by Randall S. Frederick

It turns out Tolstoy was accurate in his observations about the human condition. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes that “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Nailed it. Many families are unhappy, true enough. Most of them are unable to change this circumstance not because of singular deficiencies but because there are a range of factors that inhibit them from doing so.

I think this quote has been on my mind lately because of the disclosures coming out from Jada Pinkett-Smith about her marriage to actor Will Smith. Last year, Will Smith publicly punched comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars and then seemingly disappeared from Hollywood. Though Will publicly apologized to Rock, to his fans, and to Hollywood, his wife Jada used this experience to boost her audience for Red Table Talk and write a memoir detailing her love for Tupac Shakur, reveal that she and Will have been living separately for a number of years, that she has been unfaithful to her husband, and disclose a number of other eyebrow-raising claims. Will Smith briefly appeared on Jada’s book tour — surprising her, because they have been living apart for so long — to make strange statements of support even as he admitted he apparently still doesn’t know who Jada is or how she understands their relationship. It’s sad, in a way, but as CBS Mornings anchor Gayle King finally put it, after a certain point, “it’s none of my business.” Clearly, Jada should have discussed some of her revelations in counseling with her (titular) husband before revealing things to the world about her (loosely defined?) marriage with the father of her children.

Jared Diamond tries to pick up Tolstoy’s thread about family dysfunction in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. There, he argues that domesticated species do not “come in from the cold” because of any particular positive trait, but because of a lack of possible negative traits. He narrows it down to six examples, pointing to diet because to be a candidate for domestication, a species must be easy to feed. Finicky eaters make poor candidates. Non-finicky omnivores make the best candidates. Second, Diamond points to growth rate because an animal must grow fast enough to be economically feasible. Elephant farmers, for example, would have to wait perhaps twelve years for their herd to reach adult size. There is also the condition of captive breeding. A species must breed well in captivity. Species that having mating rituals prohibiting breeding in a farm-like environment make poor candidates for domestication. For example, Such rituals could include the need for privacy or long, protracted mating chases. Fourth, Some species are too ill-tempered to be good candidates for domestication. Farmers must not be at risk of life or injury every time they enter the animal pen. The zebra is of special note in the book, as it was recognized by local cultures and Europeans alike as extremely valuable and useful to domesticate, but it proved impossible to tame. Horses in Africa proved to be susceptible to disease and attack by a wide variety of animals, while the very characteristics that made the zebra hardy and survivable in the harsh environment of Africa also made it fiercely independent. Fifth, the tendency to panic. Species are genetically predisposed to react to danger in different ways. A species that immediately takes flight is a poor candidate for domestication. A species that freezes, or mingles with the herd for cover in the face of danger, is a good candidate. Deer in North America have proven almost impossible to domesticate and have difficulty breeding in captivity. In contrast, horses thrived from when they were re-introduced to North America in the sixteenth century. Finally, Diamond points to social structure. Lone, independent animals make poor candidates and, in contrast, a species that has a strong, well-defined social hierarchy is more likely to be domesticated. A species that can imprint on a human as the head of the hierarchy is best. Different social groups must also be tolerant of one another.

Since I originally worked my way through what Diamond wrote shortly after the release of his book, his ideas have worked their way into my mind and colored how I see relationships. On their face, none of these issues are immediately transferrable to marriage and family. But I’m me, so I began to examine many of the relational patterns of my friends in light of Diamond’s observations. Derivative as it may have been, I began to identify (and, I suppose worse, discuss) couples who I did not think would “make it.” From a distance, they were missing something and now I had a language to explain what that undefined (and occasionally indefinable) something was. When friends broke up, it made sense — despite how things may have appeared to other friends in our orbit. I began to recognize that greeting breakups with, “Oh thank God” and “Called it!” were not helpful. That doesn’t mean those thoughts went away, just that they didn’t need to be expressed or shared.

In time, and having harmed friends as a result of my unsolicited opinions, these ideas continued to be observed in other relationships. Specifically, my family. I’ve written about my family before, though never in full detail. Among my many mistakes is an optimism that one day we might be able to sit down and actually tell the truth about the abusive dynamics we share.

My family, like many families, remains unhappy. Our one connecting thread, the tissue that held us together for so long, is that we are unhappy in our unique way. Though, it turns out, we are not alone in this. Many unhealthy and dysfunctional families believe they are especially broken and live in a conspiracy of silence about the things they have experienced.

Many families are not unhappy, mind you. I am entirely committed to the idea that happiness is possible, and I’ve observed families that work through their particular kind of dysfunction. Most of the families I know, however, experience cycles of unhappiness. There are periods where things are not openly hostile or vacations where they remember ah yes, I suppose I do enjoy these people after all. Sometimes it happens in predictable ways, patterns and scripts, certain words or phrases that communicate things will be okay, we just need to ride it out. Other times, it needs to be worked at intentionally, negotiated, and then renegotiated again later. This is okay. And it’s a hope I still hold for my own family, that we can be honest with one another eventually. Happiness inside of a family is, I believe, quite possible. I have to believe this is possible, at least. But how they get to that point and how they manage to stay there is beyond me.

There. I’ve said it.

I cannot share from the abundance of a familial storehouse here. Like Tolstoy, I imagine I am able to comment on the types of unhappiness I see within families without detailing my own experiences overmuch. Like Diamond, I am able to observe examples and make associations, but the prescriptivist approach that a family should do these number of things or avoid those, I cannot comment on. Tolstoy was correct that happy families appear remarkably similar, but the unique ways that they might fall apart is less predictable.

Every family is unique and, in this way, plays a long game to achieve and maintain happiness, one where the rules change frequently and whether one moves up the ladder or down the chute is as much fortune as it is hard work. Here are a few examples.

The Perfect Family

In my family, unhappiness meant a conspiracy of silence. What happened inside my mother’s home was never to be discussed. My grandfather was a minister and, as my mother puts it, no one was allowed to have a life. Everything they did outside of the house, every movie they saw, and even every television show they admitted to watching, was filtered through the expectations of those who did not live with them.

These are families who are so worried about what others think that it consumes how they behave and how they present themselves. Reality tends to warp around them to meet the expectations of others, instead of living authentically. This is especially true in times of stress or grief. Makeup is applied perfectly, clothes are pressed, and the family members do their best to give the impression that they have it together. Letting on about their problems would be disastrous, and could jeopardize the family’s control.

Families like these do originate because they are perfect. They are built, piece by piece by every member because something terrible has happened. It is a collective defense of the family core. When my aunt — can we even call her that, when she died before my mother was even born? — died at the age of six years old after she was hit by a tractor-trailer, my grandmother had what would now be called a mental breakdown. The grief consumed her. She did not discuss it with anyone for three decades and what she revealed then was that one day, my grandfather had left. He was asked to come over by a parishioner. Other members of the church were waiting nearby and, my grandfather now gone, there was a knock at the door. She was told by well-intended church members that she “needed to get over it.” They waited until my grandfather was not at home and ganged up on my grandmother, reminding her that she had a responsibility to her family and to the local church. “After all,” they told her, “Kids died every day.” Her grief wasn’t special. After that day, my grandparents never spoke of the pain they held for another thirty years. Not even with one another.

I think about this all the time. I think about how these two days — the loss and the visit — irreversibly broke my family. It was the origin point, I believe, of a great deal of dysfunction in my family, the need to perform for others.

As a child, I came to believe that all families were like mine. Surely, there were other children watching as their mother and aunt got into fistfights, pulling one another’s hair, all because someone took an unflattering photo. Surely, every family held secrets. Every family was dysfunctional in their own way. Whenever I had playdates with other kids and observed their families, especially the seemingly perfect ones, I developed a sense of suspicion. Healthy families, I came to believe, were simply lying. Every family lied. Every family. I tried to respect their privacy.

As I got older, I began to notice this was not the case. I had been wrong. When I shared stories about my family, a few people nodded, but most were silent. The one who shared similar experiences often came to me privately, as though understanding me was a kind of private confession. Someone I dated in college expressed shock. “Your aunts were wrestling over a doll? Like, actually wrestling with one another, like children? And they were grown women?” Recognizing something was amiss, I tried to cover for them. Yeah, I said, People do weird things like that when they’re grieving. But I knew grieving had nothing to do with it.

My family fought when they were happy too. They made wild accusations, made connections that seemed to come out of nowhere, and denied. Denial was routine. So was gaslighting and manipulation. The stories were always changing. My aunt admitted she gave a child up for adoption one time and denied it thereafter. Later, yes, it happened, only to say years later that someone “imagined that” or “told a lie.”

My grandfather said he “despised” one of his daughters, and then said I misunderstood him. “I never said that.”

My aunts forgot my mother’s address, and her phone number, and her email, and her birthday whenever they wanted her to apologize for something she had said or done… or failed to say… or failed to have done… or imagined she said or imagined she had done. You get the picture. Unreliable narrators at every corner of the page.

The last time my aunt Frances “forgot” my mother’s address was when my grandfather died. Which was so strange because Frances stood in my mother’s apartment the week before. She said she would have called but she lost my mother’s phone number. But then again, she had called my mother the week before. My mother and I disappeared, it felt, whenever it was convenient for them. Then again, we disappeared whenever it was inconvenient too.

My uncle pulled a knife on my mother at Thanksgiving dinner one year. Everyone at the table that year had already denied it by Christmas. Placating, my grandfather insisted my mother “just forget that happened.”

If it never happened though, what was there to forget?

My aunt Janey beat her oldest daughter so badly that her mother-in-law called my grandparents four states away and told them outright, “If you don’t come get this girl, Janey is going to kill her. Kill her dead.” She meant it. Even if my cousin had stayed with her grandmother, the one making that call, Janey “would just come her and kill her. She needs to be far enough away that she’s safe.” Today, the only person alive who remembers this phonecall is my mother.

Of course, Janey denies this ever happened. She maintains that she never beat her daughter. Even though there are photos of my cousin with bruises, even though my cousin went to live with our grandparents, even though the trauma remains.

As the years continued to roll forward, I came to know how it came to be that my mother would “fly off the handle” whenever one of her sisters touched her shoulder, why she would begin screaming whenever they “forgot” something, and why my mother never wanted me left alone with them. It took me years to recognize many of the things I had come to accept as normal were tragically dysfunctional and profoundly abusive.

Siderail: The Identified Patient

Of course, this retelling is slanted. I’m sure my aunt Janey had a perfectly good excuse — or at least one that made sense to her — for beating her oldest daughter. My cousin may have “sassed” her mother. She may have “talked back.” Hell, she may have simply talked. That seemed to be enough at times. Speaking in their defense, I’m sure there are perfectly good, justifiable reasons why my family kept secrets — first from the members of the congregation, then their neighbors, and ultimately one another.

If we go along with the narrative that my aunts, plural, put forward then they abused my mother, “Jo”, because she deserved it. For them, my mother was the source of everything gone wrong. “Jo” became the scapegoat for all of the problems in the family, even those that predated her birth.

In families with an identified patient, all of the struggles and problems can be traced to one member of the family. There is always one person to blame. In therapy, an identified patient is the one who a family will come into therapy with, pointed fingers extended, saying, “We would be fine if only little Timmy would behave in school,” or “This all started when Chassidy started smoking pot.” It starts early, the scapegoating and blaming until — as could be expected — the identified patient feels they are damned when they do and damned when they don’t. Even when they’re not there, it’s their fault.

Was my aunt was abusive to her daughter? Well, yeah, but it was only because Jo wasn’t there to babysit her niece! (If we are even acknowledging that it happened at all.) Swing after swing, my aunt wasn’t responsible for beating her daughter. It was Jo! If Jo had been there, Janey would have hit Jo, not my cousin. Gosh! It’s all Jo’s fault, can’t you see that?

When another cousin, Frank, put a knife to his mother’s throat, ya know, he never would have done that if Jo was there. If Jo had been there, he would have done it to her instead. Not his mother. It was Jo’s fault, when you thought about it. Everyone hated Jo, so let’s not hold anyone else responsible. Not even the one holding the knife.

In a sense, I think my aunts could say this is what I am doing to them here. I’m blaming them for the division and animosity they brought about. From their perspective, I’m sure they believe they are victims whenever I tell the truth. After all, they were the victims when my mother told the truth too. Reality bends around them and, tellingly, they are the victims of my mother screaming as well as her silence. They were the victims of her fighting back whenever they pinched and poked, and they are the victims of her abandonment today for that same reason.

Notice that an identified patient is often the one who is creating the scene, who is speaking up and demanding the family come back to reality, to acknowledge the dysfunction. Dysfunction, though unhealthy, works for many families because at least everyone knows their role and scripts.

In family systems therapy, counselors and therapists are taught to locate the person who is at the source of the family narratives. It’s not always obvious. If mom is an alcoholic and the kids act like kids, she is the one who gets blamed. After all, if she was sober, she would be a better mother. The kids wouldn’t be acting up. They’re little angels when they are with their grandparents.

Then again, when the kids act up, we might also say they are “acting out” or responding to something happening inside the family dynamic. Namely, mom’s alcoholism. Again, mom is the problem because she is an alcoholic. In this narrative, as with the first, she is not taking responsibility for her actions or the actions of her children. Even here, in this second vantage, we’re still fitting a script that presupposes mom is the problem. Is the issue in either circumstance mom’s inactivity? Or the kids who actively doing something they shouldn’t? Further, what does that even mean, “acting up”? That feels like a relative term. Besides the fact that, let’s face it, kids do immature things. Immaturity is the most defining trait of childhood. So were they “acting up”, “acting out”, or just being kids? These are difficult questions to answer and it’s not always obvious.

Notice, we haven’t even made this a complicated issue like most issues are in families. We haven’t said anything about how Dad’s father died of alcoholism and this might be why he sought out a partner who was also an alcoholic, how Dad’s inattentiveness leads to Mom’s infidelity and how this might be why the kids are acting out, or perhaps it is actually Dad’s inattentiveness that compels the children to behave one way or another in an effort to get his attention.

We also haven’t addressed the consequences or repercussions, how this leads to Dad’s depression, Mom initiating a divorce, an agreement to joint custody, how the children are now using parents against one another and how this leads to more blame, more fighting, and on and on. We’ve only focused on how we label that original activity of the kids acting up or out.

Regardless of which label we choose and how we identify all the other moving parts, we can notice that the identified patient is the one everyone continues to blame for what is occurring inside the family. Who is right and wrong is secondary. The common thread is that everyone continues to point the finger at Mom because of her alcoholism.

Notice this, though: the identified patient is the one who often holds the family together. If their problems were solved, the family would be forced to develop a new pattern. Sadly, many families find it easier to support dysfunction, to blame one person, because at least there is safety and predictability in it. Unhealthy as the family may be, at least everyone knows their role in the tragedy.

The Island Family

Another type of family I noticed was the one that denied responsibility. It was a collective effort, the same as any other form of familial dysfunction. Everyone played a part in insisting there were no problems within the family, the problems were everyone else. No one understood. People were just judgemental. The Island Family has it together, but — look at them over there! — other people were the broken ones. Psht. Denying they have problems? Sounds like they’re the broken ones.

These types of families — at times, my family — have difficulty relating to others because they maintain they are alone in their experience. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? If you allow outside voices and experiences, you quickly have to confront things are not well inside this type of family. Things are, in fact, better over there and not at all good over here.

I first recognized this form of dysfunction when I began teaching middle school. One of my students had a tendency to space out. I don’t mean the way kids get distracted at times, or the way they become bored in class. What I mean is that one of my students would often sit alone at lunch and, even then, just… go somewhere else. He would be holding a sandwich and staring at the wall, his face moving but his eyes vacant. He did this in class too. At first, I was frustrated. But as one incident turned into two, then twenty, day after day, I finally had to pull him aside and ask where he was going, what he was thinking about, what was going on. He seemed confused, even denying that this was happening with good humor. He didn’t know what I meant, he said. We had a parent-teacher conference and his parents insisted the same thing. “Spacing out? No. That doesn’t happen.” It was observably false. Other students noticed it. Other teachers noticed it. Still, his parents insisted what I was presenting to them did. not. happen. I was imagining it. And then, perhaps around Halloween if I remember correctly, the student turned in his writing journal. We had been working through a poetry and personal essay module and I had been setting aside time for them to write in class. When this student turned in his journal, he had written about his mom sleeping in the loft above the garage after his dad’s ”friend” moved into the bedroom. He wrote about how his mother cried at night, how upsetting it was to him and his sister that his parents were getting a divorce. His mother had told them as much, but his father denied this. Clearly, the student was not okay and finally opened up, admitting it in tears to me when I asked him about what he had written. As we approached the holidays, I asked both parents to come in again to discuss their son spacing out — which, again, they said I was imagining along with other teachers and their son’s classmates — together with what the student had written. The dad continued to say that I was imagining it, that his son had never written those things. But there they were, in his son’s handwriting. Even then, “No. He never wrote those things.” The mother, meanwhile, sat there in silence looking at the floor until she too, like her son, began crying. Even when I asked if she was okay, she didn’t answer. Like my family, there was a collective silence. When someone broke that silence — like my student had, like the student’s mother had — the rest of the family rushed in to insist no, no. Nothing to see here. All in your imagination! Something must be wrong with you to even suggest there was a problem at all!

Despite everything, the dad maintained nothing was wrong.

Despite what their son had written, I was told I was imagining things.

Despite the dad arriving with his “friend” and that person — the friend — sitting outside in the hallway, even then, the Dad maintained that I was making things up. That there was no friend.

It was bizarre. And terribly sad.

In these types of families, there is an insistence that there are no problems. There can’t be. To admit to a problem would be to acknowledge something needed to be changed or fixed, because that something was broken. These families project any and all issues outside of their family unit, insisting that the “problem” is imagined or a misunderstanding on the part of the observer. This is especially true in religious families, for some reason. Outsiders are the ones with the problem, not anyone in these families. They think they are the ones who have it together, but they just can’t seem to relate to anyone else, especially outsiders.

Just Trying to Survive Families

My mother’s side of the family wasn’t alone in their dysfunction or even the experience of death. Many families say that one key family member’s death fractured their family. Losing a baby is hard for many couples. Some families survive, but limp thereafter. Many are irreversibly changed.

My father certainly experienced this. His mother died when he was five years old and, as his father put it, “once the bitch is dead” his father had “no use for the pups.” My father went to live with his grandmother while his sister went to live with an aunt. Growing up in poverty with a grandmother who barely spoke English, my father would pick up cans along the road for change and cleaned neighbors’ yards before learning to work as a butcher while still in middle school. The job allowed him to take expired meats and unwanted cuts home.

Some families experience the dysfunction of just trying to survive. Through circumstance and decision, they find themselves navigating a complex series of trade-offs that, event by event, are slowly warping their ability to cope.

You see, my father’s type of dysfunction began with his mother’s death. This was a profound loss to him and, I believe, shifted the course of his life. But this was only part of it. Living with his French-speaking grandmother was another shift. She barely spoke English and, a few years later when his grandfather died, made him “the man of the house” because his grandmother was unable to read bills and receipts. While he was doing his best to be responsible and while this was commendable, it also placed upon him a burden at a young age.

When Vietnam began, he enlisted rather than wait to be drafted because, as he put it, “It was a ticket out. I thought, you know, even if I died it would still be better than being alive with no way out. So yeah. I enlisted because at least I had a chance to survive over there instead of knowing for certain I would die here.”

The shift in who he was may have originated with his mother’s death, but what people often overlook are the decisions that follow, the skills we learn to survive, and how those also change us. My father learned to eat expired meat, for example. He has always navigated to the “on sale”, clearance, and expired sections in grocery stores because “those are just suggestions.” He learned to lie at an early age, both to explain his grandmother’s illiteracy as well as her inability to speak English. She “was busy” and couldn’t come to the door, she “had forgotten” to pay a bill instead of not being able to read it. But by the time he became an adult, he had learned to lie in other ways. He adapted. He survived. And he began to feel that some laws — beginning with expiration dates — were suggestions more than actual rules. Some people were particularly gullible, so it was okay to lie if you wanted something from them. When he met my mother, for instance, he told her he was studying to be a brain surgeon. She was so enamored with his charm that she didn’t notice the inconsistencies in his assurances.

Is it any wonder then that, when my parents divorced, she had come to believe he “lied about everything! All the time! Every fucking thing!” while he continued to say no, much of what he had said was true — he was just trying to survive. Even now, at holidays, I know my father well enough to know when he is lying and when he is bending the truth. I know that he speeds not because he is ignoring the law, but because speed limits to him as suggestions rather than laws. His charm was a survival skill, but his lies still have consequences.

The Ferris Wheel Family

Finally, there is the type of dysfunction where things are perpetually unreliable and inconsistent. I believe this is the type of dysfunction I experienced most, growing up. Often, these types of families experience (and bear the burden of) addiction, mental illness, and trauma. Lucky for me, I had the triple crown.

Families like these, we might imagine them like Ferris wheels. There are highs where you have perspective. There are lows where things are a little grounded. But there are also times when you get stuck, are unable to get your feet under you, uncertain of what comes next or when (if ever) it will happen. There is the whoosh of speed, but even then you may feel a little sick. It’s not necessarily, or always, easily seen as “bad” but there are, more than anything else, ups and downs and unpredictability. Eventually, you just want to get off the thing but find you are prevented — either chained in or left hanging high above with the perspective of great things in the distance but no way to get there and no predictable understanding of time on how to get there.

Does this seem like a great moment to go get cotton candy because there is no line? High above, you see there is no longer a line! But I assure you, by the time you get off, the line is full again. Are you stuck somewhere dangling, staring at the carriage across from you? This would be a great time to talk to your partner, but there you go again jolting forward too fast to communicate anything but the terror.

In dysfunctional families, you’ll notice an inability to confront challenges in a healthy way. Losses and addictions, secrets and traumas, each of these happen to families in time. But in families, we find ourselves unable to adequately or appropriately cope. Families of dysfunction are still functioning, mind you. Just not in a healthy or appropriate way. Even when the next generation comes along and tries to heal, there is often a great deal of misunderstanding because of how things were interpreted. Trying to explain can feel like a denial of someone’s experiences.

For example, “Mom didn’t abandon the family. She left the family because her sisters were abusive,” is hard to hear when your mother is one of the ones being called “abusive.” Still, Fern Schumer Chapman, an author on family, points out that it is possible for families to reconcile, even those who have become estranged because of the dysfunction.

When it comes to the reconciliation itself, there are no rules; there is no foolproof how-to guide. Change is difficult; few want to admit they were wrong, apologize, and take responsibility for the hurt and lost time. It’s wise to recognize, however, that without some discussion of the issues that drove the estrangement, there’s a good chance those very issues will re-emerge.

For those who hope to reconnect, the first step toward reconciling is examining your reasons for doing so at this time. Why do you want to reconcile now? Has something changed that leads you to think that relations will be better now and in the future? Are others in the family pressuring you to reconnect? Do you feel safe when you are near your estranged relative?

The next step is establishing expectations. What kind of relationship are you seeking? Do you want a limited connection that will allow you to spend special occasions together comfortably? Are you hoping your children can have some connection with the estranged relative? Are you hoping to communicate easily, whenever you want to? Are you looking for support from your estranged relative? Can you offer support to them?

The third step is making a plan. Discuss in advance whether past issues must be addressed. Determine what you will say and how you will say it. Maybe you and your family member can simply agree that you have different values, and neither of you will raise those issues. In these situations, focus on the future and determine how you can respect differences and sustain a healthy relationship.

Some people simply resume a relationship without discussing what drove them apart. Other estranged siblings fear that they’ll continue to harbor resentments if they never resolve the source of their split.

Whatever the original issue may have been, the illness often spreads and becomes more complicated over time. The death of a mother, left unaddressed, becomes emotional neglect becomes over-responsibility becomes hypervigilance becomes obsessive and controlling behaviors. In many instances, it is easier to return to what is familiar, the pain, rather than confront it. Even if it is unhealthy, the dysfunction begins to feel safe because it is familiar and predictable. As exciting as the Ferris wheels, toxicity, dysfunction, and the roller coasters of emotion may be, we must — absolutely must — acknowledge and confront our role in the drama.

Typically, these roles are consistent over time because once we identify with the role, we begin to make choices that align with that role. For instance, a “perfect” child may live into that role by avoiding threats to their role, refraining from sharing opinions or even developing them at all, especially in ways that might challenge their role as the “perfect” member of the family. This creates a false sense of self, avoiding conflict to the point of neglecting self-development. Or they will find a way to sufficiently hide their actual behavior to maintain that status, creating a dichotomous (fractured) sense of self where they do not avoid risky behaviors but instead develop a way to avoid detection of those behaviors. What becomes problematic is when we begin to deny who we really are to maintain these roles. The “problem” child may not be able to acknowledge their successes because they define themselves by the negative traits of their role; the “perfect” child, in contrast, will either deny their problems (to their detriment) or find themselves consumed with unrealistic expectations and perfectionism.

Common roles like these need to be continually re-examined.

The golden child is the one who can do no wrong. In adulthood, this role often manifests as perfectionism and a low sense of self. It is common for these people to become obsessively attached to others, as they learn to get their value and worth from external sources. As we’ve already mentioned, the delayed sense of self and the neglected identity become problematic over time.

The hero is the one who finds a way to “prove” to the rest of the world that the family is all right. They hold onto an idea like, “If little Jimmy is a football star, then our family can’t be that bad.” In adulthood, they are drawn to achievement and success and are prone to perfectionism and being overworked. In my family, this meant that my mother was able to excuse things occurring inside of our home because I was still making good grades… even though I was missing several days of school. I know of another member of my family who works long hours to prove they are a good provider for their family, despite other members of their home having issues with alcohol.

The one who diffuses conflict in the family is the family’s mascot. Skilled with humor and other methods of deflection, they are able to draw attention toward themselves and away from where it could turn volatile. Many well-known comedians and actors are self-proclaimed “mascots” and this role develops regardless of birth order. An older sibling may become the mascot to distract from the behavior of their siblings, protecting them in a sense. It is just as likely that the youngest sibling may grow into this role.

The identified patient. I don’t want to linger here since I’ve already mentioned this role previously, but the person who is frequently the family’s “reason” for having problems or perhaps their reason for coming to therapy is the identified patient. You should notice that therapists — as outsiders to the issues within the family dynamic — are often the one most able to identify this role in a family dynamic because, while the family thinks this person is the reason for them coming to therapy, clinicians know that the true issues run much deeper than one person. When the person is a child, caregivers often excuse problematic behavior as immature, still able to be “fixed,” but, by adulthood, if they haven’t already, this person often becomes the family’s “black sheep.”

The scapegoat (or “the black sheep”). Unlike the identified patient who receives all the blame while remaining inside the family dynamic, the scapegoat/black sheep is often the person who has chosen to leave the family, or at least “break away.” This may mean they establish boundaries and only occasionally interact with the other members of the family in a controlled and defined way, or it may mean that they have “abandoned” the family for good. Very much like a scapegoat, their presence is not required to receive the blame. Unlike the hero who remains highly invested and corrals members back to one another internally while defending the family externally, we might see the scapegoat as the one who has “given up” and values transparency, even if that means they have to leave the family dynamic to get it. While their “abandonment” of the family appears harmful or malicious, intentionally causing harm to the family dynamic by exposing them to criticism, it may also mean that this individual is doing what is necessary to be able to live, to breathe, to seek out a more life-giving dynamic. The scapegoat/black sheep is often the most honest of the family members because they are the one who “broke away.” In my mother’s experience, being the honest one does not always come with perks. The rest of the family, uncomfortable with her honesty, emotionally withheld and became distant. This is, it turns out, quite typical of unhealthy family dynamics. This is only compounded by the question of who distanced themselves first or “kicked out” someone first. Did my mother give up on her family or did they give up on her first? In the end, it doesn’t really matter. What followed was an irreparable rift within the family. Family members often distance themselves from this member, the black sheep, especially if they are unhealed and still in the denial phase.*

*It is worth pointing out that what one family considers “normal” might make them the black sheep in another, so “transparency” and “abandonment” does not necessarily make one a scapegoat. Each family is — as I have been saying since the start — unique in their own form of dysfunction and dysfunctionality.

In other families, there are roles like the lost child, the one just trying to survive unnoticed, because getting noticed means getting in trouble or being in the limelight. In adulthood, this person will maintain that feeling of being lost and unseen, often having low self-esteem or self-worth. They will struggle to make decisions and constantly have feelings of invisibility or not being “seen.” I count myself as someone who is still recovering from a role like this in my own family. My childhood feels like a redacted file at times, with large sections of my life and the experiences of young adulthood simply “blacked out” because I was trying to survive.

Still, in other families, there will be an enabler or caretaker, the person who maintains the look or appearance of normalcy within the family without trying to hide the dysfunction as is the case with “the hero.” Rather, the enabler/caretaker is a sort of martyr in supporting and affirming of the unhealthy behavior of family members who might have a substance use disorder, untreated mental illness, or personality disorder. In adulthood, this role often manifests into more of the same. They continue trying to “fix” others and have an overall strong sense of responsibility and ownership over the problems of others.

Finally, there is the parentified child who will take on the role of the other spouse in the absence of a healthy caretaker relationship. Sometimes this role is also the caretaker, but not always. In adulthood, this person is frequently drawn to relationships with a lot of dysfunction and emotionally unavailable partners. They struggle with boundaries and base their self-worth on their partner’s (or others’) approval. In previous decades, this role and the dynamics in which the role exists were called by other names like “emotional incest” because, again, the role is very much like a spouse in the absence of a health caretaker relationship. In divorced families, you often see this dynamic appearing in older children who hear the rash statements of the wounded parent whose partner has left them/the family. The older child assumes the role of a second parent, which (to be clear) is not their role and should not be their role. This individual assumes responsibility for their family at an early age and it can be very difficult to break from this dynamic and establish a healthier one because of how entangled things can become at such a formative age.

Though my wife and I had very different experiences as children, these roles are pretty consistent in dysfunctional families. I grew up poor while she grew up safely wealthy; as the youngest of three, she had siblings while I was an only child until I was fourteen. She had very little responsibility, while I had a considerable amount of it. Her extended family met regularly, while mine kept their distance and, when they would get together, did so with a great deal of confrontation. Nevertheless, wealth and a larger family did not insulate her — either of us — from dysfunction or familiar roles. Dysfunction appears in many families, in other words, without regard for circumstance.

My wife, for instance, is the “golden child” who can do no wrong. Notice that statement. She can do no wrong. This can be understood two ways: She does things well and this has earned her this label. However, it also means she must maintain an unrealistic standard. She is not allowed to do anything wrong. When she made mistakes as a child, her siblings used this to taunt her, compounding even little mistakes with the reminder “I thought you were perfect? Mom said you were but you’ve failed!” In her teens and twenties, she became aware that she did not have a sense of self. She had lived under the expectations of others for so long that she had an underdeveloped sense of self. As an adult, she is still trying to navigate the unrealistic expectations placed upon her, to determine who she is and what she wants, and manage this together with an awareness of her humanity.

My father, in contrast, was the golden child in the eyes of his grandmother. After his mother died, his mother’s mother took him into her home and raised him. Because he was the child of her only daughter, he could do nothing wrong. On a few occasions, my father has explained, “I could look directly into my grandmother’s eyes and tell her something that she knew — she knew! — was a lie and she believed me. I could see it in her eyes, that instead of recognizing I was lying, she would change her own understanding of things. If I said it, that was it.” But when he enlisted and went to Vietnam, he found that this skill was limited to his grandmother. When the status went away as he entered a new social group, he discovered the other side of being a golden child, namely that he too had an underdeveloped sense of self. Approaching his eighties, he has come to understand that many of his relationships over the years have been codependent; his sense of worth and meaning is often defined by and derived from others. While this role felt “golden” to him when he was younger, he has come to realize in the decades since his grandmother died that he grew up with a diminished sense of self. His role was defined by his grandmother, and after her passing, he had to find a new identity. This was particularly challenging while in his forties when so much of life just keeps coming at you.

Which is to say, there is no defined, singular way these roles appear. Rather, there are markers and indicators of behavior within different types of family dysfunctionality.

If you find yourself in any of these roles or using some of the typical excuses to deny your traumatic history, know that this is typical. Truly. It is something you were programmed to do to survive your experiences, and it makes a great deal of sense when you begin to see that you are not alone. There are patterns to what probably felt (and may even continue to feel) like chaos; these patterns are recognizable when you begin to speak to other individuals who are healing from their own unique experiences.

What is so promising is recognizing that our roles can change and merge over time, and a person can inhabit more than one role in their lifetime. Families can have different roles at certain times. Growth and development both personally and within the family is possible.

Let me emphasize that again: Growth and development — both personally/individually and within the family/ collectively — is possible. It is. Through self-awareness and self-reflection, we can work to change the dysfunctional patterns that brought us into adulthood.