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