What Are the Structures, Rules, and Roles in Your Family, and Are They Serving You?
Consider what roles each family member plays within your family, and whether everyone is satisfied with the current arrangement.
By Vanessa Chin, MS AMFT
Every family has a code…rules to live by. What were and are yours?
Despite culture, structure or classification, the social groups that we belong to, we often call them families, subscribe to a certain code.
Our earliest ancestors relied on emotional connection within the group for survival. As a result, we continue to find security within our modern families, creating a bond that sets the stage for the family code.
Family code is not the list of household rules on the chalkboard, that forbid jumping on the furniture and include a color coded chore-chart. The family code is something more subtle and, consequently, much more powerful. Family code is made up of implicit rules, resulting in the roles that individual family members take on.
Here are some examples of implicit family rules:
Our family is always right/better
No one upsets *this family member*
We do not talk about _.
It is okay to lie if _.
_ is not real, if we do not acknowledge it
Certain emotions are bad
Certain things are selfish/weak and that is bad
It is not okay to have certain needs
Be happy/positive/etc all of the time
Do not bother others with your problems
These rules are typically not discussed openly, yet each member is subconsciously aware of them.
The rules are often not noticed as something significant because they are intertwined with our thoughts and beliefs. Rules often seem obligatory and indisputable, because they were taught through the family system during critical stages of brain development, specifically infancy through adolescence.
Not all family rules are bad, in fact, all family rules lie somewhere on a spectrum from helpful to harmful ones.
It is often the ways in which we internalize and respond to family rules that make our experience of them positive or negative. Rules become harmful when an extreme need to uphold the rule elevates it above the members’ wellbeing.
Rules function to maintain balance within a family, making the family strong against changes or challenges.
Members experience this balance as security because it keeps the family in a familiar place. We tend to equate familiarity with safety, so familiar situations often remain unchallenged.
Members within a family abide by the rules and, yet, another subconscious process occurs: each person addresses their need to fit within the family.
To prove that we belong, we take on roles to uphold the rules.
You can learn more about these roles in THIS previous blog post.
Some common roles are:
The hero
The helper
The good/bad one
The scapegoat
The funny one
There may be a different role or a combination of roles that you tend to adopt in your family.
We take on these roles because they ultimately serve the individual by preserving the balance of the family. These roles are initially tied to our survival by securing our purpose and place in the group. But as we grow and experience life outside of our family, we may recognize how our role limits or hurts us.
The code is often challenged when a force pushes the family out of the familiar and into the unknown.
This could be a change in the family structure, from gaining or losing a member, the occurrence of an internal event, something concerning a member, or the occurrence of an external event, something from outside of the group.
Each member will recognize the code being challenged in different ways and at different rates.
An example of this is when a child leaves home to attend college. The college student begins to recognize the family code because of differences in the ways that their roommates and friends live, while the family remaining at home tries to maintain balance as the role that the college student once held has changed.
As we begin to identify our family code, we may want to challenge it, but lack the experience and ability. Each family is different to navigate, therefore, there is no universal method. Below are some tips to consider when attempting to implement change to your family code. You can also plan out how to have a conversation with your family to change the code by reading here.
Considerations for challenging your family code:
1. Increase Personal Awareness of Your Family Code
Recognize the rules and roles that make up your code. Assess how those rules and roles affect you. Tune into your reactions to the code: how you feel, how you think, how you act and how they affect your relationships.
2. Be the Change You Want to See
Lead by challenging the code for yourself. Explore what living outside your family code looks like in a safe setting. If your code is to “always say yes” and be the people-pleaser, this could look like exercising saying, “no” with friends or at work.
Use “I” statements when sharing your experiences relating to the code. Approach conversations with confidence in the validity of your experience without assuming other members’ experience.
3. Manage Expectations
When you plan to challenge the code within your family, it is important to manage expectations.
When the code is challenged, the family moves away from safe, familiar territory, into the unknown. The unknown can be confusing, disorienting and scary for all of the family members, including the individual desiring change.
Assess for safety. Your family may be especially fragile or volatile. Consider if it may be helpful to involve a professional, like a therapist. Seek out a therapist that will conduct family therapy.
Plan for imperfection. Everyone stumbles when learning a new skill, so be ready for progress to look different than expected.
There is a chance that the family will not be up to the challenge to change. Recognize that you are not responsible for making the family change, and practice setting boundaries.
4. Bring Gentleness and Understanding
The process of challenging the family code will look different for each family member. It is important to extend gentleness and understanding towards yourself as you navigate new territory. You may experience becoming emotionally overwhelmed, not knowing what to do, saying something unhelpful, or just struggling with the process.
Practice validating your experience and give yourself permission to accept yourself as you are.
Recognizing, challenging and working towards the change of family code may not be easy, but it is often an essential step of personal growth.
Begin by increasing thoughtfulness around the rules and roles within your family, and see where that awareness leads.
Vanessa Chin works as an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist with California Counseling & Therapy serving clients in-person in Santa Barbara and virtually throughout California.
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