Family Dysfunction - The Generation Effect - Chapter 2

It is generally acknowledged that behaviours are determined by feelings and emotions; feelings and emotions are determined by thoughts. Thoughts are determined by intrinsic and extrinsic factors; they can occur in response to an immediate occurrence or experience; they can also emerge from preconditioned responses to previous occurrences, specifically from the pre-verbal and formative stages of childhood. These latter responses are referred to as Schemas and can also be formed during adulthood. Schemas occur as part of our natural response mechanism to everyday experiences, and far from being completely negative, they are the foundation building blocks of our minds that allow us to make 'informed' decisions and reactions. They become troublesome when the initial experiences have been traumatic in some way, resulting in a pattern of behavioural responses that evolve as maladaptive practices that affect everyday lives. Lack of support to core needs, parental abuse, and even being 'spoilt' are all examples of the conditioning that can instil negative schemas. The bearers of these Schemata rarely realise what is occurring, as they become entrenched in a repetitve cycle of emotional and behavioural responses that, to them, appears quite 'normal' (although to others they are far from normal).

So it was with Terri and Steve, each having had difficult experiences in their formative years and beyond that they now carried with them into adulthood and ultimately their own relationship.

Steve's family history was paved with dysfunction. His father, one of three children, had suffered the loss of their mother at an early age and all three were consigned to a care home. When his father eventually remarried, the new wife only wanted two of the three children, and Steve's father was left behind. Thus early schemas were initiated in his father by the trauma of abandonment, twice occurring at an early age. He spent most of his adult life in the RAF - then a predominantly male environment - and it is likely that this was a subconcious response to his early experiences - being away from female presence was a maladptive response to his abandonment as a child. Steve was born therefore of a 'dysfunctional' relationship between his own parents; his father was away most of the time and he was the only male amongst a family of females- his mother, two sisters and a Nan - so he spent most of his youth in the sole company of women. Sadly, Steve's mother also died, when he was twenty; ironically, with his father away, he had suffered a similar 'abandonment' to his father's. Thus, the "Generation Effect" was evolving and the concomitant dysfunction that followed suit was yet to manifest in his own life. It soon would...