There is a phenomenon in family therapy in which a family will partake in clearly dysfunctional habits that cause conflict, ruptures, and unhappiness, and yet, even when brought to their attention, they will fight to maintain these habits. This is due to a process called “homeostasis.”
Homeostasis is a process in which a family utilizes different habits and roles to keep stress, conflict, and anxiety within “tolerable limits” (Messer, 1971). Each family has their own tolerable limit and will fight to maintain the emotional energy of the family within those bounds. In short, the family will push each other to behave the same as they always had in order to create a predictable environment for themselves, known as a state of “equilibrium.”
Common family roles that members of the family will be “forced” to maintain are:
1. The scapegoat or rebel: During family tension, dysfunctional families might try to find a scapegoat. This will be the person they blame for the tension in order to “unite together” against a common, internal enemy. The scapegoat will be seen as the problem, which then dissolves any family responsibility for solving the greater issue.
2. The mediator: At the same time, there is often a mediator. This person takes on the role of helping everyone “get along.” They do this by sharing each person’s side of the story and asking everyone to agree to disagree. While this can be helpful in some situations, when one person always has to mediate, they are put into a high-stress role in order to get the family back to equilibrium.
3. The “good one”: Like finding a scapegoat, the family might also point to the “good one” in the family. This is the person that the scapegoat will be compared against.
Common family habits include:
1. Defensiveness: To return to homeostasis, or the normal way of being for the family, there is often defensiveness. Defensive behavior limits the ability to see one’s role in a situation or begin to consider how to change the pattern.
2. Withdrawing: In order to remove oneself from a conversation or to work toward problem-solving, family members might withdraw from the conflict in order to get their way. Because there is so much tension, the other family members will “give up” and return to the status quo.
3. Triangulation: In order to push the family back to homeostasis, members of the family will form alliances with each other against whoever is threatening the status quo.
4. Lying: Family members might lie to each other or use family myths to get people to “behave” within the window of tolerance.
5. Resignation: Often, the process of trying to create change causes so much stress that people will resign themselves to the current dynamic.
6. Relentless arguing: Relentless arguing that never goes anywhere reduces the likelihood of change and increases the possibility the family can return to their predicted dynamic.
Families can change their baseline way of functioning when members of the family choose to target and change any one of these roles or behaviors. However, the first person to do so will find that they become the scapegoat as they are seen as responsible for causing a “shake-up,” even if the shake-up is for good reason.
For this reason, it can be helpful for families to participate in family therapy together, where a therapist can build a relationship with each member of the family that creates a sense of safety so they can drop their defenses while also building up tolerance for change.
In the case that family therapy isn’t appropriate, it can be helpful to attend individual therapy in order to better understand how the family dysfunction is impacting the individual and what can be done in order to protect oneself against it.