The Family Member Who Absorbs the Whole Family's Anxiety

Family members are intensely emotionally connected. This connectedness can  be a source of intense joy but it can also foster reactivity.
 

As family members, we react not just to each other's behavior but to what we believe are each other's needs and  expectations.  Seeing a family member craving attention, approval, or support from other family members can trigger powerful feelings.

In families, we watch each other carefully for changes in each other’s behavior. Our observations are meant to help us predict what will happen next. Our predictions are based upon the clues we pick up in the moment together with memories of past experiences.

When a family member watches another member’s behavior, the observer reacts in line with what they believe will be reciprocal to the action they are predicting is about to occur by the member they are observing.  Around it goes, a change in one person's behavior or functioning leads to reciprocal changes in the functioning of others. 

 Family members are emotionally interdependent to some degree. This interdependence is an evolutionary quality that enhances chances for survival by promoting togetherness and cooperation in families. Family members are then more likely to protect each other, shelter each other, and make sure other members are well and safe. However, helping is distinguishable from enabling.

 Conflict between family members breeds anxiety. Tension intensifies throughout the whole family system and leaves traces in every corner and nook of the family. As anxiety increases, emotional connectedness between family members becomes more stressful than it is comforting. Eventually family members feel overwhelmed, isolated, or out of control.

Behaviors on the part of family members are often reciprocal. When one family member becomes reactive another will respond In an effort to gain balance back in the system.

For instance, in an effort to minimize the energy they are feeling from the reactive member, one family member will choose to engage in enabling behaviors, believing that will accommodate the reactive member and bring them back into a peaceful space.

Let’s say, for example, one family member has unrealistic expectations of another family member. The one with the high expectations is the one who then has to fear that the family member won’t meet those expectations. The one with the high expectations then takes on too much responsibility for the motivation of the other family member.

 For example, If Marni wants her son, Jasper, to make the principal’s list every semester, when it happens that Jasper is in an academic slump and having a hard time, Marni will not just become tuned in to studying habits and try to support Jasper but may go so far as to monitor Jasper's communication with friends or Marni may take it upon herself to go into the school to complain that the student’s are getting too much homework.

 Another reciprocal interaction that creates greater family stress occurs when one person gives up too much control of their decision-making in a relationship. Once they have given up that control they feel vulnerable. That vulnerability then triggers their behavior of anxiously telling others what to do and monitoring their actions.

 Peter is waiting for his wife Demi to get home from work so he can have a break in taking care of the kids. Demi works late for what appears to Peter to be without a good reason and then goes out for drinks with friends. Demi texts Peter and says she will be home by 9:00 PM but doesn’t actually arrive home until after 10:00 PM. Peter has taken care of helping the kids with their homework, made sure they each washed up and brushed their teeth, read stories and got everyone into bed. Peter is exhausted. He is also angry, frustrated, and hurt because this has become a pattern of behavior with Demi.

 The next evening, instead of having a heart to heart conversation about how he was feeling in response to Demi’s behavior the prior evening, Peter carries on doing all the homework, washing up, stories, and bed time rituals with the children, even though Demi is present and could certainly help. When she offers, Peter says he knows she still has work to do, to just carry on with what she needs to get done and he will care for the kids. When she arrives in time to read stories, Peter says that he’s got it and her offering to help now makes everything harder, as the kids will get wound up with her presence since she has been out of reach for so long.

 Peter takes on the bulk of the responsibilities. Seeing that, Demi doen’t feel the need to get started on her own routine with the kids. She merely offers to help Peter, just in case Peter should need help. 

In this case, Peter gave up his power to ask for a fairer division of responsibilities and chores. Peter feels vulnerable because he is leaving the deciding of what each will do to contribute to childcaring to Demi. Peter feels out of control in terms of getting his own needs met. To compensate for feeling powerless and frustrated Peter anxiously asks Demi not to step in as doing so breaks Peter's routine and will only get the children riled up.  Peter becomes overly accomodating and takes on the anxiety arising as a result of both party's actions.

 The family member who does the most accommodating in the relationship or in the family literally absorbs the anxiety of the whole family system. 

Sometimes it's a parent who is overly accomodating.

Sometimes it's a child who is overly accommodating.

Here’s the real rub!

 In attempting to accommodate each other, we think that we're working through things with the other or minimizing conflict.

We think we are doing all that we can to get along.

Actually we may be exacerbating conflict by creating an uncomfortable imbalance.

 Also, the family member who is always accommodating is the one most vulnerable to problems like depression, alcoholism, or physical illness.

Is there someone in your family or maybe even you who is overaccommodating because of the thought that doing so will make things better and lead to less conflict and more ease between family members?