Toxic Family Dynamics: Breaking Free

The holiday season is a challenging time for many of us, especially those who might be caught in toxic family relationships or find ourselves estranged from loved ones. How can we deal with that while protecting ourselves is our topic for this episode. Our guest for this episode is Nicole Noble, Ph.D., a counselor with the School of Health Professions Department of Clinical Counseling and Mental Health. Dr. Noble, who has been on this podcast before, describes the characteristics of a toxic relationship and differences between disagreements and toxic interactions. She also gives us strategies protect ourselves during these types of interactions. 

Transcript

Melissa Whitfield  0:10 
Hello and welcome back to Texas Tech Health Check from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. I'm your host, Melissa Whitfield. We want you to get healthy and stay healthy with help from evidence based advice from our physicians, health care providers and researchers, the upcoming holidays could potentially be a challenging time for many of us who might be caught in toxic family relationships or find ourselves estranged from loved ones. How can we deal with that while protecting ourselves? That's our topic for this episode. Dr Nicole Noble is an assistant professor in the School of Health Professions, Department of Clinical Counseling and Mental Health. She's been with us on this podcast before, and in this episode, she describes the characteristics of a toxic relationship and differences between disagreements and toxic interactions. Dr Noble, also gives us strategies to cope and protect ourselves during these types of situations.

Melissa Whitfield  1:06 
Dr Noble, welcome back to our podcast.

Dr. Nicole Noble  1:11 
Thank you for having me.

Melissa Whitfield  1:13 
Can you remind our listeners a little bit about yourself, your expertise and what you do here at the Health Sciences Center?

Dr. Nicole Noble  1:18 
Yes. My name is Nicole Noble. I'm an assistant professor in the clinical counseling and mental health department at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. And my background is in counseling individuals, couples and groups in a variety of settings, schools, higher ed, private practice, and now I work at the your life behavioral health and wellness clinic.

Melissa Whitfield  1:40 
Well, we're so happy to have you back so soon, and with a really important topic that some of us might not think about this time of year, but it's really something that other families or other people might consider, and it's about toxic relationships with their family or just close friends. What are some characteristics of a toxic relationship, specifically with family?

Dr. Nicole Noble  2:01 
So there are quite a few, unfortunately different ways to achieve this toxic family interaction. So first, any type of abuse, physical, sexual, emotional, neglect, financial that would definitely be considered toxic family relationships. But beyond that, if somebody's not celebrating your successes with you and sad for you when you have failures. That might be an indication if there's difficulty with communicating really negative patterns of communication, either like extreme, aggressive or even complete withdrawal, those may be indicative of some difficult, toxic patterns and extreme negativity, manipulation, guilt may also be some of it, but what I often say for people is to listen to their body and the reaction that they're having in their body. So if every time you're around someone, you find that you feel not great, maybe you're sick. That might indicate that there's something else going on. Certainly, if you're feeling really stilted in conversations, like unable to have anything to talk about, that may indicate that you're feeling rejected in that interaction, and that might be signs that this isn't the best situation for you right now.

Melissa Whitfield  3:24 
What is it about the holidays that makes a toxic family dynamic worse?

Dr. Nicole Noble  3:29 
There's so many expectations. People find the holidays really stressful because often you have to pack a lot in, a lot of time, energy, money, resources are going into these holiday experiences, and people have ideas about how they can be perfect or ideal, and of course, often when we have too high of expectations, it's difficult to live up to those. So we may have some let down with that, and then additionally, just the close proximity of people. So usually you may not see your family for a long time, and then you may go back home see them for maybe several days at a time, close proximity. You're eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, all activities are supposed to be together, maybe too much togetherness. So through that, if we can kind of have some more boundaries and separate a little bit, have some time, make some time for ourselves, carve out that for ourselves that may help make it a little bit less that way. And then also people. Obviously, drinking is common in the holidays we want to celebrate, but sometimes that can be overdone and make people more likely to say or do things they wouldn't normally do. Alcohol is a depressant as well, so when had for an extended period of time, it will lower our mood. It gives us those highs, but then after that, it's like we dumped all of the good energy, and then now we have kind of this sluggish, not great energy after so and then people sometimes go back to these family expectations once you're in the environments. It kind of reminds you of how you were at a younger state. And so there may be like a caretaker in the family, there may be a scapegoat, a distractor, a hero. So that's all according to Virginia Satir, a well known family therapist in the field who talks about conflicts and how conflicts are the result of unresolved grievances and unequal attention to family members emotional needs that have long term impacts.

Melissa Whitfield  5:37 
Well, when you were talking about being together and being close, not being far apart for, you know, maybe days at a time that may kind of rung true to me. Because, you know, whenever we took a road trip, we always had a fight for something one of us always ended up getting mad for. You know, by day two, what is the difference between a disagreement, which is what we would have among family members and toxic family interactions.

Dr. Nicole Noble  6:03 
So a disagreement may involve not thinking or behaving in the exact same way. There's lots of different ways to live our life and eating habits, sleeping we could do lots of different behaviors, so we may disagree on some specific topic, but toxic family interaction would involve a lack of respect and not honoring boundaries, trying to control the other person. My perspective is the right way. Yours is not. That would be toxic type of behavior and trying to get our way at any costs or eroding the trust in the relationship through some sort of harmful or manipulative behavior. Trust is really essential to have a healthy relationship, so if we start thinking that the other person doesn't have our best interests at heart, that's where we start going into toxic relationships versus I'll let you have your things you're interested in. I'm going to have mine kind of setting those boundaries and realizing we can love and support someone without trying to control them.

Melissa Whitfield  7:12 
How does this impact a person's mental health?

Dr. Nicole Noble  7:15 
So if people experience toxic family relationships, they may may experience really low self esteem and self worth. They may lack trust in others and not feel safe in the world overall. If your family environment is chaotic, how can you feel safe when you go out in the world? There's no soft place to land. We all want that soft place to land.

Melissa Whitfield  7:40 
What strategies can we use to cope with toxic family members during gatherings?

Dr. Nicole Noble  7:46 
We may want to set up some boundaries and recognize that you don't have to see them throughout the entire holiday. We want to maybe set up some time, some breaks, some space. You know you said earlier about the trips and finding disagreements, and those are common, and that's because we're tired, we're we get lethargic, it's hungry, it's a long day. Our our whole patterns are disrupted, and that's actually really difficult for our bodies to handle. So there's lots of reasons to get more upset, but if we can set some limits and put self care as a priority and recognize that it may happen if we're not taking care of ourselves, we may be more disagreeable. Recognize when we get hungry, we may be a little more upset, and try to take care of ourselves or use silence when we're upset about something or change the subject, we don't have to address everything. We can choose changing the subject and trying to find common ground when possible. Instead of focusing on our differences, we can focus on the our similarities.

Melissa Whitfield  8:58 
What are some ways than to respond to family members who manipulate guilt trip or goad someone into an argument, because sometimes they just they just want to pick at someone.

Dr. Nicole Noble  9:09 
Yes, so we need to realize that we don't need to manage our family members emotions. We need to manage our own. So if we're feeling like guilted because the family member wants us to go to their event, but we have a lot of other events we need to go to. Sometimes we may need to put ourselves first and realize I can't do that and be my happy, peaceful self. If I do too many things, I'm going to stretch myself too thin, and I'm not going to have my emotional stability, so setting those boundaries and limits and remaining calm so that we can like that, putting ourselves as the priority in that way. And that feels strange when we don't see family members all the time or something, but sometimes that's necessary for us to function happily together.

Melissa Whitfield  10:04 
Is it healthy to cut ties with toxic family members, and do we have to tell them, or can we just drop them?

Dr. Nicole Noble  10:11 
So certainly, in some instances, estrangement from a toxic family member may be our best option, unfortunately, but if we could have more of a cordial, polite relationship with less frequent encounters where we have less emotional energy that we're investing into it, that would be more ideal, but that may not be possible. And if we find that we're always angry, we're always in a state of turmoil and resentment, we may want to put a pause and consider other alternatives to our behavior. We can identify the patterns of our arguments like often, we can know if I say this, you're going to say that, and then it's going to escalate in this way. So we can change that pattern in a variety of ways, and one of it might be space and silence and time to allow yourself to miss the person and them to miss you, and about whether or not we address it with them. That might depend on the person and the interaction, if we think they're going to be upsetting us in some way, we might need to say, I need some time. I'll reach out to you when I'm ready, or we might not say that we might just give space.

Melissa Whitfield  11:26 
What do you recommend for those who are trying to break negative family patterns in their own lives and family, as you said, we start to recognize patterns in the arguments and disagreements. So what can we do?

Dr. Nicole Noble  11:38 
So slow down. We don't have to react. If we take a minute. I know this sounds so silly to people like, breathe. Sounds ridiculous, but seriously, if we just take a second to breathe, let ourselves have time to think about it. I also recommend, if we are in an argument, we might stop and try to start writing down with the other person saying, like, get out a pen and paper ask them, I don't think I'm understanding your perspective right now, let me see if I can understand it. And that dynamic of like you actually care what I have to say may change the whole interaction and seek first to understand and then to be understood. Focusing on their feelings, we can validate their feelings without validating what they say we did necessarily. I can see how you would be upset and feel hurt at that, but we don't have to agree with whatever they're upset with, necessarily. If that makes sense.

Melissa Whitfield  12:37 
Absolutely. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Dr. Nicole Noble  12:42 
Emotions are fleeting, and things can feel really intense and painful, and then they can feel really safe, peaceful and calm. So we need to give ourselves permission to put the dispute and the issue down for a minute and focus on a renewing activity so we can feel a sense of peace, and then maybe we might re approach it. And like I said earlier, we all want home to be a soft place to land, so if your environment isn't that, you deserve better, and you can take steps to help yourself get there. If you don't know those steps, you might seek help in some way, counseling or something else, but there are a lot of alternatives, and you probably haven't tried all of them. If we think there's only two options, like yell or be quiet or walk away, that's not usually the case. There's infinite options, so we may need to just take a step back to see some of those other options that we have in front of us.

Melissa Whitfield  13:41 
Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about this. It's very important topic, obviously, and for definitely giving us something to think about. And I won't feel guilty on these car trips anymore, about being hungry. Yeah, or hangry.

Dr. Nicole Noble  13:55 
Maybe we need some more snacks too, like we can plan ahead of time, can't we?

Melissa Whitfield  14:00 
That's right. That's right. Well, thank you. I hope to have you back soon.

Dr. Nicole Noble  14:03 
Thank you. I appreciate it.

Melissa Whitfield  14:07 
Thanks for listening to Texas Tech Health Check. Make sure to subscribe or follow wherever you listen to podcasts. This information is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek immediate medical advice from your physician or your health care provider for questions regarding your health or medical condition. Texas Tech Health Check is brought to you by Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and produced by TR Castillo, Suzanna Cisneros, Mark Hendricks, Kay Williams, Hope Caperton and me, Melissa Whitfield.