In a family with fearful parents, children feel unable to act and be themselves at home.
One or both parents become emotionally
absent (parental absence), inefficient and unable to fulfil their parental role, which, in addition to providing for their children, also includes educating, guiding them and setting limits and boundaries for them.
Parents often feel this inability to act as individuals (their tastes, dreams, etc.) when their children begin to grow up.
This can only further complicate the child’s development, as they feel that they have eliminated the parents’ function and become more disoriented.
It is as if the parents, in their difficulty to preserve their individuality, leave their children in charge of the family.
The job of the systemic psychotherapist is to try to find a way to help these parents function as parents when they have children who rule the roost, putting their lives at risk or not letting their parents live.
The first clients are therefore the parents, because the children are not interested in change.
It is the parents who are willing to ‘sweat’, because they are the ones who suffer the most.
And how can we help restore parental authority so that there are no more doubts about it?
The task of the systemic psychotherapist will be to legitimise parental authority by creating a method of thinking that helps them make quicker and more accurate decisions. In other words, as therapists, we cannot complicate things. We must provide simple concepts, with easy-to-apply rules, based on needs.
PARENTAL PRESENCE
The parental function is: maintenance, care, affection, education, guidance, limits, boundaries for the child.
PARENTAL ABSENCE
When parents feel unable to assert themselves, to act as individuals (their tastes, preferences, dreams, etc.). This only complicates the child’s development when they feel that they have eliminated the function and role of their parents.
ON THE MOTHER
She finds herself in a situation where her breathing space is reduced because she is constantly stressed and under attack.
After her first child and after about 10 years of marriage, her energy has decreased significantly.
This is why they are the first to seek psychotherapeutic help, because they are more willing to pay to improve the situation.
Example:
The mother asks her son to do his homework, but he makes a lot of noise, cries, argues, etc.
She can continue to fight and, with great effort, get her son to do his homework.
But she gets tired and gives up! Thus, the son is teaching his mother to give in, and the mother conditions herself to give up in order to have peace.
After many years of working to educate his mother, he never goes back.
The noise increases and the disorder becomes stronger. The son stops realising the extent of his disorder.
In this story, selective blindness has developed = they stop seeing in order to adapt to the process (it has become a habit or a vice).
Mothers need to start seeing again and believe that they are capable.
They say, ‘Whatever I do won’t work’. Like fathers, they too become paralysed in terms of action.
ON THE FATHER
He plays an important role, because in fatherless families the situation is even worse.
And the more distant the father is, the greater the likelihood of problems with the children.
However, he rarely seeks help, because within the family he has more free time to interact pleasantly with his children.
In the case of fathers, they are even more reluctant to argue with their children and leave it to mothers to perform this tedious part of their paternal duties.
Here, there is a hierarchical breakdown, with the father acting more like a friend, a nice uncle or simply the mother’s husband!
ON THE CHILD
After centuries in which the father’s role was one of authority and the mother’s role was to follow the children in this command, things have changed.
But they have not changed for the better, because if children used to be very afraid of their parents, today parents are very afraid of their children.
Perhaps this happened alongside the feminist and hippie movements, when taboos were broken down and standards changed.
But after centuries of oppression, both children and women have gone from one extreme to the other, which has become equally dysfunctional.
The issue is not that women should swap places with men and children should boss their parents around.
Everything that is to be functional and healthy must follow a hierarchy.
This is where the work of the psychotherapist comes in, redistributing roles and functions according to the skills of each member of the family.
THE WORK OF THE FAMILY PSYCHOTHERAPIST
When parents come into contact with the therapist, they already feel that they will be criticised in some way.
We must accept them and take a sincere interest in their suffering, because then the dialogue changes and they become motivated.
THERAPEUTIC ALLIANCE
The psychotherapist must also take an interest in the parents’ paralysing fear (fear of seeing their child become a drug addict, commit suicide, become a murderer, etc.).
The psychotherapist must help parents express these fears.
As professionals, we cannot minimise or belittle their fears and anxieties.
Once the fears have been expressed, we can begin to address them (as a team).
The psychotherapist’s message to parents:
“I need you, and this is a priority for the first three months.
At the beginning of treatment, you will need to be available, willing and committed, otherwise it is not worth starting.
I need your commitment, whether you accept my proposals or not.
This is now a priority in your life!
What if your child had cancer? Wouldn’t you drop everything and make this a priority?”
With the parents’ confirmation that they are willing to commit, the action plan begins.
Without this, nothing in psychotherapy will work.
SHOWING PARENTS WHERE THE DYSFUNCTIONS ARE
1) Children who perceive that there is no PARENTAL PRESENCE in this family.
They test boundaries and limits and realise that ‘there is no one at home!’.
Where there is no longer a parental presence, that is where we will create one.
2) Adopted children
In general, as they enter adolescence, they experience an unconscious conflict between the two possible destinies that life has offered them: the destiny they did not experience with their biological family and the destiny they are experiencing with their adoptive family.
Therefore, the adopted child may feel anguish and even a sense of disloyalty towards their biological family, while at the same time feeling guilty and like a traitor towards their adoptive family.
The adolescent phase, which is a period in which young people naturally become rebellious towards their family, can lead the child to seek out their biological family, bringing with them a whole imaginary world they have created about it.
The issue can be exacerbated when adoptive parents, unsure of their parental roles or afraid of losing this child because of their ‘other destiny’, break off dialogue, creating bitterness, reproaches or violence.
3) Children who commit suicide
They feel alone, unsupported, without anyone, because their parents are not there with them (emotionally and also physically).
They feel disqualified and abandoned.
The psychotherapist will be there, with sensitivity,
and will ‘invite’ the parents to participate more.
The client (child) will be irritated at first, but we will be there. This helps to reduce despair and loneliness.
* O Psicoterapeuta deve mostrar aos pais a importância da presença parental - estarem com seus filhos. Os pais devem estar lá: onde o filho vai, onde ele está (nas drogas, na marginalidade, sozinhos, etc).
MEANING OF PARENTAL PRESENCE IN THE FIELD OF ACTION
Parents are physically present.
1. WITH CHILDREN
It is the act of picking up a child and holding them close when they are having a tantrum, for example.
A ‘big hug’ can mean a lot to a child.
It is a manifestation of physical presence: I am here, I am holding you tight, I am protecting you from yourself!
2. WITH ADOLESCENT CHILDREN
In the case of adolescent children, there is already a stronger bond with the territory.
They are in charge and rule their bedroom and other places they frequent.
They have absolute control over their bedroom (no one can touch anything there), but they have the right to touch other ‘territories’.
This happens with all teenagers and is the beginning of them also becoming territorial human beings (with a guaranteed territory).
The physical presence of parents with adolescents can be like this: when the adolescent takes control of all territories (mother’s wardrobe, father’s car, mess everywhere in the house, etc.), parents intervene with their physical presence, contesting the territory, perhaps talking, holding the adolescent (with a strong hug). Parents must be present, question places, mark their presence and dominance, know the places their children frequent (in some cases like good detectives, following them, creating a support network, etc.).
There are interventions that only work because of the time parents devote to their children. Example: parents devote two hours to meeting with their children. Until they take a stand and make it clear what they have done right and wrong, successes and failures will not give them (parents and children) any peace.
Time is therefore a factor in parental presence.
Example: the father is working and remembers his son and calls him to find out if he has done this or that. He is present in his son’s life. It is as if the parents were saying, ‘We are your parents 100%. We are with you!’
The psychotherapist must show parents that the goal is never to fight against their children and that the goal would be their surrender. In reality, the intention is to pave the way for negotiation (dialogue, agreements).
3. WITH ADULT CHILDREN
When issues from the past have already become confused, when children become adults, they tend to continue to treat their parents as ‘muggles’ and ‘softies’.
Children rule everything and emotionally devalue their parents, as well as taking control of their entire physical territory.
The psychotherapist will help these parents who have established relationships with hierarchical breakdown or even, continuing previous psychotherapy, not allowing parents to return to being ‘naive’ or to want to influence the life of their adult child.
Parents’ discourse should be more or less as follows: ‘I can no longer influence you, I would like to, but I give up doing so. However, I will not allow you to exploit me, hurt me, invade my privacy, etc.”.
4. SINGLE-PARENT FAMILY
In the case of a family where one parent is raising the children alone. Example: a single mother with a teenage son.
Alone, she will not be able to perform both roles (mother and father). The immediate question is: who will support her? If there is no one else, it will be the psychotherapist. He will be the source of support for the mother.
If a more serious case arises, such as this teenager becoming involved with drugs, the psychotherapist will not let the mother deal with her son alone.
He will ask for help from uncles, brothers, friends, creating a network of mutual support. People will spend time with this teenager, knowing where he is, who he is with, etc.
Sessions can be held with all members of this ‘artificial family’, which is actually a safety net for the teenager, helping him to lose that feeling of loneliness, isolation and abandonment.
5. DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN PARENTS
The couple may disagree both emotionally and on the upbringing of their children, to the point where they no longer speak to each other.
The psychotherapist’s work focuses on communication. Example: the psychotherapist tells the parents: ‘You have a symmetrical problem. You both have completely acceptable, human and positive desires for your children. You, Mum, have this and that desire, and you, Dad, have this and that desire. In other words, you have completely opposite desires!
The idea here is to help you be different parents, but not mutually exclusive, without cancelling each other out.
Texto organizado por:
Jaqueline Cássia de Oliveira
Psicoterapeuta Familiar Sistêmica
Fontes:
Seminário e livros de Dr. Haim Omer
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