BLACK SHEEP: When you’re the only one in your family who’s ready to heal

By Natashia Saunders, MFT Trainee

 

Let’s face it, breaking harmful generational patterns in your family is hard. It feels like they might break you before you break them. The boundaries you’re setting with family—even the ones you announce nicely—are offending people. But you don’t want to divorce your family. Or do you? Well, let’s be honest, you’ve been thinking about it, but you keep coming back to your bottom line: They’re my family. 

 

But something needs to give, right? To change. Your family can change for the better, can’t they?

 

Wouldn’t life and family gatherings be so much easier if everyone just respected each other instead of yelling or fighting, or the opposite—avoidance; or the patterns of blame and verbal abuse—because some people can’t take responsibility—just stopped? Then there are those family members who try to make you feel guilty—do make you feel guilty for trying to break old family patterns and relate in healthier ways. And there’s the manipulation, unwillingness to acknowledge the pain they’ve caused in the past, and the intrusions on your personal space and your relationships. How about when they don’t show up for you? Or maybe they’ve always been there when you really needed them, which is why you can’t leave them now? How about those adults who want you to mother them? Or be like a father to them, even though you’re the daughter or the sister or brother or non-binary other? 

 

There might be drug use (current or past), alcoholism, eating disorders, or the childhood trauma no one wants to talk about. I could go on… 

 

There are great things about your family, too. Sure, you think, there’s no such thing as a “normal family”, but your kind of “abnormal” family is a little extreme. They sometimes feel like a burden. But also, you think, “My family is still my family.” And unlike some people who can walk away from theirs, you won’t quit them. Nor should you, unless you want to. 

 

You’re not alone.

 

All of the scenarios I’ve described above are things I’ve heard in the therapy room or experienced. What is also true is that family drama will seem to get worse before it gets better after you’ve taken the first steps to begin to heal. You’ll begin to recognize patterns that harm, see the history of hurt in your own life, what caused those hurtful episodes, how they still affect everything you do—your job, your friendships, your hobbies. And you begin to see your triggers and your own image reflected back at you, and it’s likely that you won’t like everything you see. It’s why you went to therapy in the first place, sought out that self-help, regretted vomiting your family problems on a friend who didn’t understand that you still love your family and want to be around them, and you’re still asking that age-old question: What’s wrong with me?

 

It’s not just you, friend. It’s all of us. And all of us have an opportunity to move from what’s called “low insight” of self to “high insight”, where we know ourselves better and can choose to change the things we no longer want to negatively affect our lives. Beginning the healing process can sometimes make us feel out of control. Like seeing a train coming fast and we’re in slow motion and we can’t move from the track and we can’t stop the train, which is also us. 

 

It can get better.

 

And when it does… just when you think you’ve finally got yourself under control—you’ve found your zen, your new self, your new job, new school, new relationship, new place, have limited your substance use—you go and visit your family, and whack! you’re suddenly back at square one and your first thought is, “I never want to see them again!”

 

But then you remember, you’re Black, or Asian, or Latino, or Catholic or Hindi or Italian—or whichever background you’ve grown up in—where family is family for life, and you can’t leave. I’ve added labels to the last sentence intentionally, to let you know that some of what you struggle with is cultural too, and for a lot of people. The wrong therapist or friend might tell you your family is “enmeshed” so you should bail, or give you a speech about boundaries without also preparing you for the impact of consequences of those boundaries. But the right help may ask what you want to do. Or ask some version of, “Tell me about a moment in time when all of your family were together and things were good like you’d want it… even if that moment only lasted for ten minutes?” 

 

Therapy and other safe relationships can be a place to help you recognize your role in your family system because, yes, you absolutely play a part in what’s happening in your family, whether you chose the role or not. You can decide if you want to keep up your performance, and you can also consider the consequences if you don’t. The consequences are often the place where you become (or already are) the “Black Sheep.”

 

But even as a Black Sheep, you’re not helpless. You can use that role to better your family in ways they never thought imaginable. “We’ve always been like this,” they’ll tell you. But just because you’ve visited a place, doesn’t mean you have to move in. 

 

So, why did your family stay? Is there safety and protection in the way they’ve chosen to exist? Something else? What are the alternatives? 

 

Understanding your role as a Black Sheep, or feeling like one, is just the beginning. You don’t have to quit your family or feel guilty for putting up with them. It’s all a process, albeit a hard one… if you choose