Michelle Flynn

And these are all roles that kind of happen in order to make the system function.

And they're very unconscious.

And like these roles can work when we're little and they can get us really far.

But often what happens and this is what I see in my practice is then as adults, these roles don't serve you anymore, particularly the roles that force you into position of doing too much, overachieving, being the one to always support the other siblings, show up for parents and, you know, do the really hard stuff.

Well, I don't know.

I mean, I think that's probably anecdotal.

Again, you see, like what's really interesting is that, you know, we might be raised in the same house as such, but we're not raised in the same family because by the time another sibling comes along, the situation in the family system is going to have changed.

There might be

more financial pressure.

There might be one parent is working more now.

There might be grief in the family system.

So it really depends on what is happening in the family system.

So, you know, when I meet with people in my therapy room, they'll often have a very clear narrative around their family situation and what it was like growing up.

And that might sound completely different to their sibling's narrative.

So, for example, one child might experience the parent as being loving and

attentive available all of those things home from school maybe when they got in all of that and then for example something happens in the family system there's a divorce there's a grandparent that passes away and then suddenly that parent is less attentive maybe more anxious maybe

doesn't maybe have the emotional resources and then the system has to adapt again.

So, you know, the narratives or how we experience our childhoods are often very different.

And I think that that depends less on where you come in the family and more about what's happening in the family.

Yeah, I mean, again, and I think it's age dependent, right?