Photo by Oleg on Unsplash
A toxic family is one where the same hurt keeps happening and nobody is allowed to name it. You leave every visit feeling smaller, your boundaries get treated like insults, and somehow you end up as the problem. If that’s your family and you still want them, you’re not weak or confused. You’re a child who needed them, and part of you still does.
You drive home from the birthday dinner and replay it the whole way. The comment about your weight. The joke at your expense that everyone laughed at. Your mother’s face when you said no. You’re furious, and under the fury you’re aching, because you still want them to be the family you keep hoping they’ll be.
When I was a boy, I had a job in my family that nobody gave me out loud. My mother had been abandoned, and I believed I could heal her. If I were funny enough, entertaining enough, special enough, I could stop her from feeling alone. That’s the magical thinking of a wounded child. I thought I could fix her broken heart.
I didn’t have a name for it until much later. I just hid inside humour so nobody would see how frightened I was. Getting the laugh. Being the one who made it all okay.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. It was never your job to hold your family together. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the chest, the throat, the stomach, and whether something in you softens or braces. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in you softened, or something rushed in to say “but you don’t know my family,” both make sense. That rush is a part of you that has spent years defending you, and maybe defending them too.
Every child makes a trade. A child can’t survive believing that the people responsible for keeping them alive are unreliable. To look clearly and say my parent can’t keep me safe is to fall straight through the floor of the world. So the child decides: it must be me. I must be too much. I must be not enough. Better to be a flawed child in a safe world than a fine child in a world with no ground under it at all.
That’s why you still want them, and why you still blame yourself. Shame is the psyche choosing survival over the truth. You’ve been carrying their failings as your own for so long that it feels like your personality.
And there’s a second thing that happens in families like this. When everyone has quietly agreed not to see what’s going on, the one who finally says it out loud becomes the identified patient. The problem child. The sensitive one. The crazy one. Not because they’re wrong. Because they’re right, and being right threatens the arrangement everyone else needs to keep intact.
Maybe that’s you, the one who named the drinking or asked why nobody talks about what happened. You’re not celebrated for clarity. You’re corrected. You make sense.
Signs your family is toxic, from the inside
You don’t need to diagnose anyone. What matters is what keeps happening to you.
You feel worse about yourself after every visit. Not tired. Smaller.
Your boundaries are treated as attacks. You say no and it becomes a story about how cruel you are. The no itself never gets heard.
Your weak spots get used. They know exactly where you’re tender, and that’s where the jokes land.
There’s one official story. Your memory of what happened is wrong if it doesn’t match the family version, even when you were the one it happened to.
You never know which version you’ll get. Warm at Christmas, cold by New Year’s.
You’re the one who has to manage it. The peacekeeper, the entertainer, the scapegoat. Like me with my jokes, you have a job, and nobody ever asked if you wanted it.
If anyone in your family is hurting you or threatening you, that’s not a coaching question. Get safe first: call 911 if you’re in danger, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Family ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So we work with the moment your family shows up in you, usually right after you see them.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One long breath out. Look around and name three things in the room that are yours. You’re not in their house now.
What happened
One plain sentence, no case for the prosecution. “My sister made a joke about my divorce and everyone laughed.”
Where it lands in the body
A hot face. A sinking stomach. A throat that closed before you could answer. Rest your attention there for a moment. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Which part picked it up? The one that goes quiet and smiles. The one that wants to send the furious text. Each one carries a coin: too much (I overreacted, I always ruin things) or not enough (they’ll never think I’m worth it). Thank it. It learned this job when you were small.
Trace it
Only as far as tonight needs. What role did you get handed? The fixer, the clown, the problem? And what did you need back then that this role was covering for?
Feel it and tell someone
Say the real feeling to someone who’s on your side. Not the story about them. The feeling. “I miss my mum and I’m angry at her, and I hate that both are true.” When the voice inside says it must be you, let the Friend answer, the part of you that knows you’re good: “That’s not true. You were a child, and you needed more.”
One creative action
Choose one small thing for the next contact. Leave after two hours. Don’t answer the question about your job. Drive yourself so you can go when you’re ready. A boundary isn’t a punishment. It’s the ground you stand on so you can stay in the room at all.
How to deal with a toxic family without losing yourself
A parent is supposed to give a child three things. When the child asks, are you there for me, the answer is yes. When the child asks, out loud or silently, am I enough for you, the answer is yes. And the third: boundaries that stay the same tomorrow as they are today. The boundary happens inside the attachment bond.
If you didn’t get those three, you can’t make your family hand them over now. I tried for years. You can stop trying to change them. What you can do is give the three to yourself, and to the people you love now.
That’s how the wound gets repaired. Not by finally being seen by the people who couldn’t see you, but by letting your own children, your partner, your friends see you, so they never inherit it.
Some people need distance, for a while or for good. That isn’t failure, and it isn’t a verdict you have to defend to anyone. If you’re there now, I wrote about it in I’m estranged from my family.
One thing to do tonight
Write down the job you were given in your family, in one word. Fixer. Clown. Peacekeeper. Problem. Then write one sentence underneath: “I don’t have to do this job tonight.” Read it slowly. Notice what happens in your body. That’s the start.
Would therapy help with this?
If the hurt shows up as dread before visits, replaying after them, and old roles getting in the way of your life today, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if there was abuse, if you’re dealing with flashbacks or panic, if you can’t decide whether to stay in contact and it’s eating you alive, please talk to a licensed therapist where you live. You deserve a real room for this. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Family ground, that means being able to love your people without handing them the steering wheel.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Family ground, the night after the dinner when the replay won’t stop. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
The boy who thought he had to be funny enough to hold his mother’s heart still lives in me. These days he gets three sentences, the same ones I try to give my own kids. I am here for you. You are enough for me, exactly the way you are. And the ground will be the same tomorrow as it is today.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
What are the signs of a toxic family?
You feel smaller after time with them, your boundaries get treated as attacks, there’s one official family story you’re not allowed to question, and you never know which version of them you’ll get. The clearest sign is how you feel about yourself afterwards.
Why do I still want a relationship with my toxic family?
Because you were a child who needed them, and that need doesn’t switch off when you grow up. Wanting them isn’t weakness. It’s attachment. You can honour the longing and still protect yourself.
Is it okay to cut off toxic family members?
Yes, if staying close keeps hurting you. Distance can be a boundary, not a verdict, and it doesn’t have to be forever. If the decision is tearing you apart, a licensed therapist where you live can help you think it through.
The Friend comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
