Join Helen and Valerie as they forge through the complicated, shifting territory of family relationships. Listen as they tell stories of juggling family dynamics alongside the battle of recovery. They will reveal whether they could build happier, healthier family relationships within their changing worlds.
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Relationships Part Three: Family Relationships
Episode 4
Helen Sneed: Welcome to Mental Health Hope and Recovery. I'm Helen Sneed.
Valerie Milburn: And I'm Valerie Milburn.
Helen Sneed: We both have fought and overcome severe chronic mental illnesses. Our podcast offers a unique approach to mental health conditions. We use practical skills and inspirational stories of recovery. Our knowledge is up close and personal.
Valerie Milburn: Helen and I are your peers. We're not doctors, therapists or social workers. We're not professionals. But we are experts. We are experts in our own lived experience with multiple mental health diagnoses and symptoms. Please join us on our journey.
Helen Sneed: We live in recovery.
Valerie Milburn: So can you this podcast does not provide medical advice. The information presented is not intended to be a substitute for or relied upon as medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The podcast is for informational purposes only. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health providers with any health related questions you may have.
Helen Sneed: Episode 5 Family Relationships. You choose your friends, but God gives you your family. Welcome to our take on the enormous subject of family and what we've learned along the way. Family is the most basic unit of humanity and subject to countless definitions over the course of history. For our purposes, we'll go with the definition of people connected by blood and by law, which sounds pretty daunting, especially when you look at the obsessions with the Royal Family and Ancestry.com that draw the attention of the world today. In our next episode, we'll examine the family of our choosing, friends and intimates that have a family like presence in our lives. Valerie, tell us the kinds of families we'll be discussing today.
Valerie Milburn: Today we're going to look at two different types of families. We're going to be talking about our family of origin and our nuclear family. Family of origin is our biological family or adoptive family, the significant caregivers and siblings whom a person grows up with. Now our nuclear family is a couple or their dependent children regarded as a basic social unit. This could also be a single parent. So family of origin, biological family, nuclear family, the couple or their dependent children regarded as a basic social unit could also be a single parent.
Helen Sneed: Okay, before we get into this, I just want to tell you Mary Carr said A dysfunctional family is a family with more than one person in it, but it is something we can aspire to. Here are some criteria for a Functional family by Christine Van der Waelin Clear boundaries Relationships within are seen as important. Conflict is allowed. There is open communication among all family members. Family members have an attitude of service toward one another and others, and positive change is possible in the family dynamic. Now, perhaps the most famous words written about family are by Leo Tolstoy. He said, all happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. What we're going to try to look at today are perhaps some of the aspects that guide us toward a happier family.
Valerie Milburn: I love that list of criteria for a functional family because listening to it, I see how much growth I've had in my relationships with my family members. Some of those criteria are present in my relationships with my family members. Now, that was not the case when I was entering into my recovery journey, not the case when I was struggling in crisis with my mental health conditions. One of the things you mentioned about looking at healthy families today is the I wanted to point out is the difference between a healthy family and the difference between that and healthy family relationships. Because we're talking about family relationships today. Because that's all we can work on, is our relationships with our family members.
Helen Sneed: Yeah, I am so glad that you are making this point because it's been a real eye opener for me. It has been now for some years that you hear that you
Helen Sneed: think, oh, the family. And it looks at this. To me, it's like this big closed fist. It's a big single entity when in reality you deal with one finger at a time, as it were. That is what's helped me is that it's one on one relationships.
Valerie Milburn: I like that analogy. It's great. What we want to do today is talk about what we've learned in our individual relationships with our family members. And I think the first thing I learned was that the relationship I needed to work on most was my relationship with myself. And my sponsor kind of summed that up for me when she said early in my recovery that she said, if you get better, the people around you will get better too. That's a quote from my sponsor. She said, if you get better, the people around you will get better too. And this was indeed the case. I mean, as my relationship with myself improved, my relationships with others improved as well. And here's how I healed my relationship with myself. First, I had to get sober. I mean, sobriety was just the bottom line. Nothing was going to get better in my mental health condition until I got sober. And to do that, I worked the 12 steps that took a lot of work with my sponsor, going to 12 step meetings. I also had to continue my appointments with my psychiatrist for both med management and therapy. I had take my medications regularly. I had to implement my entire wellness plan to get stable with my mental.
Helen Sneed: Health Valerie, when you were in this period of having to be so focused on getting yourself better, how did you deal with family issues? Did you just put them off to the side or what did you do?
Valerie Milburn: Well, I focused on myself, but focusing on myself was part of the healing, because I was building trust with my family members as I started to show up for family events, as I started to keep my word, as I stayed sober and my relationships were developing in a more healthy manner simultaneously as my relationship with myself was healing. So I reached this level of peace and serenity with myself, and that indeed, brought peace and serenity to my relationships.
Helen Sneed: So it all sort of coalesced.
Valerie Milburn: It did, yeah.
Helen Sneed: Because for me, like you, positive relationships with myself had to come first. But later, it seemed like some of the improvements or changes with my family came simultaneously with myself healing. So at times, I couldn't make the distinction as to which came first. Now I had the added challenge of dealing with amnesia. For the first eight years of my life. My first memories were of shame and of hopelessness and despair. And I didn't have any context for it because I was just a little kid. I didn't know what any of it meant. So I relied on family members for the earliest stories of my life. I much later realized that we had wildly divergent interpretations of events and relationships, and it was up to me to define my place in that distant world. And that a shared house has as many different stories as the people who live there. And each one is valid in certain areas, and each one is invalid in others, especially my own. I always empathize with others and accepted their definition of who I was. And it wasn't until I learned to empathize with myself that I began to build a strong, positive identity. And I could take that to my family.
Valerie Milburn: I know what you mean about that shared memories being not really shared, and that they are divergent. I remember a trip to the circus. Well, I remember one part of it. My brother remembers another part. We came home from the circus, and my mom was upset about what time my dad brought us home. And there ensued this very unpleasant event between my parents. And all I remember was the blow up with my parents, with my mom being so upset about my dad bringing us home late. And I brought this up to my brother one time, and he said, what are you talking about? I had a great time at the circus and just have two completely different memories about that event. One of the other things I had to learn in order to improve my relationships with my family was that
Valerie Milburn: I had to learn to set boundaries with my family members. I had to learn to do this in a couple of different ways. I had to learn to limit my visit lengths, sometimes with certain members of my family. I had to learn to limit what I share with some family members, and I had to learn to cut ties if necessary. One of the examples of limiting visit lengths was with my mom. My mom had always been somewhat difficult, but as she got older, living in assisted living, she became more difficult, needing more and more. And I just had to limit how much time I spent with her. I did this by no more than twice a week visits and no more than four hours at a time.
Helen Sneed: And that was the way that you could protect yourself and stay in your life, in recovery without succumbing to the old dynamic.
Valerie Milburn: Right. And I had to really fight to do this so that I wouldn't give in to being judged by other family members. I had one family member in particular who expected more of me, and I had to just hang on to what I knew was right for me and my mental health. Another thing I had to do was limit what I and still have to do is I limit what I share with some family family members. And this is because of a number of reasons. I may not trust their discretion to not share with another, to not repeat something personal. I may know that their response is not going to be supportive or it may just flat out not be their business. And then about cutting ties, there's one family member who was so emotionally abusive that I've just ended that relationship.
Helen Sneed: Well, I think that's harder to do than it sounds. Oh, boundaries. I took the time honored route of leaving, Moved half a continent away for 40 years, chose a profession unlike any other in my family. I went into the theater and I moved to its national center, which was New York City. It said that the second child must cast a wider net. And I did. When I first got sick, though, in New York City, I moved home because I couldn't function on my own. But once I got better, I returned to New York and I swore I would never let my family see me sick like that again. What happened to me is throughout the decades, my attachment to my family never matured. I was enthralled to their opinion of me and my career successes. The approval of others and a host of friendships could be easily eclipsed by my family ties. I yearn for their love and respect. So healthy boundaries for me are essential to the current pleasure I take in many aspects of my family relationships.
Valerie Milburn: You mentioned the shame associated with your illness. Boy, I had to deal with that, too. But I had to let go of the shame associated with the pain my illness had caused my family members, as well as the shame just associated with it personally. But I finally absorbed the truth that I was a sick person trying to get well, not a bad person trying to get good.
Helen Sneed: Can you say that again? Because that's really important.
Valerie Milburn: It is. It was important to me. I had to absorb the truth that I was a sick person trying to get well, not a bad person trying to get good. And the shame began to evaporate as I acknowledged not only that, but that I acknowledged that day after day, I was working hard, really working hard to live each day to the best of my ability, and that my actions were loving and responsible and getting healthy.
Helen Sneed: Yeah, as I said, shame, the Great Enemy is my first childhood memory and the last to go as an adult. And I still fight it daily in many aspects of my existence. We've talked about that. It creeps back in all the time, but I felt terrible that I had brought shame upon my family with my illness. I was kind of a around and about, and people knew that something had happened to me because I just disappeared. And there was such stigma attached to mental illness that, you know, I was. I just felt terrible about it. But this was easier to deal with because I was, you know, in
Helen Sneed: absentia. I was away. But what was more unyielding was the shame I felt within my family. I was the weak one, the sick one, the black sheep. There were other huge and horrible emotions that tormented me in anything to do with my perceptions of family. There was anger that it had happened to me, jealousy of the health of the others, and a sense of abandonment even though I had left first, and huge grief and despair that I couldn't be a member of my family any longer, that I had lost them. And I didn't realize it for a long time, but my personal recovery would lead to the recovery of my family.
Valerie Milburn: Yeah, that's the personal recovery leading to the recovery of our family. That's that notion of if we get better, our families will get better, too. And so the next thing I had to learn was, and this was a big one, was to express my feelings. And there were four words I had to. Four phrases I had to learn to be able to complete those four phrases. And they were, I think, I feel, I want, I need. And to learn those important words and how to complete those thoughts took self love. That had to be shame free. We keep coming back to shame because it's such a Big thing I had to learn that I have the right to use my voice. Took a lot of courage and a lot of practice.
Helen Sneed: What did you do when you were first learning to express your needs and you felt like you had failed at it, or did you have that experience?
Valerie Milburn: I did, and I got so frustrated. And I had both my psychiatrist and my sponsor to work through those feelings of failure and frustration. And they just both said, keep going, keep going. And my sponsor was the really big. Was such a big cheerleader and is such a big cheerleader of mine and kept saying that I have the right to use my voice. And that was really what I had to focus on because the childhood responses associated with me expressing my feelings didn't allow me to trust even those people who love me and who want to know what I think and feel and want and need. I also just hadn't been completely available emotionally because I was using drugs and alcohol. And so I didn't trust my voice for a long time because I didn't really even know what my feelings were because they were so dulled by drugs and alcohol.
Helen Sneed: Right.
Valerie Milburn: You know, there are six types of intimacy, and emotional intimacy is just one. And that's what I was striving for by being able to say, I think, I feel, I want, I need. But the six types of intimacy are physical, emotional, intellectual, creative, experiential, and spiritual. And emotional intimacy is demonstrated through words and communication. So until I learned to be able to communicate feelings through words and communication, I didn't achieve emotional intimacy with the members of my family. And I wanted that with, you know, true emotional intimacy with my husband and my sister and others whom I love. But it took both sobriety and stability in my mental health conditions to learn to do this.
Helen Sneed: So you had to learn really almost a whole new vocabulary.
Valerie Milburn: That's a great way to put it, a new vocabulary. But I learned that vocabulary and the intimacy and beauty of my marriage blossomed, Just blossomed with my ability to communicate in a healthy way.
Helen Sneed: Families and their problems go on and on, and they aren't solved. They're dealt with. Roger Hebert said that. And I think it's one of the smartest and most mature things that I've ever heard about family relationships. So as I got better and stronger, I could see that families have problems that can seem insurmountable. These huge elephants in the room. But I learned that we could change rooms in order to deal with our problems. For me, many have to be left behind. Just leave them in the past and focus on the present. You may not solve a problem, but you can outgrow it, mature beyond it. This is where communications are indispensable to tell the other family member what you value, need appreciate in them and in others.
Helen Sneed: Stay in the day at hand. Conversation doesn't have to be a minefield. With practice and communications, I have found the safety of common ground and shared feeling with plenty of laughter.
Valerie Milburn: You know what you said about some problems just need to be left behind. That's where I get into acceptance. Because the most important thing I had to learn was acceptance. I had to learn to accept on a day to day basis. Well, moment to moment. Lots of times that everyone is a child of God doing the best they can. But acceptance doesn't mean I have to like it or put up with it, but I have to accept it. And there's freedom and peace of mind for me in acceptance. Because acceptance is the most important thing I've learned for health and happiness in my relationships.
Helen Sneed: Well, I think maybe it's, you know, you can't get very far without acceptance. I'm no longer absentee. I live in the same city and in present in my family members lives and it makes a huge difference. But I had to accept myself before I could learn to practice it in other relationships. I had to accept the permanence of the elephants in the room before I could shut the door on them for good and enter into the pleasures and challenges of family life in the present. George Burns said happiness is having a large, caring, close knit family in another city. Well, he always makes me laugh, but I do prefer being in the same one as my family.
Valerie Milburn: I do too. It's been a challenge or it was a challenge for a while having my parents in the same city. But we got used to it and we managed to navigate that relationship. After they moved to Austin when I was, I don't know how many years they lived here before they both died. But we got along and figured out how to do it and it was worth the work. So one of the things you and I talked about that we thought would be interesting to talk about today is having me compare my family of origin to my nuclear family, the family I grew up with, to the family I've built with my family, husband and kids.
Helen Sneed: Yeah, I think that it's important. I have to sort of put a little brief disclaimer in here. I have never married and I've never had children. And so when I think of these institutions I have lots of opinions but very little experience.
Valerie Milburn: Well, so you're going to be A great audience for this because you're going to have a lot of opinions about what I say. I love that. So I like to say that my parents were excellent role models of what not to be. And I don't say that in a mean spirited way. My parents loved each other and they loved and cared for me and my five siblings. I did, however, learn that I wanted things to be different in my own marriage and that I wanted to parent differently. So I'll tell you some things I value in my marriage. My husband and I laugh together and joke with each other constantly. We have fun together. We have mutual interests. We are mutually supportive of each other. We also have healthy, independent interests and independent friends. We have mutual friends we spend time with. We also spend time separately with extended family as well as together with extended family. And we enjoy our extended family. We parent together in a loving and healthy manner. And we are polite to each other. We are even still saying please and thank you at the end of being locked down with each other through the whole pandemic.
Helen Sneed: That's pretty amazing.
Valerie Milburn: It's really amazing. And also saying please and thank you after 37 years together. My husband is also my best friend. You know, there are also many differences between the family life of the family I grew up with and the family life that I've built with my husband and children. And again, this comparison isn't done with malice, but I always knew I would parent differently than I was parented, and I think that's pretty common. One
Valerie Milburn: big and very important difference is that my husband and I never raised a hand in anger toward our children. No physical discipline of any sort. No spanking. That was not the case at all growing up. Enough said about that. My husband and I and our children have always had open communication. My daughter likes to say, there are no secrets in this family. And it's a powerful saying, and it's true. But we are open and honest with each other. Maybe a little too much. My daughter did say to my son, her brother, one time, you need a filter. So we have, we have fun together. We enjoy each other's company, we laugh together. We can laugh at ourselves. We're nonjudgmental. Just overall, the atmosphere in my house is light. I mean, Helen, you know that you come to my house a lot now.
Helen Sneed: It's a great place to be.
Valerie Milburn: Yeah, it's so nice to have you back in the house now that we're vaccinated and can come over again. So overall, I've just worked hard for the beautiful family I have I. I will always work to maintain my relationships with my husband, my children, and now my precious little four grandchildren, and with my extended family. I'm blessed and grateful and I just never take it for granted. I know how special it is. My family is the most important thing in my life.
Helen Sneed: Well, it's been hard won and you deserve every minute of it. So what have I learned about family? Well, to begin with, it's not one unit. It's all about the individual relationships and how you treat one another. I've learned to keep it in the present. This has been a guiding principle in my recovery, and it turned out to be the key to the family relationships I enjoy today. Keep communicating, listen to the other stories. You'll learn a lot. Accept the fact that conflict will arise just as it does in most relationships, and also realize that another family member may trigger you into a terrible memory or feeling. But this probably unwittingly. Believe in the capacity for change within yourself and with the family dynamic. For some people, however, a healthy relationship is simply not possible, or it may not be under current conditions for the foreseeable future. So regardless of your circumstances, I hope you can find acceptance and peace. As Karen Sock Whitney said, everyone has a right to have a present and future that are not completely dominated and dictated by the past.
Valerie Milburn: That makes me think about what you said about being triggered sometimes by family members, that we don't have to be dominated or dictated by our past. And I was just wondering, how do you handle a situation when you're in a family setting and something, some negative memories come up? Do you remove yourself from the situation, change the conversation? What do you do in the moment to bring yourself back into the right frame of mind to continue in a family setting?
Helen Sneed: Well, it's a real challenge. I expect it's probably happened to you too. And I guess my response depends on the circumstances. I try to change the subject. I don't directly confront the person and say, well, what you've said is just triggered me into the ozone. I try to keep it within a social context because that's where my family relationships reside. And so if I have to, I'll leave the room for a minute. Or if I'm really upset, I guess I can always make an excuse and go home. But I try to deal with it. And the thing I tell myself is they didn't mean to do it.
Valerie Milburn: That's really good.
Helen Sneed: That's the thing to try to remember.
Valerie Milburn: Yeah, that's really good to remember. Makes me think of what my guiding principle is, that everybody's really doing the best they can. And I like that they're not doing it on purpose. They didn't mean to. That's great. I'm going to remember that one.
Helen Sneed: Okay, so, Valerie, I think now it's time to segue into mindfulness. Do I have this correct?
Valerie Milburn: You do. And you just mentioned about staying in the present moment, so that's.
Helen Sneed: Well, I hope. I hope that that's where you're going to take us today.
Valerie Milburn: We are.
Helen Sneed: It's been a long, stressful week.
Valerie Milburn: Yes, it has. It really has been.
Valerie Milburn: And we do indeed end each episode with a mindfulness practice. And I always give a definition. What is mindfulness? Well, it's an ancient practice used by many cultures. And basically mindfulness is a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations. Today we're going to practice an exercise called Bringing Awareness. And this is adapted from rawpixel.com the bringing awareness exercise can be done anytime with no tools at hand. First, just simply stop what you are doing. Now. You may not be able to do this right now, but if you can't, you can take in this exercise and practice it later. But if you can, simply stop what you are doing, stop the autopilot, stop activity, stop your thoughts. Be present in this moment. So if you can, stop what you are doing. Next, focus on your breathing for six breaths or up to one minute, depending on what you have time for. Right now, we'll take six deep breaths together. Do not allow thoughts to intrude. Bring your awareness fully to how you are breathing without trying to change it. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Do not allow your thoughts to intrude. Breathe out. Bring your awareness fully to how you are breathing. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. One more. Next, expand your awareness out to your body. What are you sensing? What are you feeling right at this moment? Focus on the sensations of things like the wind on your skin, the feeling of your clothing, or even aches and pains that you are having. Finally, expand your awareness even more out to your environment. Take in the colors, the shapes, the sounds, the movements of what is around you. Try focusing on the colors and the shapes only, rather than labeling things. Some examples, it's not a traffic signal. It's green, yellow and red circles. It's not grass. It's green lines swaying in the wind. It's not the towel you are folding while doing the laundry. It's a soft white piece of cloth. Try it. Focus on the colors and shapes around you. That's it. We just practiced one way we can become truly mindful. Live fully in the moment. Reduce our stress and anxiety. Enhance our serenity. Thanks for doing this mindfulness exercise with me.
Helen Sneed: Thank you, Valerie. That was terrific. We have come to the end of this episode, but certainly not to the
Helen Sneed: subject of family relationships. They represent a shifting, changing dynamic that comes from within you. Our next episode is intimate relationships. The family of our choosing. The friendships and romantic relationships that are critical to our survival.
Valerie Milburn: I want to thank you, our listeners, for being with us today. Helen and I are always honored that you have joined us, and we invite you to join us for our next episode.
Helen Sneed: And I leave you with our favorite word.
Valerie Milburn: Onward.