Jerry Wise: Break the Family Trance to End Generational Dysfunction and Heal

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0:38Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to The Daily Motivation Show.

0:49What are the clear signs that you could start reflecting and asking yourself if one of your parents were narcissistic in any way? One of the things certainly that I found is that so many people grow up under the family trance. And so the family trance, they don't understand the dysfunction of their family because it's been normalized. And I've used the term malignant normalcy. because then if I grew up abused and I'm in an abusive relationship, I've normalized the abuse as not something I like, but I will accept or it's kind of normal. But that's a malignant normalcy. That's not a normalcy you want to have.

1:41And so when I think about helping people see, And really, that's what my work is about. It's to help people see outside the box and to see in a broader way so much of all the dynamics that are going on within the family. And if you have a narcissistic family, or there's all kinds of other dysfunctional families too, there's some universals that go along with that. But when you say a narcissistic family, I think when you start to recognize, hey, they've always been controlling. They lack empathy. They guilt and shame. They could be abusive, but they don't have to be abusive to be narcissistic. They love you and they have a plan for your life.

2:34And I say love with air quotes. We used to say that in religious circles, God loves you and he has a plan for your life. Well, the narcissist loves you and they have a plan for your life and you better follow it. Wow. Or else. Or else. And the narcissist will be very self-absorbed. Everything is basically about them. It always comes back to them. That's the whole focus. And if you have parents who have some of those type of traits, there are other traits, but some of those, people will always ask me, am I a narcissist? and I'll go, do you ever feel guilty? Oh, yeah, all the time. Then you're not.

3:18You're just dysfunctional. You're just dysfunctional. No, right. A narcissist is not going to feel that guilt. They don't feel, what have they done wrong? They're always right. So that why would I feel guilt about anything or shame? So if you felt that, you're probably less likely to be a narcissist. If you, but a parent can be a narcissistic parent and they don't, they can abuse you, they can criticize you, they can, but they'll never go, oh, that my bad. No, that would. They want to apologize. Do that. Why would they apologize? You made them do it. You made them do it or they did it for your good.

4:03So why would I ever need to say, I'm sorry? There's no need to say, I'm sorry. What's the worst thing a parent could do then to their kids over and over again that will almost surely make them dysfunctional as an adult? Is it never apologizing to them when, you know, they... That's too symptomatic. That's too superficial. Uh-huh. The thing that's going to make them more dysfunctional as an adult is to not break their own cycle from their own past, bringing that cycle to their current nuclear family and not knowing it. So bringing the generational trauma onward. And the generational programming and the generational emotional Wi-Fi that's been going on and they just bring that right into here, that's going to mess them up more than ever.

5:03Now, does abuse and narcissistic meanness, do all those things affect the kid? Of course it does. Screaming and all that stuff, yeah. Exactly. Of course it's going to. But it's not the screaming that's the underlying problem. That's a symptom of something. It's a symptom of how the family has been dysfunctional and toxic. And it can come out in different ways. Narcissism, alcoholism, abuse, workaholism, sex addiction. It can come out in gambling and all kinds of symptomatic ways. But underneath all of that is an enmeshment to a family whose trance has never been broken. Wow. the origin family.

5:49The origin family. It's never been broken. And now you're just living it out. Only John's living it out that way. Mary's living it out that way. But that's the underlying important dynamic. And if we don't break the trance of the family, the origin family of ours, if we don't break that trance, then we're just going to relive that pattern in our adult relationships as well. In some way. And it may not even look like the way mom and dad did it. But the pattern's still there.

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