Families - who’d have them?

I think perhaps the messiest relationships we have are with our own family - under what other circumstances would you both love and hate the same person and stay in contact with them even when they drive you to complete distraction?

They say blood is thicker than water, but is it healthy to stay in a relationship with someone who causes you pain just because you share DNA? Would it not be better to surround yourself with people who support and love you for who you are, even if they are not family? I would argue that yes it is.

In the news over the past couple of weeks there have been 2 particularly horrific stories of mothers, one of whom had a relative hide her daughter whilst she told the nation of her despair over her loss. And why? So they could cash in on and share the reward offered for the child’s return. The other abused her son and allowed others to do the same, until the 18 month old boy was dead.

Both of these poor mights would have been better off with a stranger than the family who were supposed to protect them and didn’t.

In Prochaska, Norcross and Diclemente’s six stage programme for change (Changing For Good - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-Good-James-O-Prochaska/dp/038072572X?&camp=2486&linkCode=wsw&tag=edesfieunl-21&creative=8922) they talk about the importance of environmental control, where you “restructure your environment so that the probability of a problem-causing event is reduced”. If you were trying to lose weight you’d probably make sure there were no biscuits and cakes in the house, and if wanting to quit smoking you’d stop buying cigarettes and hang out in smoke free zones. It makes sense to not put yourself in situations that will cause you problems.

So doesn’t it also make sense to remove yourself from a harmful environment even if it is within the family? I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to do, or even that it has to be permanent, but:

“… if you have a splinter in your finger and it becomes infected, you can take antibiotics and apply antiseptic cream to deal with the infection, but if you don’t remove the splinter, it will undoubtedly become infected again.” (Free Healing Lessons, http://www.edensfields.co.uk/lessons.html)

This entry was posted on 24/11/2008 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Seedlings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.