Toxic Family Kyrptonite

Article

There is something about the way these families interact that protects the perpetrator and blames the victim. Adult survivors who return, after a healing period of absence, usually find themselves treated like a child or an infant. They cannot assert themselves effectively. I have thought of these families, or of individual family members, as "kryptonite." They are elements from a past life that rob one of his or her powers and make a survivor weak and vulnerable.

In the case of a soldier returning from war, the "kryptonite" works in different, but related, way. A 30 year old may be treated like a 16 year old. There is either too much or too little interest in hearing about life and death among comrades-in-arms. The veteran wishes that civilian family life can be restored, but has little tolerance for those who can't appreciate the reality of war. And to be treated as an adolescent ironically elicits adolescent emotion: rage and rejection.

The kindest of families may have a hard time assimilating one who has been "to hell and back." Toxic families add insult to injury and are
often clueless and remorseless.

So why try to maintain loyalty to a toxic family? I often wonder why. There are times when I advise a survivor to forgo a family holiday or to avoid contact with a demeaning, demoralizing relative. You don't HAVE to go home again. PTSD means that the past pursues you. Successful treatment entails escaping from a relentless past. Since adults with PTSD have competing responsibilities, I almost always reinforce a survivor's responsibility to current concerns: job, new family, health and self, before obligations to past family members. There are times when a doctor writes a medical excuse from work. I can't exactly write a medical excuse from attendance at a family reunion, but I wish I could. The next best thing is to work on the "Board of Directors," the voices of authority from a survivor's past that yap away in one's mind, creating guilt and doubt for avoiding the toxic family.