Module 06. Glossary
Terms of the module
- Family myths
- Family needs (5)
- Family rules (spoken and unspoken)
- Functions of the family system (18)
- “I allow myself” (5)
- “If X, does that mean Y?”
- Levels of needs (4)
- Mental hygiene (5 rules)
- Signs of trouble-makers (15)
- Stages of the family life cycle (8)
- The family as a system (two laws)
- The “IF” expectation trap (three kinds)
- “Three circles” (6 steps)
- Vulnerability buttons (26)
Family myths
The deep level of a family’s self-awareness: a system of shared ideas and stories about “who we are,” which are perceived not as a myth but as objective reality. The myth shapes identity and the sense of “us,” stabilizes the system in hard times, regulates roles and is passed down from generation to generation. The concept was brought into family therapy by Antonio Ferreira, who showed that a myth serves a family in the same way that a defense serves an individual: it hides what is unbearable to see; Russian family psychotherapy has described the most common myths, and the course examines exactly those. Myths can be functional (“we are a family where everyone supports one another’s growth”) and dysfunctional — when the myth hides problems and keeps people in rigid roles.
“We are a close-knit family” can hide conflicts, suppressed anger and a ban on separation: unity is shown to the outside world at the cost of authenticity, and a grown-up child who has moved to another city is experienced as a traitor. “We are a family of rescuers” requires that there always be someone in the family who is being rescued, and the system resists that person’s recovery, because it would destroy the myth. “All people are bad; you can only trust your own people” closes the system off from the world. To recognize a myth means to assess its influence and, if you wish, to consciously choose another, more supportive one. A collective relative of self-confirming beliefs (module 1) and of the life script (module 2).
Family needs (5)
Five needs that a family is meant to meet: belonging — security, a sense of “us”; the family’s recognition of each member and giving each one a place — “everyone belongs, everyone matters”; the balance of “taking — giving” between parents and children, where the flow of life runs from parents to children, and the child gives to the parents, but only out of love; self-expression — with freedom comes responsibility; the ability to look at each other calmly, without avoidance or hostility. Bert Hellinger called the first three needs the orders of love — belonging, the balance of exchange and each person’s place in the order of precedence — and noticed that a child who is made to “give” to the parents out of duty rather than out of love becomes a little adult and stops growing; Winnicott would have described the same thing as an environment that holds and therefore allows development. In a family there is no time: everything is always happening, and the echo of past events still sounds now.
A functional family wants to, can and does cope with challenges — internal ones, like the birth of children, and external ones, like losing a job; a dysfunctional one wants to but can’t. The point of forming a couple lies in three tasks: genetic, material and dyadic (emotional connection, security, support), and love is when all three vectors coincide. The model gives a calm language for talking about what a family lacks, without looking for someone to blame; the fifth need — looking at each other without hostility — sounds the simplest and is the first to be lost; it is emotional needs (module 3) turned toward the family.
Family rules (spoken and unspoken)
The rules of a family system are stable ways of behaving: how to rest, run the household, spend money; the distribution of roles, functions, places in the hierarchy and decisions about what is allowed and what is not. Spoken rules are clearly formulated and known to everyone (“we all have dinner together,” “raising your voice is not allowed”); they can be discussed and changed. Unspoken rules are unwritten, absorbed through observation: “you can’t talk about Dad’s problems,” “Mom’s opinion is law,” “feelings must be hidden,” “always show success to the outside world.” It is these that more often govern the system and maintain the dysfunction, because first they have to be recognized. The concept was introduced by Don Jackson, a founder of family therapy, who noticed that a family behaves like a system with rules that no one has ever formulated, and Virginia Satir added the most important rule — the rule about rules: whether in this family you can talk about what you’re not allowed to talk about.
A family without rules is a space of chaos and conflict; rules that are too rigid stifle development and get in the way of adaptation; a struggle over the right to set the rules is a frequent cause of crises in a couple, and newlyweds often quarrel not over the dishes but over whose parental family sets the rule about the dishes. Becoming aware of the existing rules is the first step toward revising them. The course’s question: “What are your rules?” A family relative of implied agreements (module 1): what goes unsaid rules more powerfully than what is said.
Functions of the family system (18)
Eighteen tasks of a healthy family, examined in a “problem — solution” format: from avoiding open discussion of painful topics, when the family lives in “seeming rather than being” mode, and financial instability without a transparent budget — to destructive ways of settling conflicts, chronic illnesses, emotional estrangement and avoiding time together, a lack of personal time and space, the couple “getting stuck” at the dyad stage, a lack of mutual support, neglect of upbringing, the family members’ development coming to a halt, and stagnation of the system with a fear of change. For each problem — a solution and a sample dialogue: “when X happens, I feel Y; I would like to discuss it, because our relationship matters to me; how do you see this situation?” Family therapy assesses families along the same axes — problem solving, communication, roles, affective responsiveness and involvement, behavior control — and David Olson showed that a family’s health lies between the extremes: a family that is too enmeshed smothers, and one that is too disengaged doesn’t hold its members.
In essence, this is a checklist for diagnosing weak spots: going through the functions, you can see where the system works and where it sags, and what to deal with first; most often the first function to break is the first one — talking about what hurts — and the other seventeen break after it. Failures in the functions are often connected with the participants’ cognitive distortions (module 2) and with unspoken rules.
“I allow myself” (5)
A formula for giving yourself back the right to reality and to your own needs: I allow myself to see and hear reality, not an idealized image of what should be, was or will be; to express my true feelings and thoughts, not what is imposed from outside; to be in my feelings, not to pretend; to ask for what I really need, instead of passively waiting for permission; to take on risk and responsibility for change, rather than relying on the old tried-and-tested ways. These five permissions are Virginia Satir’s five freedoms, which she considered a condition of a healthy family, and in each of them you can hear the prohibition it is directed against: “don’t look,” “don’t speak,” “don’t feel,” “don’t ask,” “don’t take risks.” Transactional analysis calls such a permission the most powerful therapeutic act, because it is addressed not to the mind, which understands everything anyway, but to the part that once received the prohibition.
Simple words lift an invisible inner prohibition, and usually the hardest turns out to be the fourth — to ask, because we were taught to be ashamed of asking. Next to it are the questions of inner rank, which is born of self-perception rather than an imposed social role: who am I, what am I, where am I, when am I, how do I show up, what for; Arnold Mindell distinguished social rank, which is granted, from psychological rank, which a person claims for themselves and which a manipulator cannot take away. The same logic as in self-permission (module 2), applied to getting out of the “IF” trap; against the demands of the Inner Controller — counter-permissions (module 8).
“If X, does that mean Y?”
An essential technique for neutralizing a myth: “If X happened or is true, does that automatically mean Y? Are there other possible explanations?” “If it’s expensive, does that mean it’s high quality?”, “if everyone does it, does that mean it’s right?”, “if he’s silent, does that mean he’s offended?” The question exposes a hidden leap in reasoning — what logic calls “it does not follow,” and what Daniel Kahneman described as the main habit of fast thinking: the mind completes a story from what it sees and doesn’t notice what it doesn’t see. In cognitive therapy this is the Socratic question about alternative explanations, the most common tool for working with an anxious thought; in psychoanalysis — the skill of not taking the first explanation that comes to mind for the only one, because the first one is usually prompted by fear or desire.
It helps you see that a conclusion has been slipped to you, not proven — in advertising, in an argument and in your own anxious thoughts: “he didn’t answer my message, so he must be angry” falls apart at a single “what else could it mean?” A direct continuation of the work with filters of perception (module 1) and an answer to the fourth step of myth-making (module 3), where the ear is meant to arrive at the desired conclusion on its own; one of the tools of mental hygiene.
Levels of needs (4)
To get out of the “IF” trap, attention is shifted from waiting for changes in others to meeting your own needs on four levels. Physical: am I getting enough sleep, do I feel safe, how is my body, is there stability. Psychological: do I feel calm, do I feel in control of my life, at least in some area, how is my self-esteem, am I confident in myself. Social: am I getting enough recognition, do I feel approval — above all from myself, do I feel competent. Spiritual: do I see meaning in what I do, is there a sense of mission, am I fulfilling myself. The four levels are a condensed version of Abraham Maslow’s pyramid, from the body to meaning, with Viktor Frankl’s correction: meaning doesn’t crown the pyramid but holds it up, and a person who has a “why” can bear almost any “how.”
It helps you understand more precisely what is really missing: fatigue and irritation are sometimes about the body and sleep, and sometimes about meaning and loneliness, and confusing them is costly — someone who hasn’t slept doesn’t need a conversation about mission, and a vacation won’t help someone who has lost meaning. “How can I sleep properly when he comes home at night…” is a question about a physical need that I can protect on my own. It deepens emotional needs (module 3).
Mental hygiene (5 rules)
Rules for working critically with incoming information — hygiene of the mind, by analogy with hygiene of the body. I understand that these words are the opinion of one particular person; they are about that person and their perception. I understand that there is a high probability that these words have nothing to do with reality. I understand that the speaker may want me to think within the limits of these words. I work on extracting facts from the other person: who, what, when, how and under what circumstances. I find out how things actually stand, and I am ready, if necessary, to go out into the field myself and check. The word itself appeared at the beginning of the twentieth century together with the mental hygiene movement, but the course’s rules are closer to Bion’s analytic discipline: bearing not-knowing and not grabbing at a ready-made version until you have checked — the mind, like the skin, gets sick from what gets into it without a filter.
It is especially needed in the stream of news, advertising and other people’s opinions, where it is easy to pick up anxiety and take other people’s conclusions for your own: someone else’s panic is contagious exactly to the extent that you have forgotten the first rule. A direct continuation of filters of perception and of telling a fact from an interpretation (module 1); the working question is “If X, does that mean Y?”
Signs of trouble-makers (15)
The signs by which you can recognize a person around whom problems multiply: avoids direct answers to specific questions; speaks in negative generalizations — cognitive distortions; breaks agreements and avoids clear arrangements; piles up unfinished business and doesn’t take responsibility for it; treats others in ways they wouldn’t want for themselves, yet reacts painfully to the same treatment; doesn’t admit mistakes and blames others; manipulates vulnerabilities; doesn’t respect other people’s property and time; focuses on consequences rather than causes — constantly “putting out fires”; doesn’t listen and shows no empathy; is prone to gossip and negativity; seeks to create drama and conflict; resists feedback; communicates unclearly and ambiguously; controls excessively — micromanagement. Psychoanalysis sees one mechanism behind most of these points — projective identification that has become a way of life: the person can’t bear their own guilt, anxiety and chaos and unloads them onto those around them, which is why next to them someone is always guilty, anxious and indebted, while they themselves are surprisingly calm.
The list is not for sticking labels on people and not a diagnosis, but a basis for decisions about distance and the format of cooperation: with whom to make agreements and how to protect them; a reliable sign is that after talking to such a person you are, for some reason, busy with their problems rather than your own. The mirror image of the principles of agreements (module 1) and to mental hygiene; the thirtieth rule of effectiveness (module 8) directly suggests identifying such sources and keeping them at a distance.
Stages of the family life cycle (8)
The family is a developing organism, and each stage sets new tasks; the idea of the family life cycle was brought into psychology by Evelyn Duvall, who also counted eight stages. The monad: separation from the parental family, psychological autonomy and readiness for partnership. The dyad: the premarital period of getting to know each other and the marital one — everyday life, finances, a clash between the models of the two parental families (“in our family we did it this way”), the balance of closeness and distance, the boundaries of the couple. The triad: the first child; the roles of husband and wife are joined by the roles of father and mother, and all agreements are revised; the risk of “stabilizers” for the husband — escaping into work, hobbies, addictions; “Dad sets the separation”: “you’re not only her child, you’re mine too; you’re not only a mother, you’re also my wife” — what French psychoanalysis calls the function of the third: the father breaks up the fusion of mother and child and thereby gives both of them separateness. The second child: redistribution of attention and sibling jealousy. Primary school age: the family’s boundaries become permeable; the child must not be drawn into marital conflicts — Murray Bowen called this triangulation. Adolescence: rebellion, searching for oneself, gradually handing over freedom and responsibility. The empty-nest dyad: “what connects us besides the children?” The monad: one of the spouses passing away or leaving the relationship — new supports and new meanings.
Crises can be normative (expected, like the birth of a child or the children leaving home) and non-normative (illness, moving); at the junction of stages the system rebuilds itself, and this is natural. The key to getting through the stages is open discussion of feelings and revising agreements; rigid rules and roles get in the way of adaptation, and many couples come to a specialist not because something has broken, but because the stage has changed while the rules have stayed the same. Knowing the stages helps you not to mistake a normal transition for a catastrophe or for “we’ve fallen out of love.”
The family as a system (two laws)
A view of the family not as a sum of people but as a single organism, where a change in one element changes the whole system, and the problem of one member often expresses the distress of all: a child’s symptom frequently turns out to be the most honest message about the parents’ marriage. The course’s foundations: only something for which all the conditions are met can happen, and something for which they are met cannot fail to happen; true knowledge is knowledge of causes, as Francis Bacon said long ago; the fabric of our present is woven from the threads of the past. Two laws of the system’s life: the law of homeostasis — the drive to maintain stability, even dysfunctional stability, which is why it is so hard to change established rules and roles (family homeostasis was first described by Don Jackson, who noticed that as soon as a patient began to get better, someone in their family “fell ill”); the law of development — the system cannot help changing under the pressure of its members growing up and of external events. The conflict between the two laws is a source of tension and the engine of change.
A warning from the course: studying the family can stir up regret that your parents were not perfect; no one is perfect, demanding perfection is irrational, and to forgive means to change your attitude, not to forget. The systems view shifts the question from “who is to blame” to “how is the system organized and what holds it in place” — the same thing Freud did with the symptom when he stopped looking for someone to blame and began looking for the cause. It develops circular logic (module 2).
The “IF” expectation trap (three kinds)
The belief “when X happens, real life will begin”: “when he changes,” “if he stops drinking,” “once I lose weight,” “once I earn enough.” Life is put off, and your state is made dependent on an external condition, which, on top of that, keeps moving further away. The course distinguishes three kinds according to the roles of the triangle: the Persecutor’s IF — “if they are properly punished and put in their place, my problems will be over”; the Rescuer’s — “if I can help them and solve their problems, everything will work out, and I’ll feel needed”; the Victim’s — “if people help me, feel sorry for me, do something for me, that’s when I’ll be able to live.” Irvin Yalom called the third kind the belief in an ultimate rescuer — one of the main defenses against responsibility for one’s own life: as long as someone is supposed to come and save you, you don’t have to live your own life; in transactional analysis the same pattern is known as the “until” script, where joy is allowed only after a condition is met, and that condition never comes.
Waiting for changes from the other person means making the other person responsible for my emotional state. The way out: put your “IFs” into words and ask what will happen if they never come true, and how ready I am to bear that; shift your attention to your own needs on four levels; “I allow myself”; and the questions of inner worth — who am I, what am I, where am I, when am I, how do I show up, what for. A person who has waited for years for their husband to stop drinking discovers that they can get a good night’s sleep starting today, and that is where their own life begins. It echoes active expectations (module 3) and codependency (module 2).
“Three circles” (6 steps)
A way of explaining the value of your service without pressure — through joint exploration. “The best result my clients get after working with me is ___” (the center). To create this result, three essential components must be taken into account — three circles: A, B and C. Why these three components matter so much: if there is A and B but no C, then… “Allow me to tell you about the sequence of steps we follow.” To work on A we do 1, 2, 3; it takes T1, costs P1, and the result is such-and-such; and so on for each circle. “What questions do you have for me so that you can make the best decision for yourself?” The model works on what sales researchers confirmed long ago: a client believes not the seller’s arguments but their own understanding, and so instead of persuading them, you teach them — you draw a map on which they find their own place; in Berne’s language this is a contract made by Adult with Adult, where the price and the timeline are named before any expectations arise.
The model breaks a complex task into understandable parts and gives the client a map of the process: they see their own need and how the offer meets it; three circles drawn on a napkin are more persuasive than a presentation, because the client saw them appear. You are in the position of an expert partner, not a petitioner. It rests on the honest definition of sales (module 4) and RBT (module 5); it continues in the sales funnel (module 7).
Vulnerability buttons (26)
Levers that are pressed to influence a person, bypassing their awareness: benefit, greed and urgency; comfort, laziness and simplicity; vanity, appearance and social approval; the herd instinct and “social proof”; authority and trust; safety and fear of loss; scarcity and uniqueness (“today only”); femininity and masculinity; hope and nostalgia; curiosity; reciprocity and generosity (“a free gift”); “bet you can’t” and challenging yourself; consistency and commitment; a sense of control and power; fairness and honesty; guilt and shame; children and the parental instinct; relief from pain and getting rid of problems; health and longevity; novelty and progress; humor and positivity; confidentiality; fear of missing out on a benefit; emotional impact and “the call of the heart”; skipping ahead — a limited choice that presupposes agreement on the main point; guarantees and reliability. Robert Cialdini singled out six of them as universal laws of influence — reciprocity, consistency, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity — and showed that they work automatically, like a click that starts a recording. The buttons are not defects but our needs: you can only press on what is alive, and a person who needs nothing can be neither seduced nor intimidated.
Advertising and experienced manipulators work precisely through these buttons. Knowing your own is protection: when you feel a familiar twinge (you got fired up, you started to hurry, you felt awkward), you can stop and check the decision with a cool head; urgency is the most reliable sign that a button is being pressed, because real reasons to decide immediately are rare in life. A fuller map of what you met as the hook (module 1), myth-making (module 3) and the 38 tactics (module 4); how people strike not at weaknesses but at virtues — strengths as vulnerabilities (module 9).