The Role of the Outsider in the Family System

By Hayley Moore

In many families those that are cast aside often introduce new energy and new routes for healing, at the cost of their own belonging. In family constellations work, the term ‘black sheep’ is often used to describe those who are excluded, who often carry behaviours, emotions, or life patterns that the rest of the family rejects or doesn’t understand.

“In a family, no one can be excluded. If someone is excluded, another member of the family will unconsciously identify with them” (Hellinger, 1998).

This dynamic is highly visible when an individual struggles with addiction, makes life choices that are destructive, or challenges family norms, belief systems or secrets. In other cases, however, a person may be rejected without any obvious cause. Their presence alone appears to create discomfort. What are they representing in the family system?

Family constellation theory suggests that everyone has an equal right to belong. Therefore, in Hellinger’s framework, the ‘black sheep’ is not simply the problem but often a signal that something unresolved exists in the family system. When a person is cut out or labelled a ‘black sheep’ others unconsciously pick up their loss. A member from a later generation may manifest the excluded one’s feelings and fate. The system attempts to reorganise itself around what is missing. The black sheep holds space for the unspoken.

When a family system resists integration, symptoms and entanglements intensify and can persist for generations. Hellinger’s work emphasises that denying belonging causes disorder with far-reaching consequences. Systems often refuse completeness by excluding members for apparent safety, only to have the issue resurface in a later generation through hidden loyalties.

What becomes of their children and those that follow them? Are they then doomed to be excluded as well? Where was the original fracture? Who came first? And what is the entanglement?

The outsider of any system carries the weight. They may struggle to find safety in any group. Belonging can feel out of reach in relationships, work, and social spaces, carrying a quiet sadness and sense of being ‘othered’. This can result in destructive behaviour patterns or self-sabotage.

Their exclusion from the original system may allow others to believe the problem has gone away. But the collective weight remains, blocking the pathway to peace for all.

With this in mind, I sought to answer the questions of ‘the outsider’ and exclusion in my own family.

My mother died in an accident when she was twenty-seven, leaving behind a husband and three children, the eldest of whom was me, at six years old.

My father remarried after two years. Two stepchildren were added into the mix. My youngest sister was only an infant and was sent to live with my father’s sister in another province. My other sister’s life hung in the balance as a result of the same accident. She would need specialised medical care and surgeries for many years. Our family system was fractured.

In my father’s attempts to normalise this monumental loss, he shut out all memory of my mother. He became frozen and shut down. We were not allowed to talk about her. All reminders were removed, and we were encouraged to move forward as if she had never existed.

In an attempt to provide stability for my sister, my aunt raised her as her own child, treating me on my holiday visits as a cousin to her and her new siblings. My sister’s role and loyalty within the family became divided.

An omission in the system, especially one as large as this one, could not go ignored. The effects would ripple out for years to come. In studying the dynamics of omission in family constellation work, I began to understand what I had been seeing in the families I worked with.

Whilst the black sheep pattern is often associated with those who act out, I began to recognise it in those who were always searching for belonging and never quite finding it. Always struggling to fit in.

In each case there were barriers to belonging. Sometimes rigid attitudes, sometimes silence, sometimes a loss that had never been acknowledged. When what was hidden was brought into the open, connections shifted.

I began to ask what the black sheep holds for the family. What they draw attention to. The one who feels too much. The one who challenges what cannot be questioned.

And then the question turned back to me. What if the omission in my family was not acknowledging my mother’s death? Was I holding space for the one who was missing?

My youngest sister eventually rejoined our family, but she felt displaced. She was torn between two branches of the same system and no longer fully belonged to either.

My other sister never fully recovered. Her hold on life remained fragile. My father held onto her as if his life depended on it, leaving little space for the rest of us.

He had closed himself off from his family and severed ties with my mother’s family. My sisters and I had lost our place on both sides, without this being recognised and acknowledged. I did not understand it at the time, but I had become the outsider in the system. Not because I did not belong, but because I remained connected to the one we had lost.

I remembered my mother. I refused to forget her. That was the only connection I had left.

As many outsiders do, I sought connection where it was available. For me, that became a spiritual connection to my mother. It grew out of necessity. I craved belonging and could not find it in the absence she had left.

I attempted to re-establish ties with her family as I grew older. My youngest sister followed.

Both my sisters sought connection at the fringes, with other outsiders. Connections that appear safe are not always so.

The connection with my mother’s family proved to be the most dangerous of all. Within months, my sister died at the hands of the person she had most connected with. Their shared outsider status created a bond that became fatal. My mother’s daughter was killed at the hands of her sister’s child.

When someone in a family system is excluded or forgotten, a later member may unconsciously identify with that person and even take on aspects of their fate (Hellinger, 1998, 2001).

We could say that, out of loyalty, my youngest sister shared the fate of our mother and followed her. In deep grief, my other sister soon followed too, dying just over a year later, entangled with the same fate. The losses multiplied.

After my sisters were gone, my father turned away from the one who remained. The family turned with him in their collective pain, and my place was quietly erased.

A younger relative contacted me a few years later to ask, “How are you connected to your father? I thought he didn’t have children.”

At my sister’s funeral, my stepsister introduced me to her children by saying, “This is the lady who grew up in my house.”

As someone who works to help families find belonging, I could not ignore what was happening in my own. I needed to understand it. More than that, I needed to create a different path for my children and for my sisters’ children.

In a constellation, a few movements revealed the imbalance clearly. The opening statement from my father’s representative was, “You do not belong. You belong with the dead.”

But the outsider’s journey is not only to hold space for those who are gone or forgotten. It is to learn how to hold space for themselves while finding new places for healing. Restoring to balance what was lost.

I had to find what I needed from a wider framework. I had to unlearn what I had been given and build something different.

Over time, I returned to the healing work. I allowed space for the losses and fractures that did not start with me. Slowly, I began to take my place again. I helped my children and my nieces take theirs, systemically their places can never be erased, only that one feels displaced without acknowledgement by others in the family.

There is more to be done and the healing continues. But something has shifted. The place that was denied by others has been restored through self-healing where belonging is not conferred from external sources. My children and my nieces can now access a sense of belonging that was once blocked. Whether or not the wider system changes, something has changed within us.

When clients experience a sense of disconnection within their family systems, the recognition of what Hellinger described as the ‘orders of love’ in a system (Hellinger, 2001) restores their route to belonging and to receiving the flow of love that is rightfully theirs. By acknowledgement of what had been excluded – we open new pathways to belonging.

The legacy of exclusion no longer remains.

Mothering children who challenge society’s norms through their disabilities has shown me how this dynamic does not exist only within families, but within society itself.

“The opposite of belonging is fitting in” (Brown, 2017, paraphrased). In her book ‘Braving the wilderness’ Brené Brown argues that true belonging requires authenticity rather than changing oneself to gain acceptance, making “fitting in” a barrier rather than a pathway to connection.

The outsider does not fit in and accommodate the system’s defences. To do so is to act against their inner integrity and systemic role. Their role is not to disappear into the system, but to reveal what it cannot see and claim their right to belong regardless.

They hold the space for what has been left out. In choosing not to turn away, they carry the possibility of restoring what was lost, for themselves and for all who come after them.

So we honour the ‘black sheep’ who are often the clients that seek out this work. The ones who are searching for new pathways to belonging. When everyone belongs, harmony is restored – within ourselves, our families and our communities.

Let us welcome the outsiders in so that we may hear what they have to teach us.

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References:

Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Spark, G. M. (1973). Invisible Loyalties: Reciprocity in Intergenerational Family Therapy. New York: Harper & Row.

Brown, B. (2017). Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone. New York: Random House.

Hellinger, B. (1998). Love’s Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

Hellinger, B. (2001). Orders of Love: A Guide to Family Constellations Work. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

Weber, G. (2003). The Healing Power of Families: An Introduction to Family Constellations. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

Wolynn, M. (2016). It Didn’t Start With You: Inherited Family Trauma and How to End the Cycle. New York: Viking.

About the Author

Hayley Moore has been a facilitator of family constellations for the past 18 years. Her clients are spread around the globe and she consults online and in person. She has hosted many retreats and workshops both here and in the USA. She and her husband have two boys, one of whom is on the autism spectrum. They live in the KZN Midlands where she continues to draw inspiration from their natural surrounds and enjoys a slower paced lifestyle. Her process and work, focusing on self-empowerment and personal growth, is informed by her natural intuitive and psychic abilities, producing powerful results for her clients.