Okay, it's not just you, other people have dysfunctional families too. Let's talk
about how to survive a dysfunctional family.
Top 10 ways to survive a
dysfunctional family. Number 10 realize, that you're not a
special case. I know, it feels like you are because your family is more
dysfunctional than any other family, right? Probably not, it's just the one
that you're used to and so you start to feel like it's extraordinary or somehow
special, it's really not. Every family has some level of dysfunction and yours is
no exception. Probably there's more dysfunctional
families, there's less dysfunctional families and that's why we're going to
start with, you're not a special case, get over it, it's something that happens to
all kinds of people even good people like you.
Number nine, notice that you've made it so far. I know, how amazing is that? Even
with all of the dysfunction, here you are, you've made it this far. Why would that
not continue to be the case? And you'll get some other tips that are going to
help you as you move forward but notice that you've made it so far, you've got a
hundred percent track record for surviving this so far. Pretty cool.
That'll change how you feel about it too. Coming in at number eight, quit. I don't
mean quit your family, I mean quit the job of trying to please everyone. This is
one of the most dysfunctional things that happens in families because we
continue the dysfunctional behavior and interactions because we don't want to
upset anyone or we want to please everybody or we want to make sure that
everybody's happy with everything. Well, you're really bad at this job
anyway so in fact, you know what? You don't have to quit. I fire you. You're
fired from the job of making everybody happy and pleasing everyone. Does that
help? You know, it probably doesn't because usually when I fire people from
this job they still show up for work the next day. Somehow, you get to quit the job
of pleasing everyone. Alright, moving up the list to number seven, learn to take
care of yourself. This might go without saying, self-care is a really important
part of being in any relationship and especially if there's some dysfunctional
patterns in there, who's going to take care of you? Your dysfunctional family?
Probably not. Learn to take care of yourself. There are four main aspects to
this that I think are just very basic for self-care. Number one, get enough
sleep, make sure that you're taking care of your sleep needs and the research
shows that most average adults need anywhere from 6 to 10 hours of sleep,
adolescents are more toward the 10-hour end of that thing.
Get enough sleep. Number two, eat a balanced healthy diet. The fuel that you
put in matters, this is part of taking care of the machine. Number three, get
plenty of exercise, regular exercise, and I'm going to recommend that you get
three to five episodes of good aerobic exercise every week, about a half-hour in
duration. You can modify that according to your own needs but a lot of the
research I've seen places it at about 3 to 5 episodes of a half-hour each, good
aerobic exercise. You need this not only for your body but for your mind. our
brain is part of your body and that's the organ in our body that we associate
with our mind. Having that healthy and functioning helps with everything else
and then finally the fourth piece is regular prayer and
meditation. Now that's coming out of some research that was done at Harvard on
brain maintenance. Prayer, meditation, whatever your inclination is from a
spiritual standpoint, this is something that helps your brain to be healthy and
I think has to do with quieting some of the noise that happens in our world and
having a little bit of solitude peace where you can just be present and
increase your self-awareness so all of that has to do with learning to take
care of yourself let's move up to number six. Set appropriate boundaries and
limits. You'll notice that some of the dysfunction that happens within your
family has you in positions you don't want to be or has you experiencing
things that maybe you could have avoided or prevented had you set up the
appropriate boundaries. This could range anywhere from having new locks put on
your home. Oh wait, can you do that? Isn't that rude? It's not rude, it's part of
taking care of yourself. If you've got people coming and going from your house
that you don't want coming and going from your house, you have a security
issue. Do what you can to it to address that and set up appropriate boundaries
and limits. Sometimes this has to do with how we communicate those boundaries and
limits to people too. I remember when I was working in a juvenile correctional
facility and I often had to use this phrase.. I'm not going to let you hurt me.
Yeah, having a job where you get to use that phrase occasionally, that taught me
a lot about setting up appropriate boundaries and limits and that's a good
one. I'm not going to let you hurt me even if you never say it out loud. Having
that mentality has you showing up a little bit differently in the dynamic.
Now we're halfway there. Let's move up to number five on our list
and this one feeds right off of the boundaries and limits. Here's how I'm
going to phrase it.. Don't show up. What I mean by that is don't show up for the
barbecue if you're on the menu. Kind of goes without saying. You know that there
are some family events that become a venue for people beating you up or
getting into that thing that you didn't want to get into or criticizing or
ridiculing you for whatever place you are in your life. If that's the case and
that's just an example of a dysfunctional thing that could happen in
a family. If you get invited to the barbecue and you find out that you're on
the menu, you might consider not showing up. Wait, can we do that? Isn't it rude to
not come to the family event? Not necessarily. It might be self-care and
I'm not saying that you should avoid all of your family events, that's not what
I'm saying. I am saying that if you're on the menu, you might not want to show up
for the barbecue. There's some of these other points that you can use to maybe
address some of the dysfunction in your family and hopefully we can make an
improvement in the way things that are going. I'm just saying if you can
reasonably predict that this is not going to be a productive outing, it's
okay for you to not show up. Now that brings us up to number four. I really
like number four because it's more active. Learn how to handle snipers. I got
this from my friend, Pamela Jett, who is an amazing communications specialist. I
had a podcast interview with Pamela, you can link to that down in the description
from Live On Purpose radio. Pamela Jett, how to handle a sniper. Here's what
Pamela taught me.. In an assertive communication and we're not talking
about somebody who shoots at you from the roof of a building but we are
talking about someone who takes potshots at you in other ways, it might be through
words or their behaviors, you know what I'm talking about now, right? This is how
Pamela defined a sniper, somebody who's taking a potshot at you.
So her suggestion was that we do three steps basically, you identify, verify and
accept. Identify means that you as clearly as you can, state what happened.
So it might sound like this and put it in this format actually, when X happens, I
feel Y or I felt Y so when that issue was brought up about my medical
condition, I felt betrayed. That's just an example, okay. When everyone received
their award at the family party and I was left out, I felt overlooked. Okay,
whatever it is. So identify is to clearly state when this happens I feel this.
Number two, verify. This one is simple, you simply ask the person who took the pot
shot, "Is that what you intended?" So when everyone was recognized except me, I felt
left out,is that what you intended? Now you've just put it back in the hands of
the sniper, right? 99% of the time when you do the verify step,
they're going to backpedal, they're going to, oh no no no no, that's not what I
meant at all or it might even turn it back on you a
little bit. Oh, you're so sensitive. Whatever it is, you go to step number
three, accept. You simply say, okay, this is so
powerful because what you've just done is put them on notice that their
behavior is impacting you in a certain way and you're willing to set up an
appropriate limit around that. Identify, verify and accept. Moving up to number
three, practice gratitude. Gratitude is the most powerful quickest way that I
know to get to a positive evaluation of what it is and
we're constantly evaluating and judging our family. The fact that you think
they're dysfunctional is a judgment, the truth is they're more dysfunctional than
some and less dysfunctional than others. When you compare your family to a more
dysfunctional family, you feel gratitude that they're not that dysfunctional,
right? When you compare your family to a less dysfunctional family, you feel a
little deprived that you got stuck with this one. All I'm saying is, pick a
position about that and a position of gratitude helps you to show up
differently in this family and it changes your immediate experience of
them as well. Practice gratitude. That leads us to number two, practice
positivity. This expands the gratitude step from number three, this expands it
into not only being grateful for the family that you have. What, wait. You have
a family? You see what I'm talking about, even a dysfunctional family is still a
family. How you judge them is the evaluation piece. What we're going to do
from here on out is the creation piece and there's always an upgrade. Consider
this for a moment.. When you're practicing positivity, you
can use a little strategy that I've shared in some other videos. I call it
BB8 which sounds like Android from Star Wars but it's really an exercise. Use
those initials, BB8, to think about Better By Eight. How sure are you that
eight o'clock is coming? Oh, pretty sure? Yeah, look at your watch,
it's on its way even if it's eight o'clock right now. Oh, no, it's a little
past eight, another one's coming. That's what I'm talking about. Eight o'clock is
coming. How sure are you that you're gonna be around
for eight o'clock? Oh yeah, almost as sure? Good.
If eight o'clock is coming and you're gonna be around for eight o'clock,
there's only two possibilities. I used to think there were three, I've narrowed it
down to two because I don't think it's possible for things to be exactly the
same at 8 o'clock as they are right now. At the very least, you're gonna be a
little older, you might be more hungry, more tired, I don't know.
Think about your family, it's gonna be around at 8 o'clock, yeah. So get clear
about what can I do to make sure that things in my family are a little better
by 8:00. That's BB8, better by 8:00. Can you do that? If you doubt this at any
level, switch it. Look at the opposite. Is there something you could do to make
sure that things in your family are worse by 8 o'clock? Oh yeah. Now 6 ideas
come to mind, right? That creative power that you have has to be harnessed in one
direction or another. When I say practice positivity, I mean get clear about the
upgrade and then you apply your creative power to creating that upgrade, better by
8. Number one on our list comes back to a really simple concept, love. Yeah,
choose love. Your job with your family is not to fix them, it's not to solve all
this dysfunction. Your job is to love them no matter what and even if. Those
you let that sink in, feel the relief that that brings to your heart into your
mind to know that, hey, my job is simply to love them, it's not to fix any of this
dysfunction. That's number one on our list because at the end of the day, you
didn't pick these people, you kind of were given them, you know what I mean,
it's not your job to go ahead and correct everything. When you realize that
your job is to love them, all the pressure's off and you get to sit back
and enjoy and be entertained by and sometimes puzzle over all the weird
things that are happening but you're doing your job as long as you love them.
We've all got stories about those dysfunctional families and how we
survive it. Leave a comment down below about what you've experienced with this,
let's start a conversation.