What's It Feel Like to Be the Black Sheep of the Family

Source: Andy Campbell/Stocksy

One of the hardest realizations that many of united states face on our healing journeys is the idea—and all the feelings that come with it—in which we come up to realize that we're the blackness sheep of our family unit of origin, or of our peers, childhood religious institution, or early on community.

Maybe there'due south ever been a nagging sense of feeling like the odd one out—like the proverbial ugly stepsister. Or a sense of feeling a scrap orphaned. Feeling like the alone wolf. Or a sense of being the scapegoat.

Maybe it'south because y'all felt, understood, and responded to things differently than other members of your family/peer grouping/community.

Maybe it'due south considering you looked or sounded different.

Maybe your life choices went against the grain of what was "normal" where you grew up—whether it's because you spoke upward when others didn't, moved away from your hometown, or chose to love, and work, differently.

So mayhap your sense of feeling like the black sheep was subtle and implicit—naught directly said out loud but rather ever a slight sense of the back of your mind and center.

Or maybe your feeling of being the black sheep was more explicit and you were physically and relationally rejected past your family of origin, church, or early customs, for who you are and how you move through the world.

Maybe you were disowned, emotionally cutting off, kicked out of your house, or treated visibly differently.

However and for whatever reasons this may have manifested for you, many of us can identify with "the black sheep" archetype and, while this is predominantly a debasing term in our collective lexicon, this mail is all about reclaiming the power of that archetype—diving deep into what it may mean to be the so-called "black sheep" from both a cultural and psychological lens, exploring the pain of what it can hateful to embody this archetype, simply also the power, gifts, and opportunities it offers.

Let's exist clear: "Black sheep" isn't a term listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bedrock diagnostic book for mental health clinicians. And there isn't one single, universally-agreed-upon definition of the term, either— certainly not a clinical i—but it's nonetheless a phrase that infuses our collective cultural lexicon.

The phrase originally and objectively described what happened when a recessive cistron resulted in the birth of a sheep with black rather than white coloring. Manifestly, these black sheep stood out from the flock, and, plainly, their wool was traditionally considered less valuable. (The not-so-subtle devaluation begins…) Around the 18th century, some suggest, is when the pejorative nature of the term equally we have come to empathize it today came most: It became an idiom meant to imply waywardness. These days, "black sheep" is a term that may be used past others to describe the states (or for us to self-describe) if we seem like the odd ane out in whatsoever way from our family of origin or early on community.

And yet, in that location are many dissimilar definitions for this phrase depending on the school of thought one consults. From a Family unit Systems Theory perspective—introduced past Murray Bowen in the mid-20th-century—the family is an emotional unit and a system inside which one could say that the proverbial blackness sheep (non Bowen'southward term) is analogous to the "identified patient."

The identified patient is function of a family unit'due south commonage, unconscious psychological projection process in which they essentially defer and outsource the hurting, tension, and feet felt within their dysfunctional system onto i person who so psychologically, and sometimes physically, "holds" the emotional energy of the family, manifesting information technology in symptoms and behaviors that the other members of the group can point to and say, "There's the trouble! Information technology'due south her, not us!"

In this way, the identified patient could exist seen equally the family scapegoat, serving equally a "protective office" for its larger dysfunctional patterning.

From an archetypal psychological perspective, "the black sheep" may most closely resemble "the orphan" archetype, or that of "the abased child." These archetypes are, in essence, recurring symbols or motifs that describe someone, or an attribute of someone, who doesn't feel similar they fit in with their family or community of origin, physically or spiritually, and perhaps considering they do not seem to fit, the group's "shadow" is projected onto them. Showing upwardly across myths, legends, and fairy tales since time immemorial, "the orphan" and "abandoned kid" archetypes are so prevalent that I believe we all embody this classic, at least in some minor way.

And, in a playful merely too psychological way, Jungian annotator and author Clarissa Pinkola Esté'due south classic story of the Mistaken Zygote Syndrome elaborates further on the classic of the "orphan" or "abandoned child" past explaining how some of u.s. may have mistakenly ended upwardly (metaphorically) in the "wrong" families. (The full story can be found in her book Women Who Run with the Wolves.)

Whether y'all most closely resonate with the description of the identified patient, the orphan or abandoned kid archetype, the Mistaken Zygote, or all of these descriptions, you're likely seeing that within each is laced the theme of beingness misunderstood or rejected, and the feeling of beingness misplaced or displaced. This is the essence, to me, of what "The black sheep" classic is all about.

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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-the-whole-beautiful/202201/the-power-being-the-black-sheep-the-family

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