Case Study: Adult family
- Father aged 50
- Mother aged 49
- Daughter aged 30
The family attended Relate initially to look at the relationship between mother and daughter. The father felt he was piggy-in-the-middle. There is also a brother aged 25 who lives at home with the parents. The daughter has her own place. The daughter and mother argued a lot as she was growing up. The brother is very laid-back just like his Dad. All the family get on well together when they socialise and do not want to end up hating each other. They have a shared interest, which means they see a lot of each other almost on a daily basis.
It became apparent early on that whilst all parties wanted to listen and understand each other, negative messages from the mother's childhood were being carried forward into the relationship with her daughter. The mother's parents had been very critical of her. The messages she heard were that:
- she was never good enough
- she was not clever unlike her brother
- men are more important than women
- women should get on with things and not moan.
So when her daughter had a different opinion about something or suggested alternative ways for the family to share their interest, the mother felt and heard this as criticism.
The father said that the mother should just sort things out. Again this gave the message to the mother that she was not good enough either as a wife or a mother.
We looked at how the mother reacts when her son or a friend has different ideas or opinions. The mother was very surprised to see that she would see the comments differently.
So there was an agreement within the counselling session that she would try to take a step back and reflect on who she was really hearing. Was it her parents all over again criticising her, did it feel like they were almost in the room standing alongside her daughter or was it really her daughter that was being critical towards her? The daughter agreed to look at how she challenged her mother. Did she use the word 'I' as in 'I think this may be useful for us all' or 'You' as in 'You should do things like this'?
After a few sessions the mother and daughter started to enjoy and value each other's company. Rather than looking at things in a negative way, they started to support each other with new ideas.
The family had started to rewrite their own family message, changing the negative message that had been brought down through the generations.