A Torturous Ending for the Family Member Who is the Most Accomodating

Family members are intensely connected emotionally.

 This connectedness can 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.  We watch carefully, albeit mostly subconsciously, for changes in each other’s behavior. We do so in order to predict what will happen next, based upon past experience.

The family members watching another’s behavior will react in what they believe will be reciprocal to the action they are predicting is about to occur.  Around it goes, a change in one person's behavior or functioning will lead to a reciprocal change in the functioning of others.

It's impossible not to be impacted by other members of the family system, even if we are separated, especially if we are still parenting, because family members are emotionally interdependent on each other to some degree.

This emotional interdependence is a human characteristic of evolution. In promoting cohesiveness and cooperation in families, families protect each other, shelter each other, and make sure everybody is well fed and taken care of. Interdependence among family members promoted survival.

However, helping is distinguishable from enabling.

When there's conflict within the family, tension is intensified throughout the whole system and leaves traces in every corner and nook of the family.

As anxiety increases, emotional connectedness of family members becomes increasingly stressful rather than comforting. Eventually family members will feel overwhelmed, isolated, or out of control. It's a reciprocal interaction. In an effort to gain balance back in the system, one family member will often choose to engage in enabling behaviors.

Let’s say, for example, one parent has tons of anxiety. This family member has unrealistic expectations of another family member. The person with the high expectations fears the other family member won’t meet those expectations and will then they take on too much responsibility for the distress of the other family member.

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 Jasper's studying habits but may go so far as to monitor communication between Jasper and his friends or may take it upon themselves to go into the school to complain that the student’s are getting too much homework.

Something similar happens when a person gives up too much control of their thinking and decision-making in a relationship. Once they have given up that control they feel vulnerable and then begin to anxiously tell others what to do.

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. She texts 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, he 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 Demi 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.

The fact that Peter heads right into taking on the bulk of the responsibilities and Demi doesn’t feel the need to get started on a routine with the kids, but merely offers to help, just in case, is evidence of Peter giving up control over his part in deciding the division of responsibilities and chores. He also feels vulnerable because in leaving this responsibility of deciding to Demi, he feels out of control in terms of getting his own needs met. He then anxiously asks that she not step in, as doing so will only get the children riled up. 

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.

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 over accommodating because of the thought that doing so will make things better and lead to less conflict and more ease between family members?

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