Typecasting, Candice Bergen and Family Relationships
I'm experiencing some challenges in my relationship with Candice
Bergen.
I recently started watching _Boston Legal_ on Sunday nights,
because Candice Bergen had joined the cast. (She joined the cast
so that more people like me would start watching _Boston Legal_
on Sunday nights.) Like most Candice Bergen fans, I mainly
associate her with her character on _Murphy Brown:_ tough,
smart, funny, sharp, no-punches-pulled, slightly over-the-top,
and definitely not someone you want to have angry with you. Even
the _Vogue_ editor she played for a few episodes of _Sex and the
City_ fit this mold.
While I'm certainly enjoying watching her on _Boston Legal,_
it's been an interesting challenge for me, because the character
she plays, Shirley Schmidt, is different from Murphy Brown. I
expected her to be playing a larger-than-life version of her
usually type. Instead, we're shown a very different Candice
Bergen, and I'm noticing that even after three episodes, I'm
still having to adjust my expectations.
Shirley Schmidt does embody all of the strong qualities that
Candice Bergen's characters are famous for: brilliant,
no-nonsense, sharp and canny. But she's also much softer and
more compassionate than I expect from her characters. This new
character is still Candice Bergen, but she's a far more subtle
and nuanced Candice Bergen than I expected.
I realized this after the first episode. And yet, I still expect
her to behave in the way she did in Murphy Brown. I expect her
confrontation scenes to be bigger and louder and broader, and I
don't expect to see her character as a layered and multi-faceted
person.
This is creating a certain amount of strain on my relationship
with Candice Bergen. I'm having to alter my expectations of how
she behaves, and who she appears to be as a person.
Sadly, I don't actually have a personal relationship with
Candice Bergen. I simply have the same relationship to her that
millions of other television fans do. But even in this one-sided
relationship, I still have safety and validation needs, and this
change in her character is disrupting those needs. The fact that
she has evolved, that she is playing a different character
requires me to adjust my expectations and redefine my
relationship with her, and this makes me feel less safe in our
relationship.
(At this point, in the interest of avoiding a restraining order,
let me state that I am only using Candice Bergen as an
illustration.)
In Hollywood, actors are, often arbitrarily, assigned a "type."
We see an actor in a certain role, and identify her with that
role. The stronger the identification, the harder it is for us
to accept her in different roles. Actors constantly struggle
against "typecasting," because once they're seen as a certain
"type," they find it more difficult to be cast in roles that
differ from this "type."
Jim Carrey, for example, is a fine dramatic actor; however, it's
taken him many years (and a number of baby steps) to be able to
be accepted in more serious roles, and audiences still relate to
him best when he's being a clown.
But typecasting doesn't just happen in Hollywood. We also
encounter typecasting in our family relationships.
For most of us, we first experience typecasting because we're
the ones being typecast. Our families have an uncanny knack for
not recognizing how much we've evolved and matured as
individuals. No matter what our accomplishments, no matter how
much we've achieved, our parents and siblings invariably
remember us as we were in our most memorable (and usually our
least favorite) role from our childhood.
When we spend time with our families as adults, we struggle
against this typecasting. We try, in increasingly less subtle
ways, to get our families to recognize and relate to us for who
we are, rather than for who we were. It's an ongoing
struggle--one that we seem to lose more often than we win,
reverting to type and playing out our well-established roles in
the family drama long after we believe we've outgrown them.
What we rarely notice while we're feeling typecast ourselves, is
that we're making the same typecasting assumptions about our
family members. We're so concerned that our family members
notice how much we've changed and evolved that we don't take the
time to notice how our family members have also grown.
Since the Universal Law of Relationships states that our
partners in relationships are our mirrors, (and therefore it's
never about the other person), if we want our families to accept
us for who we are now, all we need to do is to learn to accept
them for who they are now. When we change how we relate to our
families, the way that they relate to us will also change.
It's quite simple, actually. Unfortunately, simple isn't the
same thing as easy. Just as it's taking me time to adjust my
expectations of Candice Bergen and accept her in her new role,
it takes us (and our families) time to adjust our expectations
and begin to relate to each other as adults.
One essential thing to recognize is that anytime the nature and
dynamic of a relationship changes--especially a long-standing
relationship such as a family relationship--we're dealing with
the question of safety needs.
Let me explain. One of the fundamental things that our egos need
in order for us to feel safe is to know what to expect. On the
most fundamental level, "safe" is the same thing as "familiar."
We don't have to like what we expect in order to feel safe; we
simply have to _experience_ what we expect.
Consider this: Our family relationships are some of the most
important (and frequently difficult) relationships in our lives.
We value safety in these relationships tremendously, because
safety often seems to be in such short supply. No matter how
well defended we may feel in the rest of our lives, our family
members always know where (and how) we're the most vulnerable.
We instinctively cling to what's familiar (and therefore safe)
in our family relationships, and this results in typecasting.
On a conscious level we may want to embrace our family members
and recognize their evolution as individuals. On an unconscious
level, however, the fact that our family members are no longer
playing their familiar and safe roles in the family drama is
very threatening. We (and our family members) unconsciously
cling to the familiar family dynamic (no matter how
dysfunctional it may be), and try to impose it on our family
members-even as we attempt to escape it ourselves.
There may be some very deep and dark fears at the root of this.
As long as we stick with the original family dynamic, we're
still a family. We're bound by blood and we are required to stay
in relationship with each other. Parents are required to raise
and protect children; children are required to live with their
parents and abide by their rules; siblings are required to put
up with each other, or at the very least not fight in a moving
vehicle.
Once we become adults, however, this dynamic no longer applies.
The thought that our family members are no longer required to be
in relationship with us--and worse, that they could choose to
reject or abandon us--is fundamentally terrifying.
This is not necessarily a universal fear, of course. But I
invite you to consider that we do derive a certain amount of
comfort--and safety--from the knowledge that there are some
relationships that will always be a part of our lives.
So, how do we overcome typecasting in our family relationships?
The same way that we change any belief or pattern in our lives:
through AWARENESS, OWNERSHIP and CHOICE.
First, we become AWARE that our expectations of our family
members may be out of date. Next, we OWN and take responsibility
for our expectations, and for our safety needs. We are
responsible for maintaining the balance in our own safety
accounts. It is not the responsibility of our family members to
help us to feel safe by living up to our expectations of them.
Finally, we CHOOSE to relate to our family members as they are
now, rather than as they were then.
When our family members have difficulties in accepting us for
who we are now, remember that they're feeling unsafe. Who we are
is unfamiliar and threatening to them. Once we're AWARE that
we're involved in a safety issue, we can OWN the situation.
Owning this particular situation means recognizing that we're
not responsible for the fact that our family members feel
unsafe. We are, however, responsible for making sure that their
lack of safety does not result in _us_ feeling unsafe as well.
Finally, we can CHOOSE to be gentle with our families, helping
them get to know who we are, not making them wrong for relating
to us as we were, and ultimately allowing them to feel safe in
our relationship once more.
I'm gradually overcoming my expectations in my relationship with
Candice Bergen, and as a result, our relationship has improved
tremendously. Just imagine how powerful overcoming typecasting
can be in your family relationships!