What is the individual self-identification of the family? Systemic family psychotherapist Maria Antipova names the main family models – a hero, a rescuer, a survivalist – and explains what they are pushing us to and when they turn on.
There are well-known myths about families, that is, the scenarios by which families live. These are also family-forming ideas, as if asking the pioneers: who are you, they will answer: we are such and such, we must do this and that. For example, a pioneer never betrays a comrade, helps the weak, and many other things… That’s how it is with families. If you ask a person about his family, he will answer you that he is such and such, and he lives in such and such a way, hear that “it’s not customary with us”, “we don’t do that”. In a family, a person receives a set of rules on how to live and how to deal, for example, with their own emotions, but as with strangers, how to deal with certain difficulties.
Rescuers and heroes
Famous myths: “we are heroes”, “we are a friendly family”, “we are intellectuals”, “we are from workers”, child-centrists: “the meaning of life is in children”, “we are survivalists” and many more different individual self-identifications of families. The behavior of a person from each myth is determined by the idea in which he was brought up and raised, and by the skills that he received from his parents. And ideas and skills are formed under the influence of the circumstances in which these families were formed and lived.
For example, it is during times of crisis that families of rescuers can feel very much in demand and actually become so: there are many doctors, psychologists, firefighters, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, and people in helping professions in such families. An important component of this myth is the idea that one should think more about others than about oneself. Such people overcome their difficulties by helping others, they are not afraid of strong emotions and instability, they know how to live in such circumstances and remain effective.
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Another myth is the “family of heroes”. These are families where there are examples of survival through heroic deeds and where stories about heroic relatives are passed from mouth to mouth. Here it is customary to do everything to the maximum: to love to unconsciousness, to be offended and not to forgive … There are many strong emotions that should be overcome through suffering, which you should be proud of. There are many difficulties in the life of people from the “family of heroes”, because an easy life is not for them, in a calm time they get bored. A crisis is what will make them start up and with enthusiasm begin to overcome difficulties.
The meeting of two myths
Sometimes, when people get married, the myths of different families are mixed up, complementing each other or, conversely, strongly contradicting each other. For example, the behavior patterns of “rescuers” and “heroes” are well combined, but the behavioral patterns of the carriers of the myths “we are blue blood” and “we are ordinary people” differ greatly. They will create tension in the family, because they do not have a common answer to the question “What to do if there are difficulties?”.
For some, a crisis is a time to buy, for some it is time to pack and look for quieter places, and for some it is to go to the barricades, fight for their ideals, or, conversely, hide their values and live a double life.
Our history of development has left many traumas in the lives of our families. Many of us are familiar with post-traumatic reactions to hunger and scarcity: fear for loved ones, fear for our lives, lack of a safe space … And this greatly affects the formation of our behavioral reactions.
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Secret resources
I see that a new generation has appeared, not familiar with scarcity, who are not too interested in eyewitness stories and films about war, hunger, fear. For them, life looks a little different – both life in general and today’s life in particular. Current events are perceived differently by the generation of the 1970s, who remembers the USSR, and the generation of the 1990s, who was born in another country. I see how in each of us the influence of the family and the influence of the time in which we grew up, in which our personality, system of values and beliefs took shape, are mixed.
Crisis time awakens all the secret resources for the survival of a person and his family: for one, a crisis is a tragedy, and for another, an opportunity. In a crisis, general anxiety rises: everything around becomes unpredictable and it is not known where it will lead us and how it will turn out for us and our family. Unpredictability is hard to bear, the primary task is self-preservation. At this time, we rely on the familiar that we absorbed with mother’s milk. The usual schemes are turned on, that is, the myth begins to work without asking us: we run to buy food, equipment, withdraw our savings from the bank, stop expressing our opinion or, on the contrary, start defending it with redoubled energy … Psychologists call this behavior dysfunctional when we we act thoughtlessly, not taking into account the new circumstances and the changes that have taken place so far, but we follow the usual scenario transmitted to us by our parents.