Feelings For Family | Mixed Media Project

For my current mixed media project, I wanted to convey the concept of feelings, especially familial.

I believe that how feelings and emotions among family members are handled while young can determine healthy attitudes, feelings, emotions, and most importantly, emotional intelligence in their adulthood. But the family harmony network isn't automatic. It's a complex system of interactions between members.

It's called family dynamics.

Two types of dynamics can flourish. Either the family is functional or dysfunctional. Certain behaviors are at play in both types of dymanics.

In a functional family, Psychology Today maintains that parents strive to create a loving and healthy environment in which each member feels safe and respected. The article also states that a positive home requires parents set and uphold rules, but not resort to overly rigid regulation of any one person's behavior. I would add excessive punishment to that statement as well.

Also, in a healthy household, slights and misbehaviors are readily addressed, and boundaries are clear and consistent, all of which help avoid disharmony in the longer term.¹ While this goal sounds simple enough in theory, application an be difficult to achieve.

I truly believe that a functional family can exist, although as stated above, it's extremely difficult to sometimes achieve and maintain. I grew up in a household where one parent regularly threatened, "if you don't behave, then I'll tell the other parent when that person gets home."

Now, this was a tactic that certainly worked, especially if the other parent was stricter and would hand out a more severe punishment. That was the environment in my home. However, it was the waiting that was agony. I would rather have received whatever punishment I deserved immediately and gotten it over with so that I could return to my activities, careful not to repeat the transgression.

However, my siblings were a bit more rambunctious, throwing caution to the wind and return to whatever activity that landed them in trouble. Just more careful the next time not to get caught.

When I dwell on a functional family, I think of fair boundaries. The limits that each family must adhere to should be reasonable and agreeable as well as achievable. If each family member can contribute to the well-being of the family by giving and receiving positive, constructive advice, then that member will truly feel a part of the cohesive unit and appreciated for their worth and role in the family.

And the thread that is woven throughout the family unit determines family relationships. Whenever a group has a close family relationship, each person can thrive with positive attitudes amid a positive atmosphere. They learn lessons of closeness and

However, in a dysfunctional family unit, the emotional turmoil is often described as being more common than one imagines and can originate from many unhealthy habits. Hurt feelings among members that are not resolved timely and amicably can be a huge problem. If left to linger, family quarrels can flare up at a moment's notice. Grudges can result with estrangement occurring for lengthy period of time. These separations can have lasting effects, sometimes following members into old age.

Also, the articles reminds us that when one or more family members contend with a problem such as alcoholism, drug, or other abuses, the entire household is impacted. Feelings and emotions are overlooked or devalued. In a dysfunctional home, there is usually no sense of unity or empathy. If no boundaries are set, members can be highly critical or abusive of each other, both mentally or physically, of one another sometimes without any heightened concern for consequences.¹

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What type of dynamics run through your family?

To create a theme of a functional family, the images I wanted to include in my design spoke to me of closeness. Since I love nature and the natural environment, I try to add animals, flowers, or landscape in my designs whenever possible. Since discovering stable diffusion program, one I use often is StarryAI. The moon image I designed with a vivid text description produced a unique version of a dark moon with a unique animal inside.

Finally, I included two of my pure fractals I created in the advanced fractal rendering program, Apophysis 7X. These fractals add a touch of mystery with a positive vibe.

^{Flower and portrait background ~ Father and daughter ~ Butterly love image ~ Black birds - Contributed to the #LIL by @onyechi ~ Night Cafe - stable diffusion image titled "Blue Moon With Shadows - Image 4" ~ Pure Fractal titled "Apple Of My Pink Eye" ~ Pure Fractal titled "Dark Moon"}

Once the images were assembled, and I was satisfied they would fit my theme, I uploaded them into Canva, my design program. To blend the different type images. I began with a blank, white canvas. I then added layers of elements in accordance with my upgraded Annual Pro Membership that includes tools to remove backgrounds, resize, filter, duplicate, and reposition items as required.

I share with you my completed design:

Thanks for taking the time to view my post. I hope you like my mixed media project.