Recently I read about debunking myths about family estrangement in the New York Times. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/well/family/debunking-myths-about-estrangement.html)

What I learned: estrangement is more common than you think and sometimes a great thing to do. I read between the lines as the lines told upsetting stories of real challenging families were people had been cruel to one other. But what it implied was more worrisome.  The feeling conveyed is that at the first sign of trouble many people are just dropping troubling family jerks off.  After all they are troubled and troubling.

The unsaid part is what is the long term cost?  What if anything could the possible befits be of dealing with the family jerks, those who have behaved in a horrid way toward you?  Why not just get rid of them?  More and more people do take the easy way out.  Depending on what the person has done, it is a lot of work to put the facts on the table and to make an effort to hold people responsible for past actions without the punishment of estrangement.

To avoid estrangement and cut off from family one has to have a reason or a principle to make the effort to  change oneself and to change the way I automatically  deal with others.

Some say that is too hard and they just cut off and walk away from the disappointing family members and smile.  But wait, what are the long-term consequences of the “take the easy way out” solution?

 Consider the possible impacts:

Am I getting emotionally weaker by not taking issues up with people?

Am I encouraging more horrid behavior?

Am I  getting paralyzed emotionally or can I see possible options in the way I deal with family members?

Am I teaching my children to slink away from dealing with people?

Are there more options than winning and loosing in family interactions? 

Can we get beyond blame and shame and consider the basic behaviors that promote survival in family groups.   Other forms of life have basic building blocks that organize living organisms.  

Consider an Aspen grove.  They are far removed from us but they are an organism that has many individual tress connected by a root system promoting  both group and individual survival.

Over time these trees developed a root system that could figure out who to help and at what cost.  Can you imagine the human family as though it were a grove of Aspen trees? 

Aspen Trees are connected over many miles and very cooperative. Perhaps as they are often clones they do not fear one another. They share recourses, like water, over many miles. They do not reject the jerks.

But wait you say we humans aren’t clones and are often fearful  of others. (Are you in my tribe or not?)

For humans there are many reasons to worry about jerks.

We know that the fear response activates with the slightest hint of difference. Therefore our sensitive physiology is a challenge.  Unlike the Aspens we have to calm ourselves down in order to figure how to  cooperative with our near and dear.

Differences can be charming or they can be threatening.  The family connections that sustain us can also threaten us. We humans are just way more emotional and reactive to those we are related to, and much of our reactivity is dominated by generations of habitual responses.

Consider the Aspen:

A single Quaking Aspen in Utah covers 106 acres of land and is estimated to weigh more than 6,000 metric tons. Aspen grove known as Pando (Latin for I spread) could be shoots from a clone as much as 80,000 years old. [1]

[1]http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=13-P13-00005&segmentID=7

Bowen talked about the family reaction to death as one reason that anxiety increases. An emotional shockwave results when family members are less focused on self and more prone to project anxiety and blame on others, thereby sacrificing one or two of its members to increasing symptoms. Often, we see how following a death, sibling rivalry reverts to an earlier time. The way people were treated as children seems to drive conflict. Little things people say can hurt. They may remind people of the way mother or dad criticized them.  Little things become big hurts and people feel unable to cope, get mad, and cut off.

Opening the family system up after the death of a family member. People come together for family meetings to talk about the will, or how to manage a family business or family resources, or the funeral. Even if there are no resources, people can be more aware of the system loss and take the loss as an opportunity to get to know their more far off family members and rebuild the relationship network. Death at its best can enable the resolution of old hurts and renew old or even strained relationships.

The assumption that can be tested: If a family leader can begin to see the cutoff process as an impersonal event that may no longer serve him/her, then there will be less cutoff, more flexibility and greater resiliency through the system. 

One person who understands the impersonal nature of a system allows others to see how family anxiety is distributed unfairly and can alter the automatic responses, providing a greater advantage for the group.

One example: When I was in my early thirties, my maternal grandmother died. It was 1973. I divorced three months later. My mother died shortly after that, and at that same time my brother had a nervous breakdown. I figured out that the best thing to do was to get a job in psychiatric hospital to understand how to relate well to my brother and manage my life. I had worked there for six months when I met Murray Bowen, MD. It was 1976. Both of my parents were dead and three of my four grandparents had died. My one remaining grandfather was 86 and would die in 1978. I was living in a cutoff family with little contact with other generations. My parents had been cut off from family because of their drug problems. I did not have a significant relationship available in my extended three-generation family.

Dr. Bowen came to talk about drug addiction at the psychiatric hospital. After being introduced he asked me to show him the way to the stage. Halfway there he stopped and asked me one question: “What should I say to the people?” I replied that his work differed so much from what people were used to hearing from mental health experts, that he should just talk about whatever he wanted to say. And, of course, he did.  Bowen talked about life-long learning, improving relationships, and how mice can tell you more about drug addiction than people, because they do not lie. He said that if you could figure out how to de-twitch a mouse you could cure drug problems. At the end of the conference he took my name as an applicant to the postgraduate program, despite knowing I had only two years of college.