What Are You Carrying That Wasn’t Yours?
Exploring Intergenerational Roles and Emotional Legacy in the Therapy Room
This week’s Tend to it Tuesday opened up a conversation many people feel in their bones, even if they don’t always have the words for it:
How am I still shaped by the emotional roles I inherited, even decades later?
As a therapist, I often sit with clients in that quiet, painful realization:
“I was the kid who had to stay calm so everyone else could fall apart.”
“I didn’t get to be angry, so now I don’t know how to express it.”
“I still feel like I’m failing if I’m not helping someone else.”
And sometimes:
“I became the parent I swore I wouldn’t be.”
We don’t get to choose the emotional landscape we’re raised in. But in therapy, we start asking:
“What was given to me, and what do I want to give forward?”
💬 What It Looks Like in the Therapy Room
In sessions, these patterns often appear subtly:
A client who shrinks their needs to “keep the peace”
Another who steps into a caregiving role even when they’re the one needing support
Or someone who can’t explain their panic until they trace it to family patterns of unpredictability or perfectionism
When we explore these together, I’m not looking for blame. We’re looking for clarity. Understanding legacy can bring compassion to the present. One question I often ask is:
Who taught you to respond this way, and how did it help you survive?
That question alone can open the door to self-forgiveness, and eventually, new choices.
🛋️ Somatic Signals of Inherited Roles
The body remembers long before the brain catches up. Sometimes, your nervous system tells the story before your words do.
In clients, this might show up as:
A clenched stomach when they feel “not good enough”
Shoulders that lift instinctively when someone raises their voice
A flat affect or shutdown when asked to “take up space”
We learn to follow those signals. The goal isn’t to override the body; it’s to work with it.
Somatic therapy gives us a language for those cues. And when paired with family systems work, it helps untangle the difference between:
“This is how I am” vs. “This is who I had to be.”
✨ A Therapist’s Practice
Therapists carry our own roles into the room, too.
Sometimes, I notice my urge to rescue, fix, or over-attune. When that happens, I pause and ask:
“Whose role am I stepping into right now?”
“Is this coming from care, or from a part of me that once needed to be needed?”
“What’s my role as a present-day therapist, not a child in my family of origin?”
These questions help me show up with curiosity instead of reaction. And they’re powerful invitations for clients, too.
📣 Prepared for Action?
You don’t have to keep playing out old roles on a new stage.
Whether you're noticing family patterns in parenting, relationships, or your own healing, therapy can help you pause the cycle.
