Dysfunctional Families 101

What is a Dysfunctional Family?

A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehavior and even abuse on the part of individual members of the family occur continually, leading other members to accommodate to such actions. Children grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is normal.  Dysfunctional families are most often a result of the alcoholism, substance abuse, or other addictions of parents, parents' untreated mental illnesses or personality disorders, or the parents emulating their own dysfunctional parents and dysfunctional family experiences.

Symptoms of Family Dysfunction:

According to Steven Farmer, the author of Adult Children of Abusive Parents, there are several symptoms of family dysfunction:

* Denial (i.e. a refusal to acknowledge the problems of a parent; ignoring complaints of abuse)

* Inconsistency and Unpredictability

* Lack of Empathy toward family members

* Lack of clear boundaries (i.e. throwing away personal possessions that belong to others, borrowing without asking, not knowing what the rules are, inappropriate touching, etc.)

* Role reversals ("parentifying" children)

* "Closed family system" (a socially isolated family that discourages relationships with outsiders)

* Mixed Messages

* Extremes in Conflict (either too much or too little fighting between family members)

Signs of Unhealthy Parenting:

Dr. Dan Neuharth, author of If You Had Controlling Parents cites eight signs of unhealthy parenting:

* Conditional love

* Disrespect

* Stifled speech (children not allowed to dissent or question authority)

* Emotional intolerance (family members not allowed to express the "wrong" emotions)

* Ridicule

* "Dogmatic or chaotic parenting" (harsh and inflexible discipline)

* "Denial of an Inner Life (children are not allowed to develop their own value system)

* Social dysfunction or isolation

Parenting Styles:

Neuharth also lists eight different parenting styles which cause family dysfunction:

* Smothering (parents do not allow their children to maintain a separate identity)

* Using (narcissistic parents)

* Abusing (parents who use physical, verbal, or sexual violence to dominate their children)

* Chaotic (unstable parents who behave in a wildly inconsistent manner with their kids)

* Perfectionistic (parents who "fixate on order, prestige, power, and/or perfect appearances".)

* Cultlike (parents who feel uncertain and "raise their children according to rigid rules and roles".)

* Depriving (parents who control by withholding love, money, praise, attention, or anything else their child needs or wants.)

* Childlike (parents who parentify their children. They tend to be needy and incompetent. Usually allow the other parent to abuse children.)

Every Dysfunctional Family Has an Enabler and a Dependent!

The Enabler protects and takes care of the problem spouse, referred to as The Dependent, so that the Dependent is never allowed to experience the negative consequences of his or her actions. While the Enabler feels angry and resentful about the extra burden that is placed upon him or her by the Dependent's unhealthy, irresponsible and antisocial behavior, he or she may feel powerless to do anything about it. The Enabler feels he or she must act this way, because otherwise, the family might not survive. While the family is afforded survival by the Enabler's responsibility, the Enabler may pay the cost of stress-related illness, and never have his or her own needs met, in effect, being a martyr for the family. The paradoxical thing about the Enabler's behavior is that by preventing the Dependent's crisis, he or she also prevents the painful, corrective experience that crisis brings, which may be the only thing that makes the Dependent stop the downward spiral of dysfunction.

The Effects on The Children:

The children of dysfunctional families lose their true identities - "their authentic selves”.

The children assume roles - "adapted selves" within the family to make up for the deficiencies of parenting. Children in dysfunctional families loose their “true-selves” and feel constrained to adapt to atypical roles within the family to allow the family as a whole to survive. These roles also called “adapted-selves” are:  

1. The “hero" or good child- the one who is responsible, self sufficient  and acts as the parent.
2. The "scapegoat" or problem child- the one who acts out and is blamed for the family’s dysfunction.
3. The "caretaker"- the one who takes responsibility for the emotional well being of family members and others.
4. The "lost" child- the quiet one who’s needs are hidden or ignored.
5. The "mascot"- the one who uses humor to divert attention from the family dysfunction.
6. The "mastermind"- the one who capitalizes on other family members faults to get what they want.

Once we have taken on a role, and it has become our comfort zone, or our survival mechanism, we - our "true self"' - stops growing.

The longer a person plays a role, the more rigidly fixed he or she becomes in it. Eventually, family members "become addicted to their roles, seeing them as essential to their survival and playing them with the same compulsion, delusion and denial as the Dependent plays his [or her] role." 

It doesn't take long before we need to "medicate" ourselves to reduce the stress and alleviate the pain the "adapted-self" creates.

MEDICATORS include: substance addictions, such as alcohol, drugs, pills, food and/or process addictions, such as sex, porn, anger, gambling, compulsive spending, the internet, work, etc.

Medicators lead to loss of control.
Some of us will end up in recovery. Some of us will die.

If you are an only child:

A special case is the only child. An only child in a dysfunctional family may take on parts of all of these roles, playing them simultaneously or alternately, experiencing overwhelming pain and confusion as a result.