We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Family Roles: Which Part Did YOU Play?

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

428. Family Roles: Which Part Did YOU Play?  Amanda, Abby, and Glennon take a close look at the roles we’re assigned—or take on—within our families of origin. They unpack how these childhood roles stick with us, shape who we become, and continue to influence our relationships and choices long into adulthood. -The six different types of family roles and how to identify yours;  -The gifts and pitfalls of each role; and  -The signs of an unhealthy family system. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome, love bugs, to We Can Do Hard Things. Coming to you, coming to your ear balls are me, Glennon Doyle, my sister, Amanda Doyle, and Abby Wambach. Okay? Are you going to continue to mock me? I wish PodsBuddy could see Abby, who like a seven-year-old who needs attention is mouthing every word that I say right now. Okay, stop. Yeah, she's mimicking, she's trying to make,

actually that's a perfect segue. Today. Like a seven year old desperate for attention rolls right on in full speed to our topic today. Which is something we have not yet discussed, which is strange that we haven't because we are obsessed with figuring out why we are all the way we are.

When we ask this question, why am I the way that I am? There are lo so many answers, but one idea is exploring the family roles that we all played as children and then continue into our adulthood. So this topic is so important, so exciting, so depressing. Sister.

Illuminating, illuminating is what it is. To me, I'm gonna say how I think about this in a couple sentences, and then you're gonna take over and give us what it actually is, okay? My feeling is that at some point we wake up in our like, I don't know, maybe some people do it earlier in their 20s or 30s, most of the people I know in our 40s, like come to, I don't know, it's like life has been

so chaotic and then at some point in our 40s, it slows down enough to be like, wait, why am I the way I am? And we discover that when we were born, it's kind of like families just issue us scripts and roles, right? It's like the whole family is a play, a production. And everybody in the family is at some point issued a character that they are going to be required for the rest of their life to carry out, to stick to the script of, to go on the hero's journey of,

that may or may not have anything to do with our actual personality, but seems to be important that we stick to so that the whole production can run from beginning to end. And then at some point we realize, wait, I was just given that script and that character. I wonder how I can step outside of that role and be a full person. You've done a lot of research, Amanda, on family roles, et cetera.

Does that sound like a good way to think about it? It sounds very true to the situation. The very big picture is that there are six traditional roles in families. I'm gonna mention them real quick then we're gonna go back and figure out how the heck we got here and then go into each of them so you can try to identify yourself like which one were you and what are the gifts of that? What are the ways that that might be showing up in ways that don't work for you now? How you bring that into your relationships

and into all dynamics outside of your family, even today. So the first one is called, lots of different people call them different things. So I'm just gonna say the various names in case you've heard them. The first one is called the hero or the perfect one. Sometimes also called the golden child, but that's a little bit more nuanced and different. The second one is called the scapegoat or the black sheep or the rebel. The third one is the rescuer or caretaker or martyr, sometimes called the enabler. The fourth one is the

lost child or the easy one. The fifth one is the mascot or the comedian or the class clown. And the sixth one is the identified patient or the struggling one. So these are the six. It is also very possible that you play multiple roles. There's like often overlap between the two depending on the dynamic of the family. But we'll go back to like how the heck these even became identified.

But Virginia Satir, she was known as the godmother of family therapy. She was working with in addicted families where one of the parents was an alcoholic. And she was working with these families and realized, this is strange. These personas keep showing up in each of these dynamics. And that's weird that there's always like a perfect one, always a scapegoat. And so she identified this and then many, many researchers since then have verified this. It started out again in alcoholic families. But what I think is fascinating is that I haven't really understood until now like why. When you're talking about the scripts, like, why are we giving scripts?

What is happening here? It just seems very arbitrary, but it's not. And Dr. Alexandra Solomon, she describes this amazingly. She has this podcast called Reimagining Love. And you should go listen to that one on Family Roles, because it really helped me understand. So basically it's in any situation of dysfunction or high stress. So that means that there's someone like the parents in the family have, there's patterns of trauma that came down,

there is substance abuse, there's some kind of neglect, there's some like continuous stressors, if it's financial or if it's like strife within the marriage or divorce or relocation, whatever it is, there is stress. Is that all families or no? I mean, I don't know a family that doesn't have one of those things. But I suppose it's theoretically possible, but it isn't just as originally thought

to be in addict families. Right. And the Pressmans, they're a couple and they describe an unhealthy family system as any system that operates around meeting the parents' needs rather than the children's. Which, just let that settle into your bodies. An unhealthy family system is one that operates around meeting the parents' needs rather than the children's. And when you start to think about it that way, the scripts make more sense. And what Dr. Solomon

talks about is in a perfect world where there is not a lot of stress, where there is a lot of health and room for everyone to be, health equals flexibility. People can be who they are. They can be as complex as they are. They can be high-performing and super silly and super lazy and we can all be as complex as we each are. But that's only able to be tolerated where flexibility is tolerated and flexibility can only be tolerated where flexibility is tolerated. And flexibility can only be tolerated where there is health. Where there is stress, stress equals a lack of flexibility. Stress requires rigidity.

Rigidity is a fear-based response that says, things have to be like this, because this is the only way we can handle how stressful this is. It needs to be predictable. People can only be one thing. You can't be as complex as you are. You must be this one thing.

Ooh. So it's kind of like what you say, Glennon, about the belonging. It's sort of akin to when you're saying like, okay, as a kid, I'd rather my parents be a good guy and I be a bad guy. Gabor Mate says that kids are willing I'd rather my parents be a good guy and I be a bad guy. Gabor Mate says that kids are willing to sacrifice

their authenticity for belonging. So if it means that in order to have a place in this family, I can only be this one thing, that's the way I'm gonna show up. Okay, so stop there for a second. So the parent who's stressed or the child of an alcoholic or having financial trouble or whatever. It's some kind of dysregulating thing that that person has not yet learned how to regulate themselves,

how to take care of their own needs in such a way that they can be there completely for a fully human child. They are just in like survival mode, which so many of us are, because I'm seeing myself in a lot of what you're saying. The strategy for survival of the parent is to make each child one dimensional so that they can deal. It's to reduce complexity. Like think about it, and even in basic stressful situations on the very micro, if we're super stressed, we need to reduce complexity. We need to make this as simple as possible. It is an attempt to create stability

through making things less complex. So if I am so stressed and I feel like I need to cling to, I'm drowning in the stress, I need things to be stable. And in order to make them stable, I need them to be not complicated. And that is my coping strategy. And so I need you child to be not complicated. And even more than that,

there is positionality in roles, right? Like it isn't arbitrary like, because theoretically if you need things to not be complex, why aren't we passing out the perfect one script to all of our kids? Right. It doesn't work that way. Each one of these roles is performing a very real function in the family. And if one role is already taken, that function is already complete. We need another one. And so it's fascinating when you look at each one of these roles and figure out how each one of these

is managing and deflecting and reducing the overall stress of the family. Wow, okay. And it's all deflecting is an important word, right? Yes. Because that is, first of all, that's fascinating. I've never thought of it that way. I always thought of it.

And is this a different way of saying what you're saying? I always thought of it as like any parent who is stressed, hurting, unhealed, but loves their kids to death, wants to not have their dysfunction be the story of the family. And whether that's conscious or subconscious, they want to not be a player on the stage that other people can look at and analyze

because they want to be a good parent. They want to be perfect. So they become the director, the omnipresent God, and they just assign roles to everybody else. So that if there's any dysfunction in the family or stress or whatever, everybody can point to each other instead of looking at the parent. Is it assigned by the parent or do the children assign? That's what I was just going to say.

I don't know the answer to that. I think that there's a lot of like maybe poetry in this. There is some data that suggests that birth order has something to do with what you would tend to be. But I think it probably besides that, so like the oldest one is often the perfect one. The youngest one is often the perfect one. The youngest one is often the easy one. So there is something about having a lot of attention on you or not a lot of attention on you that makes you more likely to be in these roles.

That said, they're often, again, they're in response to other roles. So if I am naturally a little bit of a, I have to call bullshit when I see it and therefore I am the rebel, my next sibling is not gonna be a rebel. My next sibling is going to be the peacemaker or the rescuer because we need to balance out this rebel.

So it's about balance. to be the peacemaker or the rescuer because we need to balance out this rebel. So it's about balance. I think it's way more complicated than just like the parent is like, gotta get a lost child around here, you'll be it. Right. Jacob's, it isn't assigned, but it's reinforced by the rest of the unit for sure.

Okay, so we sense what is needed, in other words. Yes. But the metaphor still holds enough. Like there's a stage, your family's a stage, there's a bunch of scripts laying out. But it's more like an ad lib. We're like, this play is fucked. Okay? We're going on stage, there's an audience and I can tell this thing is going to be a disaster.

And so you're acting like this. And so I can tell what this play needs is this. And we just show up on the stage and start performing it. Then we become, what do they call it? When actors get like stuck in, they're like a character forever. We become typecast. What does it cost? Yeah, typecast. That's we are typecast. And it's a very real thing. Because if you know how they say like, your family is your love school, like if you learn that that is the way you function in a unit, it's much more and Dr. Solomon talks about this too, that role that you played,

and that is still such a core part of you, tells you who you think you are, who you're supposed to be, who you're allowed to be and not allowed to be. Yes! What makes you valuable, and what is possible for you, and what makes you lovable, right?

So if you are the perfect one and you're only as good as your last accomplishment, you will not let your people see your imperfections because that is how you were valued. That is how you were loved, right? So it's, we're taking this everywhere with us and I don't think we realize it. No, and also you can't, that's why all of us, I mean, pod squatters, it's like if you've ever figured out that you're only living a one dimension because of the family role you played, say you're in therapy, say you're whatever, I don't know, and then you start to play with other parts of your personality. So if you are the lost one,

but you start to play with agency and showing up or whatever, it is like walking on stage and going completely off script. And everybody in your family just like stares at you. Like, wait, what? That's not how we do it. It changes the entire play in a way that is so incredibly

uncomfortable and painful that you almost just go ahead and pick your script back up. The belonging becomes more important, survival mode speaking, than the expression of full humanity. When I got sober, I mean, and I know we're gonna go into our own stuff, but like, when I got sober, I had, and I'm sure a lot of people have this,

but I think in terms of my family, the changing of that role that I went through, I think was probably more traumatic than any other part of my sobriety is the role, the shifting of the role and just living in it and just being like, this is who I am now. I am a different, I have a boundary, you know? And like that was so against the way that I learned

to operate inside of my family system. Well, when you think about it, all of this makes sense from a 64,000 foot view, because it's like, if our bodies are trying to always through jacked up means or not get back to homeostasis and some kind of balance. And so we use really unhealthy ways to do that and healthy ways to do that. It's the same thing for every system and every ecosystem. So if your family is trying desperately to get to homeostasis, is trying desperately to get to a place of internal balance so you can survive.

Then of course you're going to figure out what the thing is that leads to more balance, whether it's healthy or not. And when you start to behave differently, that family is now out of balance. Yep. Totally. And then on a personal level,

I think what's really interesting about this, thinking just about sobriety and stuff, throughout my life, I felt like I had so much more complexity than I was allowed to have in my family system. And so one of the things, and Glenn and I have been talking about this actually recently, not being understood. And part of being understood is showing yourself. But I don't think that I was allowed in so many ways to show the full complexity of who I was.

So whether it was my gayness or being really good at something, all of this stuff had so much to do with in some ways, there were symptoms of what became my addictions. So it's like all all of this is like, makes such perfect sense as to like, why we think maybe we are more than maybe we are, and we are bigger than we have been shown

throughout our life in these like little small, very specific roles. And what is possible and for you to show of yourself and whether there's even an appetite in the world to receive it. So like Dr. Solomon says that this part of this and this broke my fucking heart. But when she says one of the reasons that we do this in addition to the balance, in addition to everything is because it just doesn't make sense to keep asking for things you can't receive. Oof, oof.

So if you keep trying to be seen in all of your complexity, if you keep trying to be seen, Abbey, with having all of this, and it keeps not being received, not being seen, Abby, with having all of this, and it keeps not being received, not being seen, then we are humans adapt to that and we stop asking to be seen in that. And we start showing the one thing that will be seen over and over and over. And then what do you think happens the first time that you're looking to fall in love or you're looking for a deep friendship, you're going to show the thing that you've been told over and over is palatable

and seeable. And what you're not going to do is try to show that other stuff that you've already been told nobody's interested in. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. nofrills.ca. I'm Kristen Press. And I'm Tobin Heath. We're World Cup winners, Olympians, and the hosts of the Recap Show. Every week we sit down with the icons, disruptors, and game changers on the field and beyond it to talk victories, heartbreaks, and everything in between.

We've built a space where athletes, change makers, and people creating the future of women's sports can show up and show off So the thing that you have been assigned, the role that you've been assigned, and we can all just admit that we all do this. Like it's not something that bad families do. We do it. If you've ever thought about your siblings or your children as the blank one, the blank one, or they always do this or they never do this. Like all of those things are the artistic one, the Whatever you think, like people are not like that. People are all the things,

but we decide it's so incredibly difficult to live with the complexity of human beings and let everybody be themselves that we categorize them just to sort. just to sort things. And what are the good parts of those roles, the adaptive parts of those roles later become cages, just 100% of the time, because nobody is one thing. And so all of the things that we did to keep that role, to stay in character, that we have to do in our family of origin, we have to not do in order to be the full expressions of ourselves.

It's a setup. It's so hard. And then if we choose one or the other, if we only keep our family role out in the world, we live half a life. And if we bring our full self to our family of origin, it creates an almost incredibly difficult discomfort. So there's not an easy answer here, but I do wonder, I want wanna talk about each one a little bit

so everybody can find themselves. And then my question for this is because I can tell you eventually when we get to what I believe my role is and what the kind of, I know this is a masculine way of thinking about life, but the hero's journey is for each of them because I bet there is one because I have been on mine. And I know what it is.

And that's what I think is so fascinating is that there is a major, so there's a role that it plays in the family, the function that you're providing to the family, and the way then in order to fill that function, the way you show up in the world, in the family and then in the world. And the way that that has brought a lot of awesome things to your life. Like that is a skillset. You have nailed that role and now you can do X, Y and Z. And then also this is the cost of that to you.

It's a specific set of things that each person needs to work on as a result of it. Like, a very, whether it's a shame or worthiness or whatever, every single one of those roles has a specific thing that like, you have to look over here because that part is underdeveloped. This part is crazy overdeveloped. Cool. So it's, it's like a, it's kind of a guidepost of where you might want to get curious about your work. Oh, this is fun.

That's amazing. That's great. Okay. So do you want to go through them and see if pod squatters can find themselves in these things and then let's figure out what is underdeveloped and overdeveloped in each thing? Yes. Perfect. And again, this is a lot from Virginia Satir, from Dr. Alexander Solomon.

There's like so much of this that's pulled from a bunch of, this is kind of a grouping of a lot of this research. But okay, so the first one that's often talked about is the hero. So this is, you know, if you and your family are the responsible one, you would have gotten good grades, you're super self-disciplined.

You believe that if you are perfect enough, the family problems will go away. You believe that if you are a good kid, then it will prove to the rest of the world that the family's all right. And that is the function. If Amy is the captain of the basketball team and killing it, how can we be messed up? If Johnny is the valedictorian, how could our family

be bad? We are doing great. So you're developing this to be helpful to the system. You're trying to take the stress away. You're trying to be helpful. You're trying to be competent. to be helpful to the system. You're trying to take the stress away. You're trying to be helpful. You're trying to be competent. As a result of that, you feel like then and now you always have to be the leader, which means you don't get to be vulnerable because you always have to be strong, because you always have to be making sure that everybody looks good. Everybody's taken care of. making sure that everybody looks good, everybody's taken care of. The challenge for you is, so okay, function is we must be okay, right?

Is that the function for everybody? We are okay as a family? Is that everybody's function? No. Oh, okay. Balance is, everybody's function is balance, reduction of stress, but the specific to the hero is look at them therefore we must be okay.

Ah, got it. Okay, we're proving we're like the trophy that proves that we are a good functioning group. So the gifts of that you are now you're a highly competent person, you are driven, you appear to be nailing it, right? But you have a lot of problems. You expect just as much from everyone else as you do of yourself. So you are very, very critical and self-driven and never satisfied with yourself. Therefore you are often very critical and never satisfied with others.

You look to others for approval of your own self-worth. So you are constantly trying to prove your worthiness because your worthiness is the thing that everything depended on. Wow. So much pressure. Yeah. So you're controlling your judgmental and you are secretly very judgmental of yourself also and full of self-doubt. That must be very hard relationally, like in a romantic relationship. In a romantic relationship, you are very controlling and very judgmental and don't understand why

people aren't trying to be perfect. As hard as you are. Interesting. Okay. So also, obviously I am that. Okay, well we weren't gonna say anything. We were not, I don't know. I don't know. Not trying to cast you, but okay, got it.

Yeah, they were hard at making their spouses perfect since they're used to perfecting everything about themselves and very frustrated when their spouse is not interested in that endeavor. Yeah, and just let the pod squad know the three of us took these little quizzes so that we're going to let you guys know throughout this episode which one we are specifically. Yes, that's also on Alexandra Solomon's website. So go Dr. Alexander Solomon slash roles and it's it's good. it's like two minutes to get it. So if you're a hero, you have to like get off. Well, the big picture for all of these, okay? Big picture for all of these things as a first step

that applies to all of them is you have to differentiate, which means you have to start practicing being a person outside of your family of origin. That is not the place you start. No. That is the last place. Final frontier. Yes. So you need to get outside, or you have to get off stage. Right. And you've got to start acting in other places, start behaving in other places so that you can experience differentiation where you are not required to be that thing. And then each person has their specific thing.

So if you're a hero, you have to get out of the family because the family keeps putting you on the pedestal, you have to get off the pedestal. You need to address your shame in order to improve your self-worth because your self-worth right now is on your accomplishments and you need to figure out how to have it in yourself outside of that. And an important thing I'm hearing you say is,

when you think to yourself, I have to learn how to be my full self. So I'll start with my family because those are the people that love me the most. Absolutely not. Like you do not start with your family. You start with like a mailman. The family is the final frontier

where you have practiced it, you have whatever, and then you come back. That makes sense to me. Because family of origin is where the roles are most concretized. Yeah. What they say about that is that we don't often, once we're inside of our families, we don't even know where we begin or end and where the play starts, right? To use your analogy. And so Dr. Lisa Firestone says that people take on their parent or caretakers point of

view as their own at such an early stage in life, it's possible that a feeling that they have for what seems like forever or an attitude they've long held isn't even their real feeling or attitude. Oh my god. It's the freaking, it's the, I'm afraid I've never even met myself. It's the borrowing other people's feelings. It's the, yes, not even knowing where you, everybody gets that.

Not even knowing where you start and another person starts. Yeah. Okay, so we've got the hero. Let's go through the other ones. Okay, so that was the hero. The next one is the scapegoat, also called the black sheep or the rebel. This person

is the one who is different. They are the most honest of the family members. It is not like a lovely position to be in though by being the honest one because they're the ones who are basically like calling bullshit, but nobody else is affirming them. Right. They're like doing it in a lonely way. They're often seen as angry, antagonistic, cynical. This kind of bridges a little bit with the identified patient or the struggling one, which we'll get back to.

There's like a little bit of crossover with this, but this person needs the most improvement. They're like the kind of the disappointing one. Whereas the hero is trying to like cover up the family's strife by insisting that everything's fine. And the mascot, which we'll talk about later, is trying to distract everyone from the tension. The black sheep or the scapegoat is the person who is externalizing the family's problems, is like speaking up about it, acting out, and the family does not wanna hear it. Okay, that one is like the check engine light. It's like beep, beep, beep, beep,

but nobody else wants the check engine light on because they don't want anybody to know that there's a problem. I feel like maybe the check engine light is the, I don't know, maybe the identified patient. Maybe this is like the speed race car going down the street. Like this one is actively cannot be ignored even if we wanted to. Okay. It's like the prophet screaming in the wilderness.

This is this one and everyone's like shut up. Yeah. It's like the flare. It's like the emergency flare that they're trying to like signal out into the world like, we have a problem here. Nobody in here sees it and I'm trying to, there's a problem.

Right, I am acting out in a way, which is different from the identified patient, not in a way that's making me sick, in a way that is pissing off the family. So I'm externalizing the problems of the family. And therefore, because I'm doing that, the family says that I'm a screw up. Got it. Okay.

And so this person is the caller of bullshit. This person's function is the least obvious because it's like what does this do to create the balance of the family? There's like some theories about, well, does everybody actually need a little bit of identifier of the truth? Are they actually performing that breath for the family? Who knows? But they have a lot of leadership. The gifts of it are their leadership, they're ferocious, they're fearless. They have a lot of these things. The challenge in many ways is you have this hypervigilance because you're always outside.

So they're outside looking in and judging the system. And if you become very used to standing outside and observing and commentating and criticizing something, then that becomes your mode. And you have trouble becoming part of things. Ah, that makes so much sense. Yes. And so your need to differentiate from the family that you feel is fucked up becomes an ongoing need to differentiate from everything and not meld in to things. I wonder if a lot of like activist type people started being these, that one, because it is,

so if you're the one who was always saying, wait, but mom, that's bullshit, or wait, can't you see what dad is doing? And like your sisters and brothers are all like, why do you always have to do this? Like, shut up, stop, stop, stop. That might be you, right? But it's externalized.

You don't turn it in against yourself, but it ends up making you so isolated because you know your role to keep yourself safe is to just make sure you're seeing what everyone else is doing clearly. Yeah, and you're calling it out. So you have to be hyper vigilant. You're like waiting for like, where's the injustice, where's the problem, where's

the thing that I need to bring to everyone's attention and to raise hell about right and so you are never at ease in yourself as part of the group because in some ways you're policing the group, right? Wow. Okay. Okay. So, one of the things that you need in your work now is to figure out a support system outside of your family unit because they think you're a fuck up. You need to work on figuring out how to identify your own needs and you need boundaries, which is true of all of them.

But you're so looking at the unit and everything around you to identify what's wrong. You're not real sure what's going on internally with you. That makes sense. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yep. How can you get even more of everything you love about Porter with the new BMO VI Porter MasterCard? Enjoy more freedom, more flexibility, more rewards, more of all the things you love. Need I say more? Get your ticket to more with the new BeMo VI Porter MasterCard and get up to $2,400 in value in your first 13 months. Terms and conditions apply. Visit bemo.com slash iPorter to learn more. Okay.

Our third one is the rescuer also called caretaker, enabler, peacemaker, martyr. Okay. This person feels a personal responsibility to keep the family together. Okay. They want to keep normal to keep the family together. They want to keep normalcy in the family. They sort of mediate things that are happening to try to make peace when tension flares. They often, unfortunately, that looks like enabling

or supporting or affirming the unhealthy behavior because they're just trying to like bring peace back as soon as possible. Often this shows up in relationship with where they're trying to fix others. They think that they can solve the problems of other people. And so sometimes they're attracted to people who need their problems solves. So these are like the human zambonis of the world. Yes. Of the family. Yeah. Exactly. So they often develop an opposition to a black sheep.

If there's a black sheep already in the family, they spring up to relieve that tension and conflict by trying to mediate between the black sheep and the family. All of these roles are also a way of internally coping, right? So like when I, the enabler, I'm stressed out by this, it is a way of trying to diffuse my own anxiety about the dysfunction that's happening by stepping in and fixing it rather than just being like, this is deeply uncomfortable. I don't like this tension.

I hate it. These are all ways of avoiding it being deeply uncomfortable and stressful. That's important. And trying to change it into something else. So it becomes, it's not just a role. It might be a role in a collective ecosystem, but then becomes a survival mechanism that's internal,

but just for your own personal survival. Well, and also, you know, if this is how you responded in all these ways to the stress in your family, just imagine these in workplace situations. So insert any stress from anything. And this is what you're doing, right? Any stress in your workplace. Okay, you're the rebel, you're going, right? Any stress in your workplace. Okay, you're the rebel, you're gonna be like, fuck this boss and they didn't do that. If you're the peacemaker, you're gonna be like, okay, let's get Johnny and Sally in a room and see what we can do to work this out. If you're the hero, you're just gonna work so much harder and try to hope everyone gets happy soon.

Like, all of these things are just responses to stress. So the rescuer in many ways become they're very compassionate, protective, they're collaborative, they're really good at all of these things. A challenge for them, they have a lot of suppressed anger because they have not dealt with their own anger because all of their energy has been dealing with other people's anger and stress. So they are very skilled at dealing with the emotions of others.

And they don't know what their own emotions and needs are because it's never been relevant to how they've operated. They also need to be needed and that is a problem. So they might be, if you're the person who's like always trying to help everyone, but they're like, thank you a lot, your help sucks, we don't need your help anymore and you're making people like,

everyone seems to be resentful of your help, you might be the human Zamboni, you might be the, what's this person called? This person is called the Enabler, the Peacemaker, the Rescuer, Caretaker. Yeah. Okay. All of those names. Okay. The fourth one is called the lost child or the easy one. This person is just trying to survive unnoticed, whereas the perfect one is often the oldest child. This person is often the youngest child. They want to be unnoticed because being noticed means getting in trouble. They are quiet, withdrawn, often lonely. They don't want to be a burden. But deep down, what they want the most is to be seen and loved. And so their challenge eventually is to make themselves

visible. They are seen by their family as, you know, staying out of the family drama. They're called the good kid or the easy kid. They're even tempered. They're pliable. They're often risk adverse and they often lack social skills. Their function is to reduce stress of the family. So they're in, you know, where some of these are the squeaky wheel. They're the wheel that never squeaks. They just don't do that. They will withdraw from reality. They shove their feelings away, which is hard to establish intimacy. Their gifts are, they are incredibly flexible. They're adaptive. They're independent. They know how to do all of that. The challenge is that because they never asked for help or required anything, they have a

lot of difficulty asking for help. Dr. Salman said this, which I found fascinating. I've never heard this. She said they often turn two people problems into one person problems. Wow. They make it their own problem? Yeah. problems into one person problems. Wow. They make it their own problem. Yeah. So they often turn two people problems into one person problems.

Give me an example. So what I was trying to say, remember I was, when I was talking about how like I'm a little squirrel who like, if I have a interpersonal problem with John or with someone else, I like pick up the acorn and run away with it and figure it out and try to like work on it and then bring the acorn back and I'm like, look, I solved our problem. Got it. You don't want to be burdensome. You don't bring your needs to a person.

You don't ask for help. You don't say like, we have a problem and I expect you to work with me on it. You take away your problem, solve it. And you're like, I'm all good. I took care of myself. I have no needs. Does the lost child, because that sounds a little bit to me like perfectionism too.

So does the lost child take the acorn away, fix it, come back and say, I fix it. It feels to me like the last child would decide something was all their fault and then just like let it slowly die inside of themselves. Yeah, it's a good point. I don't know. They do have a lot like some of the the lost child and easy ones. Big challenge in adulthood is establishing some comfort with managing conflict. Sure. So the turning the two people problem into one person problem likely has a lot to do with the hesitancy around conflict.

So because that is so unnatural for them to bring a need up that creates a conflict in the family because that was the opposite of what they ever did. So they need coping mechanisms to deal with what happens in conflict when stress occurs so that you can not be overwhelmed by that since you're used to just avoiding it. Yeah, that makes sense. So if you're the person who's like,

if you imagine bringing any part of your humanness or problems or challenges or anger to your family and you just imagine your parent being like, oh wait, not you. Like of all the people, not you too, not you too. Like that's the last child. Like you can't even imagine because your role is to not have problems so that everybody else

can have their problems. Yeah. Also it's, these are self-policed even much more than they are externally-policed. So more than they are externally policed. So you would be like, oh, not me too. But you'd imagine it. I'm exhausted by that. Yeah.

I'm not going to do that. You know, I don't even know how to, what would be the point of me bringing that conflict up? Right. OK, there's two more. This fifth one is the mascot or the comedian or the class clown. This is the person who diffuses the conflict in the family. So conflict comes up and they're like look an eagle and they respond with humor. They are able to draw attention to themselves and away from the stress. So if there's a situation that could turn volatile or could be a high conflict, they are like

and they break the anxiety of that. They interestingly a lot of comedians. Yeah, Sam Irby I was just thinking about saying to her, okay, so did you have a happy childhood or are you funny? Right, exactly. This is the one who develops humor. So they don't face their pain because of that. It's very difficult. So it's often the youngest child also. So like you're the easy one or the mascot.

They are very desperate for the approval of others. This is a challenge. They are able to be adaptable and flexible and operate in stress, right? Because they're very used to this and deflecting it. They, interestingly, their need to alleviate the tension with humor is actually a signal of their powerlessness that they feel.

Yeah. Because they can't do anything about the situation, the substance of the situation. So the only thing that they have power or control over is introducing some levity to it. So these are people, unfortunately, who have trouble allowing tension to occur, and they need to allow the tension to just be there and be present. They struggle to show their genuine feelings because that's going against their job. Their job is to take away tension and sharing of their feelings is adding to tension.

So they will cover up negative feelings with humor or smile or joke. And so they need to allow tension to occur. They need to be careful not to self-medicate. A lot of these people become self-medicators with drugs and alcohol, and they need to not look for the approval of others. They need to approve themselves because they become like the, do, do, do, do, do, doesn't everyone love me, I'm so funny person. Court jester. Mm-hmm. Jester. Okay, last one is the identified patient or the struggling one. This person is fascinating. So this is the

person who is their family's quote-unquote reason for having problems or their reason for coming to therapy. Okay, so we're here because Angela keeps smoking cigarettes behind the house. We're here because Johnny won't eat his food. The person has brought us here, but has nothing to do with the family. It's their isolated problem. And everyone else is good.

See, we already told you that Laura's the valedictorian. She's the perfect one. And this one's funny over here. And this one doesn't cause any problems. So we don't know why Sarah keeps throwing up after she eats. She's the only one that's presenting the problems. So this is the person, their function is they're getting everyone organized and mission aligned, right?

Our goal as a family is to help this struggling one get better because the struggling one is sick. And we are good because we want the struggling one to get better. As long as we keep all the attention on the struggling one and not on anyone else's dynamics. So the therapists started calling this person the identified patient because really in the family unit, they were noting that the entire unit was sick. But this was the person that the family unit was presenting as the patient. Oh, that's good.

So if you've ever considered yourself a canary in a coal mine and you are the one who stops singing or gets sick or slowly dying. But the problem is that there's toxins in the air. There's poison in the air of the family. You're just the one who's showing the results of that in this particular way. And you keep going, we'll talk about this in the next episode, We'll get more personal,

but you keep going with this one's challenges. I'm just a little curious. There's a lot of overlap with the black sheep here. And I think it depends a lot on the family dynamic as to in the typical scenario where at least the family is identifying this person has a problem, even if they're not identifying that they have a problem, they're trying to get this person help. There's a lot of overlap with black sheep because often when the person's a child, the caregivers will be like, oh, we wanna help them.

They're still little and cute and we wanna help them. And then as they don't get quote unquote fixed or better, they become the family's black sheep. Yes, Right. And or if the family is not even willing to identify a patient or even acknowledge that someone is struggling, they might jump right to the black sheep. That makes sense. Yeah.

So then the calling of bullshit and telling the truth as the black sheep, then the calling of bullshit and telling the truth as the black sheep, sometimes the substance abuse disorder, sometimes the depression, sometimes the eating disorder is that way of telling the truth. Exactly. But the family has decided that you're the fuck up because you have that. But is it like the identified patient tends to, not in concrete, but black and white, but like, tends to turn the truth telling, like the pain in on themselves. Whereas the black sheep tends to turn it outward. Is it a little bit like internalizing or externalizing the problem, the rage, the truth telling,

you know, eating disorders, alcoholism, cutting, all these things that are self wounds are also a desperate form of truth telling. Yes. But if you're willing to rage on the outside, you might be more of a black sheep. If you turn it inward, you might be a identified patient. Right. And of course, if you don't get well, that amps up, right? So the internalized thing becomes bigger and louder. Yeah. Comes something else, right? So the internalized thing becomes bigger and louder.

Yeah. And it hums something else, right? So, yes, that it's turning inward or turning outward. It is the reason why it's the pain, right? The internalizing of the pain, the externalizing of the pain, but they are sitting, maybe they're closer to accepting the pain

than deflecting it or trying to cover it up, which is what some of the other roles are. They learn self-advocacy really well and self-awareness. They're often the ones that are sent to the therapist, so they like have more access to those things. They have generally a lot of resilience because they've been through this, because they've been told that they're the ones that have the challenges and they've had to

overcome them and they actually do have challenges. Their work in adulthood is learning to stand up for knowing that they can take care of themselves because their dependents gave other people purpose. Yes. Fuck. Yes, okay. Let's stop there and then let's come back next week and really get into what roles we think we are, what the journey might be,

all the complexities of undoing it and talk also a little bit about like, is there any plan to do better, to have a family system that's better than this shit? Like, has anybody thought of anything? Can we fix our parenting? Cause I know that- We've done this.

I would love to know or explore if there's a better model of letting people be human within an ecosystem or if we've just identified that this is it and it's the best we can do. We love you, Pod Squad. Think about which role you might be and we're going to come back and walk through this more together. Bye. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because

you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend. We would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abbie Wambach and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Burman and the show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Alison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.

I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle. ["I Walk Through Fire"] I chased desire, I made sure I got what's mine And I continue to believe that I'm the one for me And because I'm mine, I walk the line Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on map A final destination we lack We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home and through the joy and pain that our lives bring we can do our thing

I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start I'm not the problem, sometimes things fall hard And I continue to believe The best people are free And it took some time But I'm finally fine Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that Our final destination with that We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain that our lives bring

We can do hard today Yes, we're adventurers and heartbreaks on map We might get lost but we're okay now We've stopped asking directions To places they've never been And to be loved we need to be known We'll finally find our way back home And through the joy and pain That our lives bring We can do hard things Yeah, we can do hard things Yeah, we can do hard things