Introduction

It Ends With You: Grow Up and Out of Dysfunction
by Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D.

Family dysfunction often runs through succeeding generations like a snowball rolling down a hill, gathering speed and power as it goes. In 25 years of counseling people in recovery, licensed psychotherapist Tina Tessina has worked with many clients struggling with problems stemming from dysfunctional families-anxiety, depression, feeling out of control, relationship disasters, and a pervasive feeling that they don't know what "normal" is. No matter how old they are, they don't feel like they've really grown up. They never learned the confidence, self-motivation, and emotional management tools they need to live healthy, happy lives, because their families didn't provide good role models, structure, and information. The exercises and guidelines in this book will help you finally understand what a functional family is, how its members are still affected by early experience, and how to develop the skills necessary for successful living and loving. It will help you make sure that the effects of family dysfunction will end with you.

Miracles do happen, but one has to work very hard for them

— Chaim Weitzman

To grow up and out of a painful, dysfunctional past and all its leftovers - feelings, memories, pain, confusion, anger, fear, and persistent dysfunctional relationship patterns- may seem like a miracle, too wonderful to be possible. But it can be done, if you have the right tools and support. The purpose of this book is to lead you from the problems of the past into a satisfying, joyful and successful future.

Most people tend to think of family legacies in terms of handed down furniture, mementos and money. But most of us actually get far larger inheritances of habits, attitudes, beliefs and patterns. These old, learned ways of thinking and acting can create chaos in your life that resembles the upheaval of the past.

In nearly thirty years of psychotherapy practice, I have watched with awe as clients come to understand the power of childhood experience - how it can affect their lives without their knowledge. As they begin to understand and challenge their early learning, they gain the confidence and understanding they need to face the lessons of life on their own terms. Once they have unlocked their inner secrets, they are able to handle whatever surprises and challenges life holds and still see the humor, the beauty and the joy of being alive. With the information and techniques in It Ends With You, you too can change your early programming and take charge of your life.

Whether your life feels good, just tolerable, overwhelming, or even miserable, until you explore the early learning that holds you back, a substantial amount of your personal energy can be tied up inside you. This bound energy has been unavailable to you for so long, that you may not even realize it's missing, but your capacity to fully experience the joy of life, and a lot of your potential vitality, suffers.

"There was a little girl/ who had a little curl/ Right in the middle of her forehead./ And when she was good/ she was very, very good/ but when she was bad, she was horrid." goes the familiar nursery rhyme. Most of us know we can be "very, very good" or "horrid", and often we can't figure out exactly why and how either part of us does what it does, or when it's going to do which. If you can't trust yourself, whom can you trust? When you don't feel in control of your own reactions and feelings, how can you feel secure and competent? When a friend disappoints or betrays you, or life hands you something hard, such as illness, and you feel emotionally upset or out of control, what can you do about it?

We all have a need to feel in control and competent, our survival depends on it. We are naturally afraid of what we don't understand, what we don't feel we can control. When what feels uncontrollable is within ourselves, it becomes all the more threatening. Yet, most of us have at least some feelings or beliefs that seem too repulsive, primitive, dangerous, puzzling, unacceptable, embarrassing, and/or out of control to be safe.

But change, even for the better, can be frightening, too. Even as my clients agonize over how out of control they feel, and how remorseful they are about their history, they can fear and reject all suggestions and attempts to help them become more familiar with the hidden self and resist learning to manage their impulses and reactions more effectively. Many people seek hard and long for a way to avoid suppressed pain, shame and guilt __ to make it go away, to make everything "nice. " Taken to an extreme, this avoidance is often the motivation and rationale behind drug use (from herbal remedies and Prozac to illegal street drugs), compulsions (if I get busy, obsessed, or overworked enough, I won't feel bad) and a desperate, panicky feeling of being out of control. It's very painful to feel hopeless and helpless about functioning well in life and in relationships.

In my counseling practice, it soon becomes obvious that a large proportion of the problems adults have with life and relationships are a consequence of having grown up in a family with problems: divorce, alcoholism, rage, emotionally absent parents, or mental illness. Poor coping skills and inadequate decision making are a natural consequence of growing up in such an environment, because most of what young children learn comes from observation and imitation.

What you learned before you were able to think abstractly, reason and evaluate becomes embedded in your mind, but hidden out of your awareness. This creates mystery - you find yourself acting and thinking in ways that don't make sense to you. It's a frightening, out of control feeling, and many people panic and do destructive things to avoid being aware of it. Often, this panicky behavior replicates the dysfunctional behavior of previous family members. So, people who, as children, said "I will never act like that," wind up behaving just like the person who troubled them most in childhood. Others simply feel inadequate, as though someone else is in charge, or should be. Adults who have not examined the roots of their beliefs and behavior often find themselves acting in ways that do not produce good results in their grown-up lives and relationships. These people feel frustrated, mystified, and to a large degree out of control of themselves and their lives.

There is good news and bad news about fixing these problems in life: the good news is, early dysfunction can be healed, therapy works; there's even new research that says therapy can change brain chemistry. So what's the bad news? It's not easy, and it takes courage to do the work necessary.

Changing your beliefs and behavior

This book is about understanding that growing up in a dysfunctional family can block you from understanding and using some of your finest natural gifts. It Ends With You will teach you, through exercises and information, how to open up, confront and understand what has been hidden in you. You will come to understand the unique gifts you were born with, how they are blocked, how that blockage effects you today, and how unblocking them will improve all your interactions, in business, friendship and family.

It will help you examine not just the statistics that show that children of divorce can't keep their own marriages together, or children of alcoholics gravitate to dysfunctional partners, but why people have these problems, how they come to be, and, most importantly, what you can do to fix them.

In reading it, you'll learn:

• What dysfunction is,

• How your family experience shapes you,

• Why you often feel out of control, or don't understand your own reactions, and

• How to change your habits and belief systems to get the results you want.

Whatever your early family experience, whether the problems were mild or severe, you are not stuck with the result. Yes, your personality, beliefs and habits were shaped in early childhood, before you knew what was influencing you. The good news is, you can change every bit of early "programming" that you wish to change, and take control over your own life. In my counseling practice, I help clients do it every day. It Ends With You will take you through the same information, exercises and guidelines I use with my clients. When you're done, you will know what you need to make your life your own.

Copyright © 2003 Tina Tessina

About the Author

www.tinatessina.com
Tina B. Tessina, Ph.D., has twenty years of experience as a licensed marriage and family counselor. She is the author of seven books, including: The Real Thirteenth Step: Discovering Confidence, Self-Reliance and Autonomy Beyond the Twelve Step Programs, Gay Relationships: How to Find Them, How To Improve Them, How to Make Them Last and Lovestyles: How to Celebrate Your Differences. She co-authored (with Riley K. Smith) How to Be a Couple and Still be Free and True Partners A Workbook for Developing Lasting Intimacy. Dr. Tessina has appeared on national TV and radio shows including: Oprah, Donahue, Dateline: NBC and Larry King Live.