SECOND OPINION:Unresolved hurts can lead to an emotional Christmas
FAMILY CELEBRATIONS are never quite what they seem. Gatherings of family members at Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries and special occasions can be fraught with enmeshment and rebellious responses. One of the major sources of contention, particularly at Christmas, is to which family of origin do individual adult partners show loyalty?
Mature adults – those who have flown the nest – come to a consensus that the decision needs to primarily rest with their own couple relationship. Paying a visit to their respective parents on or before Christmas Day is something they both would consider, but the celebration happens under their own roof. Sometimes, the agreement may be to visit their respective parents on alternate Christmas Days. Such maturity can often be greeted with parental disappointment; hostility, silent treatment or emotional withdrawal. However, once the young people stick to their guns, eventually their wisdom is tolerated, if not wholly accepted.
Adult offspring who remain enmeshed with one or both parents can find family celebrations very trying. The enmeshment – their not having flown the nest – means they feel obliged to not only attend these festive family events, but they also tend to take responsibility for their success. These unhappy adults will cajole their reluctant siblings into attending and can demonstrate considerable upset when co-operation is not forthcoming.
Their dependence on their parents means that they live their lives from the outside-in, and they are threatened by individuals who do the opposite. They may well label these individuals as “selfish”; but truth be told, it is they who are the selfish ones because they impose their way onto others. However, truth is not commonly spoken in many families and all celebrations mask a deeper truth about family relationships that dare not be spoken.
If family celebrations create a strain for those who remain over-involved with parents, they are a source of annoyance and, sometimes, downright aggression on the part of those sons or daughters who left the family in an emotional storm. Adults who rebel carry unresolved hurts from family relationships and, unless they reflect and free themselves of what was their parents’ emotional baggage, they will continue to fight against the system.
Family celebrations can be wonderful opportunities for each family member (and this includes father and mother) to reflect on the quality of family relationships. Reflection is the sine qua nonof maturity, and when it is dangerous to be real in responding to the invitations to celebrations, then reflection is an urgent issue. It is frequently the case that the more issues that lie hidden and need to be addressed, the more dressed-up the festive occasion. Low-key celebrations tend to mirror mature family relationships, whereas high-key ones often mask many hurts within and between family members.
To the observant eye, the hurts that family members carry can be quite apparent when they arrive at the location of the occasion. Tentativeness, over-effusiveness and stiffness in the greeting of each other provide glimpses of dark realities. In happy families, warmth, spontaneity, and celebration of each other’s presence mark the interactions.
Clearly, hurts within a family are on a continuum of little to great neglects. There is no family where hurts have not been experienced, but the acceptance of that fact is rare. Indeed, the most common illusion of all is that we all come from happy families and this is carried into celebrations.
The reality is that family life is a mixture of nurturing and hurtful experiences. It is the mature family that acknowledges that reality. Parents are the architects here and it is their level of honesty and authenticity that largely determines the nature of the family ethos. Parents who hide from their own selves and from others create a family culture where “how others see us counts more than the truth”.
Yet, no parent sets out to cast a shadow on the welfare of their children, but unless each parent takes responsibility for their own vulnerability and seeks to resolve it, they pass it on, and in the words of the poet Philip Larkin, “It [human misery] deepens like a coastal shelf.”
The truth sets us free to reach out and move towards family harmony, something really worth celebrating.
Dr Tony Humphreys is a clinical psychologist, author and national and international speaker. His most recent book, with co-author Helen Ruddle, is Relationship, Relationship, Relationship, The Heart of a Mature Society. A talk Creating A Better Society organised by seminars.ie will take place on Thursday, January 20th, at Stillorgan Park Hotel, Dublin.