Childhood Set-Up- Family Roles

I would like to say a bit about the roles that family members play in addiction. This is often one important way to determine if some level of addiction is or was present in your household. The roles in addictive or dysfunctional families have often been likened to a mobile. Everyone has a place, a position, and a role to fill. The mobile is delicately balanced and so it can be seen that if someone were to ever step out of their role in the family mobile, the whole thing would teeter-totter. And quite an upset would ensue.

This, by the way, is exactly what doesn't happen when someone seeks and finds a 'healthier' way to interact within their dysfunctional family system. In the beginning of the change cycle, this healthy way does not work so well for the rest of the system. The balance has been shifted, the mobile dislodged, and the of-balance teetering causes many upsets among family members.

This for instance is what happened when I first began to have a voice in my families. Both my biological and my married families became upset. I was simply not fulfilling my role of 'the quiet one, who does what she's told.' Though their upset was tough to deal with- it was not so tough as the constant denial of self that had been going on, and killing me, for decades. And after a while both families began to adjust to the new me.

Now the roles I will begin to describe are pretty much roles that happen across the board, for any type of addiction. I, for instance, grew up in a food addiction environment with compulsive eating, binging, and even anorexic behavior happening around and within me. The roles I will describe held true, just as they would in any alcoholic or drug addicted family, and just as they do in a gambling or sex addicted family. Addiction is addiction is addiction. I have recently also come across a good blog that deals with the three letter f word, as well as food addiction, obesity, anorexia, and bulimia, which I encourage you to visit at

href=http://the-f-word.org/blog/

The first thing I will be discussing the next time I write for my blog is the role that each of parent plays in the crazy roller coaster of family addiction and dysfunction. These will be roles that will seem to set a predestined future for our nation's children. As well we know, children generally have no other way to be adults, except to fulfill on what they have already seen and experienced in the vital years of childhood. And it is very few and far between that anyone manages to escape what he or she learned as a child. Although we can of course learn a new way, given the opportunity.

Which is what my blog is all about.

The one way I know to learn a new way of thinking with facility, and fully, is to take a course called The Landmark Forum. Here is their website. Please drop me an email if you ever do it, as I would love to know what your experience was

href=http://www.landmarkeducation.com