Chapter 3: Family of Origin Issues
Healthy Families and "Love Tanks"

Healthy Families & Love Tanks

God's pattern for families is good

Human unit designed for procreation, nurturing & developing of new human life

Family is a System

Components & principles that gover the system

Chief component: Marital Partnership

If there relationship is healthy the children have the opportunity to grow

Healthy Functional Coup

Commit to each other through the power of will

Decide & Choose to stand by each other no matter what

Good relationship based on unconditional love

Based on equality of 2 spiritual beings who connect at the level of their "being-ness"

Not some maudlin feeling, it's a decision

Each is a whole person. Each grows because of the love for the other, which by definition promotes their spiritual growth

Each is ultimately responsible for their own actions & happiness

Happiness & Satisfaction come from inner resources & an individual's relationship with God - Cannot come from external resources alone

Definition🎉 Mature, healthy relationships are between equal, self-disciplined & self-responsible individuals

Analogy: 2 people committed to playing the same song on their own instruments with their own unique skills, creating pleasing & ever-changing music

Unhealthy Relationships

Based on incompleteness, neediness or complimenting & fixing one another's woundedness will NOT produce growth or good fruit, much less a harmonious, pleasing sound

4 Principles of easing the suffering of life's inevitable problems

Delaying Gratification

Accepting responsibility for self

Telling the truth and being dedicated to reality

Bracketing ego needs for the sake of spiritual growth

PARENTING

They accept that having children is the most responsible decisions of their lives.

They commit to being there for their children

With a firm foundation in a family, each child has the safeguard of having his dependency needs met appropriately at each stage of his life. Each child can grow from being dependent on his parents to being appropriately self-responsible and independent to ultimately transferring his trust & dependency to God & learning to be interdependent with certain relationships

Children are not constantly judged & measured by their parents' frustrations and anxiety-ridden projections

Children aren't used to giving their parents a sense of power, adequacy or security

Won't have to live out parents unfinished business from their own childhood issues

Child WILL HAVE access to fulfill his own God-given endowment of uniqueness, talents & selfhood

Babies are desperate for Love

Parents love between each other, receive love from God

Children's need for love is satisfied by parents which pour into each of their children in a cascading & filling effect

LOVE HUNGER

Minirth-Meier Clinic illustrates love hunger by drawing a heart shaped love tank for each person in the family

Baby comes into world with love tank empty

Ideally parents love tans are full & ready to fill each of their children with their love, meeting child's legitimate emotional needs

Family where one parent is an alcoholic

ALCOHOLIC PARENT

When child asks for things, including necessary things, the parent generally does not get around to providing them

Promises are broken

Child is ignored

Parent is abusive & unavailable, the child is filled with fear, trauma & rejections

Their ownl ove tank is low & is drained further & further as their alcoholism progresses & parent becomes more self-involved

Non-Alcoholic Parent

Parent will spend their energy trying to keep things a secret & life on track, and/or trying to help the alcoholic shape up

Co-dependent

Usually has to keep the family together, tend to the finances, and agonize over the family tragedy

Anger, depression, and disappointment will consume the nonalcoholic parent's life

Truly loves their own child, they have no more love available for the child on a consistent basis than the drinking parent has.

CHILD

Grows up with an empty love tank

What little love child had within itself is drained away & pulled out of the child by the needy parents who manipulate their children into providing for their own unmet emotional needs

Proper order of love flowing into children from stable parents is reversed & distorted

Child leaves the family of origin with an empty love tank as a codependent adult