Transcript Fantasy Bonds: Part 1 and the Family Sculpt: Part 2

Fantasy Bonds: Part 1 and the Family Sculpt: Part 2
(51 slides)
Creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth
Discussion question
• Why does marriage often lose its’ intense
romance and considerate love over the years,
ending in emotional isolation and resignation?
A fake relationship
• A fantasy bond is a relationship “role play”
based upon what we think we should do and
feel.
Intimacy defined…
• Intimacy is the sharing of feelings...both positive and negative.
Tolerating intimacy
• If children grow up in a family system where feelings are
ignored, punished or suppressed then as adults they will find
it hard to express their energies and to engage others while
they are expressing theirs.
Fantasy bond symptoms in families.
• Ritualized affection
• Dishonest conversations
• Lack of sharing true feelings
• Idealization of parents
• Role playing
• Guilt and shame for not being good enough
Fantasy bond symptoms in marriage.
• Impersonal style of conversing
• Feelings of obligation and resentment
• Decline in sexual interest
• Loss of playfulness and spontaneity
• Destructive communication
Early symptoms of a fantasy bond.
• Lose interest in talking
• Lose interest in listening
• Decrease in the amount of direct eye contact
• Conversation becomes dishonest and impersonal
• Loss of independence
• ‘We become enmeshed
Objectification of another
• A fantasy bond leads to an objectification of the other.
• A tendency to see and treat them as a role instead of a
real live person.
• This role is then frozen in time and even though the
person changes, no allowances are made.
I and “thou” relationships
SUBJECT
SUBJECT
OBJECT
OBJECT
“Thou” is a beloved and different person.
I and “it” relationship
SUBJECT
OBJECT
SUBJECT
OBJECT
“It” is an objectified role of the person based upon how
you want to see them.
Men and women who form destructive ties are usually
unable to accept the fact that they have lost their feelings
for each other. They are deeply ashamed that they no
longer feel as attracted or as interested as they were.
Unable to live with this truth, they try to cover up. They
begin to substitute form, routine and role determined
behavior.
-Robert Firestone
The Fantasy Bond within the family
Leads to the curtailment of freedom of speech, because
certain topics are forbidden.
Any communication or conversation that threatens to disrupt
the bond or interrupt the illusion of enduring love between
parents or family members is not permitted.
The family member must not show their pain or unhappiness,
because this would betray the fantasy bond in the family.
When you are in love with someone...
Do you need to be told how to act
loving???
The loving behavior comes
naturally and willingly, doesn’t
it???
It is only after a fantasy bond
is created that we need to be told
how to treat each other.
Fantasy bond in action
• Spend 5 minutes a day thinking positive thoughts
about her.
• Pay her a genuine compliment each day.
• Do an act of service for her every day.
• Tell her “I love you” every day.
• Spend a few minutes each day really talking to her.
The fantasy bond paradox
• Many couples cannot risk the threat of disturbing the
fantasy bond between them.
• It would be too painful and dangerous.
• But it may be the only hope they have of renewing an
intimate relationship.
• The threat of destruction becomes their hope of
restoration.
I’m pretending.
She’s pretending I’m not
pretending.
For now it’s working
out just fine.
Things to do...
• Learn small talk
• Create rituals
• Give up perfectionism
• Forgive
• Stop trying to fix your partner
• Be gentle with yourself
• Touch others and let them touch you
• Stop looking to your partner for happiness. Its
within you.
Romance vs. fantasy
• The expression of feelings to your partner in your own
unique and original way.
• Please note: keeping the romance alive in a relationship is a
universal problem.
Reality vs. fantasy
• Living and loving in reality is not what one’s fantasy
pictures love to be. Love is daily contact, friendliness,
caring, companionship, hard work, honesty, pain, sadness,
happiness, anxiety, and tenderness and occurs in a nondramatic way. That may not match your fantasy of
unconditional love, but it is a real opportunity to fulfill
your adult needs for love and sex.
---Robert Firestone
Part 2: The Family Sculpt…
Yours, mine and everybody else's…
The ability to see with new eyes…
• There is a concept reflecting the true nature of our experience
that suggests:
“We don’t live in reality, we live in our habituated paradigms
we call reality, but the true condition of our reality is invisible
to us.”
The disturbing implication is that we don’t see things as they
really are but as we have been conditioned to see them.
Sculpting your family, will invite you to see with new eyes the
nature and relationships of what you have imagined your
family to be like.
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that
created it. We must learn to see the world anew.”
Albert Einstein
Exploring the limitations…
• If you are going to work with families and ever understand
them you will need to journey into the territory of your own
family to accomplish that part of the mission.
• We are often blinded by our own peaceful slumber to the
dynamics of dysfunctions in our own families not seeing the
forest for all the trees that are in the way.
• Your own blindness will severely limit you in your ability to
understand and help families that are in pain, if you remain
asleep to your own history and family of origin issues.
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as
we are.”
Anais Nin
The implication of this saying suggests that if we are asleep,
in denial, ignorant of, unawares, unconscious, of our own
histories then we will only see those things which are already
consistent with the habituated reality we have been
conditioned to live in.
The journey to conscious living is the adventure that may
open your eyes to see things anew.
Family Sculpting
• A family sculpt is a visual- symbolic
representation of family relationships, energies,
powers and perceptions .
• The sculpt uses props, distance, postures,
positions, expressions, sayings and the like, to
illustrate family dynamics.
Sculpting as an art form
• In art, the medium and images can help us see aspects
and meanings of reality that could not be expressed in
any other ways.
• Sculpting is a vehicle to express with people and
position- relationships and realities that would be
difficult to articulate in language.
• Sculpting uses different parts of the brain and because
it does so- can access different insights, energies and
emotions.
The elements of sculpting:
• Props/materials used to express characteristics of family
members…
• Medications/addictions used by members…
• Actions/behaviors symbolic of members…
• Sayings that capture the uniqueness/ themes of members...
• Feelings/energies that members carry…
• Secrets/shames of family members…
• Roles/personas of family members…
The dynamics of sculpting:
• Distance: illustrates closeness or separation of family members…
• Height: indicates power/authority of various family members…
• Barriers: things that get in the way of relationships… addictions, hobbies,
etc.
• Relationships: ropes, chains, ribbons, string to indicate enmeshment,
abandonment and nature of relating
• Props: any item that portrays the role, addictions, fears, secrets,
problems, work, involvement, interest of the people involved.
Some prop examples…
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Briefcase… work-a-holism
Mirror… looking good
Credit cards… shopping/buying addict
Sword… hurtful and wounding
Joke book… family comedian
Money… saving/spending addict
Sack over head… lost child
Trophy… hero child
Cigarette/beer… rebel child
Gavel… judgmental
Cookbook… food addict
Airline throw-up sack… bulimic
Sack of pornography… shameful secret
Example of sayings…
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You will respect me!
It’s ok, a lot of other people have it a lot worse.
I’m such a geek.
As long as you live in this house…
See if you can stop me.
Am I doing good enough?
What ever you say.
I don’t care.
You can depend on me! I’ll do it.
Life is wonderful.
Just think positive thoughts
You’ll never amount to a thing
Where do come up with your ideas? You are weird.
Some childhood role examples…
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Hero child
Rebel child
Saint child
Surrogate spouse child
Parent child
Mascot child
Black sheep
Pleaser child
Peace maker child
Baby of the family
Lost child
Problem child
Examples of addictions…
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Money: spending, saving, investing
Sex: pornography, fantasy, seduction
Food: dieting, bulimia, anorexia
Religion: church attendance, service, reading
Thinking: intellectualism
Television: video
Music: listening, practicing
Internet: chat rooms, e-mail
Looking good: physically, socially, religiously
Control: power, influence, position
Risk/adrenaline rush
Worry
Cleaning/organizing
Exercise
Fantasy: romance, future
To sculpt a family…
• First, focus on the individuals and the elements of the
sculpt and develop each individual as much as you can,
in relationship to the elements of the sculpt.
• Second, focus upon the dynamics of the sculpt in
placing the family members in relationship to each
other to illustrate their connections, powers, problems
etc. to every other member.
The rough draft…
• Create a rough draft of the family sculpt by creative exploration
of the elements and dynamics of each family member.
• Draw the ideas, list the concepts, play with the process. Be
daring and creative.
• Sleep on it and ponder the insights and ideas that will come to
you.
• Do not be self critical and demeaning- give yourself slack and see
what you can come up with.
Incubate the process…
• Incubate the ideas that come to you… give them time
to settle.
• Imagine, explore, wonder, question, grieve, get angry,
feel guilty, be afraid, feel the disloyalty, be sad.
• Be courageous in inviting the energies to teach you
about your experience in your family.
• Be respectful of your history and embrace what you
can of it.
Your reality is unique…
• The reality that was yours growing up in your
family is not shared by anyone else.
• Just because you grew up in the same family does
not mean a thing.
• Your unique history and personality is shared by
no other in the universe.
• The question is: Will you be able to re-cover it?
Humberto Maturana, The Family Therapy Networker, p. 36; 9; 3.
“Systems theory first enabled us to recognize that all the
different views presented by the different members of a
family had some validity.
But systems theory implied that there were different view
of the same system. What I am saying is different.
I am not saying that the different descriptions that the
members of a family make are different views of the same
system.
I am saying that there is no one way which the system is;
that there is no absolute objective family.
I am saying that for each member there is a different
family, and that each of these is absolutely valid.”
Its difficult and unsettling…
• Traditionally it may be difficult for some to think visually
and symbolically about the nature of one’s own family,
relationships and dysfunctions it is very common to
struggle with the sculpt.
• It is also typically painful to see your family in a new and
different light that may assault some of your previously
held assumptions.
• Conscious living is challenging so be patient and gentle
with yourself in your evolution.
Good luck with your sculpt and have
some fun with it.
‘Reflection, Who I Am’
From the Disney Film: Mulan
Look at me, I will never pass for a
perfect bride.
Or a perfect daughter.
Can it be I'm not meant to play this
part?
Now I see that if I were truly to be
myself,
I would break my family's heart.
Who is that girl I see
Staring straight back at me.
Why is my reflection someone I
don't know
Somehow I cannot hide who I am,
Though I've tried.
When will my reflection show,
Who I am inside.
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside.
Look at me,
You may think you see
Who I really am,
But you'll never know me.
Everyday,
it's as if I play
A part.
Now I see,
If I wear a mask,
I can fool the world,
but I cannot fool my heart.
Chorus:
Who is that girl I see?
Staring straight,
Back at me.
When will my reflection show
Who I am inside?
I am now,
In a world
Where I have to hide my heart,
and what I believe in.
But somehow,
I will show the world what's inside my heart,
And be loved for who I am.
Who is that girl I see,
staring straight
back at me?
Why is my reflection someone I don't know?
Must I pretend that I'm
someone else
for all time.
When will my reflection show,
who I am inside?
There's a heart that must be free
to fly
That burns with a need to know
the reason why
Why must we all conceal
What we think
How we feel?
Must there be
a secret me
I'm forced to hide
I won't pretend that I'm
someone else
for all time.
When will my reflection show
who I am inside?
When will my reflection show
who I am inside?
oh, ooh yeah
the end