FAMILY RECONSTRUCTION

Family Reconstruction

What is family reconstruction?

• Family reconstruction is one of the power tools used to reconnect us in new ways back to our own families.
• It can help change a family with a dysfunctional system by providing a new way to re-examine ourselves and our parents allowing us to see the present and future with new perspectives. This will open us up to greater possibilities, providing more choices and freedom, making us to become more responsible as a result.

What are the characteristics of healthy family?

Healthy families will exhibit the following important traits:

• They accepts each other as equal in value
• They interacts with important qualities like trust, honesty and openness
• They not only have fun and laughter together, they are able to shoulder and swallow bitterness together as well
• They will find ways to have intimacy with each other
• They can work out their differences and resolves it
• They encourage each other to take risks and grows from disappointments and failures
• They exhibit shared responsibilities for the sake of each other
• They construct a family belief system – the value of the family
• They demonstrate care and concern for each other, i.e. play their role, show concern and is supportive to each other
• They need to be congruent to each other, especially in their communication

What are the impacts from the family of origin?

·        

• Family rules
• Family beliefs
• Family member’s resources
• Family member’s bad influence
• Family member’s positive influences
• Family member’s energy
• Family member’s appreciation
• Family member’s communication
• Family member’s coping

What are impacts of the family of origin?

The improvements when the impact of the family of origin has been dealt with:

• To understand the family dynamics
• To recognize the family as a core
• Must set a healthy boundary
• Must have trust and confidence among the family members
• Self-esteem has been raised
• The person is now taking responsibility for his/her inner experience and his/her behaviour
• The person is more congruent and more in charge of himself or herself
• There must be recognition of each other
• There must be acceptance of each other
• Family members must provide support to each other
• Must formed a good boundary amongst the family members
• Within the family, they must be congruent to each other
• They must also demonstrate transparency and trust

Forgiveness

What is forgiveness?

·        

•  Forgiveness = Letting go
• Forgiveness is an internal process
• Forgiveness is a feeling of wellness, freedom and acceptance
• Forgiveness is letting go of the intense emotional attachment to the past incidents
• Without forgiveness there is no way to reconstruct the family
• Especially for Chinese family, requires a lot of patience and tolerance and acceptance and understanding (the true nature in regards to gender bias view in the family).
• Forgiveness is taking back your power
• Forgiveness is moving on
• Forgiveness is for you
• Forgiveness is accepting
• Forgiveness can improve your mental and physical health
• Forgiveness can help a person to grow better
• Forgiveness can prevent self-punishment
• Forgiveness helps to develop a more healthy, physically and mentally
• Forgiveness helps us to be more congruent
• Forgiveness can help you to achieve self-actualization
• Forgiveness brings relief to one’s own internal struggle
• Forgiveness creates just a healthy lifestyle
• Forgiveness can bring peace within oneself, peace among and peace between
• Forgiveness helps one to appreciate life to a fuller extent

 What is the forgiveness process?

·          

• Unoad your emotional baggage like anger, shame, guilt and fear and stop taking all the blame for everything that ever happened to you.
• Recognize that, you did survive, that you developed some personal strength and compassion as a result.
• Appreciate yourself and live in here and now

The tools for reconstruction of a famiy

·          

• Courage
• Creative
• Risk-taking
• Tolerance
• Patience
• Focus
• Calmness
• Priority
• Follow your feelings (intuition), than to trust your intellect
• Cannot make any drastic decision when one is subjected to emotional turbulence, just simple one step at a time
• Give time for healing
• Have good organization and planning skills
• Ability to accept changes
• Ability to accept losses
• Cannot be calculative

Life After Family Reconstruction

·       

• To accept change is permanent
• Everything is more intact
• More secure and better boundaries
• Family reconstruction helps the body, mind and emotion move beyond stress, survival and coping to a more positive way of expressing and experiencing life.
• New perception to see old situations in a new framework, especially in relation to our “self” level. It is a way to regain and own our wholeness and we become more aware and accepting and lastly forgiveness and move on our new path happily.
• To allow the family members a second chance to grow, offering the other members the opportunity to change for the better

 

FAMILY RECONSTRUCTION

Case Study – A Success Story Of A Weak Woman  - Successfully Transformed  By Using Family Reconstruction.

Sally’s was married and lived in a dysfunctional family system totally opposite to her well to do maternal family. Her maternal family’s upbringing places strong emphasis on maintaining the mix of Confucian and traditional Chinese family values. Many times, she was crashed by her husband or his family members and had to rebuild herself constantly in order to survive the marriage.  Her resistance against the marriage falters because she was ingrained the traditional belief that it is also her duty to place the honour of her own family first before herself. 

Her husband coming from a totally dysfunctional family, with irresponsible parents, they couldn’t give him any sense of security or belonging. His father gambles very heavily leaving the mother to run a small family business and assume the control of the family. In short, they offered little in his upbringing but imbued into him the negative traits of both of his parents. Even when he is married, he still lives his wilful spendthrift and irresponsible life, constantly finding himself with heavy credit card debts. He is very chauvinistic and temperamental with little tolerance for criticism. When things go wrong, he would put the blame on others especially his wife and never on himself even when he is the source of the problem or committed the act.

Though her husband was way much older than she was when they got married, he still displays his love for the single’s lifestyle. His irresponsible attitude prompted by his mother and his family members left Sally to fend on her own with nearly zero financial support from him. Even when she was pregnant with her child, he could even quit his job for the sake of his friend, leaving her with no financial support leading up to her delivery. Due to the lack of care for her pregnancy, the child she gave birth to grew up sickly requiring constant medical attention. Her child being her motivation to survive, she had to set up her own business to maintain her upkeep and pay for her child’s enormous medical bills that was to come.

As far as it goes, her husband’s mother taught him to control everything of Sally, financially and emotionally. When Sally’s husband was part of the business, he controls literally everything and her survival falls literally on her capacity and talent to manage her business well. Sally is a very hardworking lady, she work until 12 midnight every day and need to look after her child at the same time, because she cannot afford a maid. When she had to send her sickly child for treatment, she had to pay for all the medical bills with her own savings. All he would do was to spend it on entertaining his friends, drinking and partying on a very regular basis. Each time the company goes into the red, she had to struggle to rebuild the firm back into the black. 

When she tried to turn to her maternal family for support, all she encountered was a wall of resistance and they would cast the blame on her. Her own naïve-ness was also her undoing as well, though she was clear what he was doing, the family system (family shame and reputation) of hers stifle her ability to react. So in the eyes of others, her presence with him gave him the excuse to portray that there was nothing wrong with Sally’s family and allowed her to be singled out as the one at fault. It became hard for anyone to believe her the predicament that she was in. Even her own family members would put the blame on her for the failure of her own marriage. They would go as far as to threaten to outcast her if she sought for a divorce from the marriage. No one wants to rock the boat, even though she knows it was illogical for her to stay on in the marriage, the same illogical and cruel “family beliefs” and “family values” trapped her within. 

Sally’s life took the turn for the worst when she wanted to have some autonomy and authority, especially to have some emergency cash funds for the child and herself because all the funds was totally under her husband absolute control. Every time, Sally must ask for cash for even the smallest request. Instead of giving her some control over her own life, her husband crashed her business by transferring both clientele and funds out from the company into another company he has established, leaving her with a bigger bank loan and huge liabilities taken out against her name. It traumatized her very badly, and yet through this ordeal, she had to rebuild but this time round, it took the slowest to regain her footing back into the business and longest to recover from. The reconstructed business managed to survive very successfully.

In trying to sabotage Sally, her husband started to influence their child with his undesirable habits – the lack of a sense of security and belonging. He influenced their child to become rebellious and wilful like himself. He would indulge the child with the sense of freedom, often quoting “Freedom (to be with best buddies) is the most important thing in life, without freedom I would rather die”. The wrong parenting style drove a nail into the relationship between Sally and her child. The clash of parenting style made her child lived separately from her and influenced the child to ignore her advice or guidance. No matter how badly her child would have treated her, she would try to reconnect with her child. Actually, her child was another very important reason that she didn’t pursue a divorce. Knowing that a broken family could cause a lot of emotional scarring, she held herself back. She would give the child everything to enjoy, on her businesses trips abroad, from sleeping in luxury suites to eating out at Michelin starred restaurants, she vowed only to give her child the best. 

In all, these are some of Sally’s struggles, what would be lengthy to write would be the entire reconstruction process. But she would reconstruct herself each time when she was down. Each time she becomes more congruent with herself and recognizes what key family values to maintain and what to abandon. Her ability to maintain some level of clarity probably saved her. She was able to overcome them due to her immense ability to forgive. Forgiveness has given her the ability to become a better person and she strives to maintain a healthy lifestyle. This is important to her ability to help her move on in her life leading to her own self-actualization.

Treatment Plan

When I started out on Sally’s case, it seems to be quite complicated with many issues compounded together. It took time to sort out her issues and prioritize her treatment by developing an understanding of the issues involved. 

I began with working on her perceptions of family systems knowing fully well she has to be able to externalize her suppressed emotional states. She learned to process her feelings and expectations. At the same undergo some remodelling of her cognitive and behaviour processes. 
 

To strengthen her inner self, I need to work into her inner resources enabling her to find the strength necessary to rebuild her business and her self-image. Slowly her self-confidence improved and she began to exhibit her ability for self-recognition, self-value and more importantly, self-acceptance and self-appreciation. As she becomes more congruent with herself, she can then exhibit strength of character and demonstrates her new found self-fulfilment.

This is critical for not just the rebuilding of herself, but also for her ability to show forgiveness and compassion. With such qualities, I am  able to work on her acquiring new passion for life  and to deal with  her unfinished business before making any drastic decision. This is where family reconstruction is about her ability to deal with the wrong views and correct those views to enable her to end the suffering and gain some level of happiness and peace, even if those people who affected her badly are still around her!

CO-DEPENDENCY

Co-Dependency

Co-dependency is a learned behaviour formed by watching and imitating other family members who display this type of behaviour, it can be passed down from one generation to another. It is an emotional and behavioural condition that affects an individual’s ability to have a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship. Also known as “relationship addiction” because it maintains a one-sided relationship that is emotionally destructive and/or abusive. It started with studies on families that have people living with an alcoholic or substance abuser. Today, the definition of co-dependency has expanded to describe dysfunctional patterns of living and problem solving developed during childhood by family rules. 

As co-dependent adults, there is a greater tendency to get involved in “toxic relationships”, in other words with people who are perhaps unreliable, emotionally unavailable, or needy. The co-dependent person tries to provide and control everything within the relationship without addressing their own needs or desires, setting themselves up for continued unfulfillment.

Even when the co-dependent person encounters someone with healthy boundaries, the co-dependent person still operates within their own system. This creates problems that continue to recycle in the same relationship or into new relationships.

Dysfunction within the family can lead to co-dependency. When one member of the family suffers from fear, anger, pain or shame that is either ignored or denied, it can causes a family to become dysfunctional and the underlying problems can include:

·         An addiction of a family member to drugs, alcohol, relationship, work, food, sex or gambling.

·         The existence of a family member suffering from physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

·         The presence of a family member suffering from a chronic mental or physical illness.

The following are some of the symptoms of co-dependency:

• Controlling behaviour
• Distrust
• Perfectionism
• Avoidance of feelings
• Intimacy problems
• Caretaking behaviour
• Hyper vigilance (heightened awareness for potential threat or danger)
• Physical illness related to stress
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
• Over suppression by family members (i.e. not allowing to expose family dark secrets) 

General rules set-up within families that causes co-dependency may include the following:

• It's not okay to talk about problems (i.e. family’s dark secrets)
• Feelings should not be expressed openly; keep feelings to yourself
• Communication is best if indirect; one person acts as messenger between two others; known in therapy as triangulation
• Be strong, good, right, perfect (i.e. to exercise perfectionism)
• Make us proud beyond realistic expectations
• Don't be selfish (i.e. constantly giving without ever taking)
• Do as I say not as I do (i.e. must follow instructions)
• Don't rock the boat
• Families that practices Confucian ideologies like Filial Piety or upholds unrealistic ancestral traditions
• Not allowed to break the family traditions or rules (i.e. like not allowed to divorce)
• Unhealthy family belief system 

Many families have one or more of these rules in place within the family. These kinds of rules can constrict and strain the free and healthy development of one’s self-esteem and coping. As a result, children being disempowered can develop non-helpful behaviour characteristics, problems solving skills, and reactions to situations in their adult life.