The Willingness to Work: An Important Variable

– Damned if it’s bogged down in symptoms. And all things indicate that they’re probably not going to get out of it. And they’ve got a good functioning member of the family that’s cut off from the whole. I’ve had better than average luck with these. For instances, one family would be a, one with a parents and the son struggling at home, and a daughter who is a nurse living away from home. Not having a damn thing to do with all of them. And me saying to her, “They need you. You can go back home and be you. And influence the whole thing. You ain’t doin’ it for them. You’re doin’ it for you my dear, not for them.” You don’t do a damn thing if you’re tryin’ to rescue nobody else. Well then you’re tryin’ to rescue yourself. You’re going to do a hell of a lot. And you know, I’ve had people that take my word for it and would really work for it. And that’s on the premise that they’re doin’ good for themselves and I’d say if you leave it up to them everyone would say, “I’m not going to move. All cause of that bunch of jerks. I’m okay.” But they’re going to help themselves by doing it. You’d be surprised at the number of them that do. So this has to do with involving who you’ve seen when the family’s close together. They are going to externalize one. They’re going to develop a conflict that’s going to externalize one. Which is a characteristic of people living together. So at any time family’s going along, doin’ pretty well. Able to relate to each other, and then suddenly there’s one person becomes the jerk. That to me would be an increase in anxiety, an increase in reactiveness when that happens. That would be fairly easy to fix. if you can do something with the reactiveness. But it’s easy for that family to say I don’t want nothing to do with the bad side of this family, good riddance. So it depends on, how you get your own self together and put yourself on the line and see if you’ve got enough relationship with them to influence them. This is known as a fixed condition, barely fixed. The average person with schizophrenia is not going to put the amount of effort into it, to change self. The average parents, apply the other side of that, are not going to put the amount of effort in to change self. When you can get in grandparents, or great grandparents, they can have tremendous influence on what this family is about. And you know, somebody can say to this family, I don’t like what goes on in this family. And I’m not going to break anybodies heads for it, but I’m going to decide what’s going to happen with me, and I ain’t gonna regret it now. I’ve said to such people, you can change this family, if you want to, and they learn one hell of a lot from doing it. My god, they’re programmable in there. And they can make more hay with that then most people. if they’re willing to work on it, but you cannot leave that up for grabs and them make any progress on it, because the intensity of the cut of is such, that they won’t touch it. So we’ve got a lot of people who do these cut-offs and don’t have anything to do with them. Yet people, we’ll go into this tomorrow, you get into the position of going back to the nearest ending path. Why are you going back to a bunch of jerks? Is that because they do the same to you or you do the same to them? You can deal or you can’t stand them? You can deal or they can’t stand you? Just make yourself so you’re not so difficult to get along with. You meant to throw rocks at them because they throw rocks at you. In other words, there’s all kinds of ways to deal with this. The bottom line is, any time you put the extend family together, the chances of having conflict is greater and greater and greater. What do you do with it when you start it up? I think you deal with it as much as you can, but you don’t run into it, until you will decide to deal with it and then you can do it. What if you wanna say that it’s too much for you, you poor dear. When overwhelmed that will stir up something. They can’t get along with it, just to get you off the hook. Anyway, I would say that, you have the choice of standing anywhere you want to stand. And then lets’ let your own belief shine through, because you as a therapist, are important for them. What is the major cause of a symptom in the family? I’d say, too much togetherness. This symptom, whether it surfaces in one family member, or another or another or another, is a manifestation of a symptom in the weakest link. You can take a big family and they’re gonna focus on The one person, who is the most vulnerable, in being talked about, in being kicked out. The one most… the one who aspires to be different, they will unload on that person and that becomes your patient, and the symptom develops when that person can’t function. That person started out, I will take on your symptom, to relive you of it. I’ve chosen to give up my life, for you. People why can’t we tell these people, You’ll never give up you’re life for nothing I think you’ll gain a hell of a lot, if you want to do it. You’d be surprised the number that go along with you, Then you’re dictated by your own brain and not by some pitiful old squeak inside the person. You don’t except that. Now… what do you have to offer? You can’t… You see, as a therapist, you are a flirt of the relationship system, with everything that you say. There’s one thing that you can do to change that family and that is work on self, you don’t work on them. If you work on them, you’re trying to change them. Work on self. Communicate it to them, that you’re working on it and then by them, they will work hard to do it the way you do it. And then somebody in the family will pick up, that that’s what you’re working on and then they will start doing and then another one will start doing and another one will start doing and this family is free and clear when that starts happening. And this happened in one family, one of the first families I ever had for family therapy and these were two people, I was dealing with them, always with their dreams. That’s another subject, you can get at it any way you want to. You don’t have to use dreams, I was using it back then. But this was one in which the other will decided, I’ve been working on this now for two years. And I don’t mind telling you about life all the time. I’ve been having dreams about going up the mountian, hacking my way through a forest or something like that and my wife gets stuck down and she’s stuck back there, and I go back there to help her out and I’m at the same place now that I was two years ago. I’m fed up, I’m getting tired of going back to rescue her. The next time I’m going all up the mountain and to hell with her. He goes all the way to the top of the mountain talks about having his wife right behind him. And people, that’s not ‘hey, I knew you were that is in every family that exists. The other changes too, if you leave them alone. And if you try to deal with them, they ain’t gonna help. When you work with a family, you work with one who is gonna best pull just as far, just as fast as they can. You don’t decide who you’re gonna see, they decide. And boy when you find somebody that can move the ball fast, I’d say let them go, let them go, they’re gonna run into a blockade somewhere and the other will get a chance too. I was asked to do the only thing you have to offer a family, is activity on the part of the therapist, to be the best they can become, as a example to the family, of what they can do. And if the family can have that example, they can do some wonderful things. Which gets the therapist out of it.