Family issues

LegacyUser

I am the second youngest of a large family - 9 boys, 4 girls - I'm 32. You can imagine the dysfunction that has gone on with such a large family over the years - so much so, that there were few us talking to others and so on. Recently, one of my brothers passed away and for the first time ever, we rallied together as a family, supporting each other and doing whatever we could. So while we are all still grieving, we're all still in touch with each other, but I'm beginning to feel a bit tense around some of them. There were many issues between all of us over the years (although not so much with me, as I'm the youngest) and some of my brothers and sisters hadn't seen each other in over ten years. I feel their issues aren't really resolved, and that we all just did what we could when my brother died, which was very sudden.

Anytime I'm in their company, there is always an 'elephant in the room'..none of them have yet talked about any of the old issues or suggested we talk about them to deal with them (most of the fallouts happened when my mum died, 10yrs ago)..and the longer this goes on, the more tense I am becoming as I am waiting for one of them to explode..should I open old wounds or just accept that this grief has united us and we are being a 'normal family' nowadays? I'm very confused.

rediguana25

I know the feeling......I'm in a very similar situation.
If there is one thing I've learned it's that you can only be responsible for you and your relationships with your siblings. You can't make others in the family talk or get on or discuss the elephant in the room.
Make sure you act in an open and loving manner to all your siblings and work on your own relationships with them individually. Families grow up and grow apart especially big families that's a fact of life sometime unfortunately. A lot of people would rather brush things under the carpet and they have the right to do this. Personally I'd be like you and want to get things out in the open, and then move on. But it doesn't work like that in most families..there may be too many painful wounds that are not yours to open especially since you are younger the older ones may have had a very different and possibly harder upbringing than you did. But I know what it feels like to just want everyone to get along with no tense atmosphere. I'm sure it will naturally work out don't worry about it now just make sure your relationships with each one is kept alive and strong and hopefully this will extend to everyone else.

Bricriu

I'm from a large dysfunctional family, and communication was superficial, and some members of it didn't talk to each other and there was constant backbiting. Nothing was said upfront.

I don't think it's because a family is large that problems arise; it is because it is dysfunctional, i.e. people learned not to be open with each other, emotions weren't allowed to be expressed, and problems got shoved 'under the carpet', etc. It happens in small families too.

Anyway, when our mother died, we had got close, as people do, to look after a dying parent, but it was superficial closeness, and I felt it would dissipate in a short time. My eldest sister wanted to play 'happy families' after my mother's death, but I refused and told her we couldn't be happy if we didn't engage each other healthily and talked about our problems as a family.

I also said that we didn't have the skills to do that by ourselves and that we needed to do it in Family Therapy. We got all the members of the family on board (it wasn't easy) did a year of sessions, told our story, challenged each other, and things improved greatly. Now most of us can be who we are with each other, to a certain extent. There is better communication, more honesty, more directness, and definitely less fighting and backbiting, bad feelings and unhappiness in our family.