Are you new here? This explains the blog
RSS
Prefer posts delivered to your inbox? Just pop your email address in below and click 'GO'.
Recent Posts
- I quit blogging.
- Learning takes courage and you knew that, didn’t you?
- Wilma’s Friends on Change starts from within YOU
- I believe in the power of the individual, YOU.
- Wilma’s friends on Following our Calling
- Having faith to LET GO.
- Wilma’s friends on Our desires are the Great Unknown
- She has no desires only goals.
- Wilma’s friends on Intimacy has consequences
- Ego rejects love and intimacy.
- Wilma’s friends on Captaining our own Life
- Allow yourself to be lovable and shine.
- Wilma’s friends on Doing love to be Lovable.
- Are we lovable enough to attract love?
- Wilma’s friends on Honesty in relationships
Further Reading
Where I am coming from
Categories
Search this site
Family ‘get togethers’; how scarily revealing!
Nothing is more weird and wonderful than watching people with fresh eyes.
I love seeing their invisible limiting behavioral patterns which they consider normal, but makes me go; “WHAAAAT”.
I see those ‘invisible patterns’ everywhere, in other countries, amongst certain work cultures AND amongst families.
The beauty is of course that when people do their ‘normal’ things, I get to have a look in, get bewildered and at the same time appreciate getting this wonderful life lesson.
Because the gold lies in the fact that I go; “OMG, if they do that, what weird and limiting stuff do I do that is invisible to me and makes my life small and less jubilant?
What triggered this post off was a family ‘get together’ over the weekend.
As it obviously wasn’t my family – (my family is of course perfect, great and wonderful) -my fresh eyes could see behavioral patterns that are likely to be passed from generation to generation.
How those invisible patterns can limit lives.
Until they get noticed and consciously changed into more serving ones, they will continue to dominate and restrict.
Here are some of the invisible patterns I noticed:
No powerful celebration of special occasions.
Over the years I have seen Italian movies where grandparents with their family lap up the attention they are receiving and giving each other.
Recently I was at a funeral where they openly celebrated the person’s life and I loved it.
Although this ‘get together’ was because of John’s Dad’s 80th birthday and his parent’s wedding anniversary; there was no real celebration of his life or of the family.
With all the children and grandchildren there, it would have been a lovely opportunity to tell the family story, celebrate their life; but no such thing happened.
The invisible behavioural pattern I saw, was one of keeping a low profile and for heaven’s sake don’t make anybody or the family history important or special.
So although Italian or Latin American family style celebrations are widely known, none of that warmth, fun and family sense was used on this day.
How come, why not, it could have been such an unforgettable day?
From this I can see how I struggle with celebrating my own family’s special occasions.
A point to take note of, I’d say.
Just because it is not a pattern in the family to celebrate special occasions full out, how would it have looked, felt and be remembered if we could have gone full out Italian style after getting over the initial embarrassment and uncomfortableness? What would it have done to generations after this one?
Girl power rules, but where is the warmth.
It was interesting to observe the role of the women at the ‘get together’.
It is obvious that there are a lot of strong women in this family and they have a great impact on the men.
There is however not much female warmth going round.
The granddaughters and grandsons were already showing signs of this family pattern.
The girls were definitely outshining and overshadowing the boys in being present, capable and showing up; the boys were quiet and mostly behaving awkwardly and some were definitely dominated by the females in their lives.
It will be interesting to see how they in later life will replicate this pattern by choosing partners that are strong and capable and be outshone by them. One already has.
Although being powerful and strong is great, if that gets played out in domination over the other partner than that is obviously not great and cetainly not when it has become a role model for the family.
How would it be if the girl power could have been moderated into more warmth and everybody somehow was made to feel important, seen and valued. How would it have been if the males were given the space and attention they obviously wanted but never got? What would it do to their self esteem and their choice of life partners later on in the game?
Family full of strangers.
How much do we know of our parent’s and sibling’s lives?
What do we know of mother’s ambitions, dreams and happiness, what do we know of father’s regrets, mistakes and disappointments in love and life?
How much do we allow the family to contribute to us?
How much do we share what is really important?
How aligned are we with our thoughts and our philosophies?
I didn’t see very much curiosity anywhere and wonder why that is so common?
There was not much real talking going on and again there was no reminiscing of previous times.
My family has no understanding either and would promptly declare John and I weird and outright reckless if they would really know what we are up to.
What would it mean for a parent to be asked about their life, about their dreams for themselves and their children? How would it be for a parent to talk and to be listened to, so all hurt and regrets can be healed?
What would it mean for a child to know their parents?
AND what would it mean for siblings to hear each other’s stories, as most of the time each has experienced the family in a totally different way.
What would it mean to live without hurts, regrets and resentment because the stories we silently carry were heard and understood?
Would it change anything when you hear how others see your world?
Would it make a difference to the lives of the next generation when you allow other’s input to change your invisible patterns? Do most of us know how stuck we are with our patterns and how we resist change?
Does anybody dare to interupt their pattern big time and get encouraged by the family?
Hmm, it looks like this whole family ‘get together’ has left a big impression and brought up a lot of questions.
Why don’t we make a good life with the people dear and near to us, be it family or life partners; that we don’t and/or can’t really leaves me baffled.
I think that the invisible behavioral patterns have a lot to answer for and having them become unstuck could allow us to flow through life a lot more easily and abundantly.
9 Comments to “Family ‘get togethers’; how scarily revealing!”
Leave a reply
Subscribe to comments with RSS or TrackBack to 'Family ‘get togethers’; how scarily revealing!'.
Very good post!
I’m 62 and still dealing with the eradication of negative family patterns.
When I was younger, these behavior patterns nearly killed me.
My parents have received their after-life rewards and they are *still* “parenting” me . . .
@Alex. Isn’t it interesting, there must be a lot of washing and rinsing going on in people’s life until we arrive at our pristine origin again.
And our parents weren’t any better off, breaking the family pattern is my intent, with love and acknowledging the frustrations.
Clif Sanderson writes very lovely about that in a very down to earth way.
Thanks for your sharing and honesty Alex, that is a great contribution,
Love Wilma
Hi Wilma!
What a fantastic blog… so perfectly observed and even more perfectly worded. I felt like I was watching it all happen. (the sign of a great writer)
I noticed these sorts of “funny behaviours” about my family at a very young age – about 8 or so. A different set, of course, but still things going on that didn’t make logical or social sense to me at the time. At that age, I had no mind for dissonance, so I just went with the game that was being played for the most part, but just maintained my awareness of behaviour patterns in certain situations. As I got older, I became more and more of the outsider from the standard set of behaviours, and would ever more refuse to follow the traditions and patterns… I would especially refuse to play the role that had been cast for me, although I wouldn’t “call” anyone on it, as I perceived it to be “me vs. everyone” in my point of view, and I wasn’t up for that kind of fight.
Instead, I would stand on the sidelines of “patterns playing themselves out”, staying as impartial as I could be given that I was also involved in the situation, and try to remain distinct from the funny patterns I was seeing going on.
My family always kind of saw me the black sheep in this way anyway – the one who wouldn’t follow along easily… the one who would bring the “oddball” or “sideways” perspective on things …the one who would ask the questions nobody else had ever thought to ask (often starting with “why…” and usually either ending in my getting a scolding for being so indignant as to question the way things are, or a look of puzzled-breakthrough-moment, with the reply “you know… I really hadn’t noticed that before, so I don’t know.”. The result was often dependant on how pointedly/obstinately I had worded my question… and sometimes was aiming for one outcome or the other depending on how frustrated I was feeling at the time.
)
Of course, it was never-the-less still “the water that this fish grew up in”, so I can say that I was only “more” aware of it than other people seemed to be, and was still subject to that which I didn’t know I didn’t know had become a pattern for me. Some patterns I’d later see in myself, and some I’m sure I still have and just haven’t discovered yet. Particularly after the Landmark Forum I could see a lot more things in my own behaviour that I wasn’t aware of before.
Oddly enough, the more I’ve diverged from the path of patterns my family had developed, the more I’ve questioned things, questioned them, and questioned myself, the more I’ve grown to appreciate them, and vice versa it would seem. They’ve even started to change and question some of the things over the years too, and that’s good to see… they are more fully self-expressed than before, having more fun, and being a lot more “real” with each other than years ago. The sense I get is that breaking free of the pattern of role-playing in a family comes through being a firm but friendly stand for your own individuality within the family unit. The corresponding action is most often “politely declining” the efforts of others to type-cast you into a role of their choosing; letting them know in soft, subtle, and easily digestible ways that you are a product of your thoughts, experiences and actions in life, and not simply the product of a static familial social construct. I think after a while people start to respect that when the get the picture, even if it’s uncomfortable for them at the start that you don’t fit neatly into their script. Sure seems to have worked a lot better than the “intellectual belligerence” of my younger years, which was more like throwing darts at people to pop their “pre-conceived notion” balloons.
D
… I should add that moving from one living arrangement to another as a kid was what opened my eyes to recognising of different behaviour patterns.
Changing the background context is like changing the water in the fish bowl you live in, and realising that the new water has a different smell, taste, texture. You suddenly become aware of “water”… now that your context is different.
Over time, a new context will become almost undetectable… but when you move countries, you shake that up again.
Wow Michael. That is beautiful, rich sharing and so lovely worded.
I love your darts analogy and popping your family’s notions.
Yes, it is never easy to deal with differences in the beginning it seems, but once you know you are in water and not in concrete, your life can become more fluid, I guess.
Thanks Michael for taking the time to write such a fantastic comment
Hi Wilma,
I love your analogy between water and concrete! (…and how it plays out over time that water will erode and crack concrete if it is persistent in its motion for long enough)
What I realised as I got older is that most people tend to like their balloons, no matter how silly others might think they are.
As I was going to sleep last night, I had a half-asleep dream that everyone was walking around with bunches of helium balloons on strings. To each person, their own balloons seemed bright and cheerful and the helium made them walk lighter, but to other people they were actually heavy chains that weighed them down. Nobody was free of the balloon/chains… everyone had their own balloons and couldn’t see them as chains except on other people.
The idea of throwing darts came to mind because more often than not, my family members would be offended by my efforts to question their established patterns, and admittedly, at times I *knew* I was being offensive. Of course the problem was in my approach to it.
When a dart missed the balloon I was aiming at and hit the person holding onto it, they would be mighty upset!
Even if I hit the balloon, it still created a loud, startling *POP!* as an instant void opened up that the person didn’t expect, didn’t want, and didn’t immediately know what to do with.
Of course, I was also often hurt and got quite defensive when someone else popped one or two of my balloons without asking me first… but looking back I can see that I had lots of balloons that needed popping. Even when they ask first, and I say “OK”, the *POP* can be startling and uncomfortable and make me flinch, even though I’m expecting it.
)
I think it has something to do with how we are naturally uncomfortable with emotional and behavioural voids. Not knowing what to do in a situation can be more distressing than “knowing” what to do, even if what we “know to do” makes no real sense at all. It’s about feeling that you have control of the situation, even if it’s just an illusion.
Perhaps that’s where the whole family role-playing thing perpetuates itself through generations; it’s the learned easy answer to dealing with a common scenario. Just follow the script. Sure, it’s mildly uncomfortable for everyone, but not enough for anyone to protest and call the game off, because you all know it will get you through without having to think about it too much, or invest yourself too much.
Having grown up with a few different scripts handed to me at different times made me wonder “Where’s the improv and fun in this?! Why don’t we just do and say what we want to do any say?” As a kid it was very confusing and frustrating. Like I said, though, I think people are catching on and it’s really very different now, and people are more “themselves” than before.
On the other side, our NZ family has always played full-out when they get together. It’s incredibly fun and everyone says what they think… there’s no agenda at hand other than being free to choose what to do and say in the moment, and it makes for very vivid and fond memories… and every single time we get together is totally unique, and always incredible.
Thanks for another great post Wilma.
This topic is very relevant for me.
Every time I have a family gathering I come home feeling absolutely shocked at my family’s limiting beliefs and values that they have. I always have a great sigh of relief telling myself “thank godness I am not like them!”.
Of course this is somewhat true as I have done a lot of work to remove those limiting beliefs and values from myself, but quite often after I do more soul searching I find that the things that bug me the most about my family are alive and thriving in myself – they are just “invisble” to me!
I now try very hard to not engage in my families limiting beliefs, values and dramas and focus on what I can learn and discover about myself from observing them.
This openness is helping me to overcome a lot of those deep drop “blocks” that have been passed on to me from my family.
Thanks again Wilma, you are a star!
Kim.
@Kim, thanks
and yes it is great that you have been able to distance yourself and change the beliefs to the ones you want to choose AND I know that you and Andy have worked on that.
@Michael, I do too think that things are improving as people have more access to different cultures and views.
And of course we need more great role models in our lives of great families as you have in the NZ one.