The Family System & How It Shapes Who You Become

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Have you ever wondered why you fall into the same patterns in relationships? Why you might stay quiet in meetings despite having brilliant ideas? Or why you feel responsible for everyone else's emotions? The answer might lie in your family of origin.

Family systems theory reveals that we all play specific roles within our families that help maintain balance—roles we rarely choose consciously, especially as children. These early positions become deeply embedded in our self-concept and often dictate our behaviors decades later. In this illuminating mini-episode, we explore how visualizing your family as a sculpture can provide powerful insights about your perceived importance and function within your original family system.

If you were the "invisible" family member that nobody seemed to notice, you might continue keeping yourself small in professional settings. If you were responsible for managing family emotions, you might exhaust yourself as a perpetual caretaker in adulthood. These unconscious patterns become self-fulfilling prophecies that limit our potential and happiness. The good news? Once recognized, these patterns can be changed.

Be prepared, though—when you begin stepping out of your assigned role, the system will resist. Family members might push back against your new boundaries or behaviors because systems naturally seek stability. This resistance doesn't mean your growth is wrong; it's simply confirmation you're disrupting long-established patterns.

Take time to reflect on your position in your family sculpture. What role did you play? Which aspects still serve you, and which might you need to release? Understanding your family system becomes the foundation for authentic transformation. You don't need to remain the "small one in the corner" or the "responsible one holding everyone up." You can choose differently now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hi, welcome to a mini episode of no Shrinking Violets
.
Today I want to talk a littlebit about systems theory, and
that can sound veryorganizational, it can sound
very career related, but I wantto talk about systems in a
family.
So everything in the entireworld has a system.
We have an ecosystem, soeverything works together with

(00:23):
the pollinators and the soil andthe plants that grow.
There are ecosystems that arepeople ecosystems, so cities or
towns or commerce, all of thosethings.
But when we think about afamily, that is also a system.
And if you think about yourfamily of origin, the family you

(00:45):
grew up in, everyone in thatfamily had a role to play.
And sometimes I would have myclients describe to me if they
made a statue of their family.
What would that look like?
So think about that for aminute Now.
In family systems therapy, alot of times if the whole family

(01:06):
is there, the therapist willhave them actually create the
statue.
But I worked mostly and I workmostly with individuals, so I
would ask them to think about intheir mind if their family was
a sculpture.
What would that look like.
And sometimes they woulddescribe to me one member of the
family that was towering overthe others, or often someone and

(01:31):
many times it was them would bein the background.
They wouldn't even really bepart of the entire structure or
they would be very small, orsomeone else in the family would
be very small.
So if you think about that, itcan really give you a clue as to
what your role was in thatfamily.
So if you think about that andyou see yourself being very

(01:56):
small in that or maybe everyoneis looking the other way, no one
is looking at you that's a bigclue as to where you fit in that
system and often we take thatrole with us into the rest of
our lives.
So if you felt that in yourfamily you were not important,
then you might inadvertentlykeep yourself very small.

(02:21):
Or you may have a deep beliefthat you're not important and
that can really get in the wayof what you try to achieve in
your life.
Because if we have it's kind oflike sports psychology if we
have a deep belief that we'renot good at something or we're
not going to be able to navigatesomething, that holds us back,

(02:43):
whether we recognize it or not.
Maybe in that family structureyou did take up a lot of space
and that might be because youfelt like you had to hold
everyone else up, maybe you feltresponsible for the climate of
the family, and sometimes thathappens if there's someone in
the family who needs a lot ofcare, whether it's a physical

(03:05):
issue maybe it's a sibling thatacts out a lot, or maybe it's a
parent that has a mental healthissue or has an issue with
addiction that early familysystem where you fit in not only
in kind of like that staticfamily statue situation, but as

(03:27):
the family sort of moves if youthink of a system, everything
turns in a direction that it allfits together that doesn't mean
that you have to keep takingthat role in your life as a
whole.
So if you recognize that therole you played in your family,
that the role you played in yourfamily because we all have a

(03:49):
role we need to do to surviveand when we're young we learn
that we assume that role, wedon't choose it we recognize
later that we're repeating thepattern, maybe in our marriage
or maybe in our friendships orwith our children, and if it
feels like it's not serving you,then that is something where

(04:13):
you can work to change it.
You don't have to continue tofill that same position or be
that same kind of sort of cog inthe machine.
One thing I will say is that,especially in a family system,
if you choose to go forward andhave different behaviors or

(04:37):
different ways of interacting,the system is going to want you
to stay the way you were.
So you will get pushback, butthat doesn't mean it's wrong.
So take a little bit of timeand think about what did my
family look like, what was myposition in the makeup, or if it
would be a statue of yourfamily, and then think about in

(04:58):
the system, what role did youplay and what were the blessings
of that, and how might thatmaybe not serve you anymore?
And that can be a startingpoint to think about what change
you want to make.
Thanks for listening today.
Go out into the world and bethe amazing, resilient, vibrant
Violet that you are.