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“Made the Decision to Turn Our Will and Our Lives Over to the Care of God as We Understood him.”
Recently one of my clients stated, “I was afraid if I separated from my family, I would lose them. Fixing them kept me feeling connected.” I could relate to this family conundrum. Needing to separate and let go of family feels like super glue that you can never get rid of.
For me, it began when I was very young and impressionable. Once I ran out of a baseball stadium because I felt it was going to blow up. It was triggered by evangelical preachers proclaiming that the world was going to end in fire any moment. I was panicking trying to get my family members and friends out so they wouldn’t get hurt! My parents took me to a shrink to figure out what was wrong with me. In truth, they should have been the ones seeing the shrink for exposing me to such an evangelical shit show that would scare the hell out of me!
That said, early on I learned to be afraid of separating from my family. As a young boy, I had a long prayer list that I would go through ritually every day, praying for their safety. If I missed a day I would feel guilty.
I was the youngest boy of a family of 9. In addition, my folks spent many years raising my oldest sister’s 3 children. There was constant tumult and crisis that was ongoing. I couldn’t stand experiencing the hurt, anxiety, and fear I felt for the safety of those I love. I simply absorbed the raucous commotion, the traumatic abuse to and from those I loved. In a dysfunctional family, abuse is experienced and doled out. Every family member is a victim and a victimizer. It is part of the formula that kept me stuck in not being able to let go of my family. I would be forever trying to fix family members so that I would not lose them. It became exhausting.
Surrender and letting go can be messy, particularly with family members. Here are dynamics to consider when separating from family:
1. Surrender that leads to acceptance is not a tidy package. By this I mean there are a lot of hard feelings that you will need to embrace and release regarding your family experience. Anger, resentment, sadness, shame, loneliness, and even rage will need to be reckoned with. Taking responsibility for the contents of what’s in your mind regarding your family. That involves sitting with the ambivalence, hostility, and hurt you experienced. Surrender involves experiencing these unwanted feelings at a deep level and not avoiding the painful memories and encounters. The heavy emotion of sadness must come out before you can feel good. Surrender sets the wheels in motion. Your fear and anxiety about the future with your family is released when you separate and surrender these deep feelings of pain and consternation. Separation and surrender is a lifestyle that must be employed and guarded on an ongoing basis. Seldom is it ever one and done.
2. Calm in the presence of internal chaos about family is a result of being gentle with yourself—practicing an easy-does-it mentality. Buddhists reference this as being unconditionally friendly with yourself. Family dynamics have the power to trigger fireworks inside your brain and body. You will be tempted to jump to frantic action. You will be triggered to become a reactor in an attempt to fix things. It will be to no avail and you will lose yourself in the reactivity. Take a deep breath. Slow your process. Sit with the trigger, the problematic situation, for 24 hours before you respond. Gather your resources. Then move forward with courage and confidence. Note, moving forward with courage and confidence does not exclude feeling shaky and tender underneath as you assert your action and voice. Over time your feelings will match your confident actions.
3. When you are tempted to react, remember the slogan “Don’t just do something, sit there and be still and know.” Family members’ inactions or actions can make you feel like you are going nuts! You will want to react to their behavior. Surrender means to let go and observe. It means to realize that what other family members do is separate and not about you. Worrying about your family loved ones will not change their behavior. It never has and never will.
Just be there with your emptiness and your ineptitude to change things for others. When you resist the feelings of anxiety, despair, and helplessness to change others, they gain power and hold over you. Simply allowing these feelings to be and not trying to move away from them will permit the feelings to move through your experience and become something else. When you are in the midst of turmoil and struggle, simply sitting with the feelings and being with yourself is not popular. It accelerates discomfort. Who wants to feel that? Yet, it is a process of transforming you in relation to conflict with family members and those around you.
When it comes to family experience, surrender results from doing your best to stay present in the now and participating fully in the way things are. It is all you need to assure yourself that what happens tomorrow in relationship to your family or loved ones will be for the best for you.
Surrendering and separating from family members involves learning to go with the flow of life just like rivers that flow around boulders and other obstructions. You too will navigate around and through the frustrations of separating from the dysfunction of family members as you practice the art of surrender.
