Family Dynamics

James Framo (from object-relations therapy model) concluded:
"The politics of family requires that family members live with each other for many years and never tell each other how they really feel; through a lifetime they do not meet or touch. One of the things we try to accomplish...is to help the members really see each other, to tell each other frankly their warm, positive feelings as well as the angry ones, and to allow happiness to become something to be experienced, rather than something to be remembered (p.190)."

Framo, J.L. (1976).Family of origin as a therapeutic resource for adults in marital and family therapy: You can and should go home again. Family Process, Vol 15, 193-210.

My take from this - this therapy model is rather interesting, still trying to wrap my head around it for sure but one thing I love about this is bringing a couple's family-of-origin (one partner at a time) into the therapeutic process.
I think of my own family-of-origin and the many unresolved or unknown perceptions and processes that have gone on and continue to go on with my older brother, my cousins, aunts and uncles and my own parents. It is something we often never take time to really talk about TOGETHER. And in a non-guarded fashion - when family get-togethers come together it is a hard time to just sit and discuss what is REALLY going on with you. Family dynamics come out to play and sometimes it is great, and sometimes it is not good at all. But we are family for a reason...God put us together somehow. I think it is true that iron sharpens iron but man it is hard to have a sibling be that iron; although, how great that would be for siblings to connect at such a level that their defenses (or defense mechanisms) towards one another or their own stories about one another take a pause and they can listen to one another out of love and pursuing understanding.

That would be a really nice world...I'd be open to that.