In our romantic relationships, we often find ourselves repeating or attempting to repair the interactional patterns established in our family of origin. According to Bowen's family systems theory, ...

The patterns we carry into adulthood often have their roots in the roles we played in our childhood families. These roles developed as intelligent survival strategies — ways to navigate our family’s ...

Every family develops its own unique emotional ecosystem, and within that system, children naturally take on different roles to help the family function and to secure their own place within it. While ...

Imagine navigating through a forest, where each tree represents a family, and its roots represent its members that span back many generations. The roots, entwined and deep, hold the shared experiences ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. In the land of movies and TV shows, dysfunctional families are often in the spotlight where their drama is so exaggerated, that it ...

Every family has traditions, good or bad, that are passed down over the years. Some of those customs are helpful to the new generations, while others repeat the same dysfunction over and over. A toxic ...

A family member repeatedly poking fun at another member's appearance under the cover of humor, while everyone else chuckles, is a familiar scene that says more than we realize. In the moment, it feels ...

Negative parenting patterns rarely start with the current generation. They are usually hand-me-downs from stressed, overwhelmed adults who were once stressed, overwhelmed kids. The promise of breaking ...

Every family develops its own unique emotional ecosystem, and within that system, children naturally take on different roles to help the family function and to secure their own place within it. While ...