Our Fallen Humanity and Family Dysfunction

Townsend, Cloud, Carder, and Brawand in


“Secrets of Your Family Tree”:

You may feel that your family of origin wasn’t dysfunctional since your father wasn’t and alcoholic....

The truth is, however, that due to the fallen nature of all parents (and children), all families are flawed and therefore dysfunctional to a certain degree.

Addictive and complusive behaviors (addicted to food, sex, work, and so on) are extremely common in even “the best of families,” and such behavior is almost always linked to some form of dysfunctional family background.

(pg. 15)

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

What does the literature on family dysfunction, covert incest and addiction have to do with the Botkins?

Explaining the Botkin Model for Stay At Home Daughters

I present this information here to those who have some interest in the Botkin Daughters and Family because I believe their model, promoted by patriarchy/patriocentricity and groups such as Vision Forum is destructive and unhealthy, but the nature of the dysfunction is not so apparent. For those who are interested in the Botkin concept, I hope that you will benefit from my experience and the experience of the study of families who struggle to cope with the inevitable frustrations of life.

We have unavoidable tensions in life, many painful realities that even concern religion. The Apostle Paul said that we “see through a glass darkly” so that we do not know everything that we would like to know about God, the world and ourselves. That can be painful at times and leaves us with many unanswered questions. The so-called “Biblical patriarchy” in Evangelical Christianity has been termed more succinctly as “patriocentricity” because the practicalities or the daily working out of it describes all family life as centered around the father. His considerations and protections and wisdom comes first and it therefore the functional center. I believe that this father centered model is just another construct or tool that Christians developed in order to deal with the unavoidable pains in life, but it actually does more harm to people as opposed to helping them.

I grew up in a wonderful home, an only child with two wonderful parents that have been married 45 years, at the time of this writing. We went to church and I was a devoted Christian that loved God for as long as I can remember. I grew up and entered a helping profession as a nurse (though the available choices for me were very limited by my parents), then got married. But there were many problems along the way (which you can read about in greater detail by selecting the “personal testimony” tag). We didn’t have alcoholics or drug addictions, but we had other things that we did in order to cope, one of which was religion.

I was shocked to realize that though there was no substance use or gambling, we had all of the characteristics of an alcoholic family (centered around depression instead of substances or debachery). For some time,

 I followed two different religious alternatives in an attempt to cope with the pain of life: (1) the Word of Faith teachings that I shared with my family, and (2) a formulaic and rule-oriented Christianity through my church’s eclectic combination of Bill Gothardism, shepherding/discipleship from the Charismatic movement in the ‘70s, and through a misapplication of Theonomy (introduced to us through the Bob Mumford connections to Chalcedon through the shepherding movement). I believe that patriocentricity, the Botkin Model, is just another type of religious means of coping with life, and they differ little from the religious means that I used myself.


The Botkin Model

The patriarchal model, the Botkin model, describes and prescribes ways by which a person can hopefully avoid many of the pains, pressures and unpredictability in life through following the wisest plan of living: the Bible. But the Bible is not so specific, and application to our age must be clarified for us. In the process of making application of those principles to our daily lives, there is a great deal of our own ideology worked in as a part of the process. We select elements from our culture that have worked for us in the past. We work in our own personal beliefs as a consequence as well, since we are the ones who are working out the plan. We use what we grew up to interpret as “normal” as a guide for us. And for our family, this constitutes a good guide. For us, the effort has been noble and worthy.

But herein lies the problem. Those who grow up in a less effective family generally grow up coping with the struggles of the other members in the family. This need not be alcoholism. In my own family, it was depression. You stand on your head and move mountains to help the depressed person survive, through constant acts of self-sacrifice and service. This is not different than how the alcoholic family operates, and it is far from healthy. In my own family, I did everything I could to “enable” the depression itself. As a consequence, I developed and LEARNED my own similar ways of coping by being both depressed and sickly. Instead of being the bad kid, I was the very good kid but also the sick child because that was the only thing that pulled my other family members out of their depression. And while I was a child, it worked. And I learned very unhealthy and destructive ways of coping, and to me, they were “normal.” But I grew up, and none of it worked anymore.

I believe that the Botkins are perpetuating the same type of system. I do not know what the original problems were (addictions or a smothering parent or through some abandonment of some type) that produced the dysfunctions in the family systems of those who have constructed patriocentricity. What I can readily recognize is the pattern and the rules, both written and unwritten. I did not grow up with an understanding of “multi-generational faithfulness” in the terms that the Botkins now profess, but I did grow up with a devotion to my depressed and dysfunctional family that needed me to perpetuate it in order to survive the pains of life. I can spot the patterns a mile away. And I know well, along with every other adult child of a family trying to survive some pain of life, the destructive outcomes that the patterns produce. Those who hold the power benefit from those who support them, and I know well the role of the enabler (as well as the pleasure of the benefits of that role – the secondary gain).

(Read more under the "triangulation" tag from the label list for more information.)

What the Botkins declare to be a Biblical model -- that outlines the wisest way to live the Christian life -- I see as the die-hard attempt to make religion work to avoid the unavoidable and inevitable unpredictability and pain of living.

The Botkin model, that of patriocentricity, contains many Christian elements and concepts that are Christianly in general, but it also has the dysfunction of the addicted family rules woven in it. From my vantage, it is obvious to me that those who drafted the specifics of it have not dealt with the grief and pain of elements of their own past, and have made patriocentricity their drug of choice.

The tragedy is that they claim that their potpourri of preference (Christianity, Old Testament Legalism, Victorian and Medieval culture, the cult of domesticity, American Nationalism, and the dynamics of dysfunctional and addicted families) is the only Biblical alternative for effective Christian living. In reality, they are preaching the family dynamics of addiction, representing them as faithful Christianity.

They are using the integrity of Word of God to legitimize (and market!) their own emotional and psychological disease processes..

Ending the Enmeshment Cycle With Your Own Children

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Series of posts about Covert Incest from “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” by Patricia Love with Jo Robinson.. Exploring the dynamics of covert (emotional or non-sexual but gender-related) incest.

From pages 237 -8:

At some point in their therapy, just about all of my clients who have children become sidetracked from their exploration of their childhoods to dwell on the mistakes they've made as parents. Many of them have come to the painful realization that they've unwittingly become over involved with a son or daughter. The guilt and anxiety can be overwhelming: “How coul dI have repeated the very same mistakes? Why couldn't I see what was happening? How could I, of all people, get tangled up with a child?”

Some of you may have had a similar reaction as you read this book. As you scrutinize your current family, you recognize two of the telltale signs of emotional incest:

1. the lack of a supportive nurturing marriage relationships
   and
2. a tendency to turn to one or more of your children for emotional comfort or support.

You fear that to one degree or another, you're recreating the same twisted dynamics that were so harmful to you as a child.

It is a distressing but well-documented fact that people tend to pass on the destructive elements of their own upbringing. Like dominant genes, dysfunctional behaviors show up in generation after generation, replicating themselves seemingly at will. Children of alcoholics develop drinking or drug problems. Abused children grow up to abuse their own sons and daughters. Children from unstable families wind up with a distressingly high rate of divorce. The tendency is to either duplicate the behaviors we've observed in our families or to run blindly in the opposite direction, creating a whole new set of problems.

How can you keep from repeating the mistakes of the past? And – if you've already made some errors – how can you restore a healthy balance to your family?

The most important thing you can do is strengthen your support network. This recommendation is both cure and preventive medicine: a strong support network will help those of you who are just starting a family establish a healthy pattern of interaction, and it will help those of you with older children correct any ongoing enmeshment. A strong marriage relationship and/or caring friends will give you the support you need to be an objective and nurturing parent.

But no matter how strong and resilient your support system, you will still have a greater tendency than other parents to step over the hidden boundaries between parent and child. Especially in times of stress, you will be tempted to turn to your children for support – it's a familiar and comforting pattern. To guard against this tendency, you need to be especially clear about the differences between parenting and partnering.

Excerpt from
Dr. Patricia Love's The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When a Parent's Love Rule's Your Life Bantam Books, 1990

Characteristics of Covert (Emotional) Incest

From “Silently Seduced” by Kenneth Adams. Exploring the dynamics of covert (emotional or non-sexual but gender-related) incest.

In his book “Silently Seduced,” Kenneth Adams continues to describe covert incest, the process by which a parent or major caregiver uses a child to meet and satisfy their (non-sexual) unmet adult needs. Dr. Patricia Love in her work, “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” describes her own experience with her adult clients who have also become enmeshed emotionally and psychologically with their parents as a result of the process of covert incest. She terms the child within these relationships the “chosen child,” but the dynamics are all the same. Pia Melody builds upon this premise to describe the interaction and dynamics of adult children who follow the same dysfunctional patterns that they did in their child-parent relationships because we are all drawn to what we find familiar. In any case, the basic rules are quite the same. Adults will recreate the unresolved conflicts of their childhood in their adult lives, using the only relationship skills they have and know, however dysfunctional.

Please read Adams' description of the basic characteristics of covert incest in both parent-child and adult child (grown adults who experienced covert incest as children), considering the profound effects of this type of parenting on children. [Blog host notes are italicized and noted in blue text.]

From pages 2 -4:

There is nothing loving or caring about a close parent-child relationship when it services the needs and feelings of the parent rather than the child. “Feeling close” with your parents, particularly the opposite-sex parent, is not the source of comfort the image suggests. It is a relationship in which the individual, both as a child and later as an adult, feels silently seduced by the parent. Feelings of appreciation and gratitude do not prevail in these “close relationships.” Instead they are a source of confusing, progressive rage.

During the feedback section of my lectures on the subject, some participants are quite vocal with their rage and express relief that they now understand why at times they hate with vengeance the same parent who has always loved them “so much.” Some are frozen in their seats and can't speak, while others can't wait to leave. A few courageous parents speak up, expressing that they are now beginning to understand why their son or daughters struggle in relationships.

Others listen to the lectures and insist there is no harm in their close relationship to their opposite-sex parent. Actually they claim to feel special and privileged. These children were given a special position by being idealized by the parent. But there is no privilege in being cheated out of a childhood by being a parent's surrogate partner. As adults these individuals in turn idealize their parents to cover the pain of the abandoned and victimized child within. To be a parent's surrogate partner is to be a victim of covert incest. This book is about the silent seduction covert incest victims experience and its effect on their sexuality, intimacy and relationships...

Characteristics of Covert Incest:

• Love/Hate Relationship. One often has intense feelings of both love and hate for the opposite-sex parent. On one hand, you feel special and privileged because of the relationship; on the other you frequently feel you aren't doing enough for that parent. This results in feelings of guilt which result in rage that is seldom directly expressed. [According to Pia Mellody, this is more common in the Love Avoidant counterpart in a relationship.]
  

• Emotional Distance from Same Sex Parent. In contrast to the love/hate relationship with the opposite-sex parent, you feel abandoned by the same-sex parent. This relationship often is competitive and the parent feels like an adversary. Feeling contempt for this parent is common. [Adams focuses on the opposite-sex enmeshment relationship, but a same-sex enmeshment is also possible and common.]
  

• Guilt and Confusion over Personal Needs. You feel guilty about your needs and probably never have a difficult time identifying what they are. You generally try to “be strong,” caretake or always “be there” for others as a way of meeting your own needs. [Pia Mellody terms this the“shame-existence bind” in other texts.]
  

• Feelings of Inadequacy. You are likely to have chronic feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness. You believe your worth as a man or a woman is determined by what you can do rather than who you are.