Voices of Enlightenment: Healing The Dysfunctional Family

The big build up is over, Christmas has passed, how was your holiday celebration? Did your family and friends give you gifts, affirming that you are worthy of being loved? Did you give gifts to the people you care about and did they show appreciation, or were they critical and ungrateful, making you feel that you are not worthy of love? Did you spend the day in solitude, loneliness, and regret for not having loved ones around you? Or was your holiday marred by the presence of one or more dysfunctional relatives who chose to get drunk or high and start an argument or fight, ruining everyone’s joy? Christmas, like no other celebration, displays the family dynamics of substance abuse, poverty, extravagance, pettiness, selfishness, neglect, lewdness, and the hiding of our problems behind food and religion. The holiday events that occur in childhood lay the foundation for the rest of our lives. When there is joy, laughter, good companionship and love associated with family gatherings, we learn to recreate this in our adult lives. When there is hurt, disappointment, anger, shame, or fear, those memories make it difficult for us to produce happy familiesin our adult lives. What memories did you recreate, both good and bad, that conjured up old feelings? How do you heal from childhood memories of a dysfunctional family that only causes each other pain during what is supposed to be a joyous holiday celebration?