The fruit of the poisonous family tree
If there are conflicts in the family and the child, even if it is the adult child, is blamed for the conflict, the result is the experience of conflicting feelings.
This can happen when the child, more immersed in new knowledge, changes of law and attitudes in society, starts to heal and speak up against the dysfunctional parents.
This is not to give judgment about why the parents are dysfunctional, there might be many reasons due to their own experience in childhood.
This article will only look at the conflicting feelings and the issues, why speaking up to people who apparently love us is a problem in the first place.
The more uncomfortable we feel in ourselves with family dynamics and comments made to us, and the more we heal, the stronger the need to speak up.
As if there is a gap between what we were used to and our newfound knowledge.
Imaging you were used to a certain type of food. The quality of the food is really bad, but it is all that there is for you. You even believe that this is the type of food everyone around you has access too.
However, one day a friend takes you to a restaurant and you experience a new, healthier, more delicious type of food.
You even learn how to cook it yourself.
After a while, you visit your old home, where they still serve the unhealthy food.
You will find it tastes even more disgusting now, because you have learned, how good and delicious, healthy food looks like. You just can’t imagine, eating the old food every again.
You definitely wouldn’t serve it to your own children.
But what do you do?
Maybe first, you try to not say anything. After all, you don’t want to upset the cook, probably your mother.
You eat a bit, but your stomach starts to hurt. You say that you are not hungry, but since no one ever listened to what was important for you, this is totally ignored, and you are lectured why you have to eat.
You then try to let them carefully know, that there is other food in the world, one that is healthier and tastier.
They call you ungrateful. Is the food, that they serve you not good enough anymore? You are accused of having changed and not care anymore about them.
Everything actually is all about them. How difficult it was to get the food. How long it took to cook it. At no point is anyone asking why your stomach hursts, or how this new food looks like.
All their energy goes into defending their old food.
Now you have a dilemma. Do you:
Keep eating their food, putting up with the stomach ache?
Do you avoid visiting, making excuses, but never feeling right about it, because you know, your reason for doing this is fear and being inauthentic goes against your values?
Or do you bring your own food, no matter what they say, but actually after a while an argument breaks out, shouting and crying and of course it is all your fault?
In healthy relationships, we should be able to say openly, when we don’t like to eat something, without the other person taking it personal and feeling like you are criticising not their behaviour but their identity and deepest core.
Of course, this is not about food at all.
This is about the communication we have with the people who say they love us but hurt us at the same time. Sexual jokes and comments. Derogative remarks about our weight, the choice of partner or career.
We have ventured into the world and found people, who would never speak to us like this.
Maybe even the law has changed and what they could get away with in the past, is now a criminal offence.
But instead of saying, thanks you helped me realise that times have changed, or even, well I don’t agree with what you are saying, but if it is hurting your feelings, I will stop, they tell you how selfish you are and if you say something and something terrible happens to the other person, it will be all your fault.
They are so dysfunctional; they can’t even see how manipulative this is. Often one parent is the enabler and defender of the other parent, who makes the sexual jokes or criticises your appearance or life choices.
Why would you deliberately hurt someone’s feelings and continue with this type of behaviour, after they told you that this is hurtful?
I have no plans to explore this further, this is on the people, who continue with this very damaging behaviour, and it is on them to ask themselves, why it feels so threatening for them to change, instead of really listening.
Do they really need the make the sexual jokes? Or the criticism about your career choice?
The conflict is not in us speaking up. It is in them, resisting and refusing to change.
We have changed. We have left the poisonous fruit of the family tree behind us and replaced it with good, healthy and respectful relationships.
We are not responsible if they find it difficult to accept that we find derogative comments unacceptable. It is not ok to make us the bad guy. We are not doing the hurt. We are trying to stop it.
To have parents alive, but not have parents, because the only communication they allow, is on their terms can be heart breaking and sometimes, we have to walk away from those relationships. Whilst people around us post on social media how amazing their parents are, celebrating Mother’s and Father’s Day, there is silence from us.
Maybe we don’t want to shame them, because that behaviour is part of their world and not part of our healing journey. But we are not willing to lie and pretend how amazing they are.
So, we find ourselves orphaned, where we might have hoped that the more we heal, the better our relationships will get. At no point did anyone warn us that the gap between dysfunctional relationships and the ones that are based on mutual respect and love will just get bigger and bigger, until we can’t have one leg on each side, but will have to choose and sadly they are on the other side, not realising, what they have done to us.
Of course, people who only know the charming side of our parents, because they would never dare to criticise the life choices of people outside the family, or make sexual remarks towards them, will be puzzled by how distant we behave.
The fact that people choose what to say to whom, shows how aware they actually are, that what they say is totally inappropriate. The remarks are often made to children and young people or anyone they see as less powerful.
Would a man, who makes jokes about his daughter’s “development” make this remark to his bosses’ wife? I don’t think so.
So maybe it is not even about sex, but the power they have over us. Because we are not allowed to criticise back, they immediately become hostile and often threatening.
“Well, I don’t have to talk to you at all then.”
“You are too sensitive.”
“You can’t even take a joke.”
It is always us who are judged, not the person who started making the remarks. As if we are the ones attacking, not the ones who are defending themselves.
And if you have been fed this poisonous fruit from your family tree your whole life, it is extremely difficult to put the finger on what is wrong with this picture.
You gut feeling tells you that you feel uncomfortable, but the constant dismissal of your feelings and the playing down of the seriousness of the displayed dysfunction, makes it so difficult to stand up for yourself and have the right words to explain what is going on.
I felt like I was in a magic show. Every time I wanted to point out the truth, a magic trick, a distraction was conjured out of nowhere and I was left confused and bewildered.
My inability to find the right words was ridiculed and taken as proof, that I had nothing valuable to say and that my point was inadmissible.
This left me even more frustrated and confused, because it didn’t feel like I was loved, but more that they tried to catch me out, when I made a mistake, just to point out, that they were right all along.
Finding your voice with courage and the right expression takes time. Especially when the right communication was withheld from you, so it gave the others more power over you.
When we engage in those communications, we sometimes regress to the little children we once were. No voice, no choice.
We are trying to fight a battle, where there are no winners. To stay firm on the side of healthy relationships, you have chosen for yourself, might mean to leave people behind, you were never meant to totally separate from.
Are we not supposed to help our parents out in old age, if we can?
But their unwillingness to see us as capable adults and their refusal to treat us with respect means we have to either chose us or them.
And if we have our own family by now, then it’s not only us we are choosing. It’s our children, partner and friends who all treat us with respect and the love we always deserved.
Whatever you choose will be hard.
Choose wisely. You only have one life and to regret not having spoken up earlier or distancing you from the people who might do their best with the knowledge they have, but still even hurt and harm you with what is their best, will hurt you even more.
And it will hurt your children.
By not being able to stand up and speak up earlier, I have allowed my children to experience fear and discomfort.
I allowed them to be fed the poisonous fruit and it has affected how they see themselves, the world and relationships.
Now that I know better, I must do better.
What will you choose?
