Remember the wondrously insane and macabre Addams family? ("They're creepy and they're kooky, mysterious and spooky/They're all together ooky....")
They were the anti-Partridge family, the inverse Brady Bunch, fabulously perverse, with two ghastly children, Wednesday (as in "Wednesday's child is full of woe," and her partner crime Pugsley, who has the unique hobby of stealing road signs--for room decoration--and is quite fond of his slimy pet Octopus, named--but of course!--Aristotle.
But in the "Morticia and the Psychiatrist" episode, Pugsley is simply not himself, and the parents are deeply worried.
Pugsleyditches Aristotle and replaces him with a puppy, actually plays the All-American game of baseball, and--horror of horrors!--puts on a Boy Scout uniform. Morticia and husband Gomez are gripped by fears that their child might be headed for normalcy--so they march him into Dr. Black, the psychiatrist's office, for some straightening out.
So what is the fear that so catalyzes Pugsley's parents to head for treatment? It is this precise thought pattern, so familiar to dysfunctional families everywhere: If Pugsleyacts normal, why then, mightn't everybody think the entire family is normal?
And the answer to this in society is yes--they might. And thus the concept of the family hero is born--and it is a role every dysfunctional family wants someone within their ranks to play, for the job of this family hero is to demonstrate to onlookers near and far that the family from which the hero dwells is just fine.
The child who defines the family's self-worth, and keeps ugly familial secrets hidden is the family hero--and what a row they have to hoe.
In his book, Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls, Robert Burney writes that "there are four basic roles that children adopt in order to survive growing up in emotionally dishonest, shame-based, dysfunctional family systems." The children take these roles because they sense that the family's dysfunction is so great, without their wearing the mantle of the chosen role, the whole might not be able to continue.
You may be familiar with these roles from your own family of origin--or your own children--and one I've discussed before, simply under a different name. The roles are the Mascot or Caretaker, the Lost Child, the Acting-Out-Child or Scapegoat [I've written about this role under the name of the 'Identified Patient'], and, finally, our very own Responsible Child, or Family Hero.
The hero is often the oldest child, although in one of the more striking cases I've just seen, it's actually the third, the first and second having been unable to handle this starring role. Heroes tend to be over-responsible and over-achieving. They might be the valedictorian, the prom queen, the starting quarterback, the head of drama--they make it possible for their families to look at them and be re-assured about the family's own well-being as a unit. ("If Sara graduated top of her eighth grade class, we're obviously doing a lot right as parents, aren't we?" goes the thought-process.) They might even be parentified, taking care of one (or both) parents, in a complete role reversal. The continued performance and excellence of the hero validates not just the hero--but the entire family unit.
Not unsurprisingly, however, this linchpin role in the dysfunctional family comes with a high price. Usually the hero feels guilty and inadequate, and is plagued by the sense, despite all his achievements, that there's nothing he can really do to heal his family's pain. Often the Hero will push herself to hard to achieve that she becomes prone to stress-related illnesses. [Most recently I had a family hero in my practice who seemed to feel so guilt-ridden that she wanted to simply obliterate herself, to greatly over- simplify the explanation for her anorexia. She wanted to place no more demands on her family--to only provide, and how she managed to perform as she did academically at such a low weight is a mystery to me.]
It is not uncommon for the Hero to feel isolated and alone and later on they have difficulty developing intimate relationships, since they have no experience being in touch with and expressing their true feelings. They seem cut off from their own emotions to the extent that they praise they receive for their achievements and successes becomes an end in itself--they feel no sense of self-satisfaction, and as thus must continue to excel and achieve in order to receive the praise that defines them to themselves as 'good.'
Robert Burney himself provides this choice insight into the Hero on his website: "The family hero, because of their "success" in conforming to dysfunctional cultural definitions of what constitutes doing life "right", is often the child in the family who as an adult has the hardest time even admitting that there is anything within themselves that needs to be healed."
So it is the greatest success in the family, from an external perspective, who turns out to pay the highest internal price--and who struggles the mightiest to even put into words that they might need help.
Even Morticia Addams understood that a child like this, despite the bountiful gifts she bestows upon her family, needs support--and soon.
Candida Abrahamson is a Chicago-area mediator, counselor, and hypnotherapist with a country-wide practice via phone sessions. Find out more about Candida and her work on her website at http://candidaabrahamsonphd.com/. To read Candida's in-depth writing on a variety of topics, check out her blog at http://candidaabrahamson.wordpress.com/.
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