Dysfunctional families: the autocratic family

I have found it helpful to talk about families in terms of the ABCs (attachment, boundaries, and communication) and the 3 Rs (rules, roles, and resulting relationships). The ABC’s of unhealthy or dysfunctional families include insecure attachment, poor boundaries (either entangled or disengaged), and closed communication. In the case of autocratic families, the head of the family may exhibit poor boundaries by asserting the right to enter any room in the house at any time without knocking, depriving the rest of the family of any sense of personal space or privacy.

Autocratic families may seem relatively innocuous compared to alcoholic or abusive families, but they show similar patterns of rules, roles, and resulting dysfunctional relationships. Rules in an autocratic family may include not talking back (a child may not address an adult in the same tone as the adult addresses the child) or not talking at all, in the sense that the conversation involves a give and take. daka democratic. of opinions is frowned upon. There may be unspoken rules against showing or even talking about emotions. This often means that the autocrat’s problems with managing emotions are passed on to the children.

Children in an autocratic family seem to display a number of distinctive roles:

The rebel he can continually confront the autocrat without ever achieving victory, often the case when the autocrat is simply too strong. The Rebel may continue, even into adult life, to try to gain recognition, acceptance, or approval.

The peacemaker accept the authority of the autocrat and urge others to do the same. The Peacemaker may enter adult life without a healthy sense of self-worth and depending on others to make all decisions.

The fugitive Avoid confrontation by staying out of sight. As an adult, the fugitive may visit you as infrequently as possible and for as short a time as possible. This refusal to compromise may appear on the surface to be a successful escape from the autocrat’s authority, but it may be accompanied by problems in forming intimate relationships.

Adult children of an autocratic family may have difficulty expressing emotions and reading other people’s emotions. They may display low self-esteem, rely on the opinions of others to define their self-image, or fail to pick up on conventional social cues. As in the case of children growing up in abusive families, the children of an autocrat, determined to avoid this unsavory trait, can become overly permissive parents. Personal or family counseling may be required to break the dysfunctional pattern that is passed from one generation to the next.