Compared with Western culture, which emphasizes the equal and independent relationship between family members, Eastern culture emphasizes the integration of relationships between family members, and inevitably there will be mutual interference and unclear boundaries.
01
Overly harsh father
Chinese often say that strict fathers and mothers are really a limitation on the function of fathers, because fathers can also be very gentle.
I idealize a father who is a state in which he has a very clear boundary with others, but he also has the ability to be gentle.
A lot of fathers, his personality hasn't really grown into a man's state, so he needs to be overly harsh to disguise himself as a man. In fact, it is desperately trying to cover up this part of yourself that has not grown up.
If you imagine how an adolescent boy pretends to be in front of the girls he likes, you can understand what men who already have children are so serious in front of their children.
02
Overly nagging mom
The mother is overly controlling the affairs of the family, may accuse, may nag, and always say a lot to the child, so that she is actually satisfying her happiness through her mouth.
To put it simply, this mother is still in the "oral period". (Babies use their mouths to link to the world)
And an adult who has become a mother, excessive nagging, but also excessive use of the mouth to link with the world, so many aggressive and emotional are said through the mouth, indicating that she is using her mouth to abuse her husband and children, such a phenomenon is actually very common in Chinese families.
If the above two points form a picture, you can imagine that in a family, the father is pretending to be serious, the mother is nagging, and the child is abused there.
03
Topics in the family are limited
In Chinese families, the easiest thing to talk about and the easiest to cover up other facts is the child's learning. Moms and dads don't have any topics with their children, they can only talk about learning, which is the most talked about thing by Chinese families.
Everyone hid behind the study and felt safer. When parents talk about learning, they cover up their inner fears and insecurities, and they themselves are not capable of dealing with it, so they use the fig leaf of learning to block it.
There is also what cannot be talked about in the family, such as sex, and this topic is a highly limited one.
If parents have repaired their hearts well, there will not be so much fear to limit their children.
When parents feel uneasy when their children talk about a certain topic, and do not let the children discuss, they need to look at their own uneasiness first, it may be that they are unconsciously anxious, and there is a knot that needs to be untied.
If the parents are able to constantly clean their knots at this time, then the child will be liberated from the family way, because this knot may be unconsciously implanted by the parents in their own childhood.
Of course, we are social people after all, and sometimes we will consciously avoid some problems, which is okay, but the premise is that parents should be clear that this restriction is not because of a certain emotion of their own, for the children, but for the maintenance of the necessary boundaries between the family. This requires two people or a family to agree to avoid.
04
Over-symbolization
Now many countries have an impression of China that Chinese children all over the world are learning piano: the piano is a highly symbolic representative, Chinese give it a lot of meaning, such as nobility, elegance, class and so on. Parents want to rely on the piano to meet some of their own needs.
On the other hand, learning piano also implies some offensive needs. For example, parents take their children to the exam and watch their children beat others.
Now the children attend a lot of art, other training classes, which we didn't have at that time, and in turn, they should envy us, because we were playing with more primitive things at that time. For example, symbolize low things such as mud, sticks, or some small animals.
As we all know, today's children do not have the opportunity to be so close to nature, which is also the sadder side of children now.
Excessive symbolization leads to hypocrisy, leads to a decrease in one's actual ability to live, and leads to excessive emotional isolation.
When you can say directly to a person that I love you, he does not say, but says, I play you a song... This can also be seen in the distant distance between hearts. There's fear, fear of being close to another person.
05
Excessive backgrounding
In society now, a very common word "spelling daddy", whether it is college or middle school. Before entering school, the teacher first investigates what the child's parents do. It seems that this is now explicitly banned by the Ministry of Education, but many teachers are still doing it latently. Among the children, it is also talked about what my father does, what my mother does.
Putting aside the banner of social morality, I have carefully experienced, what is the psychological motivation for such remarks?
A person's background covers up the person himself, and for parents, excessive proof of their social background in front of their children shows that he is very weak in his heart. Parents are afraid that they are not a good parent in their children's hearts, so they need these backgrounds to block the front and isolate their children from their true selves.
In the end, it is the parents themselves who feel that they are not a good parent, and they are afraid that the children will see this, so they try to compile a magnificent background to block the child's view.
Unfortunately, children are born to be parents' mind readers, and children know very well what their parents are doing.
Every adult has been a child, and it should not be difficult to appreciate this point when you look back carefully.
It's just that the children are very kind, so they also cooperate with their parents to make a good audience, in order to appear realistic, at the beginning, they often copy the words and deeds of their parents, and publicize their parents' social background in school or society. The price is that the child loses his true self-worth in the process, because if he stays in the falsehood for too long, he will forget the original truth.
At the same time, in society, teachers and certain classmates will cater to such an act, attracted by the gorgeous background, and ignore what kind of person the real person is, what his inner potential and characteristics are.
Under the superficial social pandering and admiration, the child will slowly drift farther and farther away from the real self, and respond to the pride of the parents' background. Like a vine wrapped around a big tree, survival can only be attached to the big tree.
On the contrary, family background has also become the soil for other families to develop inferiority.
Children, in the excessive cover of their parents, hear the voices of their parents who think they are not good. Kind children will also echo the voices of their parents, plant the seeds of inferiority in their hearts, and be ashamed to talk about their parents at school.
People often see poor children in school who are bullied, and these children often convey the message that I am not a good enough person and do not deserve the respect of others. And this shame will become a very eye-catching target in the crowd.
The children around them will sensitively capture this message and respond to bully him, causing him to repeatedly experience "I'm not good enough", thus deepening such a deformed psychological motivation.
Such children will often be extraordinary in society in the future, either as adults, angrily striving for a larger social background; or destroying society (the extreme example is terrorists); or self-hatred and self-hatred to absorb the energy of those around them. He will unconsciously create many events that will involve those around him in the sea of sadness or bring them into the volcano of anger.
Therefore, the people around him often passively feel a feeling of incompetence. Just like in those days, children experienced that parents used the background to suppress themselves and not let their real selves grow and develop.
This situation often reveals that a family has a problem that is covered up, but the child is the weakest link in the family system, they are sensitive and kind, in order to maintain the existence of the family, put their problems that they cannot express, with their own symptoms, even sacrifice to save the family, even, to save the family.
Therefore, I want to call on every family member to take on the responsibilities that should be borne by themselves, to feel the inner world of the child with their hearts, and to look at the problems they may be avoiding through their bravery.
Sometimes, people are afraid to see this, which often involves a person's sense of self-worth and self-esteem, whether it is really strong or braved.
06
Overworking
I meet a lot of families where parents are working so hard to ignore their children.
Why are they working so hard?
The family is a place where there is less reason and more affection, and it is a place where it is easy to get close to the true self. If the parent has a lot of time at home, he has no way to control himself and will roll out his vulnerability in the family emotions.
So, it's much safer to play outside with other people.
Many children are ruined by the excessive hard work of their parents, and children are greatly neglected. Such parents do make great contributions to the country and the nation, but they really owe too much to their partners and children.
07
Excessive accusations
For example, some children are very smart and have no other problems, but their grades are particularly bad. Well, it may be that the child wants to connect with the parents in a way that has poor grades, but this connection is pathological. What the child wants to express is that if I have some kind of flaw, you can give me the opportunity to blame me.
A family parent often blames each other, or blames the child, staring at each other's mistakes and shortcomings, and then attacking, which is a manifestation of no boundaries between family members.
Accusation, wanting to enter the world of another person, is an undifferentiated expression of the family. Simply put, if the child has a certain ability defect, it may be that the boundaries between the parents and the child are not clear, too close, and the parents have too much aggressive behavior towards the child, making the child "incompetent".
08
Family roles are unbalanced
This is also common in Chinese households. For example, Dad has been in a state of disappearance in the family, and Mom has too much power in the family.
On the one hand, this will affect the child's sense of gender identity; on the other hand, it is also used in this way to prevent the father from getting out of control in the family.
Dad is more aggressive and aggressive, while Mom, even if it is fierce, is also motherly, so the harm to the family will be much less.
09
Generational involvement
It is a man who is not well divided, married to a woman who is not well divided, and then has a child, and the family may be a very sticky relationship.
Because they are afraid of the confusion caused by this slimy relationship, they intentionally or unintentionally invite the child's grandparents or grandparents to enter the family, which is a relationship invasion.
In this way, the relationship between parents and children in the family is diluted, which is the characteristic of a typical Chinese family, where three generations are cooking like a pot of porridge.
Once, I asked Dr. Dan Liu a question, and I asked if I could explain in one sentence the difference between structured family therapy and systematic family therapy.
Structural family therapy emphasizes that husband and wife as the core axis of a family, no matter what, to keep this axis stable and clear, as long as this axis is there, the foundation of this family is no problem.
In Chinese families, there are many who give up the power of this axis to the child's grandparents, or grandparents, which may lead to a lot of inner conflicts in the child.
One of the core solutions to China's family problems is to consolidate the alliance between husband and wife and resist "foreign enemies" together. From this perspective alone, a family will not have too many problems.
I know that saying this will also cause a lot of people to resent, because after many elderly people retire, all their minds are on their grandchildren, if I break their subconscious intentions in doing so, I estimate that I will form a relationship with many people, but think about it, for the healthy growth of the next generation, I think it is still worth it.
10
Utilitarian relationships
Unconditional love is, I love you, not because of who you are, but because of what you have. Utilitarian love is that I love you because you can play the piano, or I love you because you have achieved a lot in society.
This kind of conditional love, reflected in family affection, becomes especially sad. If the blood love and affection in the family are added to these utilitarian things, it is very unclear what life means.
In general, my utilitarian, conditional love, for someone is meant to isolate my unconditional love for him.
People whose personality has not grown well, who have not differentiated well in the original family, this unconditional love will make him feel panicked, will make him feel lost, so he needs to use this conditional, externalized way to isolate the intimate relationship with another person. In the same way, it is a state of love impotence.
Finally, an analogy to illustrate how well a person is differentiated.
For example, if you live in a dormitory, you suddenly want to sing a song at two o'clock in the morning, and the result is that the degree of happiness you are is directly proportional to the degree of pain of others. That is, how happy you are, how much pain others will have.
In a relationship without differentiation, one person's happiness is another person's nightmare.
If you live in a separate room, the sound insulation effect is still relatively good, that is, you can sing whatever you want at night, and the degree of your happiness has no impact on them.
This is a metaphor for the better differentiation.
In the relationship in the family, if the parents are dependent on personality, there is no ability to differentiate and be independent, the child's departure is doomed to damage the interests of the parents, so the child will have a variety of physical and mental diseases, the most serious is schizophrenia, because schizophrenia can never get out of the family.
I believe that a good state is not to look at each other, but to look at each other.
Source: Zeng Qifeng's speech theme "Happiness and Guilt in the Family"