Family trauma?

I blogged a little about this elsewhere. I'm still tossing this about in my head, trying to make sense of it. I've been having, as I said in that other blog, abit of difficulty of late. About 90% of it revolves around my family. I had a rather sudden epiphany this morning that my family is perpetuating a collection of habits and attitudes that are rooted in some past trauma that had an enormous impact upon people a few generations back. It leaves me rather stunned and troubled to realize this. At the same time, however, I'm comforted by this awareness. It means that I can break that cycle, if anything, in my own home.

As I've thought about this over the last few hours, it's increasingly become clear that things like cycles of abuse are perpetuated because the abuse is a failure in resolving the issue that was the initial trauma to the family. Let me give a bit clearer of a description of my thoughts here. We'll take my family's issues out of the picture and just look at the abuse cycle in random family X. Then, we'll track down the origins of that abuse cycle.

The abuse cycle has a few phases to it. This gal, Dr. Irene, did a pretty good job outlining it here. Now, it may sound a little funny but I think we can put the whole issue with random family X into the context of the abuse cycle, deconstruct it, and then possibly find that original trauma. Now, let's say that random family X has a problem with verbal abuse. One of the parents is hypercritical of everyone, including their two children and the dog (dog = child # .5). This parent has very high expectations for everyone, including themself. As the parent find their expectations not being met, they begin to yell, chastise, castigate, and other wise verbally rip to shreds the person who has not met their expectations.

Now, as a parent, the abuser feels that the children need to be shown by examples what the appropriate way to behave is. As such, when there is a failure to behave appropriately, there must be an example made as to what the punishment is to be, thus making it a learning experience. This, unfortunately, exacerbates the emotional pain of the verbal abuse for the person whom is being made into an example. One may ask, why does parent X act in this fashion?

I suspect this would be because parent X was raised in this kind of environment. I'm certian that parent X is most likely dealing with the echos of their own hypercritical parent in their mind, urging them on to have such impossibly high expectations, not realizing how damaging it is to them. Now, we are forced to ask why that person had such a perspective. Now, it is possible to track back in this fashion and find generations of abuse. It, however, does not help to pin point where it all began. Here, I suspect, we'd need to look at the larger collection of issues surrounding the situation.

Are there topics that seem to be hot buttons for the abusers in the family, topics that are consistent? If the abusers in family X all have fits over money, it is possible that there was some major financial issue in the past that caused an enormous amount of stress. As a result, it's somewhat burned into the familial memory which turns money into a topic of anxiety and confrontation. Perhaps something else is a common topic but, that common topic can usually track back, I believe, to an event that proved extremely traumatizing.

I think that abuse is a result of a failed coping mechanisim. Stress builds up to a point that is virtually unbearable. The person whom is suffering the stress finds that yelling at some one serves to reduce the stress. They then begin to use that coping mechanisim at other stressful times. When anxiety begins to rear it's head, the person begins to engineer situations that can play out the tension building, climax, and release of stress, there by alleviating the discomfort of the anxiety. Here is where, I think, abuse begins.

I also think that it is possible, once the source of it is known, that one can possibly heal that problem. I believe that if you work to build new coping mechanisims, one can break the cycle of abuse. I believe that if you work to integrate the experiences that were traumatic into your life, you can find them to be sources of great strength and transform them from an open wound in your psyche (one that may or may not be festering with the rising sickness of an abusive habit) to a fairly neutral memory, where it's no longer so emotionally charged. I'm also beginning to think it is possible to do the same with the 'group think' of the family as well.

I can't say that this will necessarily do much to resolve the situation with my family. On one side of the family, there is the progressive desecalation of abuse, moving from a few generations back where there was rampant physical, psychological, and verbal abuse to mainly verbal and psychological abuse. And this could be claimed to be progress, though it does not go far enough, in my opinion. On the other side of the family, we find a very tangled and entrenched pattern of verbal and psychological abuse.

I know there is a way to save myself and my child from all of this monstrosity. It is simply refusing to engage in it. However, I do not want to perpetuate the habits that have sprung up around this. I'm still working on how to combat all of that mess, but I know there is a way, somehow.