First, let me say that don't really think of families in all or nothing terms, either as functional or dysfunctional. I don't think that I have ever known a fully functional family. Families exist on a continuum between the two.
Secondly, to write about what makes a family functional in general would be a whole blog in itself. Perhaps I will devote more space to this in the future. But here I just want to write about two processes or behaviors which I think are important for families as they struggle to be more fully functional.
1. First of all, let's start with a relatively easy behavior--getting through the holidays without arguing. It is my experience that when families cannot get through Thanksgiving or Christmas without arguing that it lowers the overall sense of family self-esteem. It tends to create a sense of "what's wrong with us that we can't even get through Christmas (or Thanksgiving)"?
There are also other events besides holidays which I think are equally important to get through without family meltdowns. Weddings would be one. People going into the hospital with a health crisis would be another. There are simply times that we have to put aside our desire to "stand our ground" or "be right" or "make a point," and we just need to "grin and bear it" in order not to detract from the well being and happiness of others.
If we are going to insist on making a point, winning an argument, or having a family showdown (and I am not sure that any of these are all that necessary), then at least they need to occur aside from one of these "exceptional" days.
Funerals pose a particular problem for this rule, because many families do seem to have meltdowns soon after a patriarch or matriarch has passed away. It is as if the "glue" of the family has been lost; at that point, the children's squabbles often break out in the open. But again, my rule of thumb would be that if it is absolutely necessary to have a squabble or showdown, the day of the funeral is inappropriate.
2. Shock absorbers versus shock amplifiers. When one family member begins creating tension in a family (and all of us have our little meltdowns from time to time), then there are basically two options that any other family member has. One is to react in a stronger fashion, adding negative energy to the family system, and the other option is to dampen down our reaction. Members of the family have the choice of giving out less negative energy than they receive, which would tend to calm the situation, or they can choose to amplify the first person's upsetting statements, adding to the family tension. When the latter happens, then there is escalation, and sometimes an explosion. In chemical and nuclear explosions, energy is released from some trigger which then affects neighboring matter, releasing more energy than was received. This process is repeated over and over, microsecond by microsecond in an explosion.
In thinking about how family members can react to each other in a knee-jerk fashion, I often think of the analogy of a rack of pool balls. A little known fact about pool balls is that they are extremely elastic. That is, they tend to transmit energy very, very well rather than absorbing energy. Once the cue ball hits the rack, then there is an automatic, inevitable transmission of energy to the other balls. They all react. If we then imagine the balls to be family members and the cue ball as being one particular family member who stirs things up in the family system, then the cue ball hitting the rack is analogous to one person stirring things up in the family and everyone automatically reacting to that person.
Let's say a father walks in and says, "It's been a terrible day at work; and to top it off, somebody left their bicycle in the driveway, and I ran over it!" In the pool ball example, all of the family members would automatically react to his upset feelings and statements and start saying equally upsetting things, such as "Well, why don't you pay more attention to your driving!" or "You're going to have to buy me another bicycle!" and so on.
An alternative possibility to the cue ball example, however, is to imagine little shock absorbers between each ball in the rack. The cue ball hits it, and then the shock absorbers cause there to be a kind of thud, where some energy but not all energy is transmitted from one to another and to another. Then the balls move but not with a perfect transmission of energy. There is no automatic reaction carrying the energy around the family system. And there is certainly no amplification of the energy.
On the other hand, imagine little battery packs inside each pool ball, and when one one is hit, then it actually moves with greater energy than the one that hit it. Pretty soon all of the balls would be bumping into each other with greater and greater energy. That is how some other family systems operate. They amplify the negative energy coming in, and pretty soon everyone is in an uproar with very hurtful things being said or done.
I would want to live in a family with shock absorbers. I am not suggesting that we don't react to negative events. We're just human. But if the family members tone down their reactions, then pretty soon all of the energy is dissipated, and life can return to normal. Maybe it would take a few seconds or several minutes. Or maybe a little longer. But it would not turn into a nuclear explosion. So my second choice of behaviors for a functional family (relatively speaking) would be for there to be the shock absorber effect.
How can this be put into action? Well, one way to absorb the negative energy is to delay. For example, if someone said, "Let's take a look at the bicycle and see if it can be fixed," then there is a delay. The reaction is put on hold until there is more information and a better understanding of the problem. Rather than jumping to conclusions, or imagining it being a mangled piece of irreparable steel, there could be time taken to simply take a look at it. It is possible that minor repairs rather than major repairs might suffice.
This leads to a third issue--not jumping to conclusions. There are a variety of negative communication behaviors that can cause problems in families, and jumping to conclusions would be one. But then that would require a whole other blog post.
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