Standing On Your Own Branch

This post is flowing from the previous posts started 2 days ago... go back and read those first if you'd like the background.

Differentiation

This captures the idea that the more a person is able to "stand on their own", owning their own thoughts and feelings as an individual, the more meaningfully a person can connect in other relationships. We all start out "undifferentiated"-- young children see the world as their parents interpret it for them... here I'm not so much talking about "views" as I am "emotional responses to life." But if we remain this way, we are not 'close to our family' as much as we are 'stuck to our family.'

"This is the capacity of a family member or member of close relational group, to define his or her own life's goals and values apart from surrounding togetherness pressures, to say "I" when others are demanding "you" and "we". It includes the capacity to maintain a non-anxious presence in the midst of anxious systems, to take maximum responsibility for one's own life and emotional being."

Imagine two people who are fused to the ends of a twig. If one person is shaking the twig, the other will fall. But imagine two people who are connected to two branches shooting off the same twig. If one shakes, the other will feel the jolt, but not be torn from its own branch.

"When two people are stuck to the same twig, so to speak, the nature of the relationship may appear close. They may appear together, but they are really stuck together. They will wind up either perpetually in conflict, because they are so reactive to one another, or they will have a homey togetherness achieved through the total sacrifice of their own selves."

How do you see this play out in your family--both the family you grew up in, and with your own nuclear family?