Family Doesn't Recognize the New You (And That's Normal) #personalgrowth #familydynamics

Why can personal growth feel threatening to families? Families are systems, like a community, like a company, like a team, and systems work based on predictability. Meaning, I know what the other people in this system are going to do. Sometimes, I know what they're going to do and it's dysfunctional, but at least I can predict it. What happens though when one person starts to grow and they start to heal and they start to make new choices? That can be very disturbing to everyone around them because it's like, "Hey, woah, what's this? We're used to a certain you and now you're showing up in this new way. We don't recognize you and we can't predict what you're going to do next." This is why I encourage people who have done a lot of growth and who are in some ways unrecognizable from their past selves, if you have a family that's having a hard time adjusting to the new you. It's possible that these are very unwell people and completely toxic. You're not going to be able to be around them. That's possible in a very rare amount of cases. But in most cases, the advice is simply to give it time for people to relearn and reestablish patterns with the new you.