Thoughts on Family
We experience family in different ways, over the course of our lives. As our growth process evolves, we must be aware of where our families are helping or hindering that evolution.
These thoughts are coming on Mother’s Day, which is clearly going to be a family focused time. I have found it important to reflect on my interactions with my family. For anyone who has read my thoughts or spoken to me at a deeper level, I don’t hide the challenges I have experienced. As I think about my family today, I am able to zoom out and see that family is an important group we are a part of during life. Like any group, it will have its inevitable limitations.
Families can be conventional or unconventional. They can be the people we grew up with or the people we matured with. They can be the families we are born into, ones we create, or those we join. They are groups that we are close enough with the members to identify with them as family.
I won’t minimize the impact of family, that would be irrational. Yet in this zoomed out perspective, our families of origin are just our first groups of which we are a part. They are where we experience our initial growth and learning. They are our initial forms of support, comfort, and security. They, like any group, need to evolve. If they don’t, however, like any group, we have a choice to stay stagnant within them, or leave to evolve elsewhere.
This is not me advocating for people to leave their families. In fact, my current thoughts have me thinking the opposite. I believe that those who are or want to create families, have the capacity to create them in such a way that keeps everyone together and growing. An evolving family is absolutely possible.
In working on ourselves as open-minded, Ego-healthy, and growth-focused individuals, we give ourselves a chance to start groups/families that reflect those values. We also have the choice to find partners who share those deeper values and can align on the pursuit of them, over the course of time. Members are far more likely to stick around and choose to remain a part of families whose leaders and cultures prioritize individual evolution.
Before I continue, take a moment to think about the groups in life that you have identified with as family.
- Which of those family groups have you left? Which are you still a part of?
- In the ones you have left, what caused you to do so?
- In the family groups that you are still a part of, are you growing or do you find yourself stuck?
- Have you created a family group? If so, what values do you lead it with?
The way we mature and evolve as individuals over the course of our lives is widely dependent on the ways in which we are able to differentiate from the groups we naturally exist in. The first group is our families of origin. The second would then be our chosen families. Finally, we create our own families for the final group before true differentiation as an emotionally mature adult.
Of course, it doesn’t happen in the same way or order for everyone.
We all navigate our own paths in our own groups in our own ways. As always, my thoughts are my own, and I am always open to alternative perspectives and ideas. I aim to bring a high-level, broadly attempted perspective to the idea of how our families as groups change as we do.
Family of Origin
Our families of origin represent that first group we are a part of in life. Some of us are fortunate and have the support, safety, and comfort of that group for as long as we need. Even luckier, we may have the space to learn and grow within that group, either from parents or siblings. Others of us may not be so lucky and are forced quickly into the second family group. More on that shortly.
For the sake of these thoughts, I will present the family of origin as what we have come to standardize (recognizing that this is most certainly not standard for everyone). Parents or parent that have stuck around long enough to see us leave the home and head out in to the world on our own. In this scenario, we may or may not have siblings, who would simply add another person who is a part of the group. They definitely impact the group dynamic, but not when it comes to setting the culture.
The parents set the tone. The parents are the leaders of the group. They establish the family values They are responsible for the depth of those values. Like any group, the parents determine what is important to the members of their family. Parents then raise their children to keep those values and live to the expectations of importance that they determine.
With this in mind, it is easy to see how we are initially dependent on the depth of growth and maturation of parents as leaders of the group. We can only develop insofar as they have made room for through their own process. The more emotionally immature our parents are, the more difficult it will be for us to mature ourselves. This limitation becomes shared among all members of the family, if left unchecked.
Differentiation
What happens then when a child is ready to grow beyond the values set in their family of origin? At some point, an individual begins to think for themselves. As a child grows up, they will naturally be pulled by forces and ideas outside of their family. In their own lack of depth, parents will see a member of that group/family leaving as a threat to the group, rather than a natural part of the group’s evolution.
As a child or member of the group develops, they must be able to differentiate beyond the leaders, as their unique individual paths will inevitably differ. Unable to see past the need for the comfort and safety that family stability offers on the surface, the parents condemn and resist a child growing out of that family. A child, in turn, may fear the negative response of their parent in their attempt to differentiate. With enough fear, they may significantly delay leaving and their own individuation.
If the surface values of safety and comfort remains the shared purpose of the family, growth of the individuals is the casualty.
For those of us fortunate enough to have parents that support our growth out of the family or who are unfortunate and forced out of the family of origin too early, a new family will or must be found. This is most often a group of friends that we develop even further within and find a more social sense of safety, support and comfort. The maturation process then advances to this new family, our chosen family.
Chosen Family
The best pop-culture examples of a typical chosen family come from two classic television shows, Friends and The Big Bang Theory. In these sitcoms, we watch the growth of individuals, all in their twenties, as they navigate work, romance, and friendship. The chosen families develop with people who live close to each other, are in similar life stages, and share common values. “As seen on TV” chosen families are likely not at all like the ones we have experienced, but they offer a solid visual from which we can start.
It is important to acknowledge that the chosen family may come as a replacement of our family of origin, or it may not. The more likely scenario is that we become members of both groups/families simultaneously. One foot in, one foot out.
Remember, the longer we stay members of a group, the more individuality we sacrifice. We can only individuate so far as our families make space for us to do so. It is far easier to differentiate from a chosen family than it is from our family of origin.
Let’s say we hit 18 years old, graduate high school and are forced to enter the world. Not too far fetched. We may move out of the house that our family of origin lives in but we make sure to return home and call often. Is our connection out of obligation or fear? Or is it out of choice? Regardless, in being out of the home, we naturally begin to align with new, chosen families. We seek a replacement for the support, safety, and comfort we no longer have.
Chosen families can develop in college, at work, or with friends from our childhood and adolescence. We find ourselves wanting to spend time with these people who live close by and are in a very similar emotional state. Together, we will take on a world where taxes, jobs, insurance, rent, socializing, and dating are top priorities.
These tasks can be incredibly scary and challenging, if faced alone, but they force us to grow. Alone, this stage of life can be overwhelming, so we seek people who understand what we feel and can normalize the process. We seek a family.
Assimilation
This chosen family offers us validation and normalcy in the face of uncertainty and inevitable failure. A date goes horribly wrong, we don’t get the job we want, or we need someone to go with us to our first music festival, our chosen family is there. They soothe our anxiety, normalize our failures, and validate our successes. Unlike our parents, we can be more of our new adult selves around our chosen families. They won’t judge us because we aren’t a reflection on them.
It is quite a liberating familial experience.
Along the way, members of our chosen family bring in new members (think about Bernadette and Amy from Big Bang Theory) and the people we develop connections with grow as well.
We all begin to learn from each other. We experience life together. We build careers, relationships, and resilience. We often look back on the development and time with our chosen family or families as some of the best times of our lives. We are both responsible for our own growth and somewhat not held accountable at the same time.
Of course, it isn’t always as funny or as easy as life in Central Perk or Cal Tech. But over time, the members of the group all mature to a point where they are ultimately living their own individual lives. We settle into fulfilling work. We find a partner who we want to build a life with. We get to a point where we simply out grow our chosen family and are ready for the third and final family: Our created family.
The Created Family
It comes full circle. At some point, we hope to be fortunate enough to create a family of our own. This could be one with just our partners, with children, or even a company we start. The point is that we become the leaders or co-leaders of a new system, a new group. A group where we control the depth of the values and the ways in which the members of that system feel free (or not free) to operate and individuate for themselves.
Again, quick point of acknowledgement. We have to deliberately out grow our family of origins and our chosen families to have a healthy created family. There are plenty of articles and videos out there about enmeshment and boundaries that help lay out why. I’ll let more knowledgeable writers get into those, but here is what I know.
As individuals, we are responsible for our own levels of differentiation and it it is in that differentiation that we establish ourselves as emotionally mature (or immature) adults.
For the sake of this article, again, I want to be clear that I am not saying we shouldn’t have relationships with our parents or that we need to give up our friends (it is Mother’s Day after-all). The ideal scenario has us with parents that give us the space to think and live as individual humans, rather than always seeing us as their children. It also has us with friends who offer us their friendship freely and openly, regardless of who we choose as partners, where we choose to live, or what work/ideals we pursue.
Our families, chosen or of origin, should recognize us as growing, developing individuals. Their love should come without condition. Our time apart or away from those families are seen as healthy space, being used for our growth, learning, and maturation processes.
Do these ideal scenarios come often? Of course not. Our parents hold on to their children for dear life while they battle their own aging and meaning-seeking processes. They haven’t deepened their own emotional range and therefore have difficulty accepting children who have. They see time and distance as rejection rather than space to grow.
Our friends, quite similarly, get ego-triggered when it’s time to leave the chosen family. A member of the family leaving means that the glory days of that family being together may be over. The threat of energy being focused on the next stage of maturation or becoming an adult, is a threat to the perceived freedom of youth that the group represents.
Maturation
In our created family, we are responsible for the space the members of our family have to grow. Most often, we follow, unconsciously, what we know. Unless we’re deliberate about conscious individual development, we will become our parents. Alternatively, if we have been mindful about the process of our own growth and remained self-aware in developing outside of our families of origin and chosen families, we have a chance at mature adulthood.
We have a chance to create a family that values the depth of character, the differentiation of individuals, and the unique growth path of each member. We continue our own development, continually seeking meaning in addition to what we get from the members of our families. We establish new relationships. We deepen current relationships. We learn about ourselves and never stop that learning.
Our Individual Path
Once we have created our own families, our work is most certainly not complete. Our greatest gift to those we love comes from the wisdom and learning that we can integrate into their lives as emotionally mature adults. Our children or employees will evolve (hopefully) along their own journeys. We have the responsibility to continue our evolution, well past the raising of children or starting of companies.
The hard truth behind all of our families, created, chosen, or original, is that we are individuals within them. We are, at the core, alone in our individuality. As discussed, these families certainly have their places and offer much needed sources of safety and comfort during important times of our lives. They are all, however, fleeting.
The detachment from these families in service of our own growth process should not only be our approach, but it should be supported by those who claim to want the best for us.
If people in our lives really want us to succeed in life, they must allow us to live and develop as individuals. They must trust that we will be ok on our own. If they don’t they limit our potential. If we allow ourselves to remain attached to an un-evolving family system, we are choosing to avoid our own evolution.
We have a choice, every step of the way. These choices aren’t always easy and we may not always get them right. But if we are always choosing our own growth, our own maturation, and our own evolution, we give our children a chance to do the same.
If you feel a connection and want to learn more about coaching and self exploration with me, please visit www.deliberateself.com/coaching
