Borderline Family as Defined by the Beavers Systems Model
"Collage Family" by Swiss-born artist Olaf Breuning, 2007
Families operate at unlike levels of emotional wellness. One way of measuring the well beingness of family relations is the Beavers Scale of Family Functioning, named for its creator, psychiatrist Due west. Robert Beavers.
The family is a arrangement of emotional relationships and the Beavers scale identifies v developmental levels and patterns of relating inside the family. I begin with the lowest classification for emotional competence in the family system:
Level 5: The "Family in Pain" is a severely disturbed arrangement and the about dysfunctional level of family. It is characterized by disorganization, feelings of apprehension among its members and a permeating sense of imminent danger. This family unit system is ghost-ridden and marked by losses that go unmourned or unmetabolized. The passage of time is routinely denied. This collective entity lacks authority and clear leadership. At that place is little in the manner of dependable interpersonal connection. Analogous to this type of family unit is a nation in anarchy or civil disorder.
Level 4: The "Deadline Family" exhibits express comeback in relational performance over the onetime level. In endeavour to primary the chaotic family organisation, which is devoid of structure and internal regulation, this emotional collective has swung to the polar reverse -- adapting a rigid family system of rules. Disorder has been supplanted by dictatorship. Lack of authority gives way to the ascendancy of a tyrant who ofttimes rules past coercion and intimidation. Patterns of dominance and submission reign supreme. This is an emotional universe of strict surveillance designed to control not only the deportment, but as well the thoughts and feelings of everyone within the family unit. This is a system governed by black and white perceptions, and one intolerant of ambiguity. An individual is either perfect or monstrous.
Level 3: The "Dominion-Spring Family" is a less compromised emotional system, less primitive in development. While information technology operates under strict behavioral dictates like the "Borderline Family unit," these rules are internalized and enforced by individual group members rather than being imposed from one external potency figure within the arrangement. In other words, controls on behave emerge from inside each person, not from the external demands imposed by a family despot. Family participants abide by unquestioned conformity to "oughts" and "shoulds" that they have all adopted equally their code of family unit deport. But hither is the essential point: the rules of the system have precedence over anyone in information technology. What family members actually recall and feel is sacrificed for what they ought to think and feel. Rules regulate behavior at the expense of spontaneity and the accurate experiences of individual family members. One loses the connectedness with 1'southward ain emotional life, which must be repressed for the skillful of all. In the words of Maggie Scarf, "the richness of the individual's subjective experience becomes truncated" (32). The crucial aspect: this family unit regime remains limited in its potential for intimacy.
Level 2: The "Adequate Family" and Level i: The "Optimal Family" share many characteristics and correspond the highest advances in family unit development. Both these systems are egalitarian structures and able to listen intently to input from all members. Their differences prevarication largely in a matter of degree and in their potential for true intimate encounters amid the family members. In The Adequate Family arrangement, rules are clear but not written in stone. Their purpose is understood every bit serving the best interests of people, which is meridian priority. Thus rules are discipline to revision when experiencial circumstances or existent life challenges them. In this fashion, The Acceptable Family unit is a flexible emotional system, having the capacity for structural growth and change. Less capable family systems balk at such adaptive shifts.
Level 1: The "Optimal Family" is able to adapt better than all previous levels to changes in family and its life cycle events. This is mainly due to a deep sense of security and trust in the emotional connection between family members. When conflicts arise there is business firm belief in the possibility of working them out or, if not, respecting the difference of viewpoints. This kind of family tin accept both love and detest within themselves and others in the emotional system. A full range of feelings tin be expressed and is even embraced equally part of that private family member's humanity. Individual differences are viewed equally enriching, rather than threatening to the group livelihood. Difference is not an antifamily offense, but an welcomed asset, in healthy kinsfolk. Finally, The Optimal Family experiences genuine pleasance in 1 some other's company.
This holiday season exercise your muscles of reflective thinking: step back and take stock of how your family is interacting. Appraise how its emotional system functions in terms of core issues such every bit power, control, communication, and intimacy.
While you witness your relatives from a thoughtful distance, keep in mind that their mode of interface can alter over fourth dimension. All it takes is one person's change in the pattern of interaction in society to shift the unabridged family unit system dynamic.
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Chief Reference:
Maggie Scarf, Intimate Worlds: How Families Thrive and Why They Neglect. New York: Ballantine, 1995.
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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-me-in-we/201311/5-styles-family-relating
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