How Healthy Is Your System?

3 minute read

 What is a system ?  

 Oxford Dictionary:

 “A set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole”.

 This “interconnecting network” is a good description of a family.

A family is a system.

 Families can interconnect in a way that builds up the individual members by the intentional care for, and care from, each other, or in a way that depletes the energy from each individual.

Freedom and Responsibility can be valued in the family system, producing love and high performance, or, the control of others with unwritten laws and expectations that hinder love, producing rebellion or compliance, fear and lack of self- control. 

A family, like any system, seeks to find balance, holding within it, healthy or unhealthy patterns of relationship.

 What do we do if we realise our family system has unhealthy patterns of relationship?

First of all it is necessary to understand that we need to grow in the context of relationship and support, rather than isolation, and to seek help in any circumstances of abuse .

 Remembering that each person is a part that makes up the whole system, we could conclude either:

That I have no power in the system because I am not a strong personality and others dominate, or I am insignificant because I feel insignificant, or the system has a life of its own and how could I change it?

OR

I am a part and am therefore responsible for my part. What I do matters and if I think that the system is not doing well in an area, I can evaluate how well I do in that area and change myself, opening up to new healthy growth and in doing so, open up the system also.

 An important thing about a system is that it only takes one member to change direction, to increase in their own character and freedom, to have an effect on the health of the family system.

  If I shift me …the system is no longer the same.