Have you ever thought of the ties that bind you to your family? As children, we receive love, attention and protection from our parents and caregivers and in return we offer them our loyalty for taken care of us. As small children, there is not much else we can offer in the asymmetrical parent-child relationship. We mimic our parents, “obey” them and follow what they want for us. These “invisible loyalties” as coined by Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy, one of the founding fathers of family therapy, are characteristics and behaviors that are unconsciously passed down through generations. They make family members help each other, follow traditions and have family values. They are unconscious and compulsory. “I have to do X for my family”, “what can I do, she is my mother/he is my father.” These are just some examples of sentences based on invisible loyalties.

These unconscious loyalties are detrimental to us often and are a tribute to those who came before us. A woman who was harshly criticized by her mother might grow up to harshly criticize her own children or a man who grew up with an alcoholic father might become a workaholic and spend a lot of time not connecting to their family, just like the father did in a different way.

We all have these hidden loyalties to belief systems, to our siblings, to our family members, to our ethnicity, to our religion, to our tribe, to our nation, to groups, etc. They are very important because belonging is a basic human need — a child needs to feel they are attached to their family. Many of us cannot imagine living outside of our family system, as if we could die if we did not belong to our family, our groups and countries. It was the same for me: I have always wanted to belong to a group that felt protective and loving and sent me the message “go to the world my daughter, we will be here waiting for you whenever you return”.

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