You may agree that family is a basic and most important part of your life, but the same family can be a cause of anger, frustration, distress, or loneliness. Family relationships and childhood experiences can have long-term effects, not only on your life overall but also on the relationships you build throughout your life.
Every family has its dynamics, relating to how family members interact and relate. Family dynamics are also associated with particular values, rituals, and norms. The family you live in can be based on marital connections or biological connections. Either way, the culture your family belongs to also affects the family dynamics.
Dysfunctional Family:
One of the critical questions is; how can you identify if you belong to a healthy family or a dysfunctional one? Well! Each family has a different meaning of normal. As no family is perfect, some accidental insults orheated arguments don’t instantly make a family dysfunctional. However, some common characteristics of a dysfunctional family are listed below. Identifying the causes enables you to find solutions and take steps to make your family functional.
Common Characteristics of Dysfunctional Family and Solutions:
Destructive Criticism:
Constructive criticism and feedback are important for everyone, especially, growing children. Whereas, excessive criticism and verbal abuse cast a negative impact on the child’s socio-emotional and cognitive development. Whether direct or subtle, criticism by parents in dysfunctional families also affects the self-image of the children.
On the other hand, members of a functional family allow everyone to share their feelings and thoughts and make them a part of decision-making progress to build confidence, trust, and connection. Feelings and ideas are shared in an appropriate way that is respected.
Poor Communication:
Healthy relationships, most importantly, stem from good communication. And good communication is what lacks in dysfunctional families. Family members don’t listen to each other, hence most of them feel unheard. And, unfortunately, poor communication goes unnoticed in most of families. Psychologist for kids with mental, emotional, or behavioral issues often find poor communication or miscommunication in families to be the cause. Miscommunication usually occurs when family members talk about one family member to others instead of confronting that member directly, resulting in mistrust, and passive-aggressive behavior.
Functional families are those where everyone feels respected and heard. And one of the best ways to make your family dynamics better is by increasing your listening and communication skills. Be an active listener, show empathy and compassion.
Perfectionism:
It is usually seen that dysfunctional families have one or more adults who are perfectionists. These adults put high expectations on children or other family members which exerts mental and emotional pressure on them. High expectations reduce playfulness and learning in children, also resulting in negative emotions and low self-esteem.
To prevent perfectionism, try to communicate openly, and set realistic goals. Encourage family members to talk about their strengths and weakness and try to help them overcome obstacles.
Control:
In dysfunctional families, one or both parents or elders try to control their children or younger members in the family. Inappropriate control results in a lack of privacy and enhances dependence, which hinders the normal growth and learning of the individuals.
Functional families, on the other hand, encourage healthy connections by making family members a part of the decision-making process, listening to and respecting their ideas and feelings, and having appropriate parent control with affection, empathy, understanding, and respect.
Some other steps you can take to make your family dynamics healthy are:
● Maintain structure in your family. Sometimes behind misunderstandings, acting out and heated arguments lie lack of sleep, workload, mismanagement of time, work, and home chores. Hence, try to create a healthy routine that can bring everyone together.
● Proper assignment of chores is important for healthy family dynamics. Distributing age-appropriate chores to family members enhances responsibility, empathy, compassion, independence, and a sense of security.
● Create healthy boundaries in your family. Healthy boundaries enhance the individuality, provides a sense of privacy, and creates positive emotions for each other. Also, consistent and firm rules and limits will help you maintain healthy family dynamics.
If you belong to a dysfunctional family, making it functional won’t be that easy. That is why seeking the help of a psychologist or psychotherapist will be the step you should take to get on a road to a heathy scenario. Different psychotherapy types are available to identify the issues and help the family members resolve issues and come closer. The sooner you try to make your family dynamics better, the better because with time habits will get engrained and family members will slowly grow apart. Fennel Powell Counseling is dedicated to providing you the best therapeutic services by qualified, certified, and experienced professionals. Contact a family therapist at Fennel Powell Counseling by calling (973) 405-1278. Book an appointment now to get started on your healing journey.
Advantages:
Everyone understands the importance of a healthy functioning family. However, with time, and age, conflicts can arise. Although as distressing as they may be it is possible to bring back the functionality of your family. Contacting a family therapist at Fennell Powell Counseling will provide you a better understanding of your family patterns, and dynamics and how you can improve them. The therapist will help you and your family members to learn anger management skills, and ways to improve problem-solving and enhance communication with deeper empathy.
Success:
Family therapy has proven benefits on making family dynamics better by improving communication skills and solving, mental, emotional, and behavioral issues such as trauma, substance abuse, depression, that strongly impact the family unit. Therefore, don’t forget to contact a professional when you observe signs of a dysfunctional family.
Results:
If you are looking for a way to make your family dynamics better, getting the help of a therapist from Fennel Powell will offer you great results. Family therapy is a short-term therapy with approximately 12 sessions, each session lasts about fifty minutes leaving you with the best possible results in identifying the maladaptive patterns in family dynamics and helping you and your family members bring their best forward.