So Man Secrets

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.



From pages 64 - 68:

Family Secrets


Family secrets are the things that have happened – and may still be happening – that everyone knows about but that no one ever talks about.

As you look back at the various families we have met so far, it is easy, in most cases, to see what the family secrets were. Perhaps as you think back through your own life, you are aware of certain incidents, people, or problems, that no one ever discussed, eve though it was obvious that everyone was aware of them. Perhaps you can recognize the part you played in maintaining the conspiracy of silence.

That conspiracy was a significant factor in Richard’s family. Richard came for therapy with a great amount of reluctance. He was almost overwhelmed by the feeling that he was betraying his family members by talking about their problems to an outsider. “We were taught from an early age that family business stays in the family,” he explained...

Family secrets are like having an elephant in the parlor. You learn at a very young age that the one question you never ask is “Why do we have an elephant in the parlor? If friends or others outside ask about it, the correct answer is, “What elephant?” As the elephant grows, you put a lamp and a lace doily on it and treat it like part of the furniture. In time you have to avoid the parlor entirely. But you never ask about it or comment on it.

Family secrets are one of the main ways that family systems resist change. Everyone keeps doing what they have always done, as if nothing was wrong.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves: Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

The Enmeshed Family

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From pages 85 - 87:

The Enmeshed Family

Enmeshed families are characterized by an extreme sense of closeness, so much so that almost any expression of independence or separateness is seen as disloyalty to the family. This kind of false loyalty is a very high value in an Enmeshed family.

Take Marti as an example. She expressed a great deal of hostility toward her mother. But then she was overwhelmed with guilt at her “disloyalty.” How could she speak of her own mother that way?

Marti had very few friends growing up. Her mother dominated her use of time and energy. Marti felt obligated to check everything she did with her mother, to run all her plans and ideas past her for approval before proceeding. Even after she grew up and got married, Marti felt compelled to seek her mother’s approval for decisions she was making about her family. On one hand, Marti greatly resented this state of affairs; she knew it was a way for her mother to keep her under her thumb. But the thought of breaking free from her mother terrified Marti...

Where does one person’s business, one person’s identity, one person’s life, end – and another’s begin? Within the Enmeshed family, boundaries are virtually non-existent. Everyone experiences his life as almost totally “overlapping” with everyone else’s.

Interestingly though, Enmeshed families tend to have remarkably rigid boundaries vis-`a-vis anyone outside the family. Marti said her mother never tired of warning everyone that “family business was family business” never to be discussed with outsiders.

Enmeshed families can look attractive and inviting from the outside. Take George’s family, for example. George had built a successful bakery business in his town. His three grown sons were all very active in the business. Together, George and his sons had established a virtual monopoly on the baking business in their area. They had also established a virtually monopoly on one another’s lives.

Consider Tim, the oldest son, who wanted to get married. He was almost thirty years old, and had cancelled three previous engagements because his family did not think the girl would “fit in.” Finally he found a girl that everyone approved of. She was quiet and docile, and came from a family in which people were aloof and uncaring. “I finally found a real family.” she would say, and Tim’s parents and brother would smile contentedly.

In time, Tim’s two brothers also married. As tieh Tim, their wives came from highly detatched, uninvolved families. Each was quickly absorbed int their new clan and into the bakery business. This is a classic example of a moderately enmeshed family – not quite suffocating enough to cause the kinds of discomfort that Marti experienced, but enough to blur the individual members into what one family researcher calls an “undifferentiated ego mass.” (Quote sites Murray Bowen!)


From pages 89 - 90:

The Attached Family

While the Enmeshed family feels suffocating, and the Disengaged family leaves the individual feeling isolated, the Attached family strikes a healthy balance. There is a sense of individuality without a loss of connectedness. People in an Attached family enjoy being together and doing things together, but are able to relate to people and be active outside of the family as well. When they are away from the family, they do not feel guilty or disloyal. They are able to share outside experiences with the family, knowing other family members will understand and accept their choices.

In the Attached family there is a mutual respect that allows freedom of activity, without any hidden agendas that trigger guilt. There is support for individual uniqueness, coupled with shared appreciation for one another’s accomplishments. Like all delicate balances, it is difficult to find and maintain, but it is well worth the effort.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

You've Forgiven When....

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.”

~ Lewis B. Smedes
in “Forgive and Forget”

Avoiding Superficial Forgiveness

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From page 220:

There is nothing wrong with needing time to work through the process of forgiveness...

In his book, "Caring Enough to Confront," David Augsberger says, “Forgiveness is a journey of many steps.” That little sentence sums up much of what we have been saying. As much as we might like forgiveness to be quick and easy, it is a process. It is a journey, which can take many steps. The first step – choosing to forgive, choosing not to hang on to the emotional IOU – is important and should not be overlooked. But the other steps are important, too, and we should not pass over them.

We can learn a great deal from forgiveness. Being hurt by someone only teaches us to protect ourselves and to mistrust others. Forgiveness, however, presents us with a choice as to how to respond. We can brush off what has happened by extending superficial forgiveness, ending up bitter and resentful. Or we can choose the path of true forgiveness, and learn lessons along the way that will shape our lives for the better.

If we are going to take God’s principles seriously, we will see that forgiveness isn’t optional. It is essential. What is optional is whether we choose the quick and easy path of superficial forgiveness, or the harder but more rewarding path of genuine forgiveness.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

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Six Steps of Forgiveness

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.


From page 179:



The Six Steps of Forgiveness

1. Recognize the injury.

2. Identify the emotions involved.

3. Express your hurt and anger.

4. Set boundaries to protect yourself.

5. Cancel the debt.

6. Consider the possibility of reconciliation.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

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Our Drive to Fix the Past

People who grow up in families where their needs, wants and desires were rigidly controlled carry a great deal of baggage with them into their adult relationships. We are creatures of compulsion, and we tend to seek out the familiarity of our original family. We are also trying to work out the unresolved parts of our past as well -- trying to find the solutions that we were unable to find when we were children. Somehow, if we can make our current situation work out well, it will solve and heal some of the hurts of the past as well.

But we go about it in all the wrong ways! Our minds will pull us back to that which is familiar, but without taking an honest inventory of ourselves and our relationships, we are likely to play out the same old problems.

This is my great concern with Botkin Syndrome. I'm concerned that children that grew up in a Botkin or patriocentric home will seek refuge in marriage but will be highly likely to repeat and replay the problems of their past. Even after emerging from the system, they will have a tremendous amount of work to do.



“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.


From pages 108 - 109:

A woman emerging from an alcoholic family vows to leave that misery behind forever. She marries an alcoholic and may well become an alcoholic herself despite knowing from experience what alcoholism is. A man whose home life was disrupted by several divorces finds himself constantly and repeatedly “unlucky in love.” Claudia Black wrote a landmark book on the problem with the self-explanatory title “It Will Never Happen to Me!” Numerous other sociologists and social workers have recorded the constant phenomenon: adults from dysfunctional families end up with dysfunctional adult relationships, for they have become codependents.

Why? Surely the man or woman who grew up knowing first hand the misery alcoholism or other compulsive behavior causes would know what to avoid. Can’t the sufferer see all those blatant warning signs?

We at the clinic, as well as other counselors, not a sadly intriguing fact: somehow, people who are powerfully codependent literally blind themselves to the red flags other people would flee from. No, they don’t see the warning signs, because they unconsciously choose not to. Unerringly they find themselves attracted to exactly the people they swear they’ll never end up being or joining.

Excerpts from
Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier’s
“Love is a Choice:
The Definitive Book on
Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships”
Thomas Nelson, 1989

Anger as a Virtue: The Apostle Paul

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.



From pages 226 - 228:

Paul also wrote some helpful things about anger. Much of the content of his letters in the New Testament has to do with wisdom for daily living. In a letter to the church at Ephesus, he is making the point that all Christians belong, in some sense, to one people. He then goes on to give practiced advice on how to live together as part of a united family, including: “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ‘In your anger, do not sin’: Do not let the son go down while you are still angry...” (Ephesians 4:25-27).

Notice the line, “In your anger, do not sin.” That line can also be translated, “Be angry, and do not sin.” Paul seems to be saying –

that there is a difference between “anger” and “sin”;
that it is possible to be angry without sinning;
that there are times when it is actually right for us to be angry, so long as we do not sin in doing so;
some anger can be sinful.

The line, “In your anger, do not sin,” is actually a quotation from the Psalms: “In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent” (Psalm 4:4).

The image of lying on our beds at night, quietly searching our hearts, helps to give meaning to Paul’s warning: “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” On the one hand, we can take this literally. Paul warns that anger is a destructive force, both in terms of our own spiritual health and in terms of our relationships, and we should make dealing with it a priority. If possible, we should try to clear up whatever is standing between us and the person we are angry with...

That helps us grasp another, somewhat more figurative, understanding of Paul’s words. We can hear him saying, “Do not let your anger go into the darkness – into that place where you cannot see it, or feel it, or even acknowledge its existence.” We have already seen how harmful it can be to repress our feelings; anger can be one of the most harmful feelings to repress. It is like an acid that eats away at us from the inside.

Anger that is left unresolved, or that is buried in the darkness of denial, takes root and produces bitterness and resentment. The longer we postpone dealing with anger, the more bitterness and resentment it engenders, and the harder it becomes for us to get in touch with its existence and purge it from our hearts. Once we are aware that we are angry, we know immediately that we must at least begin the process of forgiveness, and keep our anger in the daylight where we can deal with it.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop and Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

Thoughts About Anger

Quotes about ANGER from Dr. David Stoop, noted in "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves":


John Bradshaw in “Healing The Shame that Binds You”:

"Perhaps the most damaging consequence of being shame-based is that we don’t know how depressed and angry we really are. We don’t actually feel our unresolved grief. Our false self and ego defenses keep us from experiencing it. Paradoxically, the very defenses which allowed us to survive our childhood trauma have now become barriers to our growth."

(pg. 137)


Herbert L. Gravitz and Julie D. Bowden in “Recovery: A Guide for Adult Children of Alcoholics”:

"As adult children become increasingly aware of having been cheated out of their childhood, a wave of anger is likely to ensue. The adult child may want to be forgiving, but will still feel angry. Sometimes the anger is directed not at the alcoholic, but at the sober parent – the parent who seemingly should have known better and should have protected the child."

(pg. 31)
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Formulaic Thinking

Excerpts from "Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves" by Drs. Stoop and Masteller.

From pages 54 - 57:

Donna was trapped in linear thinking. She figured that the way to move Fred in a certain direction was to give him a shove in that direction. If he did not move, then she simply needed to shove harder. What she did not realize was that Fred was shoving back. Every time she pushed him, he resisted. And the harder she pushed, the more stubbornly he resisted.

We pointed out to Donna that her experience reflected a basic reality of linear thinking; that trying harder only gets you more of the same result. We began to look at her relationship with Fred, not just in isolation but as part of a broader family system. She began to grasp that action “A” does not necessarily produce result “B” – that there might be a host of other factors to take into consideration...

By this point Donna could see that her efforts to “help” Fred become more sociable only provoked this well-practiced response, and that “trying harder to help him” was only going to generate more of the same. This realization came as a tremendous relief. If she wasn’t the cause of Fred’s problem, and if she couldn’t “fix” him by working on him, then she felt released to explore some of her own interests.

Interestingly enough, the minute Donna stopped “working on” Fred and began pursuing things she simply liked to do, Fred began to respond. Her nagging kept his reclusiveness in place. Now that she had given up the role of Family Nag, he seemed free to give up the role of Family Hermit. When he saw her doing things she wanted to do, without putting any pressure on him to join in, he started – very tentatively – to come out of hiding...

The value of seeing things this way is that it makes clear that either party can change the situation by changing his or her own behavior. Before, Donna thought nothing could change in her marriage until Fred decided to be different. But she discovered that she could impact their relationship positively by taking certain actions herself...

The case of Donna and Fred is a fairly simplistic one. It involves only two people, and it has a quick, happy ending. Most family systems are far more complex and unpredictable, and the outcomes are not usually so tidy. Still, the story of Donna and Fred really did happen, and the reason it happened the way it did is because Donna learned to see her situation as one component of a system. She learned how to think in interactive terms rather than in straight lines.

Excerpt from
Dr. David Stoop & Dr. James Masteller's
"Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves:
Healing Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families"
Regal/Gospel Light, 1996 (Servant, 1991)

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Multi Generational Faithfulness: The Ultimate Tragedy

“Love is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships” by Hemfelt, Minirth and Meier.

In the very first chapter of the book “Love is a Choice,” the authors offer the story, what they would call a case history. They describe a couple with marital difficulties and a little about each of their grown children, using an example that allows us to see a more obvious example of how interconnected a family is, in both function and dysfunction. These books are filled with such little vignettes of people, examples of real life situations and how real people struggled with them.

The authors go on to describe how professionals came to understand this field of study – addictions, obsessive-compulsive disorders, workaholism, etc. – as a WHOLE FAMILY problem. He explains the history of the Christians who came up with the “Twelve Step” program for alcoholics, but how they soon noted that addictions were not just an issue of the person using some substance, as destructive and involved as that is. The problem is also one of the family, family roles and family behaviors, and addictions are just a symptom of a greater cause.

The alcoholic (or any who use a substance or a behavior as a means of coping or as a way of escape) becomes dependent upon either the behavior or the substance, whatever that may be. Because families all work together to help one another and provide balance (keeping all those relationship triangles in some kind of balance), each member of the family develops a role within the family. The addiction itself becomes problematic but is not the primary problem but merely a symptom. The real disease is whatever the addicted person tries to overcome or compensate for through the addiction.


From page 7:

The Ultimate Tragedy

Another tragedy with which we will deal in later chapters is a problem of multigenerational nature. The serious dysfunction in a founding family will be absorbed by the children’s families and then their children’s families, a ripple of misery extending farther and farther down through the years. The dependency or dysfunction may change: an alcoholic father may sire, for instance, a worka holic son who sires a compulsive daughter who spends her way to bankruptcy. But it’s there. It’s almost always there, wreaking it’s damage.

Excerpts from
Robert Hemfelt, Frank Minirth and Paul Meier’s
“Love is a Choice:
The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships”
Thomas Nelson, 1989