The Greatest Secret to Having Healthy Family Relationships

Do you want to have healthy family relationships? Perhaps you struggle with getting along with difficult people in your life.

If you are like me, you may have even shaken your fist at God in anger because you’ve suffered through years of painful interaction with those you love never quite understanding how to relate in a healthy manner.

Furthermore, you may be confused about how to maintain peace among family members. You know you love them, you just don’t know how to get along with them.

In this post, I am going to share how to have a healthy family relationship with those you love. Most of all, how to start unlocking the mystery of family pain and resolve your inner turmoil through forgiveness.

RELATED: How to Move On From Family Estrangement: 5 Ways to Heal Your Heart

What Is a Healthy Family Relationship?

The definition of a healthy family relationship is one in which all the members of the family feel loved, safe, and supported. Furthermore, they are able to resolve conflict in a healthy way.

If you have been reading some of my other posts, you may already know I was estranged from my family for seven years. Sadly, my family was not able to resolve conflict in a way that was loving or healthy all the time.

RELATED: When Family Members Stop Speaking: 3 Things You Lose

None of us liked the way we interacted with each other, but we didn’t know how to do things differently. We didn’t have the right tools to navigate a healthy family relationship.

There were too many unresolved hurts, expectations, and bitterness after many years of conflict. Over time, it became a part of our family narrative.

The most puzzling piece to this puzzle was that we were all Christians when it happened. In fact, my family had been in Christian ministry for over 30 years. We knew better.

Perhaps you know what I am talking about. I can’t tell you how many Christians I have talked to that are either barely speaking to their family members or there is a full-blown estrangement.

Sadly, many people don’t know what a healthy family relationship even looks like, Christian or not.

Get your FREE CONFLICT RESOLUTION PDF to help you navigate difficult conversations with your spouse (or family members).

Why Healthy Family Relationships Are Important

Healthy family relationships are important because it is the foundation of all other relationships. We learn how to build trust in the home with good modeling and then slowly add new relationships outside the home as we get older.

If we don’t learn what to do in the home first, it makes it much harder to navigate conflict with other people in our adult lives. We go into the world with coping skills like whining, pouting, hiding, screaming, lying, unforgiveness, or tantrums because they worked well in our home.

Our parents may have not had time to curb that character trait in us, or perhaps they did the same thing thinking it was a healthy coping mechanism. Whatever the reason, it was a learned behavior repeated from one generation to another.

Your bad behavior was part of the family system and deemed “normal” within the confines of your home.

Many of us are shocked when we hit the real world and realize those childhood coping skills (pouting, silent treatment, wallowing, lashing out in anger, etc.) no longer work with a spouse, boss, friend, coworker, or another family member. All of a sudden, your family system has turned on you.

What you thought was normal, as it turns out, is actually unhealthy. Perhaps you are profoundly confused and shocked because you don’t know what to do now.

It’s as if you found out that the grass is really green all these years when you thought it was purple.

Breaking Unhealthy Relationship Patterns

Sadly, breaking unhealthy relationship patterns is difficult because you don’t even realize what you are doing is wrong. Instead, you think everyone else is wrong.

Everyone else needs to get on board and agree the grass is purple. This will restore your balance if you force others to conform to your thinking.

In reality, you have neuropathways that have been entrenched since childhood that tell you to do things in a certain way, but the wiring is off. You are now blindly dysfunctional and are not willing to change behaviors because you don’t know how to unless you go back and rewire.

The truth is that if you don’t go back and understand the bad relationship patterns in your family,  the rest of your relationships will probably be difficult.

If you want to understand how to have healthy family relationships, then you are going to have to learn how to break an unhealthy cycle in your life. The goal is to find out where you went off track and then learn how to do it right.

RElATED: Why Does God Allow Suffering? 5 Good Reasons He Allows Pain In Our Lives

Do you have a family rift or break? Check out my book Estranged for real help! Purchase your ebook or paperback on Amazon or at your favorite digital store. 

Breaking Toxic Relationship Cycles

Breaking toxic relationship cycles requires you to go back to your childhood and deal with painful situations that happened to you. You may even have a feeling of powerlessness come over you when you think about it.

But if you want to find healing, this is where you start. As you think through the situations, you need to write down how you really felt and what you wished you could have done if you had control over the situation. You may need to process it with a friend, counselor, or pastor.

And then you need to start forgiving every single thing that happened to you. It may not have been your fault, but you still need to forgive your family member.

If you want to have healthy family relationships, this is the door you start with. I am not saying this is the only thing you do, but it is where your heart has to go so you can break your own unhealthy relationship patterns.

What you need to realize is that unforgiveness is the thread that passes toxic behavior from one generation to the next.

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What is True Forgiveness?

What is true forgiveness according to the Bible? True forgiveness means consciously and deliberately releasing another person from an offense. It is unconditional and many times undeserved.

God requires us to do it even if we never reconcile.

Forgiveness is not saying what the other person did is okay. It simply takes the person off your hook and puts him on God’s hook. It is releasing the other person completely and fully to God and not seeking revenge. Even if we have to seek justice for a crime committed, we still forgive.

When we don’t forgive, we break our relationship with God because it is sin. In fact, this is the sin that perpetuates us to repeat what was done to us and create a generational curse (Exodus 34:7).

You will actually break the curse when you forgive your family members.

If you want to know how to have a healthy family relationship, forgive. You may not be able to reconcile immediately with that family member, but it will release you to start behaving in a healthy manner. (You may need counseling if the behavior is entrenched in a pattern for many years.)

This seems counterintuitive, but it works. If you need a breakthrough in your family, start by forgiving.

RELATED: 5 Burning Reasons Why You Need to Forgive Those Who Hurt You

You can check out my book if you would like more help on walking through your family pain. There is a whole chapter on forgiveness.

This book will give you my story plus actionable steps to help you get along with difficult people in your family. And heal your own wounded heart in the process.

What do you do to have a healthy family relationship?

Got Family Problems? There is Help and Hope!

Creating Family Memories Book

Get Creating Family Memories. This book will help you manage your family in a way that allows more time to be intentional with your kids.  It includes a schedule too. You can get it at your favorite bookstore.

Join the group Christian Family Living on Facebook

Continue the conversation on Facebook and join the group Christian Family Living. This is a place for Christian women to freely talk about parenting, marriage, faith, family, and culture. Being a Christian is hard! Let’s do it together. Most of all, a sense of humor is required. Got memes? Bring it on!

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There are tips on building a Christian home, parenting, marriage, family issues, and faith. Learn how to get back to the things that matter most in your life and the life of your family. It’s time for a revival!