Censorship in the family.

What happens when there are censorships or obstacles in communication in the family?

Families are crossed by codes, mandates, and values, and they also have their unconscious aspects circulating. All this intervenes in the exchanges that take place between its members, and can eventually generate censorship towards the behavior or mode of expression of one or more of its members.

When this happens, there may be explicit censorship and disqualification, or there may also be a general imprint of distance and discomfort that prevents members from saying how they feel and communicating issues that would be important in the relationship.

Censorship towards others always implies a mode of censorship towards the person himself. If the parental couple (or one of them who imposes on the other) is very structured and intransigent, they will only accept a way that is similar to theirs, or the one that they consider correct, and everything that goes out of this line will be rejected and rejected. even perceived as threatening.

Censorship can be expressed directly or it can be transmitted subtly, through recurring jokes or comments that devalue the other or what is rejected about him. Censorship has a strong reach for the person who receives it and establishes a matrix of distance or insecurity when it comes to proposing or trusting something within the family.

Censorship implies criticism. People who are very self-critical, even if they are not aware of it, will also be strongly critical of the people around them. In the case of parents, they tend to project their own demands on their sons and daughters early.

The position of censorship can be observed even in families that apparently have a good relationship. But if you dig a little deeper you see that only what is potentially accepted is shared. There is a "correct way" of doing and feeling, and within the plane of that family, everything works under those parameters.

Activities, decisions, choices, tastes, emotions that are rejected in the family, begin by being left out. In some cases, members may experience them, but not share them. In others, they do not even allow themselves to experience what their family rejects, considerably skewing their life journey.

In some cases, however, disruption is possible, and censorship can be challenged or limited. To embark on the path of individuation, one must be able to betray that family structure in a certain sense. The more rigid it tends to cause both extremes, or flight and absolute rejection, or a lot of difficulty in opening up from it.

It is very important to keep in mind that censorship is related to power. In this case, exercising certain power at the intra-family level. The non-acceptance of the differences or choices of the members is related to a need for control and certain omnipotence, which bases all observations on its own principles, sometimes inherited in an inflexible way and without any revision.

This modality is very harmful as it complicates the individuation of the members, who feel evaluated, censored and limited in their exploratory needs. At the same time, censorship, thought of in this way, generates in the members the feeling of not being accepted as they are, with consequences for self-esteem.

 

 

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