  She was 
emotionally abused as a child and learned to numb herself through her 
fantasy bond defense.  Being unaware of her feelings and having no 
knowledge of self-responsible disclosure, she responds in angry 
judgment and criticism.  Her egocentric and magical children can only 
translate her outburst as a judgment on themselves.  Mother's anger 
and frustration translates into "I am bad".

The ability to translate words also has to do with challenging much of 
the shorthand we use in ordinary speech.  Three examples of such 
shorthand are generalizations, deletions and distortions.

Generalizations are useful as shorthand, as when one says, "Women are 
the physical child bearers".  Generalizations are dangerous as when 
one says, "You can't trust a woman."  In this case, the word 'woman' 
needs to be translated into the concrete specific woman or women this 
person can't trust.

Likewise, deletions are commonplace and useful.  When we are making 
small talk at a cocktail party, it is useful to say, "My line of work 
is frustrating."  However, if one wants help for his work which is a 
frustrating problem, it is necessary to translate that deletion into 
sensory information.  This can be done by asking how specifically 
one's work is frustrating.

Distortions involve prejudices, mind-reading and cause-and-effect 
illusions.  Making statements like, "Baptists are devil worshipers," 
or "Negroes have inferior brains," are prejudicial distortions.  
Statements like, "You make me sick," "You give me a headache," to 
another family member are cause-and-effect distortions.  There is no 
real way to make another sick or give headaches simply by behaving a 
certain way.

Examples of mind-reading are "I know what you're thinking," "I know 
you've never cared as much about me as I do about you".  These are 
mind-reading distortions.

Each of these categories needs to be challenged in order to get below 
the surface to the experience the person is actually having or wants 
to have.

Good communications involves good self-awareness.  This demands that 
one have very clear boundaries.  One takes responsibility for one's 
own feelings, perceptions, interpretations and desires.  One expresses 
these in self-responsible statements using the world "I".  
Differentiation also means that I don't take responsibility for _your_ 
feelings, perceptions, interpretations and desires.

When one has good boundaries, one knows where one begins and ends.  
One discloses in concrete specific behavioral detail.  "I want you to 
take my suit to ABC Cleaners at nine o'clock tomorrow.  Will that be 
possible?" rather than, "My clothes need cleaning."  One checks to see 
if the other heard it clearly or one checks to see if they understood 
clearly.

The last communication skill that makes for a healthy and fully 
functioning family is the courage and ability to give good feedback.  
Good feedback can take the form of confronting another with concrete 
sensory data on how the other looks, sounds and feels to the observer, 
e.g., "You seem angry.  Your jaw is tight and your fist is clenched.  
You haven't spoken for the last 20 minutes."  Feedback also involves 
confronting another with one's own internal response stated in sensory 
based concrete data, e.g., "I want to talk to you and I see you 
reading the paper.  I feel rejected and frustrated."  Confronting is 
important in good family relationships.  It is an act of telling the 
truth.  Caring enough to confront is an act of love.

Much more could be written on good communications.  My purpose in 
outlining good effective communication is to show that it flows from 
good differentiation.  Healthy partners communicate honestly and with 
each other.  They model this for their children.

To sum up, communication in a functional family will be concrete and 
experiential.  It will be characterized by:

1. High levels of awareness about self and others.

2. Concrete specific sensory based behavioral data.  A clear sense
   of "I" centered self-responsibility.

3. Feedback apropos of the other's unaware behavior and apropos of 
   one's own responses.

4. A willingness to disclose what one feels, wants and knows.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.52-54}

Rules In A Functional Family

The rules in a functional family will be overt and clear.  Husband and 
wife will be aware of their family differences in attitudinal, 
communicational and behavioral rules.  These differences will be 
understood and accepted as neither right nor wrong.  They will be 
acknowledged as simply different.  Each partner will be working toward 
compromised solutions.  This certainly does not mean there will be any 
conflict.  The capacity for conflict is a mark of intimacy and a mark 
of a healthy family.  Good healthy conflict is a kind of contact.  In 
dysfunctional families problems are denied.  There is either fusion 
(agree not to disagree) or withdrawal.

Because each person is unique and because each family system's rules 
are different, conflict is inevitable.  For example, in my family of 
origin we opened our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve.  We opened 
them fast and we didn't save the paper.  In my wife's family they 
opened their presents on Christmas morning.  They liked to spend time 
opening their presents.  Others watched while each person opened their 
presents.  They saved the ribbons and paper.

Now who's right?  Obviously no one is right.  Our families represent 
two different sets of celebrational rules for Christmas.  
Celebrational rules have less voltage than parenting rules or 
financial rules.

How to raise the children, the right method of discipline, how to 
handle money, what should be spent and saved, these are rules with 
higher voltage.  These rules lend themselves to conflict.  Working out 
these differences is a process that takes many years.

Fair Fighting Rules

In a functional marriage the couple is committed to the process of 
working out the differences.  They do not stay in conflict nor do they 
cop out with confluence (agreeing not to disagree).  They strive for 
contact and compromise.  Fighting is part of contact and compromise.  
Functional couples have problems and fight, and they learn how to 
fight fair.  Fighting fair involves:

1. Being assertive (self valuing), rather than being aggressive (get
   the other person no matter what the cost).

2. Staying in the now.  Avoid scorekeeping.  "You are late for dinner.
   I feel angry.  I wanted everything to be warm and tasty."  Rather
   than "You are late for dinner as usual.  I remember two years ago
   on our vacation you, etc., etc., etc."

3. Avoid lecturing and stay with concrete specific behavioral detail.

4. Avoid judgment.  Stay with self-responsible "I" messages.

5. Honesty needs to be rigorous.  Go for accuracy, rather than 
   agreement or perfection.

6. Don't argue about details, e.g. "You were 20 minutes late,"  "No,
   I was only 13 minutes late."

7. Don't assign blame.

8. Use active listening.  Repeat to the other person what you heard
   them say.  Get their agreement about what you heard them say 
   before responding.

9. Fight about one thing at a time.

10. Unless you are being _abused_, hang in there.  This is especially
    important.  Go for a solution, rather than being right.

When rules are covert, they present much greater possibilities of 
conflict.  For example, rules which embody the sex roles are often not 
present at a conscious verbal level.  Your highly successful husband 
who rants and raves about women's liberation may be hiding a 
non-verbal rule that says women are to be feared and controlled.  This 
rule may never have emerged during the "in-love" courtship period.  It 
may only come out after you are married as the two of you become 
homemakers.  It may not emerge until after the first child.  It is 
only then that you become Mother and he becomes Dad.  As you take on 
these roles, your family of origin bonding comes back.  These roles 
then emerge in full force.

When you were "in-love", your ego boundaries collapsed.  When you got 
married, they bounced back.  In functional families covert rules are 
brought into consciousness and dealt with.  Very little will be covert 
and unconscious.  The children, therefore, will not have to act out a 
bunch of 'secrets' or family system imbalances.  The children will not 
become enmeshed in the system.

Good functional rules will allow each family member to express the 
five freedoms.  Functional rules allow for flexibility and 
spontaneity.  Mistakes will be viewed as occasions for growth.  
Shaming will be strongly prohibited.  Good functional rules will 
promote fun and laughter.  Each person will be seen as precious, 
unique and unrepeatable.

    re: .76 (Cindy)
    
         Thanks.  I can use those rules.
    
         Now if I can only get Dana to read them and not have a fight
    over them.  ;-)
    
    Frederick
    

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.54-56}

GOOD FUNCTIONAL RULES

Good functional rules will allow each family member to express the 
five freedoms.  They are:

   1. Whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
   2. System is dynamic - constantly seeks openness and growth 
      adjusting to feedback and stress.
   3. Rules are overt and negotiable.
   4. Mutual Respect Balance - Togetherness - Individuation.
   5. When anxiety is low interpersonally and intraphysically, 
      the force toward individuation automatically emerges.

Functional rules allow for flexibility and spontaneity.  Mistakes will
be viewed as occasions for growth. Shaming will be strongly
prohibited.  Good functional rules will promote fun and laughter. 
Each person will be seen as precious, unique and unrepeatable. 

Functional family rules can be summed up as follows:

  1. Problems are acknowledged and resolved.

  2. The five freedoms are promoted.  All members can express their 
     perception, feelings, thoughts, desires and fantasies.

  3. All relationships are dialogical and equal.  Each person is of
     equal value as a person.  

  4. Communication is direct, congruent and sensory based, i.e., 
     concrete, specific and behavioral.

  5. Family members can get their needs met.

  6. Family members can be different.

  7. Parents do what they say.  They are self-disciplined disciplinarians.

  8. Family roles are chosen and flexible.

  9. Atmosphere is fun and spontaneous.

 10. The rules require accountability.

 11. Violation of other's values leads to guilt.

 12. Mistakes are forgiven and used as learning tools.

 13. The family system exists for the individuals.

 14. Parents are in touch with their healthy shame.

One of the paradoxical aspects of functional and healthy families is 
that as individuation increases, togetherness grows.  As people 
separate and move toward wholeness, real intimacy becomes possible.  
The poet says, "The mountain to the climber is clearer from the 
plain."  We need separation in order to have togetherness.

Needy and incomplete people seek others to make them complete.  They 
say, "I love you because I need you."  Individuated persons who have 
faced aloneness and separation knows they can make it alone.  They 
seek a partner because they want to love, not because they need to be 
completed.  They say, "I need you because I love you."  They offer 
love out of generosity, rather than need.  They are no longer fantasy 
bonded.

It should be obvious that the rules of a functional family described 
here are quite different than the components of the poisonous 
pedagogy.

In Figure 3.2 (takes some imagination here...(;^)), I have presented a 
visual picture of a functional family.  Each person in the drawing has 
a complete and whole circle as their own boundary.  Each person has 
contact with every other person.  The (double-ended) arrows indicate 
that each person has a good relationship with his/her own self.  
Mother and Father can let each other in because their boundaries are 
semi-permeable.  However, the boundaries are strong enough to also 
keep each other out.  They can so "no" to each other.  They understand 
that while they are accountable to each other, they are not 
responsible _for_ each other.  If Mother responds angrily to Father, 
Father does not believe he _made_ Mother angry.  He knows that 
Mother's anger is about her own response (interpretation) and her own 
history (Father's voice may have sounded like her father).  Each takes 
responsibility for his or her own responses.

Because they are committed to each other, Mother and Father are 
accountable to each other.  Father may be concerned about Mother's 
angry response and choose to do what he can to respond to her.  He 
knows and she knows he is not to blame.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.56-59}

Family Accountability

1. In a healthy family the Mother and Father have a disciplined love.  
   They have the courage to do that work that love demands.  Each loves 
   him/herself and is therefore self-disciplined.  Because of this they 
   are disciplined disciplinarians with their children.  They do what 
   they ask their children to do.

   In such a family each person can pursue his own need fulfillment to a 
   high degree.  Of course, compromise and negotiation must take place 
   from time to time.  And there _will_ be conflict and boundary 
   _violation_.  But all are accountable and committed to do the work of 
   love, which means staying in there, fighting fair and working it out.

2. This family will have their shame available as a wonderful and 
   healing feeling.  Mom and Dad will not act shameless.  They will not 
   play God by issuing "know it all" commands.  They will not scream and 
   curse.  They will not criticize with over-responsible judgments or 
   sarcastic and cutting remarks.  They will exercise clear and firm 
   boundaries as the Mom and Dad who are the architects and leaders of 
   the family.

   Was this the context from which you came into the world and enjoyed 
   your childhood?  If it was, you are indeed graced and blessed.  For 
   many of us it was not the context of our lives.  For most of us it 
   would have been, had our parents known what to do differently.  For 
   most of us, our own parents had emerged from the poisonous pedagogy.  
   They did the best they could.

3. Let us look next at how the poisonous pedagogy dysfunctions a 
   family system.  This will give you an idea of how dysfunctional your 
   family of origin was.  As you read the next five chapters, keep an 
   open mind.  Remember that the idealization of family and parents is a 
   natural and an inescapable process.  The issue here is not 
   intentionality or blame.  Most people would have done things 
   differently if they had known that what they were doing was abusive.  
   Most were probably abused themselves.  Intention is not relevant.  The 
   issue is to discover our own actual history.

What we want is accountability.  By knowing your personal history you 
will not be doomed to repeat it.  By knowing what actually happened to 
you, by making the abandonment real, you can change.  You cannot 
change what you've denied or what is embedded in unconscious ego 
defenses and therefore isn't real.  You cannot know what you don't 
know.

Terry Kellogg states that "by connecting with the past and making the 
abuse real, you can express the hurt and pain you had about the abuse. 
By expressing the anger or sadness, you can relive the shame.  You 
can then understand that a lot of your behavior was about what 
happened to you and not about _you_."  With that realization, a new 
self-acceptance and self-love can begin.  It's like each of us has a 
real surprise in store for us, the surprise of rediscovering our own 
unique and valuable and precious self.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.61-64}

Chapter 4 - Profile Of A Dysfunctional Family System

	"They are playing a game.  They are playing at not 
	playing a game.  If I show them I see they are playing 
	a game, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.  
	I must play the game of not seeing that I play the game."
					- R.D. Laing

We have seen that the chief component in the family system is the 
marriage relationship.  Mom's relationship with herself and Dad's 
relationship with himself and their relationship with each other is 
the foundation of the family.  The husband and wife are the architects 
of the family.  Dysfunctional families are created by dysfunctional 
marriages.  Dysfunctional marriages are created by individuals who 
seek out and marry each other.

One of the tragic facts about dysfunctional individuals is that they 
almost always find other individuals who operate either at the same 
level of dysfunctionally or at a lower level.  Each person carries the 
whole family within themselves.  Individuals seek out the only 
relationships with which they have any experience.  The most impactive 
relationships one has are those of his family of origin.  You may 
object that you have a relationship just the opposite of your parents. 
The fact is that to choose the opposite is to still be dominated by 
the original trance.  We are defined both by what we like or want and 
what we don't like or don't want.

The first component of dysfunctional families is that they are part of 
a multigenerational process.  The dysfunctional individuals who marry 
other dysfunctional individuals have come from dysfunctional families. 
So the circle tends to be unbroken.  Dysfunctional families create 
dysfunctional individuals who marry other dysfunctional individuals 
and create new dysfunctional families.  Left to your own devices, it 
is very difficult to get out of the multigenerational dis-ease.

Five Generation Genogram

Let me expand on this by commenting on a family genogram.  If you look 
at Figure 4.1 (use your imagination here...), you will see a 
five-generation genogram.  A genogram is a family generational map.  
It can be very useful in establishing multigenerational patterns.  
This genogram shows several striking patterns of dysfunctionality.  

First, there are five generations of alcoholism. Second, there are
four generations of actual physical abandonment.  Third, there was
inappropriate and cross-generational bonding by both parents of the
identified patient.  This is what I referred to as Surrogate Spousing.
The identified patient carried on this generational pattern by
marrying someone who was also a Surrogate Spouse. 

All the members in this genogram are co-dependent and all are in need
of some treatment for emotional recovery.  There are other subtleties
in this genogram, but they are of clinical concern.  Suffice it to
say, compulsivity and addiction are multigenerational. 

In the last chapter we explored the components of a good marital 
relationship.  Good functional marriages are dependent upon each 
partner's relationship to his/her self.  If mother/wife loves herself 
and feels centered and growing in wholeness, she feels complete, 
likewise, with the father/husband.  Each person feels complete and, 
therefore, doesn't look to the other for completion.

Without self-completion and self-value, one can hardly love another.  
When any natural organism is incomplete, its natural life drive is 
toward completion.  So when two incomplete human beings come together, 
their natural drive will be toward self-completion, rather than 
affirming each other.

If a person is in the process of self-completion, he can help the 
other to self-completion.  In fact, a more realistic concept of 
marriage would be a state of union in which each partner is providing 
the other with the opportunity of self-actualization or 
self-completion.  This is possibly what Goethe meant when he said:

    "Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest
    human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful
    living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the
    distance between them which makes it possible for each to see
    each other _whole_ against the sky.  A good marriage is that in 
    which each appoint the other guardian of his/her solitude."

This is also the sense of differentiation we wrote about in the 
previous chapter.  Two people who have good differentiation are aware 
of...
	1. Their feelings as distinct from their thoughts
	2. Their physical, emotional, intellectual selves as
	   different from their partners.
 	3. Their own self-responsibility for their own happiness.

People with such differentiated selves are truly individuated and 
undependent.  Being individuated and undependent does not mean that 
each does not need the other to love and care for.  It means that 
while desiring to love and care for each other and to be loved and 
cared for by each other, each _knows_ they can survive alone.  Each 
knows that they are responsible for their own perceptions, feelings, 
concepts and fantasies.  Each knows that the other _cannot_ make them 
happy.  Each knows that the other is _not_ their better half.

Differentiation means that each partner has worked through his own 
fantasy bond.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.64-66}

Chapter 4 - Profile Of A Dysfunctional Family System, cont'd

ARITHMETIC LESSON

The notion of husbands and wives being the other's "better half" 
actually exposes the common fallacy of our cultural script on 
marriage.  Our rigid sex roles promote two half-people joining 
together to make one whole-person, as if one-half times one-half 
equaled a whole.  In fact, one-half times one-half equals one-fourth, 
which is less than one-half.  So two people who marry to be completed, 
end up less complete than when they were incomplete.  This explains a 
lot of the massive marriage failure that our national statistics 
report. 

Two half-people create and entrapment or enmeshment, rather than a 
relationship.  In an entrapment, neither person has the freedom to get 
out.  Each is entrapped by needing the other for completion.  As the 
years roll on and the fear of going it alone increases, each becomes 
more and more trapped.  I see many entrapments in my marriage 
counseling.  Such couples actually can't divorce.  They are held 
together in an emotional symbiosis.  They re-enact the fantasy bond we 
described in the introduction.  They become bonded by their neediness. 
The symbol I like for entrapment is the symbol of two people in a 
canoe.  Whenever one moves, the other is forced to move.

In a healthy relationship, each person is bonded by desire and not out 
of neediness.  Therefore, each is in the process of becoming more or 
less whole.  Two whole people who guard each other's wholeness come 
together and grow because of the guardianship of the other.  Each, as 
Goethe suggests, provides the other the solid space (solitude) to 
grow.  Each helps the other grow by giving up control, criticism, 
blame and judgment.  In such a non-judgmental space one is free to 
exercise the five freedoms.

With such freedoms (which really amount to being loved unconditionally) 
one can accept oneself unconditionally.  Unconditional self-acceptance
is the royal road to wholeness.  When one cannot feel, want, perceive, 
think or imagine what he is actually feeling, wanting, perceiving, 
thinking, and imagining, one is split.  The shoulds, oughts and musts 
become internal measuring rods which cause one to be split and 
alienated from self.

An inner warfare of self-talk insures a constant enervating struggle.  
Existence itself becomes problematic rather than spontaneous.  
Everything must be hassled about.  Should I or shouldn't I, plays like 
a broken record.  One's self gets lost in the internal dialogue.  One 
literally is be-side one's self.  This is dysfunction.

Dysfunctionality in a family sets up shoulds, oughts, and musts by 
which each member is measured.  The poisonous pedagogy measures all 
perceptions, thoughts, feelings, decisions and imaginings.  "You 
shouldn't feel that way" or "why do you want such and such..." or "how 
can you be so stupid" or "you're just a dreamer", etc., etc., etc.  In 
such an environment, your natural powers are continuously discounted 
and judged as unacceptable.  

If you can't feel angry, your anger is split off and numbed by ego
defenses.  Your anger is no longer a part of you.  The same is true of 
your sexual feelings, your fearful feelings, your sad feelings, your 
thoughts, your desires, your visions.  As we pointed out in Chapter 
One, once you cannot feel what you feel, your ego defenses take over 
and you become psychically numb.

When people marry out of deficiency and incompleteness (as I suggested, 
they inevitably find each other), the relationship is headed for 
trouble.  Each needs the other for completion.  In courtship each is 
willing to give because of the long range fantasy that by giving, each 
will ultimately get the other to complete them.  This giving to get is 
one of the most troublesome and deceptive dynamics in relationships.  
Giving to get is a counterfeit form of love.  However, each needy 
partner is connected by the illusion that the other is actually going to 
fulfill their incomplete self.

Courtship is a very deceptive and confused form of counterfeit love.  
Being "in love" is not love.  It is probably a form of genetic 
bonding.  Nature wants babies.  So people "in love" have very powerful 
erotic drives for each other.  When we are "in love", sex is "oceanic" 
in its feeling.  

Being "in love" is characterized by strong emotion.  Actually the 
emotion is undifferentiated from reason.  One is literally "out of 
one's mind" when one is in love.  This out-of-mind state restores the 
primal symbiosis of the mother/child.  If one is still in a state of 
undifferentiation apropos of this early state, they will feel that all 
of the deprived emotional needs of that earliest state can be 
fulfilled.  Such a phenomena as this is worth short-term giving up.  
One's very boundaries have collapsed.  And so the story goes.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.66-68}

Chapter 4 - Profile Of A Dysfunctional Family System, cont'd

POWER STRUGGLES AND THE NEED FOR COMPLETION

Then comes marriage and the boundaries bounce back.  Sally Hatfield is 
married to Bill McCoy.  Now comes the power struggle between the two 
original families.  The attitudinal behavioral and emotional rules 
for families swing into full consciousness.  Each one feels 'at home' 
with their own familiar boundaries.  Each family of origin system now 
vies for supremacy.  The way my family did is what feels right.  It's 
what is family-iar.  The power struggle begins and the issue of 
differences must be negotiated.  The "selected awareness" of being "in 
love" has given way to the new focus on actual differences.

The ability to accept others as different in whatever way they are 
different depends on one's own level of differentiation.  Two people 
with low level differentiation cannot handle each other's differences.

As the power struggle intensifies, both partners despair of ever 
getting the other to complete them.  Either consciously or 
unconsciously, each begins to believe that by having a child or 
children, he/she can get completed.  This belief is the beginning of 
the children's dysfunctionality.

Born in the soil of their parents' alienated split selves, there is no 
way for the children to get what they absolutely need for healthy 
growth.  More than anything else they actually need good models of 
self-love and social interest.  Since their parents are split and 
non-self-accepting, they cannot model good self-nurturing love.  There 
IS NO WAY FOR THE CHILDREN TO LEARN SELF-LOVE AND SOCIAL INTEREST.  
What they will learn is various forms of counterfeit love resulting 
from their parents weak incomplete ego contaminations.  They will be 
shamed, through abandonment and ultimately they will internalize the 
shame just as their parents did.

When children cannot get their dependency needs met, they become 
dysfunctional.  And this is the best scenario we can paint.  Add to 
this physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and we're talking about 
severe damage to being fully functional.

All parental mistreatment and abuse stems from their parents' own 
needs for completion.  And the parents need completion because their 
own needs were never met.  Their own needs were never met because 
their needy parents were not there for them.

Parents, in abusing their children, are struggling to regain the power 
they once lost to their own parents.  All dysfunctional parents have 
been cheated out of their own feelings through their abandonment.

As children, they were humiliated, laughed at, manipulated, 
intimidated, brushed aside, ignored, played with like a doll, treated 
like an object, sexually exploited or brutally beaten.  What is worse, 
they were never allowed to express their rage, shame and hurt.  
Especially the hurt of why their own parents were treating them so 
terribly.

Beneath that hurt lies the magical egocentric belief that they must be 
very bad to be treated this way.  This is what survives in the child 
now become parent, that THEY ARE BAD.  As long as the parents are 
idealized in the fantasy bond, the child continues to blame self and 
feel shame.

Parents who were abused as children were not even allowed to know what 
was happening to them.  Any mistreatment was held up as being 
necessary for their own good.  When this mistreatment was most 
violent, they were told it hurt the parents as much as it hurt them.  
Or if that didn't work, they were taught to honor their parents no 
matter what.  As children, their most fundamental need was their 
parents' protection, hence abandonment was equivalent to death.  So 
they obeyed and denied their own awareness, (a) out of 
self-preservation, (b) because they possessed a magical and immature 
form of thinking and because they in fact did love their parents.

The child-rearing rules for the last 150 years, the poisonous 
pedagogy, made it impossible for people to remember the way they were 
actually treated by their parents.  As adults, people act the same way 
their parents acted in attempt to prove that their parents behaved 
correctly toward them, i.e., really loved them and really did it for 
their own good.

Alice Miller suggests that only when we have children of our own do we 
see for the first time the vulnerability of our earliest years (which 
has been disassociated or denied with the ego defenses that created 
the fantasy bond).  In controlling our own children and putting them 
through what we went through, we struggle to regain the power and 
dignity we lost to our own parents.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.68-72}

Narcissistic Deprivation

Children need to have their healthy narcissistic needs met.  Narcissus 
was the Greek God who was condemned to fall in love with his own 
reflection in the lake.  The story is almost always interpreted in a 
way that makes narcissism, i.e., self-love seem bad.  The story needs 
to be seen as a symbolic statement about emerging self-image and 
self-consciousness.

We humans would never know who we were without a mirror to look at in
the beginning.  That mirror needs to reflect ourselves as the person
we really are at any given time.  The original mirror is almost always
the mothering person who raises us, especially in the first three 
years of life.  The mothering person needs to mirror, admire and take 
us seriously.  Each child needs to see his instinctual drives and 
aggressive feelings mirrored in the mothering person's face.  Obviously 
this requires a high degree of security, self-confidence and 
completeness in the mothering person.  When this is the case, Alice 
Miller writes, the child can:

1. Have his aggressive impulses so they don't upset parents' 
   confidence.

2. Strive toward automony and be spontaneous because such strivings 
   are not experienced as a threat to the parents.

3. Experience his true self - his actual feelings, wants, perceptions, 
   thoughts and imaginings - because his parents do not impose moralistic 
   shoulds, oughts and musts at the time when the child is premoral.

4. Learn to please himself and doesn't have to please his parents, 
   since they are self-confident and complete.

5. Separate successfully from his parents, i.e., achieve differentiation.

6. Use his parents to meet his dependency needs, since his parents are 
   complete and unneedy.  These dependency needs are insatiable in the
   early years.  The child needs his parents' time, attention and 
   direction all the time during the early years.

			From: The Drama of the Gifted Child (pp. 33,34)

Obviously this is a large order.  Parents who have never had these 
needs met are themselves needy.  They therefore cannot give to their 
children what they do not have themselves.  When the mothering persons 
have been deprived of their own healthy narcissism, they will try to 
get it for the rest of their lives through substitute means.

The most available object of gratification for narcissistically
deprived parents is their own child or children.  The children are in 
control; will obey them because not to obey is equivalent to death; 
will never abandon them; will possibly extend their lives through 
achievement and performances.  The child becomes the sole possession 
of the parents; lost narcissistic gratification.

The child thus becomes reduced to being an instrument of the 
parents' will.  Once this occurs, the child's true self is abandoned 
and a false self must be created.  The false self is a coverup for the 
being wound suffered by one's true self.  If I can't have my feelings, 
my needs, my thoughts, my wants, then something must be wrong with me. 
 I must be flawed as a person.  I am worth-less than my parents' time 
and attention.  I am worthless.  This is internalized shame.

The tragedy of all this is that individuals or generations get caught 
up in a repetition compulsion, a vicious cycle of repeating over and 
over again the quest for the lost paradise, only to find that each 
substitute is an illusion.  Compulsively seeking fame, status, new sex 
partners, a certainty of salvation, security in a political party, 
cannot give you that deep inner unity which was lost with your child 
self.  The lost self is an inner problem, not an outer one.  Nothing 
on the outside can bring back what was lost.  Your lost childhood is 
lost forever.

The poet Omar Khayyam says,

   "The moving finger writes and having writ moves on,
   Nor all your piety not wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line.
   Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."

However, your tears are the beginning of your healing.  And it is only 
through mourning that we can be completed and comforted.  It is what 
many will have to do in order to leave home and break out of the 
fantasy bonded poisonous pedagogy. 

What is crucial here is to see that dysfunctional parents reenact 
their own original pain as children.  It is very difficult for us to 
understand that every persecutor was once a victim.  But understand it 
we must or the sins of the fathers go on and on.  The abused child in 
the persecutor is angry and hurt.  The anger is forbidden in relation 
to the parents.  So since the anger is strictly forbidden, it is 
either projected onto others, turned against self or "acted out".

Dysfunctional marriages set up dysfunctional families.  Dysfunctional 
families are the soil for abandonment.  One is initiated into 
addiction through these dysfunctional parenting styles and the family 
systems they create.  Addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders are 
symptoms of being abandoned and shamed in childhood.

Dysfunctional families have either enmeshed or walled boundaries 
within the system.  Enmeshment is the term used to describe the 
violation of ego boundaries.  Figure 4.2 (...circles overlapping each
other here...) shows a drawing of enmeshment. As you can see, all the 
boundaries are overrun.  There is no possibility of intimacy in such a 
family because there are no whole people to relate to.

The other extreme of boundary is 'walled' boundaries.  As you can see 
in Figure 4.3 (...double independent circles...), the boundaries are 
so thick, there can be no interaction or intimacy. This family may 
look good on the outside.  But on the inside each has lost contact 
with his true self.  Each is playing his respective role.  Each is in 
an 'act' even though the boundaries are walled, each person is still 
ruled by the family system.

Members are playing rigid roles in enmeshed families.  Their roles may 
be those of loving family members or good Christians.  However, they 
are all in an act.  No one is real - in touch with their real 
feelings, needs, or wants.  Since all are pretending, no one really 
knows anyone else.  As we look at these families, we see a collage of 
images who are eternal strangers to each other.  Each false self 
covers a core of secret inadequacy and shame.  As Fossum and Mason 
write:

    "These people hold tenaciously and unconsciously to a narrow
    range of repetitive responses or games that serve to conceal,
    rather than reveal themselves to each other.  After years
    everyone in the family knows each other's next line in the
    relational dialogue, and yet they remain imprisoned by the
    patterns." 
					Facing Shame

Shame governs the entire family.  The rigid roles are cover-up
defenses against the shame core.  Each person is in hiding and each is
afraid to be his true self.  All feel abandoned and alone at the
deepest level.  This shame is inherited generationally and is
perpetrated through the rigid roles and ego defenses.  Shame begats
shame.  The self-contempt experienced in shame is maintained through 
the idealization of the parents and their rules for parenting.  The 
parents are of course shame-based themselves.  Dysfunctional families 
are all shame-based and emotionally shut down.  This sets up everyone 
in the system for compulsive/addictive behavior.  Shame fuels 
addiction, which creates shame.  Shame is the organizing principle in 
all dysfunctional families.

Boundary problems in families can be divided into three categories: 
the family/culture boundary; the intra-family boundaries, and the 
boundaries within the individual or ego boundaries.  Figures 4.2 and 
4.3 describe the intra-family boundaries.  Feeling incomplete is an 
individual ego boundary problem.  Not having the ability to 
differentiate thoughts, desires and feelings is an individual ego 
boundary problem.  People with ego boundary problems contaminate their 
thinking with unresolved feelings, which cause the blocking of choice 
through the contamination of one's mind.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.72-75}

Loss Of Freedom

The blocking of choice is what I call the "disabled will".  Once our 
will is disabled, we lose our freedom.  Since shame binds all 
emotions, everyone in a dysfunctional family has their freedom greatly 
impaired.  This is perhaps the greatest casualty of dysfunctional 
families.

In the diagrams which follow (Figures 4.4,4.5, and 4.6) I have tried 
to give you a visual picture of what happens to the power of choice 
when our feelings are repressed.  In these diagrams I have borrowed 
freely from Harvey Jackins' presentation of blocked emotion in his 
book, 'The Human Side Of Human Beings'.  Jackins has developed a 
powerful method of working through the blocked emotions from the past 
called Reevaluation Counseling.  He uses the diagrams I have borrowed 
from as the theoretical basis for his counseling theory.  I have 
changed these drawings for my own purposes.  While Jackins' focus is 
on the blocked emotion, my concern is on how the human will becomes 
disabled by the emotionally contaminated mind.  I also believe that 
there is a higher level of consciousness beyond what Jackins describes 
in his drawings.

The following drawings are quite rough and surely are not intended to 
be scientific specimens.  They will give the reader a visual glimpse 
of what happens to our will when the mind is blocked by emotion.

The will needs the eyes of perception, judgment, imagination and 
reasoning.  Without this source, the will is blinded.  The mind cannot 
use its perception, judgment, reasoning and imagination when it is 
under the impact of heavy emotion.  The particular emotion, which is a 
form of energy, has to be discharged before the mind can function 
effectively.  When the emotion is repressed it forms a frozen block 
which chronically mars the effective use of reasoning.  Anyone who has 
had an outbreak of temper or been depressed has experienced how 
difficult it is to think under the power of these emotions.

In Figure 4.4, we see a model of what our raw intelligence looks like 
in an uncontaminated state.  Our 3 trillion circuited, 12 billion 
celled computer brain is capable of a new and creative response to 
every new experience that occurs in our life.

As we learn, the incoming data is given meaning and stored in our
memory banks.  When new information comes in, it is compared to what 
is already known, and either stored accordingly or becomes a new bit 
of stored memory.  When an experience is not resolved, it cannot be 
stored appropriately.  Unresolved experience has to do with emotional 
discharge and meaning.  The mind cannot function when biased by 
emotion.  Our emotions are powers which give us readouts on our basic 
needs and move us to action.

When a child is abandoned through neglect, abuse, or enmeshment, one 
of three transactions usually take place:

	1. Mythologies are created to explain abandonment.
	2. The child is given reasons for the abandonment which makes
	   no real sense to the child.
	3. The child is told he cannot express the feelings he has
	   about abandonment - usually fear, hurt (sadness) and anger.

In fact, all three transactions are aimed at repressing the child's 
true feelings, which are the core of his inner self.

Mythologies are meanings given to events or actions in order to 
distract from what is actually happening.  For example, in a family 
dysfunctioned by work addiction, the work addict father, who is 
emotionally abandoning his children is explained away by the enabling 
wife/mother by saying, "Your father works so much because he loves you 
and wants you to have nice things."

In the second case, the poisonous pedagogy has all kinds of reasons 
for the abuse.  For example, "I'm doing this because I love you" or 
"This hurts me more than you."  In the third case, the emotionally 
blocked parents cannot handle their children's emotions.  Mother's own 
sadness is stimulated by the child's crying.  This is distressful.  So 
Mom forbids the child to cry.

In every case, the distress experience cannot be stored because the 
emotions cannot be discharged.  What occurs is a frozen pattern of 
blocked energy.

This frozen pattern clogs one's creative intelligence.  It forms a 
trigger which functions like an "on" button of a tape recorder.  
Whenever any new or similar experience happens, the old recording 
starts to play.  Here we see the force and power of behavioral 
conditioning.  Like Pavlov's dog, whenever stimulation occurs, the 
response automatically takes place.  This is the basis of re-actions 
or re-enactments.  The past so contaminates the intelligence, that new 
and creative responses are not possible.  Blocked emotions take over 
the reasoning and judgment of intelligence.  And the effect is 
cumulative.

Whenever we are confronted with a new experience which is in any way 
similar to the original unresolved stress, we feel compulsively forced 
to reenact the old experience.  We act compulsively; we do the exact 
same things that never worked before; we say things that are not 
pertinent and we have intense feelings that are totally disappropriate 
to what is actually happening. 

It's like a snowball rolling downhill getting larger and larger.  Once 
shamed, we act out of shame and create more shame.  Once a false self 
is created to cover the secret private self, each new shaming event 
solidifies the false self even more.  With each new abuse that 
precipitates anger and sadness, the old triggers are turned on and the 
old frozen record starts to play.  This is the basis of what we refer 
to as over-reactions.  Over the course of a number of years of 
repressing one's emotions, one's intelligence is greatly contaminated 
and diminished.  The frozen patterns become chronic patterns.  It is 
as if the "on" button becomes stuck and plays all the time.  This is 
what I am calling "internalized shame".  Very little intelligence is 
left uncontaminated.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.77-78}

The Disabled Will

Such contamination seriously lessens one's decision-making process, 
since the will needs perception, intelligence and imagination in order 
to make decisions.  The human will becomes disabled.

Since the will is blind, it has no recourse for its choice making.  
The only object left for the will to use is itself.  As one wills to 
will, one becomes willful (literally full of will).  As Leslie Farber 
points out in 'The Ways Of The Will', the will becomes the self.  with 
each act of willing for the sake of willing, one feels whole and 
complete.  This is the basis of impulsiveness.  To act on impulse is 
to will just because you can.  In every 'act of will', the person 
feels complete.  Just by willing one can get a feeling of oneness with 
self.

When one can only will to will, one has become grandiose.  One plays 
God.  Self-will has run riot.  As Faber so brilliantly points out, one 
has become addicted to one's own will.

As children we are naturally willful, grandiose and absolutist.  By 
not getting our developmental emotional needs met (especially the need 
to identify and express emotions), we are set up to become grandiose.  

All adult children from dysfunctional families have the disabled will 
problem.  The way it looks in actual life experience is:

1. To be impulsive, to do things for no reason, to be gullible.

2. To have trouble with decisions and to make faulty decisions 
   especially apropos of trust.

3. To attempt to control what cannot be controlled, e.g., an addict
   believes he can control his addiction, the spouse believes she can
   cure the addict.  Parents believe they can control their children.
   We believe that we can control our emotions.

4. To always look for the grand experience, the perfect wife, lover,
   child, parent, orgasm, etc.

5. To be driven and compulsive.

6. To see everything in extremes, black and white, good or bad, for
   me or against me, love everything about me or you don't love me.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.77-79}

From Chapter 4 - Family Roles

What I have said thus far is that families either have rigid or 
enmeshed boundaries or some variation of both.  The family members are 
selectively cut off from many of their feelings and in rigid role 
performances, such as The Hero, The Scapegoat, The Lost Child, etc.  
There are many kind of roles.

In themselves roles are not bad and as Shakespeare wisely pointed out, 
we all play many roles in our lives.  The roles in dysfunctional 
family systems are different.  They are not chosen or flexible.  They 
are necessitated by the covert or overt needs of the family as a 
system.  They function to keep the family system in balance.  If Dad 
is a workaholic and never home, one of the children will be Mom's 
Emotional Spouse since the system needs a marriage for a balance.

In an alcoholic family one child will be a Hero because the family 
system needs some dignity.  If the family system has no warmth, one 
child will become the emotional Caretaker and be warm and loving to 
everyone.  If the system is ravaged with unexpressed anger and pain, 
one child will become the Scapegoat and act out all the anger and 
pain.  In every case the person playing the roles gives up his own 
unique selfhood.  

In dysfunctional families, the individual exists to keep the system in
balance.  This is the fate of every individual in a dysfunctional
family.  The whole family is dis-eased and each person gives up his
true self to play a role in keeping the family together. Every single
person becomes a co-dependent.  Every person lives in reaction to the
distress coming from chemical abuse, incest, violence, work addiction,
eating disorders, the parents' rage or sickness, or whatever the
compulsivity is. 

In every case some form of control is being levied on the family.  
Control results from the disabled will and is one of the major 
defenses for shame.  A shame-based person will attempt to control all 
the relationships he is in.  Shame is the feeling of being flawed and 
worth-less.  It demands that one must hide and live in secret.  One 
must guard never to be unguarded.  In a moment of unguardedness, one 
could be exposed.  This is too painful to bear.  

Shame-based parents control their children.  Children in shame-based 
families play their rigid roles as a way of controlling their parents. 
Always being Helpful, always being a Hero, a Rebel, a Perfect Child, 
a Scapegoat, etc., is a way to control the family that controls you.  
This control madness is another way to show why dysfunctional families 
set their members up for addiction.  Addictions are ways to be out of 
control.  Addictions provide relief.

Co-dependency is the major outcome of dysfunctional family systems.  
Suffice it to say that co-dependents no longer have their own 
feelings, needs and wants.  They live in reaction to family distress.

Each dysfunctional family accepts his role.  They learn what feelings 
their role demands and what feelings they may not have.  For example, 
I became my family system's Hero.  As  Hero, I had to be brave and 
strong.  I had to learn to play a role of always being up and 
competent.  In playing such a role, I had to give up my fear and 
vulnerability.  Since these were real parts of me - I had to give up 
parts of myself.  This role became my false self.  It was an act 
whereby I played my enmeshed role in my alcoholic's family script.  I 
denied my own co-dependency and came to believe that I was this 
super-competant person.

These roles are ways to survive the intolerable situation in a 
dysfunctional family.  They function like ego defenses.  They become 
part of the total family's fantasy bond.  We are a happy family.  We 
love each other.  Each member plays his part to keep the system closed 
and rigid.  Each member shares the mythology of the family trance.  
Each unconsciously agrees to share a certain focus and to share a 
certain denial.  The denial constitutes the family systems 'vital 
lies'.  Each member believes that if he exposed the lies, it would be 
unbearably painful and it would break up the family. 

We see this most vividly when we look at incest families.  The shared 
secret and the shared denial is the most horrible aspect of incest.  
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as 
denial.  This denial is often referred to as the delusional thinking 
of the dysfunctional family trance.  The delusion is to keep believing 
the myths and vital lies in spite of the facts, or to keep expecting 
the same behaviors will have different outcomes.  Dad's not an 
alcoholic; he never drinks in the morning, in spite of the fact that 
he's drunk every night.

This delusion and denial also applies to our false self roles.  We 
become so identified with each role that we could pass a lie detector 
test.  Our true self has been buried so long in the unconscious family 
trance, we think the role is who we are.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.79-82}

From Chapter 4 - Cultural and Subcultural Boundaries

The dysfunctional family system has a third boundary.  This one exists 
as an invisible line around the whole family.  I call it the cultural 
or subcultural boundary.  Nationalities and religious affiliations are 
the strongest factors in this type of boundary,.  Italians, Greeks, 
Irishmen, etc. have their own special rules and "vital lies".  
Likewise with the Pentecostalists, Catholics, Baptists, Mormons, Jews, 
etc.  The subculture boundaries control the flow of information coming 
into and going out of the family.  These boundaries also govern 
behaviors with the 'other' - the strangers, the ones outside of our 
clan.  These boundaries can contribute greatly to the family's level 
of dysfunctionality.

For example, a client of mine who was a rigid Christian 
Fundamentalist, engaged in incest with her father because she had no 
right to disobey him.  Her interpretation of her religion supported 
the poisonous pedagogy belief in parental ownership.

These subculture boundaries contribute greatly to keeping the system 
closed.  They control knowledge and information.  A major factor in 
getting out of a dysfunctional family is awareness about abuse and 
dysfunctionality.  If one's religion prohibits reading psychological 
works as part of secular humanism, then one cannot possibly be made 
aware of many kinds of abuse and family dysfunction.

Thus, it is a characteristic of dysfunctional family systems that the 
more they try to change, the more they stay the same.  They have no 
new information to break the old beliefs that form the circular 
feedback loops in the cybernetic system.  If parents are sacred and 
must be honored at all cost, one cannot even look at the possibility 
that they were abusing you.

The overt rules that create dysfunctionality are the rules of the 
poisonous pedagogy.  The parents become dysfunctional as a result of 
these erroneous rules, which they carry within their own psyches where 
they play like a recorder.  The parents parent themselves with these 
rules.  Without critically questioning or updating them, they pass 
them on to their children.  They are like carriers of a virus.  Add to 
this parents who are in advanced stages of addiction and the voltage is 
intensified.

The commonalties of dysfunctional families we have been describing 
can be summarized as a body of covert rules that operate unconsciously 
to create the distress in families.  These rules are:

1. CONTROL  

One must be in control of all interactions, feelings and personal 
behavior at all times.  This is the cardinal rule of all dysfunctional 
shame-based family systems.  Control is the major defensive strategy 
for shame.  Once you control feelings, all spontaneity is lost.  
Control gives each member a sense of power, predictability and 
security.  Control madness is a form of severe disability of the will 
since it tries to will away what cannot be willed away, viz, the 
fundamental insecurity and unpredictability of life.

2. PERFECTIONISM

Always be "right" in everything you do.  This tyranny of being right 
can be about any norms the multigenerational family system has 
preserved.  The norm may be about intellectual achievement or moral 
self righteousness or being upper class and rich, etc.  The 
perfectionistic rule always involves a measurement that is being 
imposed.  There is a competitive aspect to this rule.  There is a 
one-up, better-than-others aspect to this rule that covers the shame.

The members in the system anxiously avoid what is bad, wrong or 
inferior.  The fear and avoidance of the negative is the organizing 
principle of life.  The members live according to an externalized 
image.  They become self-image actualized.  This amounts to a chronic 
life of dissociation from self.  One is busy observing one's own 
actions in a situation while internally self-monitoring, "Am I coming 
across OK?"  "Am I getting it right?"  One is constantly comparing 
self with an external norm in an attempt to measure up.

No rule leads to hopelessness any more powerfully than this one.  The 
ideal is a mental creation.  The ideal is ideal, rather than real.  
The ideal is shameless since it disallows mistakes.  Remember what I 
said about shame as a healthy human feeling.  Shame lets us know we 
are finite and incomplete.  Shame lets us laugh at our mistakes.  
Shame tells us we are always in need of feedback and human community.  
Shame lets us know we are not God.  Shame lets us know we are human.  
Following the perfectionism rule leads to hopelessness.

3. BLAME

Whenever things don't turn out as planned, blame yourself or others.  
Blame is another defensive cover-up for shame.  A person's blaming 
behavior covers one's shame or projects it onto others.  Since a 
shame-based person cannot feel vulnerable or needy without being 
ashamed, blame becomes an automatic way to avoid one's deepest 
feelings and true self.  Blame maintains the balance in a 
dysfunctional system when control has broken down.

Life's spontaneity and unpredictability inevitably break down the 
control rule.  Blame is habitually used to regain the illusion of 
control.  Blame is how the shaming process continues to function.  As 
each person feels the danger of vulnerability and exposure, he shames 
the other with blame.

4. DENIAL OF THE FIVE FREEDOMS

Deny feelings, perceptions, thoughts, wants and imaginings, especially 
the negative ones like fear, loneliness, sadness, hurt, rejection and 
dependency needs.  This follows the perfectionist rule.  "You 
shouldn't think, feel, desire, imagine, see things, hear things, the 
way you do.  You should see, hear, feel, think, imagine, desire the 
way the Perfectionistic ideal demands."

5. NO-TALK RULE

Don't talk openly about any feelings, thoughts or experiences that 
focus on the pain and loneliness of the dysfunctionality.  This rule 
is a corollary of rule number four.  The denial of expression is a 
fundamental wound to humanness.  Human beings are symbolic animals who 
speak and express ourselves in symbols.  we create new life and new 
frontiers through the symbolic function of the imagination.

6. MYTH-MAKING

Always look at the bright side.  Reframe the hurt, pain and distress 
in such a way as to distract everyone from what is really happening.  
This is a way to keep the balance.  The system remains closed and 
rigid.  Anyone rocking the boat would upset the status quo.

7. INCOMPLETION

Don't complete transactions.  Keep the same fights and disagreements 
going for years.  This rule may be manifested two ways:  One is 
through chronic fighting and conflict without any real resolution.  
The second is through enmeshment and confluence - agreeing to never 
disagree.  The family has either conflict or confluence, but never 
contact.  Members stay upset and confused all the time.

8. UNRELIABILITY

Don't expect reliability in relationships.  Don't trust anyone and you 
will never be disappointed.  Since the parents never got their 
dependency needs met as children, they cover up this insatiability 
with fantasy bonded illusions of self-sufficiency.  By acting either
aloof and independent (walled boundaries) or needy and dependent
(enmeshed boundaries), everyone feels emotionally cutoff and
incomplete.  No one gets their needs met in a functional manner. 

...
I encourage the reader to use these (next three) chapters as a 
checklist for your own personal self-discovery.  Most of our present 
human dysfunctions can be described by the term compulsivity.  
Violence, sexual disorders, eating disorders, emotional and religious 
addictions are the ills which destroy peoples' lives.  Let us look at 
these now.

    re:  Bradshaw
    
         This past weekend our local (S.F.) PBS ran a marathon (pledge-
    drive-time) 10 segments of "John Bradshaw on the Family" plus another
    one hour segment on "Shame within" (or somesuch.)  Had I known in
    advance, I would have let others know (and I would have been
    able to tape more than I did.)  These sessions occurred in 1985
    and have now been presented on this PBS station 3 times, apparently.
    Also, he will be appearing in Berkeley in July.  (And this whole
    series will also be repeated in August, I believe.)
    
         He really does have some wonderful insights, especially in
    terms of where our stagnant beliefs originate (within our families.)
    Though he isn't metaphysical, per se, his ideas make sense and fit
    in very nicely with the ideas that *are* metaphysical.  He grew
    up in a TYPICAL dysfunctional family (abandoned by an alcoholic
    father) who became an alcoholic himself and who recovered via
    the 12-step process (used by most of the "Anonymous" groups.)  
    Though he was a very high achiever, he says he was stuck in being
    a "human DOING" instead of a human "BEING."  In any case, now
    at age 54, he is quite enlightening if not enlightened.  I'm not
    real keen with all of his stuff (helpful guilt, e.g.) but I do
    highly recommend listening to what he has to say (which can literally
    be done since audio tapes from the tv sessions are available.)
    Good stuff!
    
    Frederick
     

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.87-89}

Chapter 5 - Compulsive Families

Checklist for how you lost yourself and became and adult child of an 
alcoholic family.

The open secrets.  Everybody knows about them and nobody is supposed 
to know that everyone knows.

"After 17 bitter years of long-suffering alcoholism, I put the cork in 
the bottle 21 years ago.  In many ways the last thing I would have 
believed as a child was that I would have become an alcoholic.  I 
cried myself to sleep many a night because of my father's drinking and 
his abandonment.  I laid in bed frozen with fear waiting for him to 
come home at night, never knowing what exactly was going to happen.  I 
hated alcoholism and all it stood for.  I obsessed about his drinking 
day in and day out.  At 30 years old, after studying for almost 10 
years to be a priest, I wound up in Austin State Hospital on a 
voluntary commitment for the treatment of alcoholism!

As paradoxical as it seems, many a child of an alcoholic becomes an 
alcoholic.  And if they don't become an alcoholic, they marry an 
alcoholic or a person with some other compulsive addictive personality 
disorder.

This paradoxical pattern of adults who grew up in alcoholic families 
has focused on the truth of 'families as systems' more than any other 
single factor.  Some 10 years ago one adult child after another began 
to realize that there were communalities in their lives that seemed to 
have less to do with them and more to do with their families of 
origin.  Led by Roger Ackerman, Claudia Black, Sharon 
Wegscheider-Cruse and Janet Woititz, the Adult Children of Alcoholics 
(ACoA) became a movement, which this moment is continuing to sweep the 
country.  With the Adult Children's movement the family systems 
concept took a giant leap forward.

During the first decade of my recovery from alcoholism, I knew nothing 
of the Adult Children's phenomena.  I had dabbled intellectually with 
family systems.  I had incorporated the work of Virginia Satir, Jay 
Haley and Ronald Laing into my adult theology classes at Palmer 
Episcopal Church in Houston.  But I never got the connection with my 
own alcoholic family of origin.  I thought that my addiction to 
excitement, my people-pleasing and approval-seeking, my overly 
developed sense of responsibility, my severe intimacy problems, my 
frantic compulsive lifestyle, my severe self-criticalness, my frozen 
feelings, my incessant good-guy act and my intense need to control 
were personality quirks.  I never dreamed that they were 
characteristics that were common to adults, who as children lived in 
alcoholic families.

It has been due to the work in chemical dependency and especially the 
ACoA movement that has helped me understand the nature of compulsivity 
and how it set up in dysfunctional family systems.  The fact that 
there are common characteristics of children who grew up in alcoholic 
families betrays an underlying structure of disorder.

I've outlined some using the first letters of the phrase Adult 
Children Of Alcoholics.

A  Addictive, compulsive behavior or marry addicts  
D  Delusion and denial
U  Unmercifully judgmental on self or others
L  Lack of good boundaries
T  Tolerate inappropriate behavior

C  Constantly seek approval
H  Have difficulty with intimate relationships
I  Incur guilt whenever you stand up for yourself
L  Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth
D  Disabled will
R  Reactors rather than actors
E  Extremely loyal to a fault
N  Numbed out

O  Over-react to changes over which you have no control
F  Feel different from other people

A  Anxious - hypervigilant
L  Low self-worth and internalized SHAME
C  Confuse love and pity
O  Overly serious
H  Have difficulty finishing a project
O  Overly dependent and terrified of abandonment
L  Live life as victims
I  Intimidated by anger and personal criticism
C  Control madness
S  Super-responsible or super-irresponsible

From this checklist it is clear that as children of alcoholics, we are 
not just reacting to the drinking of an alcoholic.  What we're 
reacting to are the relational issues, the anger, the control issues, 
the emotional unavailability of the addict.  These traits are a 
response to the trauma of the abandonment and ensuing shame that 
occurs in alcoholic families.

For the children this shame is primarily rooted in the broken 
relationship with their parents.  Our index of traits shows that most 
of the problems ACoA's have are relationship problems.  These traits 
also give us a clue to understanding the roots of compulsivity.  The 
World Health Organization's definition of compulsive/addictive 
behavior is "a pathological relationship to any mood-altering 
experience that has life-damaging consequences."

   	
    does anyone have anything on only children types? cindy?
    
    		wendy o'
    

    
    Hey Wendy!  Are you in DDD?  I think we're only a couple of cube
    aisles away.  I'm in the back of the building by the windows directly
    behind the main entrance.  
    
    Anyway, I think there is something on only children a few notes back 
    where the various traits of the order of the children are talked about.
    Scott Peck talks a little bit about them in "The Road Less Traveled" 
    (he references an only child case in the book).  I'll bring in my copy 
    if you want to take a look at it.
    
    Cindy

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.89-91}

Chapter 5 - Compulsive Families (cont'd)

The propensity for pathological relationships is rooted in and set up 
by the parental abandonment.  Let us look at our index of traits.


A. Addictive, compulsive behavior or marry addicts 

   You are or have been in an active compulsive/addictive pattern of 
   behavior.  You are or have been in a relationship with a 
   compulsive/addicted person.

D. Delusion and denial

   You are in a fantasy bonded idealization of your parents.  You 
   idealize your non-addicted parent.  You minimize and deny your 
   feelings and the impact on your life and/or your children's lives 
   of a relationship you are in.

U. Unmercifully judgmental on self or others

L. Lack of good boundaries

   _You_ take an aspirin when your spouse has a headache.  You 
   don't know where your feelings end and others begin.  You let 
   everyone touch you or no one touch you.  Your opinion is the same 
   as whoever you are with.

T. Tolerate inappropriate behavior

   You guess what normal is.  In your relationships, you are now 
   tolerating what you said you would ever tolerate.  You believe 
   your childhood was more or less normal.

C. Constantly seek approval

   You are a people-pleaser and will go to almost any lengths to 
   have people like you.  In your primary relationships, you drive 
   others crazy with your need to know where you stand.

H. Have difficulty with intimate relationships

   You confuse intimacy with enmeshment and contact with 
   conformity.  You believe that if you love someone, you will both 
   like the same things.  You are attracted to destructive 
   relationships, and are turned off by healthy, stable, caring 
   people.  You sabotage any relationship that starts to get too 
   close.

I. Incur guilt whenever you stand up for yourself
  
   You feel guilt whenever you stand up for yourself, act 
   assertive and ask for what you want.  You feel guilty that you 
   are in recovery and the rest of your family is not.

L. Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth

   You find yourself lying for no good reason when it would be 
   just as easy to tell the truth.  Or you are just the opposite.  
   You adhere to the letter of the truth.

D. Disabled will

   You are compulsive, impulsive, stubborn, grandiose, overly 
   dramatic, controlling and have difficulty making decisions.  You 
   try to control what cannot be controlled.

R. Reactors rather than creative

   Your life is one reaction after another.  You over-react - you 
   say things that are not relevant, feel things that are 
   disproportionate to what is going on.  You spend so much time 
   worrying and reminiscing over others' behavior that you have no 
   time for your own.
   
E. Extremely loyal to a fault

   You stay loyal even in the face of evidence to the contrary or 
   you are loyal to no one.

N. Numbed out

   You are psychically numb.  You deny your feelings.  You don't 
   know what you feel and wouldn't know how to express your feelings 
   even if you did know.

O. Over-react to changes over which you have no control

F. Feel different from other people

   You never feel like you belong.  You always feel self-conscious.  
   You are secretly jealous and envious of other's  seeming 
   normalcy.

A. Anxious - hypervigilant

   You are always on guard.  You have an intense level of 
   nameless fear and catastrophic expectation.  You have a feeling 
   of impending doom.  You are jumpy and easily startled.  You enjoy 
   your vacations mostly after they are over and you are showing 
   slides!

L. Low self-worth and internalized SHAME

   You feel defective as a human being.  You cover up with roles like 
   Caretaking, Superresponsible One, Hero, Star, Heroine, The 
   Perfect One.  You are perfectionistic, controlling, 
   power-seeking, critical and judgmental, rageful, secretly or 
   openly contemptuous, gossipy and backbiting.

C. Confuse love and pity

   You are attracted to weak people.  You go to great lengths to 
   help pitiful-looking people.  You enter relationships with people 
   you can fix.  You mistake pity for love.

O. Overly Rigid or Serious or just the opposite

   You are somber and rarely play and have fun.  Life is 
   problematic, rather than spontaneous.  You are perfectionistic 
   and super-responsible.  Or you are irresponsible and never take 
   things seriously.

H. Have difficulty finishing a project

   You have trouble initiation action.  You have trouble stopping 
   once you've started.  You never quite finished important things, 
   like getting degrees.

O. Overly dependent and terrified of abandonment

   You stay in relationships that are life-damaging, severely 
   dysfunctional and damaging to you.  You have trouble ending 
   anything.  You stay in a job that has no future.  You are 
   possessive, suspicious and cling to the relationships you are in 
   - spouse, lover, children, friends.

L. Live life as victims

   You have been physically, sexually and emotionally abused.  
   You live in a Victim Role, finding yourself victimized wherever 
   you are.  You are attracted to other victims.

I. Intimidated by anger and personal criticism

   You are manipulated by anger and criticism.  You will go to 
   great length to stop someone from being angry at you or critical 
   of you.  You will give up your needs to stop their anger or 
   criticalness.

C. Control madness

   You fear losing control.  You control by being "helpful".  You 
   feel frightened when you feel out of control.  You avoid anyone 
   or any situation where you can't be in control.

S. Super-responsible or super-irresponsible

   You take responsibility for everything and everyone.  You try 
   to solve other's problems even when they don't ask for help.  Or 
   you take no responsibility and expect others to be responsible 
   for you.

From this index, researchers began to see just how dysfunctional 
one becomes by simply living in an alcoholic family.  This index 
helps to focus the causes for compulsive behavior.

The alcoholic family is a compulsive family.  Everyone in the 
system is driven by the distress caused by not being able to get 
his needs met.  Someone compared living in an alcoholic family to 
living in a concentration camp.  And like survivors of a 
concentration camp, ACoA's carry what has been compared to 
post-traumatic stress symptoms.  In fact, if one takes a list of 
the disorders experienced by war veterans or any other severe 
trauma victims, they will find that a large number of the 
post-trauma symptoms match a large number of ACoA 
characteristics.  Children who live in alcoholic families, if 
untreated as children, carry these characteristics of post-trauma 
stress into later life.

    Cindy,
    
         Thanks for all the time you put into this note.  I just wanted
    to say that .92 was (for me) the single most eye opening thing that
    was written here.  I felt for the first time that I actually fit
    about 60-70% of the criteria (criteria admittedly being a poor word
    choice).
              
     Guy
    

    
    Re.93
    
    Guy,
    
    You're welcome.  That's about the same way I felt when I first read
    the book.  Eye-opening was an understatement.
    
    Cindy

    no way... really?
    
    i'll stop by .. thanks....
    
    
    		wendy o'
    

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.92-94}

Chapter 5 - Compulsive Families

Abandonment

Because of the chronic distress in an alcoholic family, every person
in that family attempts to adapt to the chronic stress.  Each becomes 
hypervigilant, anxious and chronically afraid.  In such an 
environment, it's impossible for anyone to get his basic human needs 
met.  Each person becomes co-dependent.

The major consequence of this chronic stress is abandonment.  Along 
with actual physical abandonment by the alcoholic, the neglect of the 
child's basic needs is another form of abandonment.  There is no one 
there for the child.  There is no mirroring to affirm the child's 
preciousness and no one the child can depend on.  If Dad's the 
alcoholic, then Mom is addicted to Dad - Mom is co-dependent.  She 
can't be there for her children's needs because she is also an addict. 
 
As addicts, both parents are needy and shame-based.  It is impossible 
for two needy, shame-based people to give love and model self-love.

The normal child has healthy narcissistic needs, but there is no way 
these needs can be met in an alcoholic family.  So each child turns 
inward to a fantasy bond of connection with their parents (delusion 
and denial) and ultimately to self-indulging habits and pain killers.

A third form of abandonment comes abuse.  Alcoholic families foster 
every kind of abuse.  Because alcohol lowers inhibitions and knocks 
out the rheostat between thoughts and expression, physical, sexual and 
emotional battering are commonplace in alcoholic families.  Some 
estimates say two-thirds of ACoAs are physically violated.  Some 50% 
of incest fathers are alcoholic.

Alcoholic families are severely enmeshed.  Enmeshment is another way 
children are abandoned.  As the alcoholic marriage becomes more 
entangled and entrapped, the children get caught up in the needs of 
both their parents, as well as the needs of the family system for 
wholeness and balance.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  When the family 
system is unbalanced, the children attempt to create a balance.

In my family my dad was never there.  By about age 11, he was for all 
practical purposes gone.  I was the oldest male.  The system needed a 
husband.  I became my mother's emotional husband (Surrogate Spouse).  
My mom did not decide this, the system demanded it.  I also became my 
brother's "Little Parent" since the system needed fathering.  At 13 I 
was giving him an allowance.

In another family I worked with as the drinking husband's alcoholism 
intensified, the oldest daughter became Mom's Scapegoat.  Mom had been 
pregnant with her at the time of her marriage.  In fact, she was the 
reason Mom and Dad got married.  As Mom realized Dad was an 
irresponsible alcoholic, she turned her anger onto the girl child.

Another child was not planned.  He was the accidental third child in a 
very dysfunctional marriage.  He felt the emotional abandonment in the 
womb.  He became the "Lost Child" in the family.  Literally the 
parental message he got was "Get lost, child, we can't handle another 
child."

In alcoholic families the discipline is modeled by unself-disciplined 
disciplinarians.  The rules of the poisonous pedagogy offer 
justification for a lot of the so-called discipline.  Very little of it 
is really discipline.  It comes out of the parents' irritation and 
rage about their own life.  Most of the time it has nothing to do with 
the child, i.e., it doesn't come from his behavior or help the child 
improve.  Punishment occurs frequently and is usually inconsistent.  
The parents modeled this inconsistency.

What all this adds up to is that the children, who need their parents' 
time, attention and direction for at least 15 years, do not get it.  
They are abandoned.  Abandonment sets up compulsivity.  Since the 
children need their parents all the time, and since they do not get 
their needs met, they grow up with a cup that has a hole in it.  They 
grow up to have adult bodies.  They look and talk like adults, but 
there is within them an insatiable little child who never got his or 
her needs met.  This hole in the soul is the fuel that drives 
compulsivity.  The person looks for more and more love, attention, 
praise, booze, money, etc.

The drivenness comes from the emptiness.  And since one cannot be a 
child again and cannot go back and have a mom or a dad, the needs 
cannot be filled as a child.  They can be dealt with as they are 
recycled in adult life.  But they can only be dealt with as an adult.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.94-96}

The Compulsive Family In General

I've used the alcoholic family as a prototype of the compulsive 
family.  Historically the studies in chemically dependent families 
began to reveal the dysfunctional structure of other types of 
families.  Through studying alcoholism and the alcoholic family, a 
whole range of compulsive/addictive patterns emerged to explain other 
dysfunctional families.

The pattern was clear.  Shame-based compulsive people create needy 
marriages and engender the families in which children are shamed 
through abandonment.  The victimized children from these marriages 
become equally compulsive and continue the cycle.

The poisonous pedagogy, with its master/slave inequality, is 
intensified in families parented by addicts.  However, these addicts 
were set up for addiction by being discounted and having their needs 
denied by the poisonous pedagogy.  The original culprit is the 
poisonous pedagogy.

Power, control, perfectionism, criticism, contempt, blame, rage are 
all ways that shame is interpersonally transferred.  Parents who are 
covering up their shame with their own fantasy bonded ego defenses, 
their own rigid roles and their addictions become shameless.  Acting 
as if they know it all, criticizing, controlling, condemning, blaming 
and punishing, these parents play God.  Such shameless behavior 
necessitates that the children carry the shame.

Let's take rage for example.  Rage is common in alcoholic families.  
It is also a common addiction in itself.  A rage-aholic can 
dysfunction a family every bit as severely as an alcoholic father.  
Rage serves a self-protective function by insulating the self against 
exposure and by actively keeping others away.  For example, father 
goes on a drunken spree.  He misses several days of work.  When he 
goes to work, his boss chews him out.  As he comes home he feels the 
shame of his behavior.  He sees his son's bicycle lying in the front 
yard.  He seeks out his son and begins raging at him, using his 
poisonous pedagogical rights.  This spontaneous behavior enables 
father to feel good about himself (doing his fatherly duty) and lose 
all contact with the pain of his own shame.  The son, however, takes 
on father's shame by being shamed.  Rage is a strategy of defense 
aimed at making his son feel shame in order to reduce his father's 
shame.

Since there is so much shame present in an alcoholic family, the 
interpersonal transfer of shame goes on continuously.  The poisonous 
pedagogy actually supports the parents in their strategies of 
interpersonal transference of shame.  Power, control, blame, criticism 
and perfectionism are encouraged and promoted by the poisonous 
pedagogy.  

Children idealize parents through the fantasy bond and therefore they 
will pass the rage, hurts, loneliness and shame of their own 
abandonment onto their children.  Instead of passing it back where it 
belongs, they pass it on.

You've probably noticed, I use the words compulsive and addictive 
synonymously.  The word addiction is often limited to those disordered 
relationships to chemical substances (nicotine, foods, drugs) that 
have their own intrinsic addictive potency.  While there is some 
clarity in such a distinction, it can cover up other addictive 
behaviors, such as addiction to work, rage, adrenalin rush, sex, etc.  
I would bet that the chemical structure of the mood alteration 
resulting from the excitement of sex, gambling, work achievement, 
religious ecstasy, the feeling of righteousness, being in love, is 
similar to the chemical change resulting from drugs.  As far as I'm 
concerned, all addictions are ways to avoid unacceptable feelings.  
That avoidance leads to life-damaging consequences.

As we've discovered the crisis in the family is the fostering of shame 
by means of abandonment.  This shame sets up the compulsive/addictive 
behavior which dominates our culture.  I've already given some 
statistics on the extent of alcoholism, eating disorders, physical 
violence, incest and sexual abuse.  The majority of our culture is 
addicted because we still use the parenting rules of 150 years ago in 
a world that has been ravished by those rules.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.96-97}

Compulsive/Addictive Behavior

I believe that our greatest human problems focus on compulsive/
addictive behavior.  Addictions narrow our minds and disable our 
wills.  We are driven and out of control.  Our life is no longer a 
conscious choice but a multigenerational accident.  We are no longer 
free.

It is false thinking to believe that addiction is only about dope 
fiends in dark alleys or belligerent and stumbling drunks.  Addiction 
touches the lives of most of the people in our culture.

In my own work as president of the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, I found 
a very stereotypical conception of addiction.  While we were dealing 
with teenagers abusing chemicals, we were also dealing with their 
parents and families.  All around me I found work addiction, religious 
addiction, eating disorders, co-dependent people addicts, parents 
addicted to their children, cigarette addicts, rageaholics, etc.

I knew I had to expand the definition of addiction.  I knew that if 
people could identify their own compulsivities - their own 
life-damaging relationships with mood-altering experiences, I could 
create a community of concern about our common crisis.

An addiction is _any_ pathological relationship with any mood-altering 
experience that has life-damaging consequences.  The pathological 
relationship part is set up by the abandonment issues.  The inability 
to relate in a healthy manner is the result of shame, since shame is 
always the result of broken relationships.  Once the interpersonal
bridge is broken with caretakers or survival figures, children believe
they do not have the right to depend on anyone.  They quit trusting 
themselves and others.  They are set up for the fantasy bond and 
self-indulging patterns of behavior.  They are set up for pathological 
relationships.

Pathological implies a delusional quality to the relationship.  
Delusion and denial are the essence of addictive compulsive behavior.  
In denial one denies that what one is doing is really harmful, either 
to self or others.  In delusion we keep believing that what is 
happening is not happening in spite of the facts.  Firestone's fantasy 
bond is a form of delusion and denial.  In my opinion, all addictions 
are fantasy bond reenactments.

The fantasy bond is re-enacted in several ways.  It can come with the 
grandiosity of being in love; the ecstasy of feeling good and 
righteous; sexual conquest and orgasm; the full-filled feeling of 
eating; the altered state of consciousness induced by starving; the 
magical possession of money and things; the high of drugs.  In all 
compulsive/addictive behavior, the illusion of connection is restored. 
 One is not alone; one has overcome separation and aloneness.  
Delusion and denial keep away the 'legitimate suffering' which comes 
with the pain of emptiness and aloneness.  Addicts minimize the 
effects of their compulsivity in their life.  They rationalize the 
life-denying consequences of their behavior.

Compulsive/addictive behaviors are not about being hungry, thirsty, 
or needing to work.  They are about mood-alteration.  They help us 
manage our own feelings.  They distract us or alter the way we are 
feeling so that we don't have to feel the loneliness and emptiness of 
our own abandonment and shame. 

The mood alteration that comes from distraction is mostly unrecognized 
in our culture.  We promote hard work and competitive achievement.  We 
are a God-fearing worshipping nation.  We are sports-minded and have 
an array of entertainment which the whole world seeks and envies.  All 
of these activities can become addictions.  They are all ways that we 
can become involved in adrenalin rush and excitement and distract 
ourselves from whatever we are feeling.

Gambling (which claims some 10 to 13 million addicts) is perhaps the 
most dramatic.  For gamblers "the action is the distraction".  The 
fact is that any activity can distract and therefore mood alter.  Work 
addiction and religious addiction are major addictions in our 
country.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.97-98}

Emotional Addictions

Emotions themselves can be addictive.  We can substitute one emotion 
for a less painful emotion.  Men are frequently taught to substitute 
anger for fear.  Most everyone has met and angry man.  Such men have 
internalized their anger.  Men are supposed to be warriors.  Warriors 
have to be super strong and totally adequate.  Any hint of inadequacy 
would make one less a man.  Men are afraid of feeling inadequate and 
can cover their feelings up with anger.  Anger feels powerful.  
Inadequacy feels weak.

I came home one summer evening and my wife greeted me at the door with 
the news that our air conditioner had stopped working.  It was in the 
middle of summer, humid and unbearably hot.  A voice in my head tells 
me, "Real men know how to fix mechanical things."  Since I can't fix 
anything mechanical, I feel inadequate.  I don't even know where our 
air conditioner is.  So instead of saying, "Gee honey, that's awful.  
Let's go to a hotel and call someone to get it fixed," I say angrily, 
"What did YOU do to it now?"  Can't I count on you for anything?"  
Anger feels potent, fear feels wimpy.  This example shows you how 
anger works as a mood alterer.

Any feeling can be an addiction for other feelings.  Women often cry 
when they are angry.  One person may be a full-fledged sad addict.  
I'm sure you've met a 'sad sack' - a person who is always sad.  That's 
an addiction.  Chemicals, activity and emotions are powerful ways not 
to feel what one is feeling.  Remembering that abandonment is the 
set-up for compulsivity helps us to see why we want to mood alter.  
When abandoned, we feel rejected, lonely, sad, and angry.  And, of 
course, we feel shame.  Later as shame is internalized, we get all our 
feelings shamed.  So to feel is to feel shame, loneliness, sadness, 
hurt and anger.  Deep internalized shame is excruciatingly painful.  
Therefore we want to mood alter.


Thought Disorders

There are other ways be compulsive.  Certain thought disorders are 
excellent ways to distract and cut off emotions.  Obsessive worrying, 
ruminating, getting engrossed in minute details, generalizing and 
abstract thinking, are all ways to cut off one's feelings.  

Obsessive thought patterns play a major role in all compulsivities.  
The thought patterns in sexual addiction are called lusting.  A sex 
addict may be in his head hours for lusting before he begins his 
ritualized behavior - cruising, going to get pornography, looking for 
a child to victimize.  The lust is an addictive part of the addictive 
process.

The most crucial aspect of any compulsivity is the life-damaging 
aspect of it.  Life-damaging means that the compulsive, addictive 
behavior causes personal dysfunction.  The compulsivity blocks the 
person from getting his needs met through his own basic human powers.  
The compulsivity takes up all his energy.  His choices are narrowed.  
His freedom is lost.  His will has become disabled.  The person is 
driven and his life is powerless and unmanageable.  Without freedom 
one is dehumanized.  Shakespeare wrote:

	"Oh God, that man should put an enemy in his mouth.
	 That we should with joy, pleasure, reveal and applause
	 transform ourselves into beasts."

Without choice we have become like animals living from the outside.  
Compulsivity is a state of inner barrenness.  We become totally 
externalized, 'without any self-reflection and interior life.'  How 
could one have an inner life when he feels flawed and defective as a 
human being?  This shame core keeps the addict from going inward.  The 
true self is lost and hides behind a masked false self.

Compulsivity is also about bad habits that become vicious over a 
period of time.  Philosophers speak of habits as second natures.  
Good habits are vices and have the power to control our lives and take 
over.  Habits are a very dominant part of the euphoric type of mood 
alterers such as drugs, sugar and sex.  Drugs and food also have the 
added factor of having their own intrinsic chemical power.  These 
chemicals are in themselves addicting.

I've never in 15 years of working with teenage drug abusers found a 
single one who was what I'd call 'only a chemical addict'.  As 
powerful as many of the current market drugs are, especially cocaine 
and crack, I've never yet worked with an addict who didn't have a 
'hole in his soul'.  I've been in my personal recovery for 21 years, 
and I've never yet known a person in recovery from chemical abuse who 
didn't have abandonment issues.

Perhaps nothing is more important for adult children of dysfunctional 
families than to connect their abandonment violation with the 
behavioral dysfunctions and problems that abandonment causes.  For 
example, in the checklist I've given for ACoA's, each of the 
behavioral characteristics is a response to being violated.  
Abandonment violates our rights, our boundaries and our needs.

Our violated true self stays in hiding because we have lost the 
connection between what happened and the response to what happened.  
Since the fantasy bond idealized our persecutors, we can only conclude 
that our neurotic, dysfunctional behavior is about us and not them.

As Terry Kellogg has said, "It's really helpful when we hear about the 
responses to our violence, to know very simply that these responses 
are about what happened to us and not about who we really are."  This 
insight is the beginning of any recovery process.  Once we see it, we 
demythologize our idealized parents and can see that 'we are not bad, 
flawed or defective.'

At this point, I'd like to sum up this chapter by presenting a profile 
of four types of compulsive families.  Each family is a composite 
profile of people I've actually counseled, people who have shared in 
my workshops and people from my own experiences.  Each will be 
disguised in a way as to protect his/her own personal ego boundaries.

At the same time, these profiles will reflect what is happening in 
real flesh-and-blood family systems.  The four types of compulsive 
families are: chemically addicted; eating disordered; religiously and 
work addicted.  I will be talking about sexual addiction, physical 
violence, emotional battering and co-dependence in the chapters which 
follow.

{From: "Bradshaw On: The Family", by John Bradshaw, p.100-102}

Chemical Addiction: The Blue Family

Jesse is the father of this family.  He is an alcoholic and sex addict.  
These two addictions often go together.  He was inappropriately bonded 
with his mother and was abandoned by his own father.  He had two 
stepfathers.  They were both alcoholic.  One was physically abusive to 
Jesse and his mother.  His mother carried the poisonous pedagogy in 
denying her son sexual feelings as well as his anger.  Jesse is very 
passive aggressive.  He was taught that real men don't cry and are not 
afraid.  At 16, Jesse met Jessica and got her pregnant and they 
married.

Jessica was inappropriately bonded with her father since her mother was 
the adult child of an alcoholic, and incest victim, and addicted to 
sickness, being bedridden most of her life.

Jessica's father was sanctified by Jessica and her seven sisters.  
Actually, Jessica's father was an enabler allowing his wife to stay 
addicted by walking on eggs and living in reaction to her feelings, 
needs and wants.  Jessica's family looked very respectable.  They were 
staunch churchgoers.  Only appropriate feelings were ever shown.

Jessica and Jesse had three children.  Their first child (the reason 
they married) Gwen was born to her 16-year-old mother.  She was not 
wanted and felt this from birth.  She became the Lost Child, as well as 
Superachiever and Super-responsible first child.  She was Mom's 
scapegoat and felt this conflict all her life.  She went to work early.  
She married and divorced two addicts and now lives in chronic depression 
and isolation.  She hates men as her mother, aunts and grandmother did. 
 She is still lost and very confused about how to change her life.

Jack was born 13 months later.  He was the first male in two generations 
and bore the unconscious sexualized rage of two generations of 
man-haters.  He became the family Caretaker.  Jesse abandoned all the 
children with his active alcoholism.  Jack bonded inappropriately with 
Jessica and played the role of Surrogate Spouse.

Jack was also Super-responsible and a Superachiever.  He also took the 
role of Caretaker by being grandmother's, aunt's and Mom's helper.  He 
later 'acted out' his alienated rage for having to be Jessica's 
emotional spouse and the family caretaker by becoming alcoholic 
himself.  He started drinking in secret at age 13 and by 15 was 
seriously addicted having had several alcoholic blackouts.  In spite of 
this, Jack developed a Hero role by being the class president and 
salutatorian in high school.

After one year of college Jack decided to be a celibate minister.  This 
ensured both his inappropriate bond role and hero role.  His active 
addiction destroyed his ministry.  He got help in AA and sobered up.  He 
married pregnant, reenacting Jesse and Jessica's marriage.  He had two 
children and lived in non-intimacy for seven years.  Jack later found 
ACoA and continues in it until now.

The third child, Jacob, was also a Lost Child - being an accidental 
pregnancy.  He came at the apex of Jesse and Jessica's ever accelerating 
dysfunctionality.  He was a third child and carries the loneliness and 
sadness of the marital relationship.  Jacob was also the Protected one, 
Gwen and Jack becoming 'Little Parents' hoping that Jacob would not 
experience the pain of the family's trauma.  In fact, Jacob felt so 
totally abandoned that he still reenacts the abandonment by running away 
and totally disappearing.  He married at 17, pregnant, reenacting Jesse 
and Jessica's marriage.  He also married an adult child, and had three 
children, as his parents did, later abandoning them as his father had 
done to him.  His oldest daughter became Super-responsible One and 
Little parent to her sisters, and later parent to her own parents.  The 
other two daughters both became serious drug addicts.

The foregoing is a classic example of how alcoholism controls the lives 
of all the people in the family.  Each child becomes doubly addicted - 
both to Jesse's alcohol and Jessica's co-dependency (her addiction) to 
Jesse.  All of these people are enmeshed, having to give up their own 
uniqueness and individuality.  The whole family needs to be treated.

Someone estimated that each drinking alcoholic affects the lives of 50 
people.  To see the alcoholic family multigenerationally is the best 
example I know of to show how alcoholism impacts the family.

    
    Thanks, Cindy!  
    
    This stuff is great - keep it coming!
    
    Guy

    Bradshaw will be speaking in Boston, I think at the Park Plaza, I think
    on March 6th (or was it 13?).  Anyway, if anyone is interested, let me
    know and I'll search for the scrap of paper I scribbled the info on.
    
    Mary

    
    Mary - yes - PLEASE!
    
    Cindy

    Me too, Mary ... schedule permiting.
    
    Thanks,
    
    Ro
    

    Maybe we could do a car pool thingy (my word for today).
    
    I'd like to go too.
    
    Karen (KEB)

    Bradshaw will be in Boston March 7-11 at the Boston Park Plaza
    (Castle?).  The number for ticket information is 1/800.752.4666.  
    The schedule is:
    
    Wednesday evening, 3/7 - lecture on "dysfunctional families"
    reserved seating, $18
    
    Thursday evening, 3/8 - lecture on "confronting co-dependency"
    reserved seating, $18
    
    Friday all day, 3/9 - workshop on "healing the shame that binds you"
    general admission, $80
    
    Saturday & Sunday, 3/10&11 - intensive workshop on "healing your
    precious child" general admission, $170
    
    
    The information person wasn't sure what the difference is between
    "reserved seating" and "general admission," except that one was first
    come/first serve and the other is first come/first serve! ;-)
    
    I'm interested in going to one of the lectures or possibly the Friday
    workshop.  Anybody care to join me??
    
    Mary

    Yes Mary, I'd like to go.  I return from my vacation on March 6th, 
    so the Thursday evening lecture would probably be best for me.
    I've enjoyed his tv series and book and think there is much to be
    gained by attending in person.
    
    Will be in touch offline...
    
    Ro
    

    
    I feel its important to bring up your child as parents instead of
    somebody else raising them. In some cases some children tell what
    the parents do, which is very wrong. Its hard if not possible, to
    get a child to pay attention to you, especially when you're telling
    them something for their own good. Too often an abandoned child is
    still living with their parents. 
    
                                        RM

Some John Bradshaw events in Boston:
(usual disclaimers apply)

All events at the Park Plaza Castle Exposition
and Conference Center,  Columbus Ave & Arlington St.
Boston.

(800) 877-7676 for more info.

----------------------------------------------------------

    An Evening with John Bradshaw:
    Sharing His Experience, Strength, and Hope

Thursday, May 30, 1991
7:30 PM to 10:00 PM
$20 per person  
($18 for members of WGBH (Boston public radio/TV station))
(plus $1 service charge for phone and mail orders)

John Bradshaw, author, lecturer, public television host,
and inspiring teacher, spends an evening sharing his 
current thoughts on the process of recovery and express-
ing his feelings about what the future holds for the 
recovery "movement."

John's story of his own addiction, co-dependency, and 
recovery us a valuable source of hope for those of us
with similar struggles.  John does not claim to be
"cured" but rather demonstrates, with rigorous honesty 
and generous openness, the day-to-day nature of his
personal growth process.

A brilliant speaker, John ranges from philosophy to 
theology to poetry to clinical psychology with incredible 
ease.  He will cover a variety of topics and anser questions
from the audience.  This will be an inspiring evening--
don't miss it!

-----------------------------------------------------------

    Where Are You, Father?--
    Healing Our Father Wounds

Friday May 31, 1991
9:00 AM to 4:30 PM
$90 per person  
($85 for members of WGBH (Boston public radio/TV station))
(plus $1 service charge for phone and mail orders)

The psychological absense of fathers from their families
is one of the great underestimated tragedies of our time.
The presence of a nurturing father is essential to healthy
childhood growth; and the effect of father-loss--either
physical or emotional--has a profound impact on the lives 
of most men and women.

In this workshop, John will illuminate the nature of this deep
wounding and the unique ways in which each sex is impacted.
Under John's guidance, each participant will explore their
own childhood relationship with their father (or lack of it)
and identify obstructions in their own life which may have
resulted from this relationship.

John will conduct meditations and guided visualizations and
administer other exercises designed to begin--or continue--each
participants's process of healing those "father wounds."

------------------------------------------------------------

    Homecoming:  Reclaiming and
    Championing Your Inner Child

Saturday June 1 and Sunday June 2, 1991  (2-day workshop)
9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
$185 per person  
($175 for members of WGBH (Boston public radio/TV station))
(plus $1 service charge for phone and mail orders)

Within all of us lives a precious little child that represents
the most essential, vibrant, and creative part of ourselves.
Many of us who grew up in families characterized by abandon-
ment and abuse--intentional or not--have difficulty relating
to this important part of ourselves because it is associated
with so much pain.  This interferes with our ability to 
funciton as happy, fulfilled adults.

One of the gifts resulting from the "adult child" movement is
the realization that healing our wounded inner child is the key
to complete recovery.

In this powerful workshop, upon which his newest book is based,
John will lead each participant on a journey of rediscovering
the child within.  Through the use of lecture and experiential
exercises, he will demonstrate techniques for accessing childhood
memories, and healing painful wounds left by unmet developmental
needs.

I don't know how I missed some of the older replies in here, but I find it 
interesting.  Here at ZKO/TTB there have been two lunch time seminars titled
"Healing the Child Within" (or something like that).  They covered basically
the same topics as the John Bradshaw sessions seem to cover (perhaps not to
the same depth), but were interesting, and helpful in starting one to 
understand what things their parents may have done that did injure the child
within, and how it impacts adult behavior today.  It sounded like something
that may be offered again in the future or elsewhere.

Beth

    For an idea of what Bradshaw is like, check out
    _Bradshaw on Homecoming_ (or something like that)
    Thursdays, 8PM ch 44 (in the GMA).
    
    /bruce

                   
    Bradshaw has a new book out called "Creating Love".  It's only
    available in hardcover at the moment though.
    
    I just watched the 6 or 7-part series on PBS, and it is fantastic!
    The primary topics are: 
    
        Friendships, Sex, Spousal Relationship, Work, and the Earth
    
    Cindy

	Thanks, Cindy.

	Also he will be in Burlington, at the Marriot 
	Feb. 17,18,19,and 20th for workshops.  I hope
	to get acouple of the evening ones in.
	
	I think he is just terrific!

	Mikki

Mikki,

Who's sponsoring Bradshaw's workshops?  Where can one find out about 
it (price, ticket info, etc.)?

Thanks,

Ro

>Mikki,

>> Who's sponsoring Bradshaw's workshops?  Where can one find out about 
>> it (price, ticket info, etc.)?


	Well, Ro - you can call the Marriot in Burlington, like
	I did.  Or.. Wait till tomorrow and I will bring the
	workshop brochure in..

	I can tell that the nightly tickets are $25.00 with 3
	dollars off if you are a WGBH member.  The friday- day
	workshop..is much more, of course, on Creating Love.

	Wednesday night is titled: the Core of spirituality
	thursday night is titled: the Paradox of love
	 
	They are being sponsored by his workshop organization.

	more tomorrow,   Mikki

    
    Mikki and Ro,
    
    I think Larry C. is going on Wed. Feb.17th (mutual friend and former
    DEJAVUer, for those who are new).
                     
    Cindy

    I'm going on the 18th.  Got my ticket when I made my annual 'GBH
    donation.
    
    Mary

	GREAT!, see you guys there.  I hope to be going on the
	17th and 18th.  

	&^)