How Families Shape Us (for Better, for Worse, and for Therapy)

Families are our original blueprint. They teach us how to express love, handle conflict, set boundaries or not and instead ignore them and hope passive aggression does the trick. Family is the first place we learn who we are in relation to other people.

From early on, many of us are assigned invisible roles in a family. You might recognize some of these:

• The Responsible One – This person is the family’s honorary adult. They keep everything running smoothly, but no one asks how they're doing.

• The Entertainer – This person lightens the mood to keep the peace, but hides hurt behind humor and hopes laughter is enough to stay loved.

• The Scapegoat – They are a person blamed for problems they didn’t create. They are often the most honest person in the family and are punished for it.

• The Caretaker – They are the person who feels everyone’s feelings and comforts others. They grow up meeting others’ needs while quietly burying their own.

• The Invisible One – This person is never the squeaky wheel. They learned early that being unnoticed felt safer than being unmet.

  
  

In unhealthy family dynamics, these roles can get very rigid. They become survival strategies! These roles create coping mechanisms to stay safe, get needs met, or avoid distress. Family members may get rewarded for playing their part, even when it’s quietly wrecking their nervous system. With that said, not all family dynamics are dysfunctional.

In more functional family dynamics, roles may still somewhat exist, but they are very flexible. Mistakes are allowed. Repair is possible. You can evolve without being accused of causing problems by changing. These families model what it looks like to love without keeping score, to disagree without it causing war, and you can set a boundary without retaliation, and your therapist is ready on standby for the aftermath.

There is an in-between, families can fall into as well. In these families, there is rarely all good or all bad occurring. They’re complex systems of love, connection, and awkward group texts. As we become adults, we get the terrifying freedom of deciding what things we have learned from our family we want to keep and what we wish to unlearn.

So, where does therapy come in?

Going to therapy can be a space to untangle the emotional spaghetti of your upbringing and figure out what’s yours, what’s theirs, and what’s been marinating in generational guilt. Therapy is where we get to press pause and ask: Why do I feel like I’m 12 again every time I visit home again?

Whether you’re learning how to say no without three days of anxiety, grieving the parent you never really had, or just trying to exist outside your assigned family role, therapy can help. It’s not about blaming; it’s about understanding. You get to make new choices, build new patterns, and maybe even become the person your younger self truly needed. A bonus? There is no casserole required.

Ashley Bell, LMFT

*Ethically Co-Created with ChatGPT