Question

Compare and contrast healthy vs. dysfunctional family characteristics

Answer 1

In a Healthy Family

• Free to talk - People feel free to talk about inner feelings
• All feelings are fine
• The person is more important than performance
• Open discussion, all subjects are open to discussion
• Welcomes diversity, Individual differences are accepted
• Responsibility, each person is responsible for his/her own actions
• Respectful criticism is offered along with appropriate consequences for actions
• Restrictions are limited, there are few “shoulds”
• There are clear, flexible rules
• The atmosphere is relaxed
• There is joy
• Family members face up to and work through stress
• People have energy
• People feel loving
• Growth is celebrated
• People have high self worth
• There is a strong parental coalition

In a Dysfunctional Family

• People compulsively protect inner feelings.
• Only “certain” feelings are okay.
• Performance driven, performance is more important than the person.
• There are many taboo subjects, lots of secrets.
• Everyone must conform to the strongest person’s ideas and values.
• There is a great deal of control and criticism.
• There is punishment, shaming
• There are lots of “shoulds”
• The rules are unclear, inconsistent, and rigid.
• The atmosphere is tense.
• There is much anger and fear.
• Stress is avoided and denied.
• People feel tired, hurt and disappointed.
• Growth is discouraged.
• People have low self-worth
• Coalitions form across generations.

In any given family the individual members fulfill and act out roles, yet there are differences between healthy and dysfunctional families as outlined below:

• While in healthy, functional families these roles are generally fluid, change over time, in different circumstances, at particular events and are age and developmental appropriate, in dysfunctional families the roles are much more rigid.
• The various roles in a healthy family are parts of every person. Individual members, in particular children, are allowed to grow, develop and integrate these roles in their personality to become a fully functional adult with a full set of skills to develop further during their own independent adult life.
• In a healthy family members are integrated and various parts may surface at different times at no threat to the family system. In functional families the roles are interdependent.
• Healthy families in general retain functionality when individual members ‘leave’ the family system through ‘moving out’, starting their own families or even death of an individual member.

By contrast,

• In dysfunctional families the roles are almost a form of continuity or stability of the family system, stifling development of primarily the children, though one or more parents may be severely stifled as well.
• In a dysfunctional family each member takes a role, and/or is assigned one, to make up the whole which is the family. Rather than a family of fully (yet age appropriate) persons, the family system gears to create just one: the family itself.
• Members must submerge parts of their personalities and take on a role so they are less of a threat to the family system that must be kept in place. In the case of a dysfunctional family all the roles are characterized as co-dependent.
• In dysfunctional family systems when an individual member leaves, this creates an (almost) irreparable hole in the existing system. When an individual member discards the taken or assigned role it threatens the family stability (such as it is) as there is no-one capable of fulfilling (or willing to fulfill) that role. This is why dysfunctional families are often so enmeshed. The system needs all members to function as a unit, not as a community. Ideally adult individuals can fulfill all of these roles for themselves and are not dependent on others for either of these though interdependent relationships will nourish self-sustenance capabilities.