Book
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice
Murray Bowen
Bowen's idea of differentiation, staying connected to your family without being governed by it, is the useful frame for most adult family questions.
Tool 37 · Develop yourself
What do I reasonably owe, and what am I refusing?
This exercise looks at over-functioning as carefully as at neglect, and it will not make you responsible for everybody.
A guided 18 to 22 minute conversation using ChatGPT. Free, no account, nothing to sign up to.
01
Copy
Take the TAIU prompt.
02
Paste
Open ChatGPT.
03
Talk
One question at a time.
Copies the TAIU prompt. Paste it into ChatGPT.
You don't need ChatGPT Plus. The free version is fine.
What would happen if you did not do it?
Ask it about each thing separately. The answers are rarely the same and some of them are embarrassing.
Some families do not need more. They need somebody to stop solving things on their behalf.
What you'll explore
- 01One person at a time
- 02What they have asked for
- 03What you provide
- 04What they no longer ask for
A note from Mark
The instinct in families is to answer this question with more. More time, more money, more sorting things out. Occasionally that is right. Just as often the family is quietly asking for less, and cannot say so because the person doing all of it is obviously well intentioned and visibly exhausted.
The question I would put is simple. What would happen if you did not do it? Sometimes the answer is that it would collapse, and then you know. Frequently the answer is that somebody else would do it slightly worse and everyone would survive.
Read my full view ↓
I would also look at what people have stopped asking for. That list tells you what has been reliably refused, or what somebody has taken over so completely that asking became unnecessary.
And I would separate obligation from choice. A great deal of what people do for their families is neither needed nor wanted. It is a debt they decided they owed a long time ago and have never re-examined.
What you'll get
You won't finish with a personality type.You'll leave with answers you can actually test.
01
Assumed need
02
Demonstrated need
03
Over-functioning
04
What is actually yours
+
Your TAIU handover — a portable summary of everything the conversation established.
See everything included ↓
- 01What you came here with
- 02What you assume they need
- 03What they have actually asked for
- 04What they have stopped asking for
- 05What you provide
- 06Where you are over-functioning
- 07Where something is genuinely missing
- 08What is yours and what is not
- 09The rival reading
- 10What deserves protecting
- 11The credible alternative
- 12What, if anything, should change
- 13What remains unresolved
- 14Where this goes next
What now?
01 · Save it
What you assume they need, in your words.
02 · Test it
Ask one of them directly what would actually help. Then accept the answer.
Explore this further ↓
What I would do
- 01
Take one person at a time. The answers rarely match.
- 02
Separate need, want, what you want to give, and what you feel obliged to give.
- 03
Look hard at over-functioning. It is the harder one to see from inside.
- 04
Ask what people have stopped asking for and why.
- 05
Allow the conclusion that you are doing the right amount.
Test it
- 01
When did they last ask you for this, in words?
- 02
What would happen if you did not do it?
- 03
Is this need, or is it your habit of being the one who does it?
The alternative
The expected conclusion is that your family needs more from you. Sometimes the evidence points firmly the other way: they may need you to stop solving things they need to own themselves, which is harder to do than solving them. Equally the reverse can hold. You may believe you are giving somebody independence when what they have been asking for, repeatedly and quietly, is reliability. And in some families the honest finding is that what is being provided is roughly what is needed, and the discomfort belongs to guilt rather than to any gap.
Think about this
- What each person has actually asked you for this year.
- What somebody has stopped asking for.
- What you provide that nobody requested.
- What it costs you, and whether they know.
- What you would have to let go wrong.
Take this to Ask Mark
You've done the exercise. Now challenge what came back.
Interpretation, not another copy-and-paste exercise.
Take this to Ask Mark →Finished the exercise?
What did this uncover?
Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.
Next tool
What am I responsible for?
If the question is bigger than your family
Further thinking
Family Therapy in Clinical Practice
Murray Bowen
Negotiating Family Responsibilities
Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason
Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis
Stephen Karpman
Explore the thinking ↓
Book
Negotiating Family Responsibilities
Janet Finch and Jennifer Mason
British sociology on how family obligation is negotiated in practice rather than fixed by role. It shows how quietly duties get allocated.
Article
Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis
Stephen Karpman
The original seven page paper that introduced the drama triangle, free to read and much less confident than the workshop version of it that followed. The Rescuer position is the part worth your attention: help that solves a problem the other person could have solved, and so removes the occasion for them to learn.
Book
The Dance of Anger
Harriet Lerner
Lerner writes about families as systems, where one person steadily doing more quietly arranges for somebody else to do less. It explains the pattern most people notice late: you become competent, then indispensable, then angry with people for depending on you in exactly the way you taught them to.