Using a Genogram to Understand Your Family’s Spiritual History

Have you ever wondered why you struggle with certain things? Why are you more prone to one sin rather than another? There may be many reasons, but a big one might have to do with your family history. You can call them generational sins, behavior-related medical conditions or ways of thinking and acting that you inherited or learned from your family of origin. Whatever their title, they get in the way of you growing more like Jesus.

One way to trace these issues is using a tool called a “genogram”. A genogram is like a family tree, but it uses specific symbols to trace more than just how one person is genetically related to another. It can be used to trace medical conditions, but also patterns of relational dysfunction, abuse or whatever other issues you want to trace.

I appreciate that it is so flexible and can be used to trace whatever is appropriate to helping you understand your family history. There are some of the basic symbols, but you also create your own to suit your needs.

The basic rules of genograms is that men are listed to the left and women to the right. When listing siblings, they’re put in birth order (regardless of gender) with the oldest to the left.

You can look here to see some of the other agreed upon basic rules:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genogram

So what does this have to do with our walks with God?

Patterns of behavior, unspoken beliefs and values, and ways of looking at things tend to be passed down and picked up by future generations, either purposefully or not. If we better understand what those things are, we can pay attention to whether they surface in our own lives. It gives us ideas of what lies or obstacles may be in our own lives, keeping us from living the abundant life that Jesus promised.

Let’s say you struggle with misusing alcohol and wonder why it’s such an issue with you. Or you find yourself tempted in that direction a lot and wonder why. You could use a genogram and trace alcoholism in your family back a couple of generations. You might find a disturbing trend. I’m not qualified to say if alcoholism is a medical disease, a learned behavior or some combination of both, (I tend to lean toward the combination theory) but if you see a strong family history of it, then you know to be careful.

What about relationships? With my genogram, I tracked strained or distant relationships between siblings in my own family. My brother and I were never close, my mother and her brother were never close, I don’t have strong relationships with very many in my extended family. To me, that was a clue that I have probably learned that distant extended family relationships are “normal”. My husband and I hope for better relationships between our own three children, so we have been very purposeful about encouraging them to stay close as they get older. We prioritize time together as a family and make sure that they treat each other well and spend time together.

You could track a history of unhealthy boundaries within families. My mother always complained that my grandmother kept “mothering” her far into her adult years. In turn, my mother tended to not let my brother suffer the consequences of his actions…

Broken relationships such as divorce or fractured sibling relationships or parent/child relationships could also prove enlightening. If there is a strong history of conflict, perhaps you need to look carefully at how you learned to handle conflict and arguments. You may have “inherited” unhealthy ways of dealing with those things.

Once you know what you’ve inherited, you can prayerfully work with the Holy Spirit to live closer to how God designed you to live.