Latest / Therapy and Theology / S6 E3 | Families: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
Transcript
- Lysa TerKeurst: Thanks for tuning in today, friends. This episode is going to cover questions you have about family dynamics … because let's be honest: It's hard. We're going to talk through questions that'll cover different relational hardships with your parents, your children and many more. We're also going to dive into topics talking about God, forgiveness, honoring our parents, and — get ready for it — generational curses. Before we get into the content, though, I have to let you know that our team put together a really helpful listener guide that you can download for free using the link in the show notes. It's a summary of our discussion, and it'll be helpful for you as you unpack what we discuss and take your own notes; this will also be a good reference for you if you have conversations with your friends or family. Now, let's dive into today's content. First question: My adult children have a strained relationship and are not on speaking terms. How do I navigate this as a mom? This was a question that not just one listener sent in, so I think this is a very real dynamic. Jim, Joel, who wants to tackle it first? Jim Cress: I'll jump in first on that. I've seen this by the hour, many, many times … and that is: Start by recognizing and embracing, as the parent, your lack of control over your adult children and their sibling relationships. Because think about it — when they were little (yours still are little, [Joel], relatively speaking), there was a lot of control, quite frankly. We're wired that we can control our kids. "You two apologize to each other." All of that. Once they're in that adult world … I think and I feel that with my own adult kids at times. If there's a conflict, my wife and I would look and say, "Hey …" I can tend to want to rescue and step in. "Hey, can we all get …" No, they have to work that out and sort that out. An old theme for me, which has been in this podcast series already many times, is to pay attention to your own internal world. "What about my kids?" Stop. Look inside [yourself]. What's going on? Your own fight, flight or freeze. Are you in judgment? Well, I probably wasn't a good parent. Or, I know I was [a good parent]. Or, They're embarrassing me out there. Or [maybe you’re feeling] the longing and hurt that your kids, maybe one or two, are not getting along, and [you’re] turning that into self-condemnation or shame. And then remember blame: If you're blaming yourself or someone else, often blame is often an attempt to discharge pain. And the last one I'll say is … This gets right to the crux of the matter. It's been hard for me, but avoid triangulation with your adult children at all. What does that mean? [It means] I’m over here talking to one of my adult kids about one of the other ones. I’m trying to be helpful — it's like, "Sure, maybe some. I'm a human. I'm real." But often it's going to get into triangulation. Watch … I'm no longer talking to you and you’re talking to me; we're going out through one of your siblings or their in-laws, spouse, what have you. I would watch, and the [thing] I see the most of is triangulation. Just a little bit of, "Well, let me talk with you about one of your siblings." And the danger of that is that person could say, “Well, if you've talked to me about them, well, you're going to talk to them about me.” And the conduit circles back. And then your own child, whether they're deconstructing and have faith issues or just whatever, can say, “I feel betrayed by you because you talked behind my back." I would just say to be alert — be warned of these things. Lysa TerKeurst: Now let me take the question a little further. What if there's a desire on one or both parts to come together, but there's been so much animosity, and one of your kids comes to you and says, "I could really use some advice how to handle this"? Is it appropriate to then say, "Well, are you open to a thought?" Then maybe you share some perspective — not choosing sides but rather helping them see something that they may be missing in the dynamic. And one thing that I think could be particularly helpful, if they're open to a thought — and you can ask them, "Are you open to a thought?" — [is to say], “Let me share with you: If I were in this situation …” There are always the facts of the disagreement, but then there's the story underneath it. And maybe do some investigation: “Help me understand why you would feel this way.” And give them some advice of questions that they could ask, that could provide for productive conversations. I know we've even worked on the healthy conversations contract. Providing resources or providing some healthy perspectives and some wisdom may not be bad, but I agree with you, [Jim]. We don't want to get into the place where we're trying to rescue or we're trying to get into the drama of the event. Jim Cress: I like that. And again — same song, second verse — but again, to say to your adult kids … I've done it. I think it's beautiful what you've said, [Lysa]. To say, "Let me start with son or daughter. What is this hitting in you? What's going on in you?" Not, "What do you have to own?" I am going to move to that eventually and say, “Is there any place where you are wrong?” And quite frankly, I'm listening and looking for ownership — that the person would say, "I can take ownership. I see that I may have provoked or might have done something." I tell them, "We're often down on what we're not up on." How many times have we used that [Romans 12:18 phrase] on the podcast? As much as it depends on you, as far as it's in your power, live at peace with all people. And sometimes we're just not wired necessarily just like the other person. But what are the buttons? If this person's pressing buttons in you … I teach all my clients those buttons are not newly installed. They were installed in childhood or [by our] family of origin. What's [this conflict] hitting in you? And then what do you feel like you're willing to do to be able to have said conversation with that person? As Brene Brown has taught us, our kids in those positions, like all of us together, are either going to be in empathy or judgment. Empathy with a sibling who you're maybe not hanging out with or you're a little bit separated from or whatever … The idea of empathy is to say, "I want to try to understand you — first to understand you — before I'm understood." Quite frankly, what I see a lot of, mostly, is people just aren't willing: “No. It's the other person's problem.” We’ve quoted James 4:1 on this: Why are there fights and quarrels among you? Even among siblings? There's something you want, and you're not getting it. Something's at war within you. I love to say, "Let's go into your heart and soul. What's going on for you?" Then from there I could say, "Well ..." What I'm going to avoid there is I'm going to avoid that triangulation, and [I’m not going to] say, "Well, you've got a valid point. They shouldn't have said that." I think that gets dicey. This is going to be messy because I am in the middle. I want to be very wise about being a parent of adult children in the middle. Joel Muddamalle: I think there's an exercise that the ancient rabbis can maybe help us with on this one. And one of the ways that rabbinic teaching was done was through invitation of learning — through questions. Notice how many times Jesus doesn't give answers. The disciples ask Him a question. And He's like, "Huh." And He tells a story, or He tells a parable. Lysa TerKeurst: Or you ask another question. Jim Cress: Love it. Joel Muddamalle: I think this can be a very powerful way, an exercise, to invite your adult children into self-exploration: You first explore some questions to discuss and ask instead of needing to give the answer and then frame the way that they're thinking about their relationship with their other sibling. It’s just a simple, rabbinic practice of asking open-ended, exploratory questions, where the aim is for them to explore their own relationship with their siblings. And at the end of the day — and you said this, Jim — [we need to have] an openness and acceptance of our lack of control in this situation. And I think that's important. Lysa TerKeurst: I think I've said it before, and I'll say it again. One of my favorite questions is, “Tell me or help me understand. What were you feeling? What you were thinking? Help me understand where you're coming from, and then tell me more about your feeling, what you're really feeling. And then what is the story you're telling yourself?” You've said that before, [Jim]. But I think sometimes asking the right questions can provide a healthier discussion, so I love that. Jim Cress: [Can] I tag on the end of it? Lysa TerKeurst: Please do. Jim Cress: We know this … and that is to be real clear about it to your adult kids. Lean back contemplatively and say, "All right, now tell me what you're wanting from me around this." And you have a posture of curiosity. Don't do their work for them. We did a whole series — we did a podcast — on divorce and not taking sides. Who could blame your adult child for wanting you? Because [in their childhood], you were their advocate; you were the person they could ally with in safety. So who could blame them for saying, "I want you to take sides"? And don't be surprised by that. But do say, "What are you wanting from me?" They may not know. Or maybe they're honest and go, "I want you to agree with me over my sibling." And you better pause about how you respond to that. But ask them, “What do you want?” It's that Nehemiah question with the king … "What do you really want here?” Lysa TerKeurst: And what would you say if they said, "I really want you to pick a side”? Jim Cress: And me just … As Daddy and Granddaddy, I'm going to say the side I'm going to pick is the side of health, the side of reconciliation. If it's possible, [I’d take] the side of listening and saying … I get to hold things. I don't want to say what you said earlier, [Lysa] — quit saying there's two sides to every story. But often with siblings, there are two sides, and I can hold that. I want to pick the side of the mental health. Part of that is that I don't have to take low-hanging fruit or take the bait … I say there is the bait, like the bait on the end of a fishing pole. I don't want to take the bait. I say, "I need to think about this." And I say to them, "Have you prayed about this?” And you know what? [As a parent,] I also am not going to be your counselor. Sometimes I'll see a kid just shut down or in my office, [and I ask them,] “Why don't you invest and go take this to a couple of counseling sessions and talk about it?” And by the way — I’ve said it many times — my kids have done [counseling] intensives. Not with me, obviously. I've said, "Please go in and talk anything you want about Daddy, anything with me, anything you want to say, where I've failed you here … carte blanche. Just go in, and do whatever you want, but go there." If they're coming to me and I'm not really the right person to referee or help mediate this, in many cases, they're like, "Whatever." They move on. Often they're wanting me to do something and do their work in the way that they're not willing to do their own work. Lysa TerKeurst: That's really good. Now we're going to make a hard turn here, and I want to make sure we get to this question. And I'm looking at you, [Joel,] for a specific reason, but help me understand the part that generational curses play in family dynamics. And how do we go about breaking those? Joel Muddamalle: That's really good. The context of this comes probably around Exodus 34 starting in verse 7. And then many other passages in the Old Testament talk about generational curses. One of the things I love to do, Lysa and Jim, is to get into the ancient historical context because the context is the key to help us understand what these words and phrases were actually meaning, so let's start there. Lysa TerKeurst: I'll be honest … I don't know if you feel this way, but I hear “generational curses,” and two things happen in my mind: 1) That seems really big, and 2) I don't feel equipped to be dealing with it, talking about it, or certainly to be breaking these things. Joel Muddamalle: When the Old Testament is talking about generational curses, there's a specific context that it's talking about, and it's talking about fathers or families that had actually essentially fallen over to idol worship. And they had at one point in time given all their worship to Yahweh, to God, but they led their families away from following Yahweh to follow the false gods of the nations. And in so doing, there was generational … I'm going to give us a modern change of our language a little bit that's going to help, I think. Instead of calling it “generational curses,” I would call what we have today “generational trauma.” And this is how I would say it: In the ancient world, ancient context, for a father or a family to switch their allegiance from Yahweh [to idols] would actually set into motion the next generations following that false god. Literally, the father's iniquity, the father's decision to follow idolatry, would be passed on to the generations after because the son and the son and the son and the son and the family … All of them would be like, "Well, Dad did this. He led us away from Yahweh, and he sent us to worship Baal," or whatever it might be, and they would follow in that way. You've got “generational curses” as a language, as a broad umbrella phrase, to describe the actual, traumatic consequences that take place when we act in ways that are unholy and dishonoring to God. Lysa TerKeurst: Bring it into a modern-day context. I like what you said [about] thinking of it as generational trauma. And bring it to a modern context. Maybe we're not out there bowing down to a false God or a graven image, but what is it today? Joel Muddamalle: I'll give you a bunch of them, and then, Jim, you're going to be tagged into this. We might not be following Moloch and Baal and Ashtoreth and Ishtar, all these false gods, but we are following false gods, and we are being tempted by them. And today their names are [things like] “pornography," their names are “sexual addiction,” their names are “alcoholism,” and their names are “opioid abuse.” We can go on and on and on. Addictions of all kinds. Generational trauma is [when] you've got a family member who has given themselves over to alcoholism, and that has become legitimately their god. And in so doing, these children have grown up in an environment where they have not felt the love of a father because that love that the father should have poured out on these children has been given over to the false god of alcoholism. And in so doing, it has created a traumatic experience for this child. Now this child is going to grow up and have insecurity and anxiety and questions of worth and dignity and identity. Do I deserve love? What do I deserve? And then fighting to achieve that it is now a consequence of trauma that has passed on because of the mismatched affection of the father or the mother, whoever it might be. That is a traumatic experience for this child. Another one is pornography. It is a massive one. There are so many studies out there of children's first exposure to pornography being through a family member. Think of the tragedy of that. When the person who, in your mind, is the stalwart of honor and dignity and all this stuff … Then you realize, "You're a porn addict? You literally view women as objects." What is the traumatic impact on this child or this teenager or whoever it might be? And this is, Jim, where I'd have to tag you in. But I think what happens is you start from a place of righteous anger: “I cannot believe …” Then you start going, "That's interesting …" because your eyes have been exposed to something that you were never intended to be exposed to and definitely never intended to be exposed to through a vehicle or a means of somebody you trust, who’s supposed to actually protect you. And now this becomes traumatic. Lysa TerKeurst: But I think it's also looking to a parent or an authority figure in your life and watching how they cope with things. And it's like, Oh, you're angry — then you're going to drink. Oh, you're bored — you're going to drink. Oh, you're sad — then you're going to drink. And I think it's probably not a conscious choice, but through example, it's like, OK, so when I'm angry, then that's how I cope with it. And it does follow generation after generation after generation until someone decides to break it. Joel Muddamalle: Absolutely. Lysa TerKeurst: Jim, what do you have to say? Jim Cress: Well, I'm going to speak to that last thing that you said, [Lysa]. And at our retreats at Haven Place, I always say that trauma, abuse, addictions, sins, whatever else, pornography … It ran in my family line until it ran into me. And it stops right here, right now. Then you’ve got to do the work to make sure that stops. Romans 5:12 says therefore it is by one man that sin entered in the world, and through Adam, death passed on to all men, for all have sinned. There is an idea that sin is obviously flowing down. David said, "In sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5, ESV). All of this stuff is flowing down. There are many rivers and tributaries of mental health issues flowing down, mental illness (that's different than mental health issues) flowing down. Sometimes skipping a generation. Why does alcoholism run in our family? Why are men misogynistic in our family? Why is there so much verbal, emotional abuse? You could go on. There's a good theological word for it. Stuff is flowing down many rivers and many tributaries to get to where you are today. And Brother Joel did eloquently reference again … We'll talk about Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Peter Levine and others in the trauma field [who say] that the body keeps the score. And there are studies we even had with Jewish people who I have worked with and who are maybe in their mid 20s, late 20s, 30s, 40s, who were nowhere near Auschwitz — not in the Holocaust — but because trauma is stored on the cellular level in the body, it looks exactly like they [were]. All this stuff is flowing down. Sins, I do believe. The idea of curses, I don't know. But the idea is this stuff is flowing. That's why, in counseling, I often stop and say, "Hey, very gently, let's slow down and look back at your genealogy, [which happens] all over the Bible. Let's look at early exposure to pornography." And we find out that where I am today, there's a bunch of stuff that's flowed into me. How do we [stop] that up and say, "It stops here"? Do the work around that so it doesn't necessarily organically flow into the generations after. Joel Muddamalle: And, Lysa, you talked about breaking generational curses. And I think it's really important to get to this point that there is both this supernatural and spiritual reality [alongside the] earthly. These things are paralleling each other consistently throughout the biblical text. In Eden, you've got a supernatural rebellion with the serpent and an earthly consequence with the human rebellion. It's consistently happening. Jim Cress: Wow. Joel Muddamalle: I want to also talk about this in this way and be very clear on it: Jesus, on the cross, has broken sin and death's death grip on our throats. Jim Cress: Amen. Joel Muddamalle: And generational curses and all of these things … If you have put your faith in the risen Messiah, He has conquered those things, and He has set you free from them in a sense. And then here's what I mean: There's a spiritual and there's an earthly [reality]. You and I have the indwelling Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit and the people of God around us are cheering us on in these areas. And there's a real consequence to the impact of sin in our lives that we're still working out — but in a spiritual sense, we're set free. And in an earthly sense, like what Jim has just said, God has given us common grace. Mental health, alcoholism, AA … You can think about different clinical places that you can go to get support. Medication too. These are things that should not be frowned upon by believers when we view them through the lens of common grace that God has gifted us with so that we can say, "Oh, we have the spiritual and the earthly, and the earthly is actually a gift that God in His sovereignty has given to us to aid us in these things." I just want to point to the victory of Jesus on the cross without diminishing the real, fallen reality. The theological phrase is the “already but not yet.” There's this phrase in Ephesians [2:6] that says we are seated right now in the heavenly places with Jesus. That's a spiritual reality. I think of it this way: When you're a kid, and you're getting on a bus, and you tell your friend, like, "Hey, save me a seat …" I know when I get on that bus, Jim and Lysa have got my seat saved. It's almost as if I'm already there right now. And that's the way I see this. Jesus is doing that for us. And we live in the tension of the already but not yet. Lysa TerKeurst: I think one of the most important things with this whole conversation — and there's so much more we could say, but we do need to wrap it up — is to say, "This generational curse or this trauma fell on me, but I will not fall to it." And the first thing, which I believe is so crucial, is to acknowledge that this is a reality and to admit my problem with it. And from there, once you acknowledge it and you admit it, that's where you can bring it into the light. And in the light, you can get counseling, you can go to AA, you can find support groups, you can do the Bible study, and you can go to intensives and take it incredibly seriously. But if you're going to really make sure that it stops with you, then you have to do the work around it. And that's a big reason why we do Therapy & Theology — because we want to help you work through what you're walking through. I know there are more questions, and we'll get to those on other episodes, but I think for today it is a really good and healthy place to land.