People are adaptable. They adapt to the people, places and things around them. This is especially true of children. There are upsides to adaptation and there are downsides to adaptation. One of those downsides is the downside of adaptations seemingly making us safe when they are in fact making us unsafe and keeping us fixed to unsafe situations. 

We live at a time when human relationships are profoundly dysfunctional. And all families fall somewhere on the scale of dysfunction. When we are using the word dysfunction in this context, what we mean is that a relationship is not working because one or many elements of the relationship are detrimental to one or both parties involved. Because the dynamics in a dysfunctional family system are detrimental, they are unsafe on an emotional, mental and or physical level. A dysfunctional family is not a safe environment. This means, each member of the family must adapt to the reality of this unsafety in whatever way they think makes them the safest. This obviously helps them in some way. But it also dooms them. It dooms them in two ways. 

1. It forges and forms them for that specific type of environment and relationship. They “fit in” with that environment and relationship now because they have been made for it. The empowerment they found relative to staying safe and to their needs was specific to that situation. They are operational in it. It is familiar. Their way of being doesn’t make sense in any other environment or relationship. And so, they gravitate towards that specific environment and that specific kind of relationship. They feel unfamiliar, disempowered, non-operational and out of place in any other type of environment or relationship, even if that environment or relationship is dangerous and/or unhealthy for them.  

2. When you adapt to a dysfunctional family, you are adapting to an unsafe situation. You aren’t changing what is unsafe into what is safe. You are making yourself fit in with an unsafe situation, so you will be able to stay there. And so, by definition, you are making yourself unsafe at the same time as you are developing safety strategies. And when a dysfunctional family is making you unsafe, you tend to disown qualities that would keep you safe in the world, so as to fit in with that unsafe environment. This means, your adaptations can handicap you relative to your ability to create actual safety in your life. 

So that you can understand this better, let’s look at the example of Rose. Rose was raised in a family with a father who was gone almost all the time and a mother that had the wrong idea about parenting. Rose’s mother imagined that having a child would be like having a doll. That she would have so much fun taking care of it and dressing it up and that the child would be a playmate in life and love her unconditionally. When Rose was born, she certainly was unprepared for night time screaming fits or feeding and changing the child’s when the child needed these things, rather than when she decided she wanted to do them. She was unprepared for a child moving around when she wanted her to sit still or fighting nap time, when she decided she was done looking after her. She was unprepared for Rose developing her own personality and likes and dislikes that were different to her own. Rose’s mother did not want a child. She wanted a living doll. Because that isn’t what she got, she was consistently upset with Rose. From her perspective, Rose was hurting her by not being that. And there were consequences for that. Things like shaming, isolating her in time outs, belittling, negative comparisons, victim control dynamics, spanking, triangulating her father against her etc. These things were harmful to Rose and therefore, not safe. 

Rose, like all children, was a captive in her family environment. People don’t like to think of children as captives. But that is what they are. They are stuck in their family and can’t get away, unless the situation is so severe that external authorities step in and remove them. So, being unable to make her environment and relationships safe, she adapted to them. Rose started keeping herself safe by becoming the doll that her mother always wanted. To stay safe, she became a people pleaser. She became sedentary and didn’t move around a lot. She convinced herself that she liked the same things her mother liked and wanted her to like. She stopped asserting any of her needs. 

It is easy to see how these things made her safer with her mother and father. But these same qualities made it so that she was forged, formed and made for relationships with people for whom there is only a “me”, not a “you”. Environments where her sole purpose is to serve others, regardless of the cost to herself. These adaptations also make her unsafe in her adult self out in the world. She is now obese and feels constantly incapable physically, so she feels no physical safety. She can’t assert boundaries, so no one knows what they are and so, her boundaries are constantly being violated by others and by herself. She says “Yes” to things that really should be a “No” for her. Her first instinct is to comply, when complying with the wrong person, has proven to be really unsafe. She is keeping herself alone in relationships because no one knows who she is, she doesn’t bring who she is to the table. She gravitates towards use dynamics, where no one really cares about her beyond the use they have for her. She has no inner compass, she threw it away to do what her mother wanted and thought was right, so she always needs someone else to tell her what to do. And this list goes on and on. Rose’s adaptations for safety have not bent her for success. Instead, they have bent her for unsafety.  

Take a look at your own childhood. What were the unique specific pains and specific kinds of unsafety that were present in your childhood? What are some of the ways that you adapted to those specific pains and specific kinds of unsafety? How did those adaptations keep you safer and/or help you to meet your needs better? And from there, can you see the ways that it bent you towards unsafety? Can you see how it may have forged and formed you for a specific type of environment and relationship? Can you see how each of the specific adaptive strategies you employed could make you more unsafe?

To learn more about this whole concept, you can watch my video titled: How Your Adaptations Save Your Life, Only To Doom It.  

Because you associate these adaptive strategies with safety, even though you are in fact getting safer by changing them, doing so will make you FEEL more unsafe. But changing these default safety strategies you adopted will make you far safer in the world. It will make it so that you can choose to be in different, healthier and safer relationships and environments. It will make it so that you can choose a method for safety that actually works for whatever situation you may find yourself in.