By Ashley Lugo, A values driven community member challenging harmful systems through grant writing, fundraising, and art

As I started navigating relationships outside of my family of origin, I began to recognize just how difficult it was for me to hold on to them. I began to realize that being in community and in relation with others was debilitating for me, and I eventually closed myself off to people. Both out of necessity and fear, I began to place all my attention on work.

How many of y’all have interviewed with a company or worked somewhere that described themselves as a ‘family’? If you were to say, “never,” I’d be genuinely surprised. My experience is mostly in non-profit, and I’ve heard this family descriptor too much (probably to make up for how much they don’t pay). In my experience, this is a go-to for interviewers. 

Today, I’m extremely critical of organizations that describe themselves as family. However, at the dawn of my career, hearing this would be a selling point as I was constantly searching for family. 

While most people work out their relational patterns and baggage in “romantic” or “personal” relationships, I’ve been doing it through my relationships at and with work. I didn’t know I was doing this during the earlier part of my career. Now that I am, I firmly believe that to create equitable workspaces, we must start by unpacking our formative relationships.

The complexity of the term family

I’ve never had a great relationship with my family of origin. They’re good people. Hard-working people. Hard people. Both of my parents are immigrants from Mexico, and they were young when they came here. They, unfortunately, had to grow up too fast. 

From a really young age, I was very aware of their history and trauma, what they left behind, and the sacrifices they made to come here. It was used to shame me for wanting more than I needed; they never let me forget it. 

We had good times, too. My dad swaddled me and read me to sleep every night until I was about eight, even though he didn’t read English well. My parents are too complex to try and explain here, but I know they confused me and, as such, I also grew up fast, and the cycle of generational trauma continues with me. 

When I left home, I was 19 and desperately searching for somewhere I felt safe. Leaving home was my savior, and I followed that light faithfully. 

As I started navigating relationships outside of my family of origin, I began to recognize just how difficult it was for me to hold on to them. I began to realize that being in community and in relation with others was debilitating for me, and I eventually closed myself off to people. Both out of necessity and fear, I began to place all my attention on work. 

If my life was a romcom, what comes next would be a ‘leveling up’ montage before the main character has a meet-cute with the love of their life while getting work done! 

But of course, that’s not my life; that’s not anyone’s life. What really happened is that my relationship patterns continued to play out at work. I went from one job to the next, going all in and then quitting when it became too much, and all around had a very unstable relationship with work. 

Learning about family systems and attachment theory

The work environments I found myself in were the perfect silos for reenactments of the familial roles I famously played, triggered my trauma, and solidified any previous beliefs I had about people and my worthiness.

I didn’t start going to therapy until maybe four years after leaving home and didn’t start learning about Family Systems and Attachment Theory until 2020! It’s unfortunately taken a while, but I now understand that due to the family system I was raised in, I have a fearful-avoidant (disorganized) attachment style. This means I crave intimacy and connection but am also quite fearful of people and experience difficulty trusting and depending on others. In my family system, I was a parentified kid — some of the roles I played were out of necessity, such as helping my parents fill out paperwork because English wasn’t their first language. Other times it was because my parents didn’t have the emotional maturity to keep me out of their drama.

In Psychology Today, Dr. Ahona Guha states that “parentification teach[es] children not to establish or respect boundaries [and they] tend to lack these skills.” In my relationships at work and with the work itself, I eventually recognized that I had no boundaries. I was often in the middle of everyone’s drama because it felt natural to me to try and fix things. The work environments I found myself in were the perfect silos for reenactments of the familial roles I famously played, triggered my trauma, and solidified any previous beliefs I had about people and my worthiness. 

Family systems theory, originated by Dr. Murray Bowen, is a theory of human behavior that defines the family unit as a complex social system where members interact to influence each other’s behavior. People solicit each other’s attention, approval, and support, and react to each other’s needs, expectations, and upsets. The theory has eight interlocking concepts that “explain how the emotional system operates in one’s family, work, and social systems.” I highly recommend checking out The Bowen Center for the Study of the Family’s website for more information on the eight concepts. It’s extremely thorough and takes a couple of days to get through.

What do all of these psychological theories have to do with work?

In her book, Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success, leadership development coach Jessica Pryce-Jones posits that “during the course of a lifetime, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work.” Other experts and professionals say 40-50% of our day is spent at work. Whatever the actual statistic is, we can’t deny work relationships and our relationship with work are important. The reality is that workplaces that describe themselves as a “family” are quite common, but if you haven’t worked through (or even thought about) your family baggage and learned to establish healthy boundaries, working for places like this can be harmful to you and those that work with you. 

In the podcast “How Understanding Your Family Dynamics Can Improve Work,” Professor Deborah Ancona from MIT Sloan School of Management states that “we learn so much of our views toward authority, our views toward power, our views toward what’s important from the whole family system.” I’d like to add to that my personal belief that the way we attach to things can also imprint on what sort of opportunities we pursue e.g., young me working for any place that referred to themselves as a family and quitting to avoid major conflicts.

Leaders and executives need training around social and emotional systems. 

In the previously mentioned podcast, the host Curt Nickisch opens the episode with “managing people means engaging with their psychology.” Having spent more time as a ‘subordinate,’ I’ve always thought this to be true but never found superiors that did. I remember constantly feeling from my supervisors an expectation of helping them to understand me but never the other way around. From some of my most domineering managers, I remember feeling like they were allowed to tell me anything and everything, and I was expected to just take it but never the other way around. I now believe you can learn a lot about a manager’s family of origin from how they lead. 

Another interviewee of the aforementioned podcast episode, Dennis N.T. Perkins, CEO of the Syncretics Group and a former professor at Yale School of Management, mentions that “the ripple effect from some behaviors at that [senior executive] level has an impact that is tremendous.” I would argue, to the point that it’s traumatic. 

Leadership, and everyone who falls under that umbrella, sets the tone for the company’s culture. In “Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite,” co-authored by Ancona and Perkins, they say “If you want to become a better leader, you have to seek out feedback and engage in self-reflection…ultimately, leadership is about imagining the future that you want to create.” They argue in this article that by “contending with ghosts from your past,” we can uplift the healthy mechanisms inherited from our family system and challenge the unhealthy ones.

Employment is key to cultivating our safety and stability so, to some extent, our employers play a role in upholding our safety. Some of the people who had previously employed me also promised me mentorship. Those who seriously pushed the ‘family’ narrative were the most difficult to work with; they had unhealthy boundaries with work, and as such, so did I. When I finally began to stand up for myself, I became “insubordinate.” Instead of growing into my career and into myself, I stopped dreaming. 

Understanding and making space for relational learning curves at work

As we re-imagine ways to create equitable spaces — including workspaces — it’s important to remember that just as everyone comes in with productivity and project learning curves, they also come with relational learning curves.

This is what white-supremacy culture wants from us. Identity-less, non-humans that mindlessly make profits. 

I think one of the biggest hindrances to our wellbeing is this belief that work stays at work and home stays at home. Our identities are constructed from all the things that impact us day to day. Humans feel emotions that shape our beliefs, and those emotions have histories just like everything else that makes up this world we inhabit. Our emotions and our ability to express them is a gift. From our families, we’re meant to learn how to do so respectfully and how to hold space for others. But, let’s be real, most of us don’t learn that from our families. 

As we re-imagine ways to create equitable spaces — including workspaces — it’s important to remember that just as everyone comes in with productivity and project learning curves, they also come with relational learning curves. One of my favorite quotes is from somatic abolitionist Resmaa Menakem, “Trauma in a person, decontextualized over time, looks like personality. Trauma in a family, decontextualized over time, looks like family traits. Trauma in a people, decontextualized over time, looks like culture.”

Dismantling white supremacy culture means evaluating systems and challenging hegemony, including our family systems. We can show ourselves and others more empathy by holding space for the experiences that shaped us and also make room for diversity in thought and values. The point of equity is that everyone, no matter where they’re starting from, has access to safety. Work and our relationships are major building blocks to our safety and wellbeing; if we’re to create community-driven solutions, we must nurture the way we relate to ourselves and others.