Differentiating Myself from My Family Tree

© Gary Sweeten

I am learning that the most important thing I can do to help others is to keep growing and changing myself. By Differentiating Myself from My Family Tree I am operating out of the freedom of Jesus rather the slavery of wounded flesh and generational trauma.

Differentiating means that I am connected to my past and present family but I am secure enough in myself to be different from them. There are two scriptures that speak to this issue. In Genesis 2 God commands Adam to, "Leave mother and father and cleave to his wife so the two shall become one flesh." Even before sin entered the world God knew it was best for children to leave home.

This is not a physical leaving but emotional, spiritual and loyal commitment. One child may move from the USA to China but react violently to a letter from home. Another can live next door and remain peaceful even when another sibling or parent acts mean or petty. The difference is not geography but inner security, peace and thoughtfulness rather than anxiety, fear and reactivity.

Imagine that a family is made up of connected sponges that God had created to absorb emotional energy. A highly charged family involved in many traumatic and or dysfunctional activities will put out a high degree of trauma, stress and pain. In such a situation the connected system of emotional sponges will become overwrought with insecurity, fears, worry, and anxiety even when there is little to cause such a discharge.

On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being perfect peace and 10 being an emotional minefield, we might say such a family existed in a force field of anxious high intensity. Their number might be a 7 or 8 leading members to react to the slightest emotional touch. Anxious, traumatized families bruise their members from generation to generation and bruised wounded people hate to be touched.

I was eating one evening in a local cafe and a family of two adults and two young children sat nearby. The youngest boy of six or so was naturally wandering around exploring the place. As he got about three aisles away the adult male growled in an angry, accusing manner that stopped him in his tracks. The sound sent chills up my spine and I can only imagine how the child felt.

I believe strongly in structure, discipline and order. However, as the scripture says, "Death or life are in the power of the tongue." The offense of the child was about a 3 on the scale of disobedience but the reaction was at a 7. This means that the punishment did not fit the crime. His reaction was fed not by the disobedience but his own past history. He anxiously reacted to a minor infraction. The father had been bruised and was passing on his own lack of differentiation to the next generation.

If that dad were fully differentiated, which is rare, he would have been able to discipline his son with thoughtfulness and wisdom rather than pent up anger from past generations. The child needs to learn to obey but angry outbursts do not teach obedience but fear, confusion and anxiety.

The Life Way classes and counseling sessions. are designed to help people grow up. To discover who they are. When we are secure in our identity we can respond in peace.

Staying reactive to the family past means that I am not at peace.

Philippians 3:10 ff

10 I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

15 All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. 16 Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Paul admitted that he was still not mature and that he was still in in the process. I think that his "Thorn in the flesh" was anger and rage. A chronic condition. He said in Romans 7 he could not control himself. There were things in his past that he needed to leave behind.

In this passage he uses a humorous play on words. He says, "Not that I have obtained maturity, for I have not" and then "All who are mature will admit that they are not mature."

Who says the Bible has no sens of humor!