Returning Home: How to Build Better Boundaries with Your Family
When we return home as adults, we are thrown into a stage act of generational behavioral patterns. We often find ourselves being treated like children again, our parents and siblings enacting the same roles they played in our lives when we were younger. Our parents tell us what to do, guilt tripping us for our lifestyle or nagging us about our plans for the future. Our siblings tease us and fight over the last piece of pie in the fridge. It’s like we are teenagers again, struggling to be independent while secretly craving the approval of our family.
When we start our own lives as adults, we begin to experience the world outside of our families and start to create a sense of self that is often drastically different from the selves we were at home as kids. We develop our own lifestyles, opinions, and habits. So when we return home to visit, the experience can often feel like culture shock. While we have changed, the structure of our family of origin has not. This can express itself in arguments, feelings of resentment or guilt, and regression in thought and behavior.
To prevent yourself from dreading returning home and feeling stressed while you’re there, treat the experience as an opportunity to learn more about yourself and to set boundaries. If you can notice the behavioral patterns and dynamics of your family of origin, you can better lean about yourself and gain insight into why you do the things you do.
1
Notice the way you feel while you are around your family vs how you feel while not around them. If you find that your normally sunny disposition becomes defensive or hurt when around family, it may mean that they are drawing you back into old cycles of behavior. They might still be treating you in the same way they did when you were a child, dredging up old feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment, or guilt. Realistically, they may not understand how they are making you feel if you engage in these old behavioral patterns with them. To help them better understand the emotional impact of the way they treat you, tell them your feelings directly with I statements. For example, “I feel hurt when you pick on me like that.” Follow this up with setting a boundary, such as “I need you stop picking on me or I won’t be able to spend time with you.” Your family may need to understand their behavior is damaging, while getting the message that you still want a relationship with them, just a healthier one.
2
Observe the way your family members communicate with you and how you respond. Do your parents barge in on you while you’re seeking some solitude in another room? Do they snap at you or completely disengage? How do you respond to the way they communicate with you? If you find yourself snapping back or storming off, their communication style is undoubtedly triggering you. You can’t control how others act, but you can control how you respond to them. To facilitate healthier communication, check yourself before you wreck yourself. Instead of playing into shouting matches as you may have done as a child, take a step back and respond in the way you want them to respond to you. Speak in a calm tone of voice and have open body language (arms down at your sides, easy expression on your face). Directly state how their communication is affecting you. For example, “I want to understand what you’re saying but I can’t speak to you while you yell at me like that. Can you please lower your voice?” Or, “I don’t know what you need from me if you don’t communicate it to me clearly. Help me better understand you.”
3
Take note of what situations trigger you. It could be tone of voice, a look, a topic, or a whole myriad of things. Triggers are conscious and subconscious cues that remind us of past traumatic experiences that cause us to react in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. Fight: You launch into an argument or a physical altercation. This can also be experienced in the body as elevated heart rate, flushing of the skin, and tense muscles. You are preparing to fight. Flight: You can’t handle the stress caused by the situation and so you leave, without the conflict being resolved. This can be experienced as upset stomach, tearfulness, panic, anxiety, and dizziness. You can also try to change the conversation or cause a distraction that will pull everyone’s attention away from the conflict. Freeze: You stand there and take the abuse, playing mute. This can be experienced as numbness, tunnel vision, overwhelming shame, guilt, etc. You don’t want to fight and make things worse but you can’t figure out how to leave the situation or de-escalate it so you stay in it without being able to resolve it. Fawn: You want to please your aggressor. You say “I’m sorry” or try to take on emotional responsibilities so that the other person doesn’t have to. You can feel guilt, shame, and anxiety. You feel you are the cause of the problem and want to solve the conflict by assuming all the responsibility for it. The next time a situation triggers you, examine what happened and how you respond to it.
4
Experiment with boundary setting. As an adult, you now have new boundaries that your family is not used to. Often when our boundaries are violated, we react with frustration and anger. To prevent conflict while trying to establish new boundaries, clearly state to your family what your boundaries are. For example, if you no longer find it acceptable that your siblings poke fun at you, tell them so. If you don’t want your parents to talk over you at the dinner table, tell them so. Setting new boundaries can often cause disruption within families because it upends the normal way the family functions. However, if your family can understand your new needs, you have the potential to create a healthier, more understanding relationship.
Dealing with family can be difficult. If you are ever in a situation that is escalated or dangerous, do what you need to in order to feel emotionally and physically safe. Sometimes it is helpful to talk to a therapist in order to practice scenarios or to process interactions you’ve had with others. If you’d like to learn more about how to strengthen your relationship with your family, reach out today.