Uncovering Your Systemic Sentences

Few people have trouble imagining that emotional patterns can be passed down in a family. It’s helpful to keep a journal of this journey. As the pieces of your document come together, the path, possibilities, and treasure emerge. The gifts that belong to only you are revealed, waiting for you to turn what looks like a broken mess into an incredible journey. Anger in a family becomes peace through you. Generations of a marginalized group find a champion in the hardworking, scrappy kid who fights their way to the top. Are there family members who clearly demonstrate an issue with any of these principles? Does your sister act out because she feels like she doesn’t belong? Did your dad have to step into his father’s shoes at an early age and take care of the family? If so, do you, too, find yourself overburdened with responsibilities? Do you chronically try to take on too much in unconscious loyalty to your dad, who was forced out of order in the family system? Or are you someone who plays too small? Does your mother give a lot of emotional support and nurturing and yet receive little in return from her spouse or family? Do you find yourself emulating that pattern? Maybe you’re not compensated well for all the responsibility and work you do in business? Perhaps you find yourself in relationships where the balance of emotional give and receive is off? Look for patterns related to the three principles and their influences on you. And if you have no family or no family information, look for these patterns in your immediate events, relationships, or chosen family. List all the family truisms, all those systemic sentences that you heard and adopted as your own. Perhaps you find yourself saying these same things to your children. Once you have your list, notice the way you have lived your life. Think about the choices made and not made.

Say What You Say

How much has your life been shaped by these sentences in your head and what you have made them mean? How have they limited or supported you? A hint here is to look at what is said in the family about things like careers, relationships, fear, purpose, guilt, success, failure, illness, money, and other significant aspects of your family. It seems an extreme declaration until we realize that research shows that patterns of thoughts, feelings, actions, and even events in areas like health, relationships, and leadership can be passed down through the generations. I see it play out in families who struggle with certain issues like lack of education, dysfunctional relationships, addiction, failure in careers, or an inability to create financial success. It is not a curse, it’s an inheritance. The language that you speak creates your truth, direction, purpose, sense of self, and sense of others. It creates your future, whether successful, mediocre, or dismal. The feelings that arise as part of a system give us a strong internal compass to steer by. We know we’re in or out of alignment with our family or organizational systems because we can feel it. We know we’re in bad conscience with the system because we feel it. We know when we belong or when we’re being excluded because we feel it. When we feel respected and acknowledged within a system, we’re more inclined to open up, share, pass on wisdom, and engage with the system because we feel we have something of value to offer. Our discretionary energy and passion come out and we engage.

A Face In The Crowd

When we feel like we don’t belong or like we’re not smart enough or funny enough, we feel fragile and at risk and withdraw. An entire system may have a feeling or sensing pattern running through it, like guilt, that stems from a single event or series of events in the past. Dan, a successful businessman, came to me complaining about feeling driven to work to exhaustion. My father and grandfather worked three jobs to support us and give me an opportunity in life, he said. I’m now doing very well as an entrepreneur, but I feel like I am not working hard enough. I feel like I should take on another job. But I’m already exhausted by the end of the day. As we worked through his current state and history, he acknowledged he was already earning exceptionally well and that an extra job wouldn’t make much of a difference to his bottom line. Taking another job was simply perpetuating the ingrained habits of his system and his father’s driving emotions of fear and determination to support the family. Stop and do life differently! I told him, If you continue to work that hard, even with success, you teach your children that play is not an option. You teach them that hard work is an end in itself that reaps no reward. As he learned to reframe the hard work of his grandfather and father, he realized they had paved the way for him to create a family where success and money were finally fully realized and relaxation and play were welcomed as new members.

It's Okay To Look Back

I asked him what might happen if he took some of the money he had earned, invested it in a really nice vacation, and invited his father and grandfather to come along. He did so and celebrated them both at a family dinner, and by paying off his father’s home and buying new furniture for his grandfather. The pattern of driven determination and intense work was no longer needed, and the pattern of play and generosity could emerge once he could see how important it was to transform the pattern. But sometimes the repeating pattern in a family system is an event, complete with the accompanying emotional disturbances. Some of these events can be almost too bizarre to believe. For example, I had a client who fearfully reported that he was sure he was going to lose a leg and become an amputee. Who have you lost?