Lately I've been researching all over the internet re Dysfunctional families, and finally found a very good site which is not doom laden at all...most websites, on this subject, are religious and recommend therapy as self and in a group. Plus that there is often no way out of this awful dilemma in life. There is! and to briefly sum things up of what I got from this site is...
Coming from a dysfunctional family, one develops survival skills because, well, one is forced to. These survival skills could be quite useful, if looked at and turned around to suit life as an adult.
When people within the family are so full of themselves and one can't get a word in edge ways, it will develop a finely tuned empathy for others, about the importance of listening. And learning how to listen is not a bad start in life.
Control freak parents are always telling their children what to do, and can be over organizing and over protective, in what they will talk about. They will often tell other people what to do out in the world too. So one is not alone.
Often those from dysfunctional families can be highly successful in some area of their lives and are often resilient to stress and adaptive to change. Again this comes down to the mere survival level, one is literally reduced to within the family.
Due to the incredible stress the emotional self is under, in these families, with lack of emotional support or only the negative emotional stuff to be seen, one would need to learn to identify and express one's emotions. Getting it out there in the open. Hard to do, so might be good to keep a daily feelings journal. Practical realities often asks us to be careful who we share our feelings with. So need to be selective about this.
It is okay to feel angry about what has happened in the family. Often venting is for the best, and much pretense, denials, repressions and keeping family skeletons in the closet is not good for anyone, even the people who are beholden to do this. It would be helpful to find productive ways to vent this anger, with the clear goal of expressing, releasing and letting go. There is nothing wrong with two people agreeing to disagree after a lifetime of acknowledging nothing. Harboring negative emotions about a person for a long time, and giving out all the signals over the years, is a very toxic situation. Agreeing to express the negative emotions about each other is a great watershed, because then there is the opportunity to start over. It becomes a mile post which is reached, and then a new journey can be started.
One needs to learn to trust again. Okay! so if someone comes clean about what they think and the other does too, then there rises a trust that the two have had similar emotional feelings about each other all along. You both know where you stand with each other. Solid ground is where things can start to grow again.
One needs to take good care of oneself when lacking the support of a close knit family, or enduring a very destructive and condemning family. Part of this is not getting caught up in fears, and having the courage to be a little self-ish for a change and take care of number one.
Much of the pain one carries from "bad" families can become compulsive. Substance abuse is often what comes out as compulsive. Food addiction is probably the most widespread.
There is a need to change one's relationship with the family and not roll along on the same old mindsets. Most people within families seem to have hedged themselves in, are comfortable within the space and very fearful of any change. They will hold on to their relationships for dear life, often to the point of scapegoating another permanently. Thus one would need to be patient with such people until they learn, not to do this. They are fearful of not having a family at all so will hold on, no matter what. So it is a big ask as they continue to feed the negativity within themselves.
Many people just change their relationships with dysfunctional families by moving aside from it all. And this is okay. There are many instances of an orphan, a child from single parent families, an outcast who have done exceptionally well in the world without the support from the status quo definition of families. Curiously it seems to be that, the very strong bow to the contrary, can shoot the arrow straightest and strongest.
