Roles in Dysfunctional Families

Everyone has roles in dysfunctional families. When alcohol is involved, there is usually an enabler, for example. In my memoir, Following the Whispers the roles in dysfunctional families are not clearly defined in the ways my father, mother, and I interacted.

My family was not dysfunctional because of alcohol, but roles in dysfunctional families like mine existed. Like children who grew up in alcoholic homes, I blamed myself for my parents’ problems. Moreover, I believed it was my job to fix them, an example of roles in dysfunctional families. One time I convinced Mom to allow my father to come home. They’d had a fight and it became habitual to try to make Mom feel better. Locked in an intricate battle dance, my parents took turns baiting one another. Eventually, my mother threw that incident back in my face when she complained about how miserable she was with my father, implying it was my fault because I made her get Dad to come back home.

Roles in dysfunctional families are reversed. A young child should not be placed in the position of parenting her parents. But it devastated me that they were miserable, so I tried to fix them. This only led to feelings of inadequacy, since there was nothing I could do to relieve their suffering. I can see now that I was simply trying to control my environment to the best of my ability—to keep the peace at all costs—even if that meant losing my own identity by playing the typical roles in dysfunctional families.

In Following the Whispers the reversal of roles in dysfunctional families is evident in the way I parented my parents. Consequently, the little girl in me was never parented properly. Children need healthy role models to function well as adults. The roles in dysfunctional families prohibit that.

Want to know more about roles in dysfunctional families? Get your copy of Following the Whispers today!