Roles

Roles relate to:

§  The jobs we do both inside and outside. The masks we wear either within or without the family structure are designed for us to be the people or character that we need to be in particular situations. Situation orientated

§  And are often determined by our perception of a need or needs either within the community or within the family or both. Strategies develop upon which is perceived to need to come first for the family or the system. 

§  Please Note; just because it is what you think the family needs or what the family says its needs - does not make it healthy 

§  The healthy roles we play provide us with our opportunities for learning and spiritual growth.  Unhealthy roles provide opportunities for learning also.  The spiritual component is not present in unhealthy roles. Roles can be channels for expressing the truth about ourselves and our needs and our feelings.  The emphasis is on “can be.” 

§  The intrinsic problem with the social role system is that we are trained into a role or roles at a very early age long before we have any appreciation of its value or its possible effects on us later in life. This role training predetermines who we think we are.

§  This socialization aspect as a result of the role, contributes to the predetermination of the Roles we will find  acceptable to adopt in life within both the family and the community during our adult years.  It actually removes the facility of real choice from us and leaves us with a form of pseudo choice that really is not choice at all.

§  This social role system training often demands that we give up our true self ... or is a defense strategy ... for the sake of the greater need of the system. This need to give us up to the greater system is a survival strategy.  By doing so we will have a much greater possibility to survive.

§  At this point many variations on a theme can transpire but most can be lumped under the umbrella of adaptation.  For some it is a kind of grab and run modus operandi for needs fulfillment and this requires many roles or faces and often a complete disregard for the well being of others in the same system. In the extreme this is often referred to Narcissistic Depravation

Thus we cannot nurture our lost self unless we leave home figuratively and for some, literally. 

We leave home by giving up our scripts and rigid unhealthy roles.  Those that were defined for us by the system because of its need to survive and Not the individual’s. 

Those rigid unhealthy roles denied us our authenticity and we played these rigid roles out of misplaced loyalty to our dys­functional family - community system(s).  We got a sense of power and control from these roles, but they have cost us dearly.

Logically it is understood that each of us is an unique individual. 

We were born to be ourselves.  That much is true. But what the hell does that really mean.

To actually accomplish this, one must separate from the family systems designations and from our par­ents' (parents in the extended form include school teacher .. actually anyone the parent has abdicated authority to, to raise the child) beliefs and opinions about us.  This is often called negotiating your adolescence. 

Jesus Christ was strong in affirming the impossibility of finding God, much less ourselves, unless we left home.  Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to put sons against fathers and daughters against mothers ... And a man's foes shall be those of his own household."

Leaving home means:

•        separating from our family system. 

•     giving up the idealizations and the fantasy bond of being forever protected by our parents or their stand-in(s).. surrogates .. such as employers or social systems or friends or spouses. 

Only by leaving and becoming separate, negotiating your adolescence/freedom of self can we have the choice of having a true relationship.  This most basic of relationships .. with our parents .. demands separation and detachment for any possibility of a healthy relationship.

PLSE NOTE:  For some, because of abuse issues it may be necessary to create some distance for a time from our family or its surrogate.  For those who've been badly abused, you will have to make a prudent evaluation of how close you can get to your family or surrogate without violating your own boundaries.