The Trick to Finally Becoming an Adult

Summary

We Can Do Hard Things Episode: The Trick to Finally Becoming an Adult Release Date: July 22, 2025

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Introduction

In this poignant episode of We Can Do Hard Things, hosts Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle delve deep into the complexities of family roles and their profound impact on our journey to adulthood. Drawing from personal experiences and psychological frameworks, the trio explores how ingrained family dynamics shape our identities, relationships, and emotional well-being.

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Understanding Family Roles

Amanda Doyle initiates the conversation by introducing the concept of family roles, emphasizing that each family operates as an ecosystem where members adopt specific roles to maintain homeostasis. She explains that these roles often become so entrenched that individuals are typecast, hindering their personal growth and authenticity.

Key Roles Discussed:

1. Hero (The Perfect One): Strives to maintain the family's image through achievements, masking internal struggles.
   Glennon Doyle (03:18): "The hero must prove that despite anything internally, the family must be okay because look at this shiny, bright little trophy over here."

2. Scapegoat (Black Sheep/Rebel): Challenges the family's status quo, often externalizing anger and being labeled as the family's "problem."

3. Rescuer (Caretaker/Enabler): Mediates family tensions, desperately trying to maintain peace and alleviate stress.

4. Last Child (The Easy One): Minimizes personal needs to remain invisible and reduce familial stress.

5. Mascot (Comedian/Class Clown): Uses humor to deflect and introduce levity during volatile situations.

6. Identified Patient (The Struggling One): Represents the family's internal problem without addressing underlying family stressors.

Amanda Doyle (02:01) sets the stage for the discussion by prompting listeners to reflect on their own family roles, highlighting the significance of these roles in understanding personal behavior and relationships.

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Personal Experiences with Family Roles

The hosts share their journeys in recognizing and grappling with their assigned family roles:

• Glennon Doyle identifies with the Hero role, revealing how her pursuit of perfection led to deep-seated sadness and depression despite external appearances of success. Glennon Doyle (06:50): "I had a tiny bit of rebel after college, but definitely the hero made me feel one-dimensional and kind of sad."

• Abby Wambach reflects on being the Easy One, striving to remain unnoticed and reducing her needs to alleviate family stress. Abby Wambach (47:22): "I was the easy one. Also the lost one."

• Amanda Doyle shares her experience as the Identified Patient, internalizing family issues and perpetuating her own struggles as a means of maintaining her role. Amanda Doyle (17:18): "For me, what I understand is that it was my job to stay sick."

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Impact of Family Roles on Adulthood

The conversation delves into how these roles extend into adulthood, affecting mental health, relationships, and self-perception:

• Glennon Doyle discusses the grief associated with realizing the facade of perfection doesn't lead to true well-being. Glennon Doyle (09:59): "It couldn't have mattered if I kept allowing myself to be miserable. If it mattered, I would have paused and been like, hey, we have a problem here."

• Amanda Doyle emphasizes the challenge of breaking free from these roles to achieve wholeness, likening it to a personal hero's journey. Amanda Doyle (10:16): "To have full lives, we are going to have to step out of this character and fight our way to wholeness."

• The trio explores how stepping out of these roles can disrupt family dynamics, often leading to resistance and relapse into old patterns. Glennon Doyle (26:42): "That's the road we know."

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System Dynamics and Dysfunction

The hosts examine how family systems perpetuate these roles amidst dysfunction:

• Amanda Doyle (34:42) connects the existence of these roles to managing family dysfunction, suggesting that the roles arise as coping mechanisms to survive ongoing stress and issues.

• Glennon Doyle highlights that these roles are adaptive responses to consistent dysfunction, maintaining a semblance of order even when it's fundamentally flawed. Glennon Doyle (35:18): "We are adapting to and surviving the dysfunction. That's why you're the identified patient."

• They discuss the difficulty in eliminating dysfunction without dismantling the roles, emphasizing that the system's reliance on these roles makes change challenging. Amanda Doyle (36:59): "Everybody is doing it in this fucked up way, but it's holding on to hope."

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Changing as We Age

As individuals enter their 40s, the hosts discuss how aging and new contexts influence the reevaluation of family roles:

• Abby Wambach (54:12) shares how her marriage has been a space for uncovering and healing different parts of herself that were previously constrained by family roles.

• Glennon Doyle introduces the concept of differentiation, where individuals start to discover their own identities separate from their family of origin. Glennon Doyle (55:28): "Differentiation is how you discover this."

• Amanda Doyle reflects on how new environments, such as marriage and professional settings, prompt introspection and challenge long-held family narratives. Amanda Doyle (56:32): "When you put yourself in new contexts, the context you came from becomes clear."

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Strategies for Healing and Growth

The hosts offer insights and strategies for breaking free from limiting family roles:

• Beginner's Mind: Encouraging listeners to view family members with a fresh perspective, free from preconceived roles and expectations. Amanda Doyle (58:44): "Look at everybody in our life like you've never seen them before. Who are you today?"

• Open Communication: Advocating for honest dialogues within the family system to address and transcend entrenched roles. Amanda Doyle (37:29): "We are open for discussion as part of this ecosystem in unhealthy and healthy ways."

• Therapy and Self-Reflection: Emphasizing the importance of professional support and introspection in navigating and redefining personal identity outside of family-imposed roles. Glennon Doyle (14:14): "We're all gonna try to get this person better. But I don't think that we end the day, it's like it's sad to mourn that."

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Conclusion

In The Trick to Finally Becoming an Adult, We Can Do Hard Things offers a profound exploration of how family roles shape our identities and behaviors well into adulthood. Through candid conversations and personal anecdotes, Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle illuminate the arduous yet transformative journey of breaking free from familial confines to embrace a more authentic and fulfilling life.

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Notable Quotes

• Glennon Doyle (03:18): "The hero must prove that despite anything internally, the family must be okay because look at this shiny, bright little trophy over here."

• Glennon Doyle (09:59): "It couldn't have mattered if I kept allowing myself to be miserable. If it mattered, I would have paused and been like, hey, we have a problem here."

• Amanda Doyle (10:16): "To have full lives, we are going to have to step out of this character and fight our way to wholeness."

• Amanda Doyle (58:44): "Look at everybody in our life like you've never seen them before. Who are you today?"

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Timestamp Key

• 02:01
• 03:18
• 06:50
• 09:59
• 10:16
• 14:14
• 17:18
• 26:42
• 34:42
• 35:18
• 36:59
• 37:29
• 42:11
• 43:17
• 44:20
• 46:35
• 47:22
• 48:47
• 50:23
• 51:50
• 53:32
• 54:12
• 55:28
• 56:32
• 58:44

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Note: This summary selectively includes content-focused segments of the episode, excluding advertisements and promotional content to maintain focus on the core discussions about family roles and personal growth.

Transcript

[Glennon Doyle]

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[Dax Shepard]

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[Amanda Doyle]

Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things. If you have not listened to last Tuesday's episode 428 Family Roles, which part did you play? Please do. We are discussing today something that is. Oh my God. God, it's just gotta be One of the most important answers to why are we the way we are? And what that is is family roles. Meaning we live in ecosystems. We're born into ecosystems. Every single one of us. Our family, shape, size, all of it is different. But there's some kind of system we're born into. And in order to keep that system in homeostasis, everyone is assigned or takes on themselves a role, a family role, okay? And that role we play and play and play until we are so typ cast that we become these one dimensional human beings. And at some point in our life we realize that in Order to have full lives, we are going to have to step out of this character and fight our way to wholeness, to fullness, which is an incredibly complicated and difficult and harrowing journey. So can you, Amanda, briefly go through the six roles that have been identified and then let's all discuss where we found ourselves?

[Abby Wambach]

Great.

[Amanda Doyle]

In these roles.

[Glennon Doyle]

Okay, super quick. The first one's the hero, the perfect one. They're the ones who, through their accomplishments are proving that despite anything that's going on internally, the family must be okay because look at this shiny, bright little trophy over here. Second one is scapegoat, black sheep or rebel. This is the person who is the caller of bullshit in the family. They are externalizing an angry, action based way that they don't think that what's happening in the family is right. They are like the screw up of the family. They're deemed that. The third one is the rescuer, caretaker, enabler. These are the people who mediate all the tension in the family. They're to make peace desperately, and they are trying to get rid of the tension that way. The fourth one is the last child, or the easy one. They are trying to reduce stress by having no needs and becoming invisible. The fifth one is the mascot, comedian or class clown. They are interrupting and deflecting stressful or volatile situations with humor and jokes and introducing levity. The sixth one is the identified patient or struggling one. The this is the one that is showing up as the person who has the internal problem, the person who is struggling. And therefore the family knows that this is the person with the problem. We are all going to try to get this person better. So they're internalizing the pain and stress of the family, but they're the ones who are showing as if they're uniquely affected by the family stress. And the family thinks that it isn't the family stress that's causing it.

[Abby Wambach]

Right.

[Amanda Doyle]

Okay. So the idea now is if you can find yourself inside of one of those roles, and you know they might not be black and white, you might be in a couple. If you can find yourself in one of those roles, you might have a certain set of challenges as an adult because of that role that you've lived your whole life. Okay.

[Glennon Doyle]

And we talked about those last episodes, so go back and listen to those for sure.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right. And then there's this quest invitation in life which is once you figure out what your role is and how you've become one dimensional, you can open up this much larger human experience by kind of taking this journey that will allow you to break out of your role. Okay. To not be typecast anymore in your actual life. And so I'm sort of thinking of that as, like, the hero's journey for each role. Even though we all know Joseph Campbell, masculine, whatever. I'm not saying the hero's journey is the only way to describe a character arc, but there certainly is a character arc for each of these archetypes that might lead to bigger, fuller, more free a life and better relationships where you are not just acting in one of your roles or parts, but you are bringing your full self to your family, to your relationships, to your work, to the world. So in order to play with that concept that we each maybe have a hero's journey that we can embark on, why don't we each just talk about where we found ourselves in those roles and anything that you were thinking when you did this research. Amanda, do you want to start?

[Glennon Doyle]

Sure. So I find myself in the hero perfect one role. And interestingly, I think these can morph over time, which is interesting. You can have more than one. And then over the course of the family, as the family adjusts, there is a new balance set. So often, like, if the identified patient gets well, sometimes the other shifts will happen, right? Because the other people will find themselves in different roles because they no longer need to offset the one or the other. So I think that's interesting. So I think I had a little bit of a tiny bit of rebel after college period. But definitely it makes me feel one dimensional and kind of sad. And I can see how that by performing or accomplishing, I was trying to do a little bit of the easy one thing, like, say, like, don't worry about me. I'm fine. Look, everything's fine over here. And also kind of bring the flowers to the family. So it's like everyone's super proud and feels okay about how everything's turning out to do the work of proving that we're okay as a family. And also, clearly, I internalized that that is the way that I prove that I'm okay. And that that's the only indicia that is relevant to knowing whether you're okay. So when I think about the years that I, you know, spent with my finger down my throat and miserable and so deeply depressed and sad, but didn't think that was an indisha of not being okay, that's very sad to me.

[Amanda Doyle]

Why did you not think that was an indisha of not being okay?

[Glennon Doyle]

Because being okay was an externally measured determination. Being okay were these things that happened.

[Amanda Doyle]

On the outside it didn't even matter. Your personal experience didn't even matter to anybody.

[Glennon Doyle]

It couldn't have mattered. How could it have? How could that have actually mattered if I kept doing that over and over and over again? Like, how could I have believed that it mattered? That I wasn't miserable in my body, in myself, in the quietness of me, in my room? To me, the evidence is that I believed that didn't matter because I continued to allow myself and perpetuate myself being miserable. If it mattered, I would have paused and been like, hey, we have a problem here.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right?

[Glennon Doyle]

But I didn't.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right.

[Abby Wambach]

Because it was the appearance of things. So when the world looked at you, your parents, the world, they saw perfection. Still, do you think that throughout your life you've been going through more of an internalized battle?

[Amanda Doyle]

And does everything feel like the stage to you? Like, as long as you're playing your role on stage, it does not matter what happens behind stage, backstage, it doesn't matter who you are backstage. As long as you come when you hit the stage and the light goes on you. You nail it, you deliver your lines, you're the star of the show. And if you go backstage and you're suffering and you're puking and you're whatever, that just doesn't matter.

[Glennon Doyle]

I think that that is how I lived for up until a few years ago.

[Amanda Doyle]

I bet that's a universal experience for the heroes.

[Glennon Doyle]

It's heartbreaking as I've been thinking about this, like a lot of real grief, even just when I think about the gross things that I put myself through, when I think about the I and the years lost to that, of having a very, very one dimensional experience, not being able to connect with people. And the grief of. I was promised that if I was just perfect, things would work and things would be okay. And I have been, and things have not worked and things are not okay. And that is an entirely different level of grief of I was part of a scheme for a long, long, long time. And also, if that doesn't make me okay, what does? Or does nothing. And so anyway, gets very existential.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. But I think that that's what this is about. Like, are. How are you reconciling this now? You said till you realize a couple years ago, like, what is something? Or what are some things that you're doing that are trying to alleviate some of that grief? Are you working on? I'm just curious because I know I'm. I'm thinking about my sister Beth.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah.

[Abby Wambach]

As being you in this role. And like, it's making me super emotional thinking about you and how just hard that must feel to be made to be perfect and need to be perfect. And I just love you so much. Like, I want you to feel like you can be your full self, you know, like, are you doing anything now?

[Glennon Doyle]

When I'm working in therapy, I'm working a lot of this through and with my kids, because that is, like, you know, that's the trigger in some ways. And I hope that I can give to them in a way that.

[Amanda Doyle]

Re.

[Glennon Doyle]

Parents me a little bit. But it certainly has every bit of my triggers up trying to. It is like a perfect storm trying to deal with it. I think I do have a lot of grieving to do for a lot of things. Like, I just. I think for all of these things, like, if you were the scapegoat and you were outcast by your family and vilified, if you were the one who had to, like, not be a kid because you were mediating between people, if you were the invisible one who never got seen and so you think you're not worthy of being seen. If you had to make everyone laugh, even when you should have been, like, being taken care of and avoided that, or if you were the struggling one who everyone told you you were broken and really your family was broken. There's a lot of grief in all of these.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

And I feel like maybe that's something that we, like, get to the work. Right. We're like, well, our identified thing we need to do in therapy is deal with our shame or whatever. But I don't think that we. At the end of the day, it's like, it's sad. It's probably good to, like, mourn that for a little bit. But the good side of knowing that it's been a scam is knowing that it's a scam.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

That, like, there's no way to be perfect. There's no way. Nobody is. You can't love a hero.

[Amanda Doyle]

Mmm. Mm.

[Glennon Doyle]

And so I want to be a fully human person, and I don't want to make everyone close to me try to be perfect, because then I won't be able to love them either. So I don't know. It's, like, very, very sad and also kind of very intriguing because it's like, that would be a very different way of trying to understand myself and the world.

[Abby Wambach]

You can't love our hero. I can't stop thinking about that.

[Amanda Doyle]

And, you know, if you're thinking about why and how we pick up our roles, they're all symbiotic. Like, they're all in reaction to each other. Right. So I was not surprised to find out that when I took the quizzes and I didn't need to take the quiz, that's what my whole last two years have been about. But I was the struggling one. What are some other words? The identified patient. So, for me, I think the therapy I've done over the last couple years, which has been a wide range of things, has been mostly about this and generational trauma, but. But it hasn't been presented as this. Okay. It's like this weird, windy, twisty turny thing where I started to question my own identity about myself. Why do I do the things I do? Why am I the way that I am? And then over time, I started to realize, oh, my God, wait, why do I have this story about myself and is it even true? And so the story that I have had about myself forever since I. You know, everybody who listens to this pod knows the whole thing. But, you know, I became bulimic when I was 10 years old, and then I think my family found out when I was 12 or 13, and I was just in and out of therapy by myself till now. Okay. So I think it probably happens often that the identified patient can have a lot of different presenting issues over time. Because from my perspective now, what I understand is that it was my job to stay sick.

[Abby Wambach]

That's right.

[Amanda Doyle]

It doesn't matter what it is. It can be anxiety this year. It can be depression. It can be bulimia. It can be alcoholism. It can be cocaine addiction. It can be. Whatever it is, it doesn't really matter as long as I am sick. Okay. And I think the reason for me, when I'm listening to you say that person we can all rally behind and, like, say, that's the sick person. I'm not sure that that's exactly how I experience it at all. I feel like it was more like that person is almost like a threat to an excuse.

[Glennon Doyle]

They're gonna tell her secrets.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, a little bit. Little black sheepy. There's a overlap with black sheepy in it, I think, for you too.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah. It's like the scapegoat is another word for this person. Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

And no, scapegoat's a different one, but there's overlap.

[Amanda Doyle]

Okay. So it's like. I think the idea of a scapegoat is the same as, like, a sacrificial lamb. The goat is where we, like, put all of our sins, and then we sacrifice the goat. And then our sins are gone. That's what a scapegoat is, right? Or the sacrificial lamb is. Ancient religions, we don't want to make it a human sacrifice. We don't want to sacrifice ourselves. So we bring this lamb in, which is the picture of purity and goodness, and then we kill the lamb instead. And that's our sacrifice to the gods. So I actually truly, I mean, I've said this before, but I, you know, in my first book I wrote, I had a magical childhood period. So I don't know why I'm so fucked up. My best guess is that I was born broken. Okay? So my entire life I have been trying to figure out why I'm so fucked up and what's wrong with me. And if you are a person who's the identified patient, you will find that not a lot of people in your immediate family argue with you about that.

[Glennon Doyle]

They're like, good call. That's what you should be trying to figure out.

[Amanda Doyle]

Nobody. Yeah, nobody says, we also are trying.

[Glennon Doyle]

To figure out why you're so fucked up.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes. Nobody says, oh, honey, that's not right. You weren't born broken. Nobody says that. The first person that said to me, what the fuck with this sentence, after millions of people and everyone in my family has read this book was Oprah. Yeah, Oprah looked at me and said, what the hell with this? Do you believe this? That you were born broken? Okay, I think about that all the time because my answer is, yes, I do. I understand that. That. But yes, I do believe that. I think that I know more than anyone on this entire planet that having the right therapist to talk to can make a life changing therapy difference. That's why I think Alma is so cool. Alma connects you with real therapists who understand your unique experience. You can use their directory to search for someone who specializes in the areas that matter most to you, whether that's anxiety, relationships, or anything else. And what stands out to me about Alma is that 97% of people seeing a therapist through Alma say their therapist made them feel seen and heard. You know, I love that that level of connection isn't something you can get from scrolling through online advice or following social media. It's about finding someone who truly understands your journey and is dedicated to helping you make progress better with people, better with Alma. Visit hello Alma.com hardthings to get started and schedule a free consultation today. That's hello a LMA.com hard things.

[Glennon Doyle]

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[Dax Shepard]

If you're someone who's curious about why we are the way we are, why we succeed, why we screw up, then you'll want to check out Armchair Expert. Hosted by Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, the show explores big, honest conversations with artists, thinkers, scientists and cultural icons like Alex Cooper, Brad Pitt and Monica Lewinsky, just to name a few. Together they explore everything from identity and addiction to imposter syndrome and finding your purpose. Then on Fridays, they flip the mic to the listeners with Armchair Anonymous, a listener driven series where real people call in with raw, funny and totally human confessions. From disastrous dates and family secrets to accidentally joining a cult, they've heard it all. If you love self reflection, big ideas, and embracing the comedic chaos of life, follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to armchair expert on YouTube.

[Amanda Doyle]

I have come to the conclusion over the last my hero's journey. And if you are the identified patient, maybe the scapegoat, whatever. Nobody's born broken. You were not born broken. There is nothing inherently internally come out of the vaginal canal like broken. Your brokenness was required. Your perceived brokenness was required for the family unit. Because you know, we all have the capacity for brokenness in different areas. Every single person in a family. You needed as the hero as more permission for brokenness, right? But nobody is all of that while other people are not that. It's just something we all dip in and out of and explore. I have been the hero's journey of the person like me is to flirt with, think about, consider. What if you're not broken at all? I remember and I wrote this down. I wrote the sentence, I will not pretend to be sick for you anymore. I don't know exactly who I was talking to. Maybe the whole world, maybe myself, maybe my parents, maybe who. I will not pretend to be sick. There was a moment where I said all the things to my family of origin, said, this is how I see it now. This is what I need apologies for. And pointing out that elephant in the family system. Pointing out, actually I don't think it's all me anymore. I don't want to be the scapegoat. I'm actually pointing at making the elephant in the room visible. The holiday after that was the most unbearable week of my life. Because when the person points out what they were trying to keep hidden forever, what everybody's been trying to keep hidden forever, the system goes haywire. We didn't know how to talk to each other. We didn't know the whole. Everybody's script seemed to be taken like the tension. And as the person who's identified patient one of your personality traits either was or became hypersensitivity to everybody's feelings, vigilance. It was untenable to me. I did not see all of this in the moment. But what I did was I relapsed. I couldn't take it. I just went to the bathroom, started throwing up again. I hadn't thrown up for nine months before that. I was. But when I re entered into back onto the stage again, what I had done, the transgression that I had made by saying, I don't think it's me, I think it's all of us was so untenable that it was easier for me to say, nevermind, give me my script back. When I. A month later, then I was of course just fucked again. And then I came back and said, I'm fucked again. And now I need to go back to now. I relapsed. It felt comfortable again.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah, that's the road we know. Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

Everybody felt like they were back in their roles. Like everybody was sympathetic again. Everybody got their power back. I think that it has to do with power too. I think it has to do with worthiness. I think when I came out and said, wait, I think I'm all right and I'm healthy, like if you're the hero, if I become full of agency, if I become fully human, if I say, actually I've got this in our relationship, what do you do. Like, if you are depending on one thing or.

[Glennon Doyle]

Or it gives me an option to not be perfect. Right. Because the thing about families is there's systems within systems. There's the family system, there's the marriage system, there's the sibling system. Right. There is the threat that it can go either way because it's opposition, integration, or, you know, like, it's. You could. As you become human, the other person can sometimes become more human too.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes.

[Glennon Doyle]

Like, if I don't have to. If you're not totally fucked up, I don't have to be totally perfect.

[Amanda Doyle]

Exactly. So let me ask you in terms of what I'm presenting to you and what that looks like on the ground. Okay.

[Glennon Doyle]

But that's within our system. Like, when you're talking about Glennon, about. Everyone's very comfortable with the idea that, oh, no, you're sick, and we really hope you get better. And it's not a threat to us. It's not a threat to the unit that you are sick. It's a threat to the unit. If you say I'm not, we are.

[Amanda Doyle]

That was what was intolerable or felt intolerable. What I saw, how I saw people acting, and nobody knew how to relate to each other anymore. And that holiday, particular holiday, was just. It became clear to me that that was not acceptable. Whatever. I would rather just be back in my role. And now, a year or two after that, now that I've had time to see that for what I believe it is, who knows what it actually is. But I'm not gonna do that anymore. I'd rather just have a discord or I would say major disconnect or whatever. Thing I haven't been able to heal yet. Thing. I don't know if I'll ever be able to heal. Like, still, I won't pretend to be sick anymore, or I won't pretend to be sicker than anybody else. I guess I'm not saying, like, I'm healthier or, like, what, But I did wonder. So when I'm working on all of this stuff, I'm not gonna be the identified patient anymore. I'm not gonna pretend that I'm helpless or whatever. So I feel like this moment of you grieving about your being perfect role and me stepping out of the identified patient role has been, like, a long time coming. I don't think this is something we just figured out this week. I think that you have been. You've been talking about this in a million different ways, very honestly for a long time. And, you know, Sometimes it sounds like I can't do all of this. Like, I can't keep everything perfect. I can't. Or like too much depends on me or nobody else can do it as best as I can or what a growing tension, right? My role has been disappeared. Just whether it's just emotional or, like, go inside and just not when you got sick. I've been trying to figure out, like, how do I switch things around so that I don't feel the way I do. So that you don't have to feel the way that you do in this ecosystem, right? When you got sick, I was like, all right, this is the fucking time. She's been asking a million different ways. Please, please, world, stop rotating around me. I can't do everything. I don't want to do everything. That's how I've heard it anyway. Who knows? Somebody else step up is sort of what I was hearing. So I felt like perfect timing. I know I'm not fucked anymore. I know I'm not sick. I know I can handle.

[Abby Wambach]

You were never fucked, right?

[Amanda Doyle]

But, like, I thought I did. And when you think you are, that's as good as being. And so I took over like I did with my new healing self. I came in and just did all the things, rearranged a lot of stuff, did the whole shebang. And I. Here's what I wondered. I wondered if when you came back in, if that would feel like a wash of relief or. Or. And. And if it would feel a bit threatening. Because if your worthiness is tied up in this thing, won't run without me. But I'm saying with every cell in my body, help me. Even though you won't ever say those words. But that's what I was translating is as I wondered if you would have a crisis of worthiness. Like, okay, great. Because what I want for us is to not need each other. I desperately want so that I want us to choose as two whole people to come together and work and do whatever, but not because we are desperately needing each other's brokenness to be one ecosystem. So I wondered if when you came back, you would say, well, if they don't need me to keep the world spinning, what do they need me for? Because that's how I felt in our family. Okay, well, if you don't need me, if I'm not gonna be broken anymore, what's my role here?

[Glennon Doyle]

I think that's fascinating. I think had it been five years ago, I probably would have been threatened by it for sure. And I wasn't I was relieved and happy.

[Amanda Doyle]

Mm.

[Glennon Doyle]

So I think it also, interestingly, and I wanna get to yours, Abby, shortly. I think it's also interesting that what we're talking about is that these roles come in when it's a situation of stress, dysfunction, stress, all of that. Right. And as I was doing this research, I was thinking, okay, they started in, like, addicted families. Where's the addict? Why doesn't the addict have a role? This starts in highly dysfunctional families where there's a narcissist. Why isn't the narcissist named here? They're not. These are the people around those people. So you've got a rageaholic. They're not on this list. What it is doing is all of these roles are coming around, assuming that that behavior, that addiction, that dysfunction, is not changing. These are the roles that come around to make sure that we can survive notwithstanding the existence of that dysfunction.

[Abby Wambach]

Got it.

[Amanda Doyle]

Because the dysfunction is just the water we're swimming in.

[Glennon Doyle]

Exactly. If you remove the dysfunction or the high, high stress or the. Whatever it is, you don't need these roles. And also, if you're asking as part of that role, I don't want to do this role anymore. So can you remove that dysfunction? That's not going to work. Because the very existence of this entire structure presupposes that we aren't with the dysfunction.

[Amanda Doyle]

That's right.

[Glennon Doyle]

We are adapting to and surviving the dysfunction. That's why you're the identified patient. So when you say, hey, y' all not interested in this anymore. So I'd like to tell you that I'd like you to remove the dysfunction so I don't have to be the identified patient. That's not what we're doing here.

[Amanda Doyle]

And then that leaves you with no hope. It's like everybody's doing it in this fucked up way, but it's holding on to hope. We know that thing's not gonna change. So if we just keep rearranging chairs in the Titanic.

[Glennon Doyle]

But if you stop doing your role, then it creates imbalance.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes.

[Glennon Doyle]

If you stop doing your role, we are not creating. It's like these roles are. Everybody is below the surface, swimming their legs as fast as humanly possible. So above the surface, we look like we are a family that is working together. Okay. If you stop doing that, then, like, you drop out of that. Right. Or to think of it a different way, if all of this is to create balance and to create any semblance of order to make this thing keep running notwithstanding the dysfunction, when people start Doing the roles, it starts to feel dysfunctional.

[Amanda Doyle]

That's right. Exactly. Because it was functioning. It might have been a fucked up function, but it was functioning for a very long time.

[Glennon Doyle]

And so when people start to feel that, when it becomes unavoidable, that's when there is pain enough to maybe induce some change.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

But you can't sit in your role and say, I need you to stop doing that dysfunction because we don't feel any of that pain.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

This is working for us.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right, right. Except that it's like secretly not working for anyone.

[Glennon Doyle]

Totally.

[Amanda Doyle]

It works together.

[Glennon Doyle]

You have to let people feel the consequences of their actions in order for there to be any consequences felt by them of their actions.

[Amanda Doyle]

So is a necessary part of this dance, this play? It feels to me like I don't know the way out of it. But as leaders of a family, the adults in the room at least putting ourself on stage with everybody else and saying, I don't know, but I'm here too, and I'm a player and my lines and my scripts that I've received and whatever are contributing to all of this, I'm open for discussion as part of this ecosystem in unhealthy and healthy ways. Feels like the beginning. Because my experience of everyone who has these sort of family roles is that we all have parents who are just directors who don't put themselves in part of the human messy experience, who are just these like untouchable un mess with able distant controllers of the play. They aren't like saying, I too am human. I am open to hearing your full humanity and open to discussing how my role I've played as a parent might contribute to this mess. It's a distance and then it makes you feel like there's something wrong with you because that's just a God presence. Like, for example, I think as parents, I've spent a lot of time wondering why apologies have not landed for me. Like, what's wrong with me? My parents have apologized. Like, what's okay? Here's why. It is of utmost importance how and for what we apologize for as parents. The apologies to me have always been, we are so sorry that we didn't know how sick you were. We are so sorry that you were so sick and we didn't do what needed to be done. This is what has been the major chorus. And then I always am I. I'm in the moment and I'm like feeling it. But then I feel empty afterwards. And I'm not throwing my parents under the bus. All parents, all Parents, me, I'm thinking about it right now with my growing kids. That is like a parent who smokes in the house the whole time. Their kids are little. Okay, Just cigarettes everywhere. The kid gets lung cancer. Twenty years later, the parents sit down with the kids and say, we are so sorry that we didn't know how to treat your lung cancer better. No, absolutely not. The apology is, we are so sorry we smoked in that house for so long. What needs to be taken accountability for is the toxins you let into the air. Not that you didn't necessarily know how to deal with the effects of those toxins and how they went into somebody's body. Right. And the incredible importance that I'm just offering this up as a prototype for any of these roles is that because the apology was always. Or the family narrative was always, we're so sorry that you were such a sick person and we didn't know what to do with you. The only logical conclusion that I could make, the only narrative I had in my brain was, well, everybody feels bad and loves me, but everybody agrees that I was born broken. I had no other mission in life possible than to figure out what was wrong with me. The gift we can give our children, I think, is not perfection. It's not being fully healthy people. It's not being regulated. But the gift we can give is the looking closely at how we contributed what we still contribute, and owning that so that our kids can see that they are not necessarily broken or messy individually, but just that they are part of this system. It is a very unselfish thing to do because in the commitment of maintaining this idea of perfect parent, if that's your focus, then you, your kid has to believe that they are broken. That might feel great to know that you are untouchable, but then the only other logical consequence for the child in the family is, well, I guess they're perfect. So it's just me. We can share responsibility.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, because it's a system like any institution. Like, every system has broken parts to it. And it's because we're dealing with complicated human beings who we all really struggle to sit in our discomfort with shit. Right? And so trying to bring any kind of homeostasis or. Or some sort of, like, easy breeziness to a system is usually what the main goal is. I think about it with playing on soccer teams. I think about it with my own family of origin. I think about it in our family now, like, yeah, everybody is in some ways always trying to create level of peace. And every system has difficult parts to it cracks. I don't want to say broken, but parts to it that are contributing and also making it more difficult for that homeostasis to actually be applicable.

[Dax Shepard]

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[Glennon Doyle]

Liberty Lost is a new podcast about who gets to be a mother and control of young women Hidden behind the Veil of Faith When Roe v. Wade was overturned, host TJ Raphael set out to do a story about maternity homes and adoption narrative pillars for anti abortion advocates. This started a three year reporting journey full of shock, frustration and revealed a story that's never been told. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families shipped their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes and forced them to secretly place their babies for adoption. And in hidden corners across America, it's still happening. At Liberty University, there is a secretive facility called the Liberty Godparent Home. The home says it will support unwed mothers, but in reality, many of the young women feel trapped inside a system that's forcing them to give up their children. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Liberty Lost early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus.

[Amanda Doyle]

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[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. And I'm sure that there's a lot of listeners because you guys have very specific. Like you came from a family of two kids, you know, two parents. I came from a family of seven children. Two parents. Then we had two cousins come live with us. At some point in my life there was a lot of people like a lot of energy happening. And it's interesting because when I took this quiz, I only took it as a young person because a lot of the questions were directed towards the big people in your life.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah.

[Abby Wambach]

And I think that if I were to go and take it now or even like in my 20s, I would have definitely been rebel. But I was. What was I lost?

[Glennon Doyle]

No, no, you were the easy one.

[Abby Wambach]

I was the easy one.

[Glennon Doyle]

The easy one is also the lost.

[Abby Wambach]

Also lost. Yeah, so.

[Glennon Doyle]

So they're the same thing. So that's the one. The wheel that never squeaks. You're trying to reduce stress by having no needs.

[Abby Wambach]

And yeah, when I was younger and I would be interested to know how my brothers and sisters would categorize all of us and how different each one of us categories would be. That's been the thing that I've found most fascinating about this is thinking about my sister Beth, who's the oldest. She for sure was the perfect one. You know, she went to Harvard and then became a surgeon and all the things. And I remember when I was a child though, though the. I think these roles are kind of like in the air and like you pick up them subconsciously. I think that I, being the youngest of seven was in such observation of the other people in my family that I kind of cherry picked a little. Like I think the first couple of years of my life I was just going with the flow. So that's where I think that this role kind of really set In. And I. I do think that it is a predominant part of my personality. But as I got older, my sister Beth and Laura, they moved out of the house to go to college, and then Peter, and then people would just, like, leave. Every year or two, they would leave the house, and so the whole dynamic inside the family kind of changed.

[Glennon Doyle]

How long were you just. You in the house? Because it's so interesting that you were the youngest of seven, which I can't even. And two cousins living with you. Like, that's an insane amount of.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, it's a lot of things.

[Glennon Doyle]

Not a lot of attention to go around. Like, how.

[Abby Wambach]

Not a lot.

[Glennon Doyle]

But how long were you in the house as, like, a only child? When they left?

[Abby Wambach]

One year.

[Glennon Doyle]

Oh, one year. So that wasn't.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, so it wasn't a big time, but there was, like, when the girls left, when Beth and Laura, the two oldest, left the house, I was 8 and 10. And so that was kind of a very forming part of my life where they were kind of my parents, in a way. They raised me because they were the girls, and they could change the diapers, you know, like, that whole thing. And then when my brothers started to leave, my roles kind of shifted, because this is when athleticism started to take a lot of emphasis in my life, and I started to become. In some ways, I went from, like, you know, the lost one to the perfect one.

[Glennon Doyle]

Exactly. That's what I was wondering. Because a lot of this is, like, ironic, because you're just trying to be unnoticed. You don't want to be visible. And then you go into the most visible member of your entire family and the one who is arguably, you know, with Beth being the Harvard surgeon, proving that wombachs are doing all right, lost.

[Amanda Doyle]

That'S a very big difference to hero. In which case you become a lost hero. Go ahead.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah. Lost to hero. Then. I despise the hero part of myself. So I became the rebel.

[Glennon Doyle]

Because you're still not known. The hero isn't known. The lost one isn't known. Like, none of these are known, but, like, you're exactly loved for having no needs.

[Abby Wambach]

Yes.

[Glennon Doyle]

As the lost one.

[Abby Wambach]

Yes.

[Glennon Doyle]

And then you're loved for what the, like, honor and accomplishments you can bring to the family, neither of which are satisfying.

[Abby Wambach]

I mean, and I think my biggest thing, one of my deepest wounds is and needs is to fear of not being known and the desire of being loved. And it's all of these roles that I kind of took on throughout my life that enables or enlivens these needs. And these desires that I've longed for, these longings. And I just think, you know, it's kind of like a case study. My family specifically, where I can see, specifically, I know who the jester is. I know who the mascot is. I know who the Peacekeeper is. One of the things that I think is really interesting now since my brother Peter has passed away is he was the one that brought levity jokes and also he was the big Peacekeeper. I don't think that that's the same one. I think those are two separate ones. Right, sister?

[Glennon Doyle]

You said the Peacekeeper and the what?

[Abby Wambach]

The jokester, the jet.

[Glennon Doyle]

Yeah, they're different.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

The comedian is different than the.

[Abby Wambach]

I think Peter was a combination of both. And I'm curious to see how our family dynamic now is without him. Because the role that he played, and I'm not trying to like make his role bigger, I think that that role is maybe one of the most obvious missing pieces when it goes missing, you know, I think that the one who brings up all the family shit, and that's also probably a really conscious one, but all the other ones can be a little bit, they're a little bit less knowable, you know, so it'll be interesting to see how it goes, the peacekeeping.

[Glennon Doyle]

It will, it'll be interesting to see if someone steps into that, you know, if someone notices. Because these, these seem like very intuitive, like, oh, that this role is needed right now. Yeah, I will step in it. You know, I wonder if someone will take that over.

[Abby Wambach]

Well, I mean, he was the one that would go to my parents house and weed the garden, clean the pool, all this stuff. So he's being noticeably missed for so many things, so many functions in the roles that he played. But I'm curious to see how the dynamic shifts with the death. Right. And also I have a couple of questions around the kind of totality of this idea. One, I'm curious if there's any research that you've found if certain roles allow for longer lives or shorter lives.

[Glennon Doyle]

I bet I do know that the hero often is very susceptible to stress based illnesses and diseases.

[Abby Wambach]

Oh, interesting.

[Glennon Doyle]

But that's the only thing I saw about that. I mean, I'm sure that the ones that are more prone to like substance, like the comedian developing substance dependencies is probably also not great for longevity. But those two are the only ones that I saw that have associated.

[Amanda Doyle]

Okay. Identified patient probably does great because we're always in the fucking doctor's office. I mean, I feel like I've had more Testing than anyone our family put together. I'm like, I'll probably be all right.

[Glennon Doyle]

Identified patient lasts 100 years, but 50 of them are in the hospital.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah.

[Abby Wambach]

And then I guess the last thing that I think we should maybe talk about just a little bit before we get off is now that all of us are in our 40s. And I think at the beginning of the first episode, you're like, you know, when things start slowing down in your 40s, I don't think that our lives slow down in our 40s. I think that they're the most complicated and intense.

[Amanda Doyle]

Slowdown isn't the right word. I think crash and burn, like, yeah.

[Glennon Doyle]

No, I slow down like a plane into a mountain.

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah.

[Abby Wambach]

Honestly, I think our 40s is the time that we start to question our mortality because we are closer to death. And I think that that's why we start thinking about the stuff more. 20s and 30s were like, fudge it. I'm not dying for a while. I don't have to think about the shit. I think we're trying to get right with it. My question is, do we? As adults, I have found that my marriage has allowed me to uncover the different parts of myself that I wasn't able to kind of employ or, like, bring into my. Like, do relationships help us heal? Do we ever get healed? Or the way that our family's functioning as we get older? Does this apply? Or are we just thinking about this in our own nuclear, like, family with our own children now? Like, does it change as you get older?

[Glennon Doyle]

Differentiation is how you discover this.

[Amanda Doyle]

Right.

[Glennon Doyle]

So if you. It's recognizing when your whole existence is around your nuclear family, your family of origin, you don't know another existence or another sense of self outside of that. As you have more life under your belt and more dynamics and relationships with your new family and your new partner and your. Whatever your. You are starting to see a sense of self that isn't confined to your family of origin. So you start to experience, like, wait, is this working for me here? This is, how do I do? I want to replicate that? Are new things possible for me? Is this story that's being told by my family, is that even true of me anymore? Who am I? Who am I allowed to be? And you're starting to fuck with the idea of, like, is who I've always been working for me? If not, am I allowed to be something else? What would that mean to me?

[Amanda Doyle]

Yeah, I think aging is about being in different contexts. Now. I'm in the context of my marriage now. I'M in the context of this company. Now, when we put ourselves in new contexts, the context we came from becomes clear. If you're just in a fishbowl bowl the whole time with the same four fish, you never question it. But then when you are doing your little thing and you get put into an aquarium with a bunch of other fish and the other fish look at you and they're like, why the are you like this?

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah.

[Amanda Doyle]

You're like, wait a minute. I thought this was just normal.

[Glennon Doyle]

I thought this is what I was supposed to be. To get love. Why am I not getting love?

[Amanda Doyle]

Yes. And then you start to see the script and the roles and the.

[Glennon Doyle]

But you certainly can replicate, if you're leading a family that's full of stress and or dysfunction, you could absolutely replicate this and be in a different role in the new family or the same one. So it's not like it transfers directly, but these dynamics still play all the time. But I think the key is letting people exist in the fullness of their complexity. Is resisting, especially since we all live really stressful lives, it is resisting the temptation a thousand times a day to say, this kid, my husband, me, whatever, is always blank, is never blank. Is asking yourself, what is the story my family tells about me? What is the story my family tells about my son? What is the story my family tells about my daughter, about their father, about their mother? What is the real story of them? Is there a difference? Who is each person in this family not allowed to be? Who are they allowed to be? And, like, start to really interrogate whether you are inadvertently putting someone in a role or accepting them showing up in a role. Because accepting them showing up in a role is just as bad as putting them there. Like, you need to lure them out of it.

[Abby Wambach]

Yeah, that's good.

[Amanda Doyle]

Well, first of all, I know the POD Squad well enough by now to know that everyone is going to have ideas about this. Feel free to call us.

[Glennon Doyle]

747-200-5307 okay, we will do another episode on this.

[Amanda Doyle]

We will bring somebody in. We will do whatever we have to do to help us all break out of our contexts. But the, like, teeny little start of this, I really believe is just trying, like all hell to bring beginner's mind to the people in our lives. To, like, try to look at everybody in our life like you've never seen them before. Because the thing that makes us not appreciate the beauty of a rose is the word rose. It's the label of the thing is between us and the experience of the thing. We never see the thing because of the label of the thing. And if we can just try to remove the label for a day and look at each person in our family with beginner's mind, like, wow, I've never met you before. Who are you today?

[Glennon Doyle]

Andrea Gibson said about Megan in episode 245. They said, I think I learned it in college. One of our greatest human desires is to be known. But there was something about right when I was diagnosed, when I realized that the best way to know somebody is to unknow them. Yes, to see them as a mystery, to not expect the same patterns. And what's really beautiful about that is as soon as you stop expecting the same patterns, that energy almost creates this world in which the person no longer does the thing anymore, who has more of a capacity to not do it. But I remember just being overwhelmed with just watching Meg walk through the house and thinking, who is this person? Who is this mystery walking around in here? And I had years ago heard a poem by Mary Oliver talking about her partner at the time, and it was called the Whistler. And I think they had been together for decades. And then one day Mary walks downstairs and hears Molly whistling and she had never heard her whistle before. Such a beautiful poem. It just talks about how there is so much to uncover in a person even decades later, we only know a fraction of them. And I feel like there was something about that energy of just feeling like you were new.

[Amanda Doyle]

We love you, Pod Squad. You are new. We don't even think of you as the Pod Squad. We don't know who you are. You are new to us. We'll see you next time, perhaps, if you come. Bye Bye. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the POD helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on Follow. This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman, and the show is produced by Lauren Legrasso, Allison Schott and Bill Schultz.