Latest / The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten / Things That Adult Children Of Dysfunctional Families Don't Understand

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Things That Adult Children Of Dysfunctional Families Don't Understand · The Dr. Psych Mom Show with clinical psychologist Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten

• 0:06
  Hi, everyone and welcome to episode 6 of the doctor psych
• 0:11
  mom show. I am dr.
• 0:13
  Samantha Rodman. Whiten, I am a clinician in
• 0:16
  private practice. I do all teletherapy, and it is
• 0:21
  my passion to help people understand themselves a lot
• 0:24
  better so that they could have more fulfilling lives.
• 0:28
  And one group of people that finds it particularly hard to
• 0:32
  really kind of understand how To live in the most fulfilling and
• 0:38
  healthy ways is what I call the group of adult children of
• 0:43
  dysfunctional families. So, people have heard of adult
• 0:47
  children of Alcoholics, but this is really adult children of any
• 0:50
  sort of dysfunctional family, which can include parents, who
• 0:53
  struggled with anxiety, depression personality,
• 0:57
  disorders of any sort narcissism borderline hoarders.
• 1:02
  People struggled with bipolar substance abuse or Or people who
• 1:06
  are just very unhappy Unhappily, Married constant marital
• 1:11
  conflict, any sort of abuse, including emotional abuse going
• 1:15
  on toward anybody perentie fide children.
• 1:18
  Which means when the children when the child has to act like a
• 1:20
  parent to the parent. So anyhow, any children that
• 1:25
  were raised in these sorts of environments when they grow up,
• 1:28
  they frequently do not understand a lot about how to be
• 1:32
  quote, unquote, normal. A lot of things that seem Second
• 1:36
  nature to people who grew up in healthier families, do not feel
• 1:40
  second nature. They feel like you are trying to
• 1:44
  speak in a different language without having had any lessons.
• 1:48
  So today, I am going to expand on my posed which is titled 12
• 1:54
  things that people who grew up in dysfunctional, families.
• 1:57
  Don't understand. So supposed on dr.
• 1:59
  Psych mom.com. But I'll get into the categories
• 2:02
  and a little bit more depth here.
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  So, the first one, I already touched on what is normal.
• 2:09
  Adult children of dysfunctional families.
• 2:11
  Don't really know what normal is in session.
• 2:14
  As people, get more, and more comfortable with me as their
• 2:16
  therapist, you know, takes a little while for people to warm
• 2:19
  up, they'll say this sounds really stupid but I don't really
• 2:24
  know and I'll say some example of something.
• 2:27
  Like I don't really know how long a visit.
• 2:29
  It's supposed to last from a friend.
• 2:32
  Well, they really don't know. And on top of that they feel a
• 2:34
  lot of Shame for not knowing It seems like something everybody
• 2:37
  else knows automatically, but if you've lived in a house with a
• 2:41
  depressed parent, that never entertained at all, then you had
• 2:44
  no friends come over because it would be embarrassing.
• 2:46
  Well, then you don't really know, you know how long you're
• 2:48
  supposed to host somebody for in your house.
• 2:50
  You can guess from observing other people or watching TV, but
• 2:54
  you don't really know. So that's just one.
• 2:56
  Tiny little example of the constant fear.
• 3:00
  That adult children of dysfunctional families have,
• 3:02
  which is, I am doing things. Crazy.
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  Everybody must be. Being at me.
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  I just seemed very abnormal and I don't even know which of my
• 3:10
  behaviors makes me look so abnormal.
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  I just kind of sense that I'm being looked at weird now
• 3:15
  frequently. Nobody's really looking at you
• 3:17
  weird. Sometimes they are a little bit
• 3:19
  because you do get something wrong.
• 3:20
  It's not the end of the world that happens to everybody.
• 3:23
  But this is a constant fear of adult children of dysfunctional
• 3:26
  families that they are just weird and abnormal and everyone
• 3:29
  can tell next is what is it like to rely on family members.
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  This one Really is bewildering for adult children of
• 3:40
  dysfunctional families. People will say something like,
• 3:43
  I really want my mom there at the birth of my child, should
• 3:46
  gonna be so much help and an adult child that doesn't get
• 3:50
  along with their mother. For very solid reasons is going
• 3:53
  to think my God, I would want nothing less how harrowing an
• 3:57
  experience that would be to have my mother there at the birth.
• 4:00
  I would only make me feel more stressed and worse and more
• 4:04
  upset similar with. Anything else any sort of
• 4:08
  emotional support. So if you got fired people who
• 4:12
  grew up in Healthy Families, might call their parents.
• 4:15
  If you get fired and you grew up in a dysfunctional, family, the
• 4:18
  last thing you want to do is call your parents.
• 4:20
  They're just going to make everything worse.
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  If you talk to them at all, next is very important for any adult
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  children who are trying to be parents, which is many of my
• 4:30
  clients, which is, how do people really treat their children?
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  How do you bond with children? It seems Again like a quote
• 4:37
  stupid thing to think to not know it seems like it ought to
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  be automatic well why why should it really be automatic if nobody
• 4:44
  treated you that well or the ways that they treated you?
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  Well, were kind of weird and few and far between and there was a
• 4:51
  lot of other crazy chaos going on in your house.
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  So again people try to look at their friends neighbors possibly
• 4:59
  extended family. Television is a big one but they
• 5:02
  don't really viscerally instinctively know how to To
• 5:06
  really treat a child and this is kind of terrifying.
• 5:09
  If you really want to be a parent, you have all the best
• 5:11
  intentions. But you don't know what nap time
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  is or what maybe regular meals are or what it's like to be
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  smiling around your child or to have friends visit again with
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  the friends, which is a big one for four adult children of
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  dysfunctional families. Whose many of whose parents had
• 5:28
  no friends or anything else. How to make a little schedule or
• 5:33
  a routine. What is bedtime like?
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  How does it? Child of an alcoholic.
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  Know what a bedtime routine is they never had one.
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  The parent was asleep before that.
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  So any of these questions about parenting, you can really work
• 5:45
  on these, by the way, pretty well in therapy and very
• 5:47
  practical, pragmatic sense. But again, unfortunately, some
• 5:51
  people are embarrassed to even go to therapy because they think
• 5:53
  the therapist will look at them. Weird for not knowing these
• 5:56
  things, that is not true by the way.
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  That's just a fear and anxiety but it isn't.
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  True. Therapists are non-judgmental
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  and really want to help you with these sorts of things.
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  But anyway, back to the list. What is it like to have parents
• 6:09
  involved with your kids or to have parents that you liked when
• 6:13
  they're involved with your kids? And you don't feel scared that
• 6:16
  somehow they're going to replicate some of the shit they
• 6:18
  did with you, with your child. Now, many parents mellow and
• 6:21
  they don't act as crazy anymore but you're kind of always on
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  guard you're watching and then there's some people who do not
• 6:29
  have their parents involved with their kids at all.
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  Then that's really sad because on Mother's Day everybody's
• 6:34
  posting those pictures you know Three generations of women in
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  your, like, God not for me and that can be very upsetting.
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  Next one is, how do people pick a career?
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  If nobody's, really ever interested in you, you know, and
• 6:47
  nobody really asked about your hobbies, or your thoughts, or
• 6:50
  your school work, or really, anything much.
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  How are you really going to know what you're good at?
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  You didn't get any sort of structure or guidance, to figure
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  it out. So a lot of people who grew up
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  in more chaotic homes where there was more substance abuse
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  or Or people who grew up in poverty that combined with
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  mental illness. There was really no space at all
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  for anybody to think about how they were going to do
• 7:15
  educationally or to talk with them about career at all.
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  Some people get lucky and they find some sort of a mentor.
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  Some people just kind of coast along from job to job falling
• 7:26
  into something or not. Next, this is again, a big, big
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  one for therapy. What does a healthy romantic
• 7:34
  relationship? Look like many adult children of
• 7:37
  dysfunctional. Families have no idea because
• 7:39
  they saw either just complete silence and distance.
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  Lovelessness sexlessness or constant hysterical, Insanity
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  where people were screaming at and threatening one.
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  Another throwing things acting, all sorts of dramatic, scaring
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  the child and sometimes scaring them off of romantic.
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  Ships altogether, sometimes. Cultivating in the child.
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  A deep yearning for some fairytale.
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  That would be very opposite to the crap that they're seeing
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  day-to-day in their home, but they don't know what a healthy
• 8:12
  romantic relationship. Looks like something that isn't
• 8:14
  a fairy tale but involves two flawed human beings and
• 8:19
  sometimes don't get along. But that isn't the end of the
• 8:21
  world, they still love each other and nobody throws
• 8:24
  anything. Nobody screaming, the kids
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  aren't cowering, Etc. Or it can be very hard to figure
• 8:29
  this out. Also next, what are appropriate?
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  Boundaries, who knows for an adult child of dysfunctional
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  families. There were no boundaries
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  frequently parent wanted to know every single thing that a child
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  was thinking a parent cried about their own romantic issues
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  to the child. A parent was telling their sex
• 8:49
  life problems to the child. The child was cleaning up their
• 8:52
  parents vomit. I mean, lots of terrible stuff.
• 8:56
  So if you've never seen Boundaries modeled for you by
• 9:00
  parents, you really don't have any idea what sorts of
• 9:03
  boundaries you would set with anybody from friends and
• 9:06
  co-workers to your own children. You don't know what oversharing
• 9:10
  is you don't really know what so frequently you are on the side
• 9:13
  of under sharing, you're so anxious.
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  You don't want to come off crazy so you don't know exactly what
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  you're supposed to talk about. So this is a really big deal,
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  what our boundaries or like can you ever say you don't want to
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  do something if in your family of origin?
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  You were never allowed to not want to do.
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  Saying how can you say? Oh no, I'd rather go get
• 9:30
  Italian. Then Chinese, you don't know if
• 9:34
  you can. So frequently this ends up in
• 9:36
  people who are very kind of codependent and they just do
• 9:40
  whatever their partner or friend or whoever wants to do because
• 9:44
  they don't really know that they can have boundaries.
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  Oh, I like this. Not that.
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  I'd rather do this, not that. I'd rather stay home today,
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  whatever it is. Next one, related to the career
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  one in more chaotic homes, especially is how do you manage
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  money? If money was a constant source
• 10:00
  of distress or conversely, it was never ever spoken about.
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  Then you really have no idea what to do when you start
• 10:07
  earning any money. You don't know how to save or
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  you may hoard the money because you're so scared.
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  That you may end up in some sort of situation, like, your parents
• 10:15
  were always getting into, so your but you don't have a
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  healthy relationship with money and you don't really understand.
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  All that seemed to find managing money, easy, or even fun or can
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  look forward to, you know, saving up for an event or know
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  what a retirement account is. These are things that many adult
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  children of dysfunctional. Families have no idea about.
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  And sometimes don't know how to learn because yet again
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  embarrassment. Nine?
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  What does a normal house look? Like this is really big.
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  If a parent is depressed if they're over anxious paranoid,
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  if they are drunk. If they are using other
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  substances. If there is constant conflict,
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  if there's hoarding I mean you know, that one's pretty easy to
• 11:02
  understand but in any of these situations, your house does not
• 11:07
  look normal. There's piles of stuff
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  everywhere there. You don't invite anybody in to
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  fix it. Nobody knows how to fix anything
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  that that gets messed up or We don't let people do that or we
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  don't have money to do that or we're moving so frequently that
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  it doesn't matter or things just stay in boxes because nobody has
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  the energy to unpack, whatever it is.
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  If you felt when you left your house and you go into other
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  houses as a child you were like oh shit those other houses look
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  a lot more like TV then my house.
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  I didn't realize that was real. That houses look like that.
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  Like they do in the magazines or that people don't have crap
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  everywhere you know. Then you understand what I'm
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  saying? Here that is a real big source
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  of humiliation for a lot of children in dysfunctional.
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  Families is what does this house look?
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  Like, then, when you get older you don't have again any
• 12:00
  template to understand how to make the house.
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  Look nice. So frequently, this is why I
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  wrote a piece many years ago called, Pinterest can be healing
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  for adult children of dysfunctional families.
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  Because, when you look through things like Pinterest, they give
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  you step by steps. And you're like, My God, I can
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  actually make this house. Look normal, which is usually a
• 12:19
  major goal especially for women that are trying to have, you
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  know, be mother's that grew up in Dysfunctional households,
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  they want the house to look nice.
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  They never want to replicate for the child.
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  Any of the embarrassment that they felt themselves?
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  I myself was in that bucket of people myself.
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  I remember, especially as a young mother was a really big
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  deal to have the house. Look, nice and have things,
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  always ready for people to come over because You don't want to
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  look crazy. You know, this is a big worry,
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  10. What is self-care adult?
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  Children of dysfunctional. Families are always asking me.
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  Wait, so people what the, when do you exercise?
• 13:00
  When do people exercise, though? And so you brush your, you
• 13:04
  repeal people brush your teeth twice a day.
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  People eat three meals a day. We'll for me, it's like really
• 13:10
  hard. I just get up, I start working
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  by Thomas like 1:00. I'm starving.
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  So I just like, eat whatever. And I didn't shower that day,
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  but I mean, you know, it's hard. It's hard to remember now to
• 13:21
  people that don't understand dysfunctional families.
• 13:23
  This sounds crazy, it sounds like Get Up.
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  Take your shower and proceed with your day, brush your teeth,
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  everything's fine. But if you didn't have any
• 13:31
  routines and you didn't have an adult who modeled any sort of
• 13:35
  self-care then you don't know. It's not instinctive.
• 13:39
  You don't think oh, I'm hungry. You don't.
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  Sometimes you don't even know when you're hungry until you're
• 13:43
  starving. Because Buddy fed you at regular
• 13:47
  intervals. Now, there's all sorts of
• 13:50
  severity, you know, there's differences on the spectrum of
• 13:54
  severity in terms of neglect in an adult children.
• 13:59
  But the ones that the homes, we're really, they were quite
• 14:03
  neglected, you're talking about high functioning adults that
• 14:07
  have? No, no feeling internally.
• 14:12
  Oh I should get up, get dressed, brush my teeth.
• 14:16
  Teeth and then make coffee and food.
• 14:18
  They just don't have that. It doesn't go off in their head.
• 14:21
  So it can be very, very strange to Stew for them to understand
• 14:25
  that other people do this effortlessly because they were
• 14:27
  taught and prompted by the adults in their lives.
• 14:32
  Number 11, what is a healthy body image children?
• 14:36
  Who are abused? Especially I mean they don't
• 14:38
  look at their body as anything. Something has anything good?
• 14:41
  Sometimes. They look at it as something,
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  terrible and bad and a source of Shame, sometimes they look at it
• 14:46
  as something ugly because it looks like one of the parents.
• 14:49
  If you grew up, hearing your father, call your mother, I
• 14:52
  thought that whatever, whatever. Then you, you look like your
• 14:56
  mother, a man, what are you going to think about yourself?
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  You're not going to be too hyped up about a body image.
• 15:02
  That looks like somebody that you saw get emotionally abused
• 15:05
  and insulted also, if you were sexually abused, then your body
• 15:09
  is a source of Shame. So it doesn't have to always be
• 15:12
  like this. Now, everything that I'm saying,
• 15:14
  these cognitions, these thoughts and beliefs can certainly be
• 15:19
  changed, but I'm trying to explain so that people feel less
• 15:23
  alone when they have these beliefs.
• 15:25
  How many adult children of dysfunctional families feel, but
• 15:29
  again therapy can help you therapy.
• 15:31
  Be reading, listening, everything can help you change
• 15:34
  these distorted beliefs that's just a little aside 12.
• 15:39
  How can I tell anyone about my childhood?
• 15:41
  This is the key question. You know.
• 15:44
  You think my God nobody will be friends with me if I tell them
• 15:48
  that. I don't talk to my mother.
• 15:49
  Nobody will be friends with me. If I say that my father is an
• 15:51
  alcoholic, all these other people have these perfect
• 15:53
  families, and I'm going to seem like this freak.
• 15:56
  Well, I work with clients on this all the time, you know, and
• 16:00
  I worked with this in. What late 20s with my own
• 16:05
  psychologist who said people are not going to think anything bad
• 16:10
  about you. If you share that you have
• 16:12
  conflict with your family, if you share that, you do not talk
• 16:16
  to your parents as much as they do, they're not going to judge
• 16:19
  you for that if they did, that would be their problem, you know
• 16:22
  and it was true. There's never been anybody that
• 16:24
  I've said and I don't really talk to my parents or it was
• 16:27
  really tough growing up or whatever that hasn't been Been
• 16:31
  nice. People just are nice about that.
• 16:34
  If they had good childhoods themselves, they feel bad but
• 16:37
  they don't judge you for. And if they have bad childhoods
• 16:39
  in any way, any sort of dysfunction, then they usually
• 16:42
  reach out with their own story. In fact, you wouldn't even know
• 16:46
  about. If you have, if you have a ten
• 16:48
  friends, probably two of them. At least, have some kind of
• 16:51
  crazy dysfunction in their family of origin, and you
• 16:55
  wouldn't even know unless you share your own because they are
• 16:58
  just as embarrassed as you now. I just made up those numbers of
• 17:01
  Top of my head, depending what circles you run in?
• 17:04
  If you're if you're a therapist for example, probably a lot more
• 17:07
  of us have dysfunction in our families of origin, which led us
• 17:10
  into the profession because you can understand, you can deeply
• 17:13
  viscerally understand others that are suffering in the same
• 17:16
  ways. So, if your therapist probably
• 17:18
  the five out of ten of your friends, have deep family,
• 17:21
  dysfunction, or more, maybe all ten so anyhow that or those are
• 17:26
  the 12 things that I cover. In my post 12, things, that
• 17:31
  people who grew up in dysfunctional, families, don't
• 17:33
  understand. And these things can really play
• 17:37
  gue to the point that you feel like such a freak and like,
• 17:41
  you're on the outside. Looking in, everybody else has
• 17:45
  these perfect families and that you don't know how to do.
• 17:47
  Anything normal, your childhood was a disaster and now somehow
• 17:51
  you are going to make your kids into a disaster just by not
• 17:54
  knowing anything better. Now, nothing could be further
• 17:58
  than the truth. If Are listening to this
• 18:00
  podcast. Even that alone, indicates that
• 18:03
  you have a massive curiosity about how to heal and grow and
• 18:07
  move beyond your family of origin issues and it's easy
• 18:12
  easy. Easy to find a therapist like
• 18:16
  it's kind of easy, I'm a therapist, there's psychology,
• 18:21
  today.com is a therapist. I have a group practice of
• 18:25
  therapists, best life Behavioral Health, you Can find a
• 18:30
  therapist. And when I say it's easy, I
• 18:31
  mean, it is easy to go to a therapist.
• 18:33
  It's hard to make the decision to reach out and to conquer your
• 18:39
  Shame about needing to be somebody about somebody who
• 18:41
  needs to go to therapy about being that person having that
• 18:44
  identity. But it's easy, especially in the
• 18:47
  age of teletherapy to go and start working on.
• 18:51
  It it is, it's easier than you think you make the appointment
• 18:55
  with somebody that seems right and reasonable from their And
• 19:00
  everything's teletherapy. Now almost and if you want in
• 19:02
  person, people do that then you just reach out to them and from
• 19:06
  there it kind of is very simple. You just have to make the
• 19:10
  decision. And before, you know it you
• 19:12
  could be four weeks in to therapy like next month, you
• 19:17
  could be four weeks into therapy and know that you are tackling
• 19:21
  these issues that have made you feel so deeply ashamed and less
• 19:24
  than for your whole life. Wouldn't that be great?
• 19:28
  I am such I'm a big proponent of therapy for adult children of
• 19:31
  dysfunctional families because it helps you normalize.
• 19:35
  What you went through, validates, your feelings of
• 19:38
  Shame, and teaches you Real World skills where you can
• 19:41
  really just have somebody to ask, what is a normal amount of
• 19:44
  time for a visit or do you serve snacks at a visit or like really
• 19:49
  anything that you can think of in the days of Google?
• 19:52
  You can Google some of those too, but it is nice to have a
• 19:54
  human being to ask that stuff too.
• 19:56
  And somebody to tell about all this, This stuff that went on in
• 20:00
  your upbringing and to ask how it impacted you to see how it is
• 20:04
  continuing to impact your day-to-day, and to break the
• 20:07
  cycle with parenting, your own children so that their never
• 20:11
  confused about any of these 12 things.
• 20:14
  Maybe you will, since you're only human, you will do other
• 20:17
  things. They don't love but at least
• 20:20
  they will not have these particular large-scale concerns,
• 20:24
  then you will truly feel that you have broken the cycle and
• 20:27
  feel deeply proud of yourself. And therapy is really major with
• 20:31
  this. Also some books to read which
• 20:33
  I'll put in the description of this episode running on empty by
• 20:37
  Jonas. Web is a really good one and
• 20:41
  well I mean I'll put a bunch but children of the self-absorbed,
• 20:45
  that's another good one. The ghost in the house about
• 20:49
  maternal depression. I think that's enough for you
• 20:51
  know I mean people can read a million books but I will those
• 20:54
  three, those three are good ones.
• 20:56
  Okay, so hopefully you got a lot out of this podcast and I will
• 21:04
  welcome any sort of suggestions about topics that you'd like me
• 21:07
  to elaborate on and I hope you all have a great day.
• 21:12
  Bye.