Session 7 + 7½: Family Dynamics

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." - Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

Objective

Family can be an awkward and challenging experience. For adolescents, there is awkwardness and challenges that are unique to their development as well as their role in their families and the autonomy (or lack of autonomy) they experience at home. Family is such a significant factor in how we form our worldview, self-concept, and emotional learnings (or lack thereof).

A common experience of family for adolescents is feeling that they have to hide or minimize, or "get over" their feelings. They feel that adults in their lives do not allow them to feel what they are inclined to feeling.

As group facilitators, our role is to acknowledge the feelings they want to express and provide a standard for what is mentally and emotionally healthy. We are there to allow them the space to describe challenging feelings and have the experience of relating to one another. Although we have a responsibility to advocate for them when we suspect there may be abuse, we are not there to solve their problems with their families. We are not there to take sides with anyone's perspective or provide justification for the opposing perspective (or what they deem to be their problematic parents' or siblings' perspective). We are there to allow them to share what they feel and experience relating with one another, so they have that experience of not being alone in whatever burden they are carrying with this. 

What are some challenging feelings they may be experiencing with family? Feeling annoyed by siblings, anger at particular family members, feeling injustice over how parents inconsistently or unfairly judge us and focus on the negative without acknowledging good acts we have done. Feeling as though you cannot be yourself at home. Feeling as though you do not have enough of your own space at home. Feeling a need to be acknowledged for how well we are doing or how hard we are trying. Having an intense fear of failure out of a strong desire to be a success for our families. Fear of disappointment, fear of letting everyone down after they have worked so hard to help us get to where we are.

Sometimes the challenging feelings we have, such as annoyance, when we are with family really has no rhyme or reason. For whatever reason, we just feel that way. There is no way to rationalize or justify the feeling. And yet, the more we are told not to feel that way by a parent, the more intensely we feel it and may want to protest. 

During these times, it is especially critical to make a choice that only we have the power and ability to make. We must make the choice to listen to the voice in us begging of us to slow down and listen. There is a voice in us begging of us to be heard, almost as though echoing Octavio Paz saying "listen to me as one listens to the rain..." "Óyeme como quien oye llover..."

When we make the choice to slow down and listen to ourselves, how does that impact our choices? Do we feel more ourselves? Do we better understand our needs? Do things feel less intense, less catastrophic? Are we better able to contextualize the acute feelings of injustice we had been feeling and navigate around it. When we slow down and listen to the voice in us, make space to listen to ourselves, listen for our needs, listen to ourselves in the same way we listen to the rain, perhaps we take less personal offense at things. Slowing down and listening to the voice in us is something we must especially remember to do since it is something no other human being has the ability to do for us.

Activities

How do we prompt discussion about family in our groups? What we had done in the past was engage them in drawing a picture of their family and discussing what they drew. Last year a boy drew a very detailed and meaningful picture showing fractures on one side of the family. They won't always be that detailed, but the key is just to have them share the picture of their family and for that to prompt discussion. 

We can ask questions that would prompt discussion on family dynamics that help us integrate mental health lessons, such as reflecting on the benefit or healing that comes from sharing with others about challenges. 

"What was it like knowing you can relate to each other about these things?" 

"What is it like being able to share things that are challenging about family that are challenging to address with your family?"

Also, another way to integrate mental health is to address how much of the challenging feelings (such as annoyance) we have in the family context has to do with impasse in communication - things unspoken or unexpressed. How much "mind reading" are we doing when we get annoyed at something our parents or siblings say?  When we presume they are judging us in a certain way? 

Why is it that we presume we can read their minds? This probably has to do with family history, things having transpired a certain a way in the past. However, is this a mentally healthy approach to conflict? Are we presuming we know more than it is humanly possible to know about what others think of us?

 

Tools

 

1. List of positive affirmations to be said out loud

 

Activities

 

1. Students draw a picture of their family any way you would like to draw it. They need draw themselves in the picture.

 

2. Group facilitator provides space for students to quietly reflect on what they appreciate about their families, what role they want to have in their family, as well as what they want from their families such as what they hope their families would acknowledge more about them.