Family Bullying

 

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.  John Keats

Our psyches are complex and most of us carry attachment injuries. In this field, beyond the sad social persona, we can imagine the internal parts as animals. One quiet bear sits out of the way near the stream, holding her wounds, while mother simmers. Dad acts-out, and he is a model (mirror) for his offspring who are cruel, gang-like.

Every being tells a story. And all of these can elicit observations and questions. Which part of us is in center stage at any given moment? Which parts dominate? Which aspects are flexible or loving? How did members learn their roles? Why do families structure themselves around the most dysfunctional? Why does the bully so often look larger than life.

Why this painting?

Enlarging allows us to slow interactions down, externalizing the tangled web of multiple worlds and multiverses. When one dominant subpersonality reacts, we can take our precious time to reflect and carefully explore what is prompted to come forward or to flee.

To borrow from Keats’s metaphor of development, by Enlarging, the rooms that our earliest experiences inhabit become translucent. Our psyche turns into a glass mansion with many apartments. We can better discern the wild horses that have been freed from their barns and are banging up and down the stairs in a house that we want to call home. They are clunky and noisy, breaking our moments of clarity and connection. Now we see the flying squirrels that have left their attic nests at night to leap from cabinet to cabinet, distracting with hyperactive energies. Or we see other furry beings that have been sitting so still but now their outlines come into focus, startling us, as we notice the huge eyes staring back. All parts of us are sentient in their own way.

Inside-out

Most attachment-informed therapists know that childhood wounds will show up in our more intimate relationships: friends, lovers, coworkers. How did you cope with your family? Did you hide? Or did you erase yourself to comply with those who had more power? Did you fight and fuss to gain some space? Those who are bullied often bully others—Did you become a bully at some point?

This painting might remind us that we need to have a one-to-one relationship with all the parts that show up in us, especially energy forms that are bullying. Many of these inner personalities will torment us or perturb us to react resentfully, even abusively. During your introspection, consider if these subpersonalities have evolved as a mirror to an individual in your most formative years, particularly a primary caretaker or an aggressive older sibling. I suggest that you journal about all the energy forms who show up. Invest the time you need to understand them, especially the most difficult characters in your inner family. Define them and give them descriptive names.

Why are we wasting time recording old family heartaches? Why would we want to lose all that potential screen time. Because…. we can’t do what we are Inspired to do until we know what our inner personalities are doing. And unfortunately, they cannot be simply removed or exterminated by “thought stopping” them away once they have been wired in. Any more than we could have thought-stopped away people in our family of origin.

Upside down:

Have you been called by these names? Clingy or Needy or Icy. Fat. Lazy. Stupid. Or maybe Crazy? There are endless ways for us to be emotionally injured and invalidated. There are also seemingly endless individuals in society who will act out bullying roles in workplaces, in community spaces, or when they can trap someone alone. Don’t underestimate the negative impact they can have on us. However insightful we may be, whatever the length of therapy we have had and the level of healing we may have attained, bullies can sometimes bring us back to the most painful chapters of our family life. Dramas help shatter our dangerous denial, help us recognize what we may have buried from ourselves, freeing us to acknowledge that aggressive, demeaning, sarcastic people are a problem for us. We need to take action or fortify our boundaries.

1. Heart-break-Intimate Triggering

“Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena . . . Everything that’s unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbor, and we treat him accordingly.” Carl Jung

We might consider intimate dramas to be a subset of family mirroring, but they have their own special heartbreaks. The problem here is not the people but the ubiquitous patterns that emerge, sending us off on escalating action and reaction.

“Of course, I’m right That’s just common sense.”

 “Any reasonable person would know that that’s wrong.”

“You’re too emotional.”

 “You are pig headed!”

“It’s your father’s’ fault because he treated you like a princess.”

“My daddy is a good man. Don’t blame anything on him.”

“Thank God I came from a good family.”

‘Well then, let’s talk about your family. They are the ones who are screwed up.”

We get emotionally triggered and then trigger a partner who then is more triggered, and thus we get caught into an escalating loop.

People in intimate relationships, after such arguments, are left with a distorted and partial perception of what just happened. They often get stuck in blame games.

As a witness to this on a psychodrama stage or as a counselor observing a couple in their office, it is easy to see how partners are reacting to how things appear to them. While in an activated state, their mind is in me, me, me mode, rehearsing their painful stories, accusing others, cutting off any heart-felt comprehension. There are defensive pushes and pulls, angers and fears and anxieties vying for attention,

In a Heart-drama we learn and practice being a witness or counselor to ourselves, providing us the opportunity to recognize the Self-Deception and the Abnormal energies stirred by Pain, to visualize what’s happening as if from the outside. When we become an impartial observer in the courtroom, when we are no longer feeling like we must defend ourselves, the relationship dynamics are exposed with searing clarity. The challenge is to remain present on the stage in our imagination, find the honesty to notice what is happening, and consider what is occurring and role-play heart-felt requests and practice more sensitive responses.

 Couples on stage

“Couple’s work is not about behavior change. It’s about transformation of the childhood attachment experience in a way that enables us to live in harmony (the ability to have conflict and to recover from it).”      Janina Fisher

The following is a snapshot of intimate triggering. Imagine a woman who has been severely neglected as a child, ignored by her parents, carrying a deep wound. She is feeling betrayed, but she is barely conscious of that energy. Her emotional brain feels hungry for connection, while her Abnormal propagates a story about how she will be invalidated by anyone who seeks to get close.

“I never get what I need, and my partner always fails me.”

Resentful, angry, she shows up hostile, hardened, attacking. When challenged, if she could respond truthfully, she might say fighting is better than nothing.

Imagine, then, she is sitting across from a male partner. He has been physically and emotionally battered as a child. When attacked he tends to hide, maybe even fragment internally. His emotional brain sees threats and possible punishment everywhere; and he has an Abnormal story that he is unworthy of love, incompetent, even permanently flawed. When attacked, he implodes, turning toward overwhelming shame.

Our psyches are complex. But in our Work, we have an opportunity to see the Inside-out, internal parts that act out alongside the parts that tell stories alongside parts that hold wounds. Our inquiry starts to elicit the important questions. Which part is in center stage at any given moment? Which parts dominate? Which aspects are flexible or loving? When we have access to some degree of mindfulness, flow, attuned states, or spiritual peace, it becomes apparent that a lack of skills rarely is the problem. When we are maintaining a heartfelt perspective, we can generally muddle through without setting each other off and battling to the death.

The Inspired stage of conscious awareness allows us to slow interactions down. And, by externalizing the tangled web of two worlds, to see what is Upside-down and Inside-out, to spot abuse and defensiveness. As one subpersonality in us reacts, we can explore which aspect of our partner is prompted to come forward or to flee.

Is Pain in one person, overly intense and hair triggered, talking to Pain in the other? Then that’s going to be a frightening mess to come home to.

Is the Abnormal responding to criticism with prosecutorial courtroom or bureaucratic aloofness, or acting emotionally clueless, dismissive, or intellectualizing? That is sure to escalate the partner who now feels emotionally abandoned.

Or is Self-deception hiding secrets or pumping up with protective grandiosity? Or obsessing about another drink? Then that is sure to go sideways.