It is tempting to focus on identifying the narcissist, their behaviors and how they are the problem. However, this approach misses the complexity and the relationally of family systems. That is not to dismiss or minimize role of identifying and addressing abusive behavior. First, solely looking at one individual overlooks the shaping or impact on the individuals within the system. Second, it often creates an identified patient, where one person is labeled as the source of the family’s problems, causing us to miss the broader relational patterns. Lastly, simply recognizing these behaviors does not help us step out of dysfunctional patterns and behaviors. Why is that?
A family tends to develop patterns organized around protecting one person’s self-image, managing their emotional needs, avoiding conflict, or maintaining an appearance of being a “good” or “normal” family. Families can have some these dynamics even if no one individual would meet criteria for the DSM diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Most people don’t want the problematic and painful patterns from their family of origin to be repeated in the family they create.While consciously expressing this desire, most unconsciously continue to repeat these painful and problematic patterns. Without doing the work to become present to the unconscious beliefs and strategies we learned about maintaining connection, managing conflict, rejection and protecting from emotional pain, we will continue to play these out.
Healing is not about villainizing a parent or minimizing the things that happened. If the goal is to be increasingly free from recreating and replaying these patterns we must go beyond identifying and naming behaviors and dynamics. Let’s look at some of the impacts and how to move into curiosity that is transformative.
Individuals within these family systems develop predictable roles, you may have heard described them before. These roles typically develop over time in an effort to keep the equilibrium of the family system. For example, a child may take on the role of the hero, offering the family an achievement, behavior or identity that reflects positively on the family.
Another experience common in dysfunctional families is finding your feelings and experiences being minimized, denied, rewritten or assigned the blame. This can make it hard to trust yourself. Healing from these patterns means not just learning to set boundaries but to learn to trust your internal experience again.
If this is sounding familiar you might also struggle with abandoning yourself in hopes of receiving love. Healings is learning to become aware of your needs, emotions and boundaries. A therapist can help you learn to develop awareness of your inner world and explore these questions.
-What did I learn to believe about myself?
-Do I experience fear or anxiety if I express my needs or establish a boundary?
-Do I frequently find myself abandoning myself to maintain connection?