Personal Development Hack 145: How to heal from a dysfunctional family?

Families tend to be our ground one support system, it’s where we learn and grow. This growth may not always be positive as about 96% of all families in the world are suggested to be dysfunctional. Experiences ranging from emotional/physical abuse, conditional love, controlling behavior, and such exhibited by the parents are the core of dysfunction within a family. 

These dysfunctional experiences further include difficulty in starting and maintaining relationships, feeling a lack of self-worth and self-esteem, difficulty in communicating emotions, and so on, which negatively influence a person’s career and personal life. Hence, it’s crucial to learn how to heal from the dysfunctionality of your family.  

But, why do most of the families have some level of dysfunction? There can be numerous reasons behind this, but most of them can be categorized into two sets, internal and external causes. While internal causes include factors such as different personalities of parents, physical or mental illness, divorced parents, and sibling rivalry. External causes include factors such as the financial and social standing of the family, drug addiction, and so on. Therefore, it is the amalgamation of these factors which may lead to dysfunction within the family.  

How to heal from a dysfunctional family? The most basic thing to keep in mind before you begin your journey of healing is that as a child, you might not have had a voice and control over possibilities but now as an adult, you do. You may try a very effective hack about identifying and changing roles that you had played in your past. To do this: Understand what role(s) you played in the past. Ask yourself, if you were a scapegoat in the family or you felt like a lost child or if you liked to do pranks a lot. 

1.Identify how these roles are affecting you right now. Recalling instances where you think these roles make things hard for you. 

2. Take an actionable step and communicate with your family about these roles and how you want to change them to a more positive ones. 

3. Remember that you can’t change others, but you can always bring change within yourself. So, don’t try to change your family members as it can always backfire, instead try to use an approach of changing your behavior without expecting others to completely understand you. 

“Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.” ~ Gautama Buddha

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