Family Systems Theory: Understanding the Eco-System of Your Relationships

Have you ever felt like you were repeating a pattern that wasn’t even yours?

Like no matter how much personal work you’ve done—something in your relationships still triggers you, shuts you down, or makes you feel like a child again?

Welcome to the world of family systems theory.

This isn’t just about “your upbringing.” It’s about the invisible forces, spoken and unspoken rules, emotional enmeshments, and inherited burdens that operate like an eco-system within every family.

And once you see it…
you can begin to shift it.

What Is Family Systems Theory?

Family Systems Theory is a psychological framework developed by Murray Bowen that views individuals not as isolated units, but as deeply shaped by the family systems they’re part of.

Think of your family as a living ecosystem, like a forest. Each member is a tree, and every tree’s health affects the whole environment. When one tree leans, another compensates. When one is uprooted, the others lose their ground.

Key Principles of Family Systems Work:

1. Everything is connected

One person’s stress or illness is not isolated, it’s part of a relational dynamic. Symptoms in one body often mirror unresolved tension in the system.

Example: A child’s anxiety may reflect parental conflict, unresolved grief, or the burden of being the emotional anchor for the whole family.

2. Roles are assigned, often unconsciously

Families tend to assign roles to create stability:

• The Peacemaker

• The Lost Child

• The Hero

• The Scapegoat

These roles aren’t inherently bad, but they limit authenticity.
They shape your nervous system, your beliefs, and even your body’s patterns of stress or shutdown.

3. Homeostasis keeps systems stuck

Even if a role is harmful, the system resists change. So when one person tries to shift (like setting a boundary or speaking a long-silenced truth), it can feel like everything is destabilizing. But that destabilization? It’s the beginning of transformation.

How This Shows Up in the Body

Family system dynamics don’t just live in the mind, they imprint in the nervous system and the soma.

• Chronic stress

• Tension in the jaw, shoulders, or gut

• Cycles of illness, shutdown, and exhaustion

• Burnout from being the caretaker or over-functioner

These physical expressions are often the body’s way of “carrying” the family’s unresolved emotional and energetic load.

This is why family systems work is inherently somatic.

You’re Not Broken, You’re Interwoven

When you begin to see yourself not as defective but as a node in a web, something shifts.

You stop blaming yourself.
You begin to trace patterns with compassion.
You start to separate what’s yours from what’s inherited.

And most importantly, you create the possibility of new stories.
For yourself. For your children. For your lineage.

Want to Go Deeper?

Family systems theory is a powerful lens in all of my offerings, whether you’re in therapy, mentorship, or sacred group spaces.

If you’re ready to:

• Understand why you keep reacting the same way in your relationships

• Set boundaries without guilt

• Stop carrying what was never yours

• Heal through the body, not just the story

Start with Nervous System Devotionals for gentle somatic repair
Join THE KEY for ongoing collective healing
Or apply for mentorship to explore your family system at the soul-root level

You are not too much.
You’re just the one who’s willing to see the systemm and shift it.
And that is sacred work.