Family dynamics can be complicated. Your family may know exactly how to make you laugh, exactly how to push your buttons, or, impressively, both within the same five-minute conversation.

But what if you looked at your family from a completely different perspective? At the Boulder Psychic Institute, we teach that you chose your family.

Yep. When you were a little tiny baby spirit drifting around the astral plane, you spotted these people and said to your little cosmic self, “Yep, those are the ones.”

And you decided they were the people who would help you learn what you wanted to learn in this lifetime.

Wild, right?! 

Like it or not, these are your peeps.

Looking at your family with the awareness that you chose them on a soul level can change the way you understand your family dynamics. Instead of seeing these relationships only through the lens of what happened to you, you can begin examining why your spirit may have chosen these particular experiences in the first place.

That doesn’t mean everything your family does is okay. It doesn’t mean you have to stay close to someone who treats you poorly, excuse harmful behavior, or slap a spiritual lesson on every painful experience. You still get to set boundaries and choose who has access to your life.

What this perspective offers is curiosity.

And curiosity can change quite a lot.

Curiosity Changes the Dynamic

You’re here on Earth to grow and expand your consciousness. You purposefully picked your crew to support your life purpose.

So, can you get curious as to why?

Think about everything that came with being born into your particular family. You were introduced to a certain culture and way of life before you were old enough to have an opinion about any of it. Those circumstances shaped some of your earliest experiences of yourself and the world.

From a spiritual perspective, that wasn’t random.

Your spirit chose an environment that would give you opportunities to learn what you came here to learn. That doesn’t necessarily mean your family made those lessons easy. In fact, some of the people who challenge us the most can bring our spiritual lessons into very sharp focus.

Instead of asking only, “Why did this happen to me?” you can begin asking, “Why might I have chosen this experience?”

That’s a very different question.

It shifts you out of simply reacting to your family dynamics and allows you to examine them. Maybe a relationship has taught you something about your own power. Maybe being different from your family helped you discover who you are. Or perhaps you’re still trying to figure out what the heck you saw in these people before being born.

You don’t have to know the answer immediately.

The point is to get curious.

Why this family? Why these particular relationships? What has your spirit learned because these are your peeps?

Curiosity doesn’t erase difficult experiences. It simply gives you another place from which to look at them.

Guess What Else? They Chose YOU.

Here’s the other half of the equation.

Your family members aren’t simply characters your spirit selected to teach you a bunch of lessons while you sit there taking cosmic notes.

They chose you, too.

Why did they choose you? What do they want to learn from you?

You are a teacher just as much as they are.

This is where the idea becomes especially interesting. If everyone involved has something to learn, family relationships aren’t a one-way spiritual curriculum. You’re having your experience of them while they’re having their experience of you.

That can take some of the pressure off. You don’t have to manage another person’s spiritual growth for them. Your job isn’t to make sure your mother learns her lesson, your sibling changes, or everybody finally understands the family dynamic the way you do.

They get to have their journey. You get to have yours. Learning where one ends and the other begins is a pretty important part of understanding your own energy.

Are You Being a Compulsive Healer?

Families get all up in each other’s space, amiright?

One of the central tenets of psychic work at the BPI is learning to maintain your sovereignty while allowing others to maintain theirs. In simple terms, your energy gets to be yours, and their energy gets to be theirs.

That sounds straightforward until someone you love is struggling.

You may genuinely want to help. But there’s a difference between supporting someone and energetically trying to solve their experience for them. At the BPI, we call the latter compulsive healing.

A compulsive healer unconsciously takes responsibility for changing someone else’s energy. You may find yourself carrying a family member’s distress long after you’ve left the room or feeling like you can’t relax until they’re okay.

And because family relationships have had years to develop, these habits can feel completely normal. The next time you find yourself unusually upset about something happening with a family member, pause and ask: “To what degree is this my energy, or am I attempting to solve their problem energetically in my space?”

You don’t need to stop loving them. You don’t need to become indifferent to what they’re going through. You’re simply noticing what belongs to you and what doesn’t.

That awareness is the first step toward being with your family without taking responsibility for everything they’re experiencing.

Ready to Take a Looksie at Your Own Family Dynamics?

Family can be some of our greatest teachers…and some of our greatest button-pushers. If you’re ready to understand what’s really happening beneath the surface, see us for a reading or healing. We can help you explore the energy in your family relationships, clear what isn’t yours, and get a fresh perspective on those people your spirit apparently looked at and said, “Yep, those are the ones.” Or join Self Healing 101 to learn practical psychic tools for keeping your own energy clear, even when your family is being very, very family.

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