A wise person is one who knows how to learn the truth of every person and recognizes the truth in every situation.....

Navigating Through Family 

We all have the need to be deeply understood – it is a human characteristic.  We all want to be appreciated, recognized and respected for who we are and what we experience. The quality of being known is a powerful healing force.

Our family should be where we are able to receive this understanding. They should be our safety net – a group of people we can count on for support because of our shared history and connection. Family is very important as it shapes our development and personality. In an ideal world it should protect our dignity and take care of our well being. Family can also give us teachings that guide us through all our life and these, then, are the values that we carry everywhere we go. Ideally, our family should come to our aid during hard times. Unfortunately, however, it is a common misconception that a family will always offer unconditional love and understanding. In many cases, and for a variety of reasons, there is a friction in family relationships. In an ideal world, this friction should be an opportunity to realize our differences and accept that although we can never fully understand each other, nevertheless we can still accept and love each other.

The closeness, distance, toxicity or indifference of a person’s family is at the foundation of their world. Every person develops some part of themselves in relation to their family – inevitable – as we as humans are dependent and crave personal connection. Ideally, within the family structure, we should be utterly free to express our emotions without guilt and we should be able to give care and empathy to each other by offering emotional support, hugs and tears.

Each family member is unique and each member deals with their life and their life experiences in their own way and each person’s uniqueness needs to be recognized – not criticized, devalued or constantly corrected. However, unless empathy towards each other is practiced, relationships with our family members can become toxic, and mean behavior, negative attitudes, misjudgments, egos, pride, greed, and jealousies will erupt and mask realities. Each family member, ideally, should be able to allow each other the freedom to express themselves, as long as it is not emotionally or physically harmful, and, by showing empathy each member can care for another by being sensitive to their situations and thereby offering them compassion, which, in turn, offers comfort and solace for all types of suffering, traumatic experiences, and emotional wounds. There might not be a better alternative to someone’s situation, perceived or otherwise, but a loved one’s listening and understanding may be just what is needed.

When a family member reaches out to another member of the family it is more than likely in the hope that, as an individual, they will be given the opportunity to share their opinions, thoughts and needs. Conversing with another, be it in the form of verbal communication or the written word, can be misinterpreted and misjudged as the listening party, or the reader, is not in an identical emotional space and might not always listen or read with understanding. This can present a built-up pressure where the flood-gates will eventually open up, as restrained emotions need a release and when that release comes empathy is necessary or relationships will crack and/or completely break apart. A ‘listener’ should allow the upset family member to open up those locked gates and let the water gush out. Allowing and accepting this ‘venting’ process will help the water to level off and to begin to flow again, evenly, back and forth.

The right 'listener' and their words/responses can carry the family member through their ‘trials’ and can help to lighten their burden, be that burden perceived as legitimate, of not, by the ‘listener’. Whenever overwhelmed by a particular situation, the family member can then remind themselves of the lesson learned and the advice received. But, for this to happen successfully, a ‘listener’ needs to listen in total concentration and acknowledge what the family member was experiencing, from his/her frame of reference, not from what the 'listener' perceives to be the situation. The upset family member does not want to have their concerns dismissed but wants to feel connected to the 'listener' – and that they are truly allowed to fully express their frustrations without any judgment of condemnation. And, only after identifying with the upset family member should the 'listener' then venture to suggest a perspective that might help to broaden the family member’s own perspective, allowing them to see beyond their difficulty to a more enriched outlook that might give them some comfort and some direction.

Sometimes, when unconditional love and acceptance is not offered by those with whom there is a shared biology, a person will perhaps finally lose their trust, Trust that is lost is very difficult, if not impossible, to recover. Broken trust and broken family ties can not always be repaired and those who have been hurt and rejected too many times, when they have humbled themselves and put out an olive branch and then, in return, receive only judgment and criticism, finally give up on the ideal concept of family. They can continue to feel love out of sentiment that their family is their family, but it doesn’t mean that they must become a martyr for them or continue to subject themselves to constant mistreatment, negative consequences, and punishment just because they share blood ties. What can lead to continual angst is the holding on to faulty expectations that their family will someday be filled with acceptance and understanding.

Learning to accept the truth is very difficult but often the only way one can finally achieve a balance within a difficult, toxic family situation. One must finally accept, no matter how difficult it is to do so, that ‘it is what it is’ and then choose to move on.  One must realize that some people, if the family dynamics do not change,  are just not meant to share their path – are not meant to share their life any longer – and then step away from the emotional pain of a difficult and hurtful family relationship. Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad. Our lives are filled with emotional tunnels and we can only hope that, ideally, we can travel these tunnels together, as family. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.