An example might help to introduce some ways in which anxieties within the individuals of a family sys-tem can ricochet off of one another to create an inherent anxiety pattern within a given family. The anxiety in one generation can thus transmit to the next.
Imagine one of a family’s children dies of a medical ill-ness, thus creating an acute loss for all. The father might remember the grieving or lack of grieving that took place when he lost his sister in childhood; these memories wake up a cascade of anxiety from his own unresolved grief about this loss. They also leave him with longings for the child he has lost. He might try to distance himself from his wife and other children for fear of reexperiencing the loss of his deceased child.
He may resort to drinking, thus being like his own father who drank when his sister died. The mother might take blame for the death of the child, blaming her DNA and feeling guilty for the loss of her child from this illness.
She, too, may distance herself from the other children so as to protect herself against feelings of loss. She may fight with her husband for distancing himself from her; this distance between the two parents, who are at the top of the family hierarchy, creates a gap between them, as well as the obvious gap between the children and the parents. The children become anxious from this distance, as they are more neglected and get less love and attention than they want.
Survivors of the Holocaust provide many examples of the transmission of one generation’s trauma to the next. In these families, where seemingly unspeakable, actual violence, destruction, and calculated eradication took place, many members of the older generation became scarred for life.
For many, though they may have survived physiologically, the world may have never felt safe again. It makes sense that this outlook would particularly shape the raising and perceived protection of their own children, perhaps their greatest treasure. On many levels, spoken and not, constant fear, anxiety, and paranoia—conscious and unconscious—characterized attitudes of child rearing.
A fear of losing any member of the family often intensified the bond between the existing members. As adults, these offspring often report spending a life-time recovering from the constant fear which they imagine to be present, fear which their parents instilled in them in the service of protecting them.
This fear can make a child’s wish to leave, to explore the world on his own terms, to marry someone other than of his ethnic or religious background, or to challenge his parents’ authority carry the perception of doing actual harm to the existing family members. These relatives may, in fact, respond to the grown child’s actions as being injurious, given the intensity of anxiety provoked at potentially experiencing another loss or perceived loss.
Selma’s comments:
Early on, in the beginning of my treatment, I started a long diatribe against myself. I also harped angrily about my hus-band and about our lack of and poor handling of what scant money we had at a time that he already felt bad enough about our state of affairs.
When I was done with my dramatic tirade, I told my analyst that I sounded just like my mother, but that instead of feeling justified by my outburst, I felt devastated by my misery. I imagined he would respond to the core things I had said, if not continue with more criticism.
Instead, he said, “it’s good you can see it (referring to my remark about my mother).” At the time, I thought his was a pretty stupid remark, because I had given him a lot of angry material to work with, and now for what? But as usual, I thought about his remark a lot.
In a word picture, I had shown him how vile and thoughtless I was to a husband who would give me the world if he were able. Instead of going over that, my analyst chose to honor me with the knowledge that I was able to see something that might be impossible for others to see. This small beginning of self-respect, little by little, over the course of a long time, helped me to see how often I had responded to my own life’s situations in my mother’s voice. I saw how I held on to my concept of who she was, if not to the worst, martyrlike aspect of her, which did not reflect her whole personality.
My internal responses and self-criticisms were totally inappropriate, as my life was very different in actuality. Sometimes in great despair, I would act like my mother in my self-pity. My analyst might say on a rare occasion, “the hope would be that you could live a better life than your mother was able to,” or, “you couldn’t live with her, and you couldn’t live without her.” In time, I could see it myself.
First in hindsight, and then remarkably and miraculously to me, I could feel my anxiety and contain it in my throat. I would hold back my remarks, recover in time, and then make an appropriate response to my husband, and especially to my children.
I know my mother was not to blame for it all. Over what seemed like the longest of time, I even came to understand her dilemmas and to have empathy and consideration for her.
I became grateful that she had been able to love me as she had. Things took such a shift that in her 90th year, while widowed and losing her friends in another state, I insisted that she move to the city in which I lived. I found a retirement center only blocks away, and my family and I incorporated her daily routines into our lives.
I had not seen her so happy in many years, and when she had a stroke, I kept her close to my home and saw her every day for the remaining two years of her life. I came to know the attendants of the home as friends. They commented on our love and on how lonely others those whose families came infrequently to visit were.
When my mother passed, I requested that contributions be made in her name to a psychoanalytic foundation. Without this analytic experience of treatment, those years would never have happened in this healthier way. I was then my own person and was able to love her for being my mother. I felt she owed that to my psychoanalysis.
What does all of this have to do with anxiety? The most anxious of times were when I was sure everything would cave in on me. In retrospect, I saw the times when I felt I would not make it were those very times when I was get-ting better.
I gave up using her words and seeing myself as I thought she saw me; I tried to find my own voice. I didn’t know how to do it, and my native trust in my own resources was very weak. But it happened. And as it did, my anxiety receded remarkably.