My Family History

This paper regarding my family history was written to explore how my family functioned as a system, and to try to identify various patterns, secrets, communication styles, roles, and other family system concerns.

War and the clash of cultures played a major part in my family history. Both my biological parents were from Latvia, a small country which has been enslaved more times than not during the last seven hundred years by countries such as Sweden, Poland, Germany, and more recently, the Soviet Union. Latvians seem to have the same abandon regarding liquor and partying as our Viking ancestors who originally settled in Latvia. Latvians are a fiercely proud and emotional people. It is considered a disgrace if the children of a Latvian family do not end up with a successful career, such as becoming a doctor, lawyer, or an engineer (I was an engineer for eight years).

World Wars I and II literally shaped my grandparents' and parents' family lives. Grandpa Ludvigs was a WW II prisoner of war. He had two brothers who were killed by Lenin's forces for being teachers. Ludvigs and Grandma Irma, with my mother and some more distant relatives and friends, escaped Latvia within hours of the Soviet invasion in 1944. My mother's twin sister, Dzidra, supposedly did not come because she was too scared to swim across a river to freedom. Dzidra was one of the few in a crowd of hundreds in the capital, Riga, who was not machine-gunned down as the Soviets entered. Dzidra, Aunt Skidrite, and Uncle Arnolds (after whom I am named) were sentenced to Siberia to pay for the rest of the family escaping. The Soviets were "nice" to Dzidra, and cut her sentence from 10 years to 5 years because the initial ordeal caused her to have a miscarriage. What appears to be a strange form of survivor's guilt seems to play out from my mother and grandmother toward Dzidra, which sometimes amounts to abuse. Alcohol and loose living turned out to be a common coping device during wartime, and still is one in our family. My mother Maiga and Dzidra ended up pregnant with the thought that life was over. A wartime atmosphere continues to be the prevailing mood in my borderline personality-ridden family of origin, where a crisis is always occurring.

Roles in my family saw many changes, but certain ones seemed to be expected. My stepdad Russ had a strange mix of roles, namely super-reasonable and placater, who was also a hero and scapegoat at the same time. Women in my family tend to be dominant, especially my mother. They tend to treat men as cheap handymen and a good source of money. Maiga's main role was blamer. Though she was an alcoholic as much as my father, even getting her driver's license suspended for drinking, this was a strong family secret. Control of other people was crucial to her, and it was strikingly evident, especially when she was drunk. My older sister Brigit (born in Czechoslovakia), when she was married, had the blamer role. But when I see her around my family, she plays the irrelevant, scapegoat, and dependent roles. She seems to have gone beyond being just borderline, and seems to be what we call a sociopath. She could be out of jail this month. This was her fourth arrest, not counting the times she has talked her way out of it. Because Brigit spent almost as much time raising me as Maiga, she has had a profound influence on me. Ironically, Brigit was the one who led me to Christ when I was fourteen. My younger sister Sandy in her own family tends to be a dominant blamer, but in our family of origin, she tends to play the irrelevant, lost-child, and placater roles. █████ ███ █ ███ ███████████ ████████ ██ █ ███████ ███ ████ █ ███ ██ █████ ██ ███████ My role in the family was and still is supposed to be the placater and the hero/scapegoat.

Here are some of our family rules: Don't trust non-family. Children are never to disagree with parents; otherwise, they are stupid. Children must show blind obedience. Children must be more responsible than parents; otherwise, they are lazy or unloving. Children can only have mother-approved friends (that she could control). Parents have the right to act crazy if they are upset (mother was always upset). Lying is good if it helps the family. Never freely ask someone a favor, but manipulate them, especially with guilt.

The family rule last mentioned was foundational for all family communication. One-way communication was practiced, usually used as a manipulation device to get some task done or to get an "agreement" on an opinion. Any resistance would lead to triangulating other family members into the situation. Continued resistance quickly led to multiple triangulations involving all of the extended family and even family friends. "Love" meant showing no resistance. Suicide threats and attempts were also used to break down defenses. Many outside opinions would not matter because they were based on "just stupid American thinking." Loyalty was more important than truth. Half-truths, and even some delusional thinking, were used to rally the family against a "bad" member until they would give up the battle. Triangles and alcohol tended to be our main family coping styles.

Here are some generational patterns: Women tend to marry passive alcoholics. They tend to leave them for being alcoholics. Members tend to be either alcoholics or teetotalers. Lies are used by women to manipulate men to marry them. Women tend to be involved with fortune telling (a cousin claims our family goes back many generations, with witches in it, in "the old country").

Addictions in the family:

Russ: alcohol, work
Maiga: alcohol, food, tranquilizers
Brigit: cocaine, heroin, food, shoplifting, etc.
Sandy: food, alcohol, marijuana
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Our overall family mood seemed to come up for me in my dreams the night before I really started work on this paper. My dreams were filled with military planes and equipment. The feelings that came up were sadness and emptiness. To me, it seems that I am mourning a family who escaped one tyranny only to become prisoners of another. Our family was an emotional battlefield, with fear in its members as great as if they were in a literal war. Anger, negativity, hopelessness, and emptiness would be felt when the verbal missiles did not fly.

Most of the six major family therapy viewpoints seem to me not to fit my family. The women who run the family already love to blame their parents for the past, and seem to be very aware of the abuse done to them, though they are blind to the very same abuse they dish out, and usually in a worse manner. Focusing on present feelings would be better, but due to the excessive display of emotions already, it would be a rough and maybe dangerous ride not only for the family but also for the therapist. Behaviorist concentration on the problem would play right into support of our family rules. Experiential/humanistic methods would seem to play into my family's ability to say the right things at just the right time to give the impression of functional free will occurring. I like the more active therapist roles in the structural and communication/strategic methods. I think my family would need to see some literal changes in the family structure in the therapy sessions. Paradoxical prescriptions might work if they can be made clear and simple to everyone.