Who Can We Become When We Are Disconnected from Family?

In the past week I've been watching at least an episode a day of Leah Remini's Scientoḷogy and the Aftermath. For me, it's brought up a lot of interesting ideas to play with about family, belonging and resource that I wanted to write about.

In simplest terms, the TV show boils down to a series of interviews with ex-members of the church of Scientoḷogy. What is shared is a complex picture of systematic abuse and unfathomable cult behavior. Story after story describes a person of authority in the church abusing church members while acting in righteousness that their actions were morally and ethically sound. And not only that, those who were witnessing the abuse also believed the authority was doing the right thing in these cases.

As the show progresses, the plot that unfolds in the foreground is a story of devout believers who were steadfast that they were doing what was best for humanity even when they were building a secret prison, bankrupting followers and covering up physical and sexual abuse.

But there's another profound throughline that runs throughout this show and is part of every story I've watched. It is a throughline that shows us what people can be manipulated to do when an organization is allowed to install itself as the sole source of their belonging to the world. Which is to say, what can happen when family comes second.

Where we belong

It's my experience both as a facilitator of family healing and as a human being that where we feel we belong plays a huge role in what we value in life. And by extension, it plays a significant role in the way we behave when we are faced with a challenge.

Here's a broad example of how this can play out. Of course, in reality there are always exceptions to these hypothetical brush strokes.

First imagine a person only takes advice from trained MDs from the American Medical Association (AMA) and refuses any outside advice. Second, imagine another person that uses only holistic approaches, nutrition and other alternative healing methods whenever they are sick.

Let's say both develop cancer. Though there's an argument that both the AMA and holistic schools of healing are helpful, I strongly suggest that the second person who solely values holistic approaches would be in possible mortal danger if they refused all conventional wisdom of a medical doctor.

Now, let's change the illness. What if both people have a chronic autoimmune issue that causes skin inflammation? Again, both the MD and holistic practitioner are helpful sources of heath information but for anyone that's had autoimmune issues, you know that a lot of conventional approaches in this area boil down to symptom suppression. If your skin is regularly inflamed, you'll get a skin cream to use in perpetuity. However, what if adopting a new diet makes the skin issues disappear completely? If you refused to see anyone that looked at health from a holistic perspective you may never realize that you were allergic to something you were eating all along.

My point is this...

When we look to one place of belonging as the source of 100% of answers to all questions without engaging opposing viewpoints there are consequences. And those consequences are the results of the actions we take when we have a blind spot to other possibilities. In an extreme example, we can die of an otherwise curable cancer because we didn't believe in seeing a medical doctor.

Here's where I loop back to Scientoḷogy. Again, when we believe the group we belong to has 100% percent of the answers, there are consequences. We look to one source for advice about health, spirituality, interpersonal relationships, and finding purpose in life. Blind spots develop. We begin to refuse to take outside advice. And most importantly, we refuse to take our own advice if it conflicts with the dominant belief system.

And how do you double down on the worst parts of belonging to one organization and one alone? You put family second to it. That's when everything really hits the fan. And that's the subtext underneath all the worst stories of abuse shared in Leah Remini's show.

Story after story talks about the church policy that if you speak out against or leave Scientoḷogy everyone you know in the church is required to never speak to you again. Meaning you lose all connection to your friends, parents, siblings, spouse and your children all at once. Families are ripped apart.

When an organization occupies a stronger place of belonging than your own family they have an incredible power over you. Not only the power to tell you who you can and cannot speak to, but the power to convince you to perpetrate abuse. 'Brainwashing' is a word that gets thrown around a lot on this show. I'm suggesting that the bizarre and abusive acts are a byproduct of what people can become when we turn our natural sense of belonging on its head.

Your fail-safe, your family

The picture that emerges as I watch this show is that the opposing opinions a family expresses are actually an asset to its members. In other words, the family member that always argues with you at the dinner table is a corrective force. They become a voice that can prevent you from adopting extreme views or belief systems. Which is not to say that person is always right. Sometimes our family supports us by pushing us to clarify our own views through putting us on the defensive. And of course, you are simultaneously playing the same role for them.

But on some level, our family brings us back to earth and grounds us in the real. That's why as a church policy, families were broken up in favor of Scientoḷogy. It was necessary to keep the believers in the system. Because eventually, someone in every family will dissent.

Families have an uncanny ability to have at least one member that challenges the status quo. If it isn't you, your parents, aunts or uncles, or brothers or sisters, your child might be the 'trouble maker' or the 'black sheep.' That tendency towards dissent, which emerges naturally within all families, might be the exact thing the family needs when one or more members are beginning to go off the deep end. So we can actually value dissenters in our families for that. Value them for inspiring the family or ourselves to clarify viewpoints and value the possibility that they may help change minds for the better when it's really needed. Simply put, dissent deserves a place at the table.

There are exceptions to what is shared here. Every family is different, and one of the most critical exceptions to what I've shared above is when a family or family members are physically, verbally or sexually abusive. In a case like this a person must take immediate action to secure their safety and reduce harm. In other words, they must leave the situation. Belonging can and should be found elsewhere, but as I've suggested above, caution must be taken because there are sources of belonging that can be as dangerous as an abusive family.

A closing holiday thought...

As we enter the holidays it's a time where I start to hear people recite a popular quote in healing communities:

“If you think you are so enlightened, go and spend a week with your parents.”

I've understood this as either a hypothetical that suggests your inflated sense of self would easily crumble in a short period of time spent with family. Or that the quote represents a shared admission that no one's family is perfect.

After watching this show about Scientoḷogy the quote has taken on a different meaning for me. I now read this as a practical piece of advice:

If you think you are so enlightened, please go spend a week with your parents or extended family because it could save you from becoming so self-righteous that you would unconsciously hurt yourself or others.

The Bubble of "Overreaction"

Most people have experienced, either within themselves or with others, a moment where they felt someone was overreacting to a situation. There are explosive, loud, messy overreactions and subtle overreactions where we might judge that another person's response or even our own isn't justified based on the situation. With the more subtle reactions, I'm envisioning how we might be confused by our own response to the perceived tone of a text message, our anxiety surrounding an upcoming flight or a reactionary snap at a friend who unknowingly said something that struck a nerve.

The more I engage in Systemic Constellation work and witness how myself and others react to what life presents, the stronger my conviction is that when we label something as 'overreaction' we are viewing ourselves in a limited bubble.

In this case, the inside of the bubble is filled with a major presupposition - that every person is starting from more or less the same place. When someone cuts you off in traffic, there's an acceptable level of anger you can have and a response where you've gone too far. There's an acceptable amount of fear you should feel in a dark room, and a level of response where you've overstepped. So when we act out of accordance with these rules of thumb it can be confusing. It's at these times that we may reflexively ask ourselves a pretty perceptive question: "where did that come from?"

When I work with the influence of family and ancestry via Systemic Constellations and read studies in the field of Epigenetics the picture of who we are and what guides our behavior becomes dramatically broader and more complex. To give a glimpse, in 2013, researchers trained a subset of mice to avoid the smell of a cherry blossom scent by (sadly) shocking them along with introducing the scent. Then they allowed the mice to proliferate and studied the original group's grandchildren. What they found was that the grandchildren were more likely to exhibit physiological fear reactions when the cherry blossom scent was introduced compared to the control group. The trauma of being shocked and the associated smell the grandparents generation experienced was passed down to the grandchildren who had not experienced the electric shocks themselves. [Dias BG, Ressler KJ. Parental olfactory experience. Nature Neuroscience. 2013 Dec 9]

Who doesn't have trauma in their ancestry? What person doesn't have a lineage that includes violence and war? Or for that matter, a lineage that includes hatred, depression, anxiety and all forms of suffering we see today?

This study aligns very closely with what I'm witnessing in my work - which is that trauma is passed down even when it's not spoken of. Perhaps especially when it's not spoken of.

This is why I share that our ideas of what constitutes an overreaction are, at best, limited. When a person flies into rage when they are ignored in conversation, where is that coming from? Where does jealousy come from? Or anxiety? Sure, most of us can connect the dots with how our childhood experiences influence our present life. But I'm witnessing that it goes much further.

How we interact with our world can look like overreaction because we struggle to acknowledge, or explicitly deny, the vastness of what's going on behind the scenes. In a sense, your reaction is always in accord with the experience because what you bring to your life is more complex than the story of one lifetime. You're bringing the sum total of the lifetimes of your ancestors. And that likely includes the ancestors beyond grandmother and grandfather. If someone is acting in a way that looks inappropriate or unjustified in the present moment, broadening the lens to include those who came before seems to have the uncanny ability to show that the reality is just the opposite.

The good news is that acknowledgement of what came before can make a direct impact on the present. It's a shift to a 'pro-inclusion' approach to who we are. In education, inclusion is the philosophy that schools and communities benefit when students with special needs are included in the general population classrooms instead of being sectioned off into separate classes. When this happens, all students experience an education that more honestly reflects our diverse world where we learn with and from everyone that's around us. When it comes to individuals, I'm suggesting that we benefit when we include the aspects of ourselves that we may have sectioned off, denied or forgotten. In other words, what sits outside the bubble.

When we connect to both our immediate family and larger lineage, stepping into this state of inclusion means looking at those who came before and allowing all parts of them to have a place in our identity. Especially the parts we dislike. There's an adage in healing communities that "what we resist, persists." Inclusion is the antidote to this. It's a process. And the challenge is that for virtually all people living today, when we look at our broader ancestral picture it includes not only the victims of history but the perpetrators as well.

When we undergo this process an unconscious inner movement occurs where we naturally possess more compassion for other people, our parents, our families and most notably, ourselves. Without any conscious effort, we see the actions and reactions of people in a different light.

*pop*

Organizational Constellation Workshop at Maha Rose

I'm excited to announce that I'm hosting a workshop at the Maha Rose Center of Healing on Saturday December 2nd! The workshop goes from 3-5pm and will touch on how our relationship to work and money is forged. This work can support anyone by addressing the often overlooked connection that exists between how we support ourselves and the dynamics within our family and larger ancestry. The approach is an eyes-open experiential method of connecting with how we may be currently entangled in negative relationships to our jobs, bosses and coworkers and provides insight for how to gracefully step out of those unwanted dynamics.

More info + sign up: https://www.maharose.com/collections/workshops/products/saturday-december-2nd-transforming-unconscious-relationships-a-family-constellation-workshop