**\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Relational > **🌱 Planted:** Tue 8 April 2025 --- When we make great progress on our [[Individuation]] journey and we're no longer being affected by dysfunctional relationships or [[Narcissistic Family|family systems]], we can sometimes believe that we're capable of returning to these environments with hope of achieving a different outcome, especially since we're armed with new insights, therapeutic tools, and a totally new level of self-awareness. What could go wrong... right? The thing is, even though we've grown and learnt new tools to keep ourselves safe, the dysfunctional environments we came from likely haven't changed. And because they haven't changed, it likely means they don't want to, don't have the capacity to, and perhaps never will. The sad truth is no matter how much we've changed and evolved, it's unlikely we'll be able to return to these environments with everything we've learned and get a different outcome or effect much (if any) positive change. The book [[The Narcissistic Family by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman & Robert M Pressman]] introduces the metaphor of "going back to the well" describes and captures this truth: > [!quote] > Let's say that there is a well in your backyard. It's very quaint looking: round, made of old stones, with a little roof on top, and a bucket that you can lower to draw up cool, sweet water. > > You have many fond childhood memories of going out to the well, maybe with a grandparent or sibling or parent, and they would help you to pull the bucket up. You felt important and proud that you could get the water. Then one day you discovered that the well had been poisoned. > > When you drank the water, it made you sick. You were very sad that you could never go to the well and get that good water again. You thought and thought about it, and you came up with an idea: I'll go back to the well, but I'll use a New Bucket! > > So you buy a bucket, get the water, drink it—and get sick. The next day you decide to try to get the water in your favorite mug, the one with the cows on it, you drink it, and you get sick. > > So you decide to try the water out of a plastic glass, through a straw—you still get sick. You try to drink the water standing on your head ... The patients get the point. What sucks the most about this is that it is born out of positive intentions, which is our capacity for growth, hope for healing and desires for resolution and reconciliation. But, because the underlying fundamentals of these dysfunctional systems haven't changed, our positive qualities can easily become vulnerabilities if we let our guard down and don't maintain healthy [[Boundaries]]. Yes, we're better equipped to tolerate these environments because we know what our triggers are and we know exactly what we're getting into, but the healing journey isn't meant to give us the ability to turn already poisoned water into un-poisoned water. Instead, it enables us to create, recognise and move toward healthier alternatives... to build new wells with clean and nourishing water and, to choose [[Authenticity Over Attachment]].