Family roles worksheet

If you’re a therapist looking for a family roles worksheet to use with clients that provides dysfunctional family role examples, you’re in the right place. 

The free family roles worksheet gives mental health therapists a brief overview of family dynamics and examples. 

You can download the free dysfunctional family roles PDF to save to your electronic health record (EHR) and share with clients. 

What are family roles?

Family roles describe the patterns of behavior, responsibilities, and expectations of each family member within a family system. 

Various factors influence family dynamics and individual roles, such as stressors, challenges, and the family unit's health. 

For example, a supportive family promotes love, clear communication, empathy, compassion, flexibility, and care for each other. Conversely, a dysfunctional family unit is burdened with stress, conflict, neglect, and poor health. 

Understanding the family system using a family roles worksheet or a dysfunctional family roles PDF can be helpful, as these roles can have lasting impacts on physical health, mental health, and overall family well-being. 

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Healthy family role examples

The key roles within a healthy family system include:

• The role model: As the name suggests, this family role is about demonstrating healthy and adaptive behaviors to younger family members.
• The caregiver: This role provides emotional support, and is nurturing and loving.
• The supporter: Encourages, motivates, and cheerleads other family members.
• The problem-solver: Their role is to take the initiative to find solutions to challenges and conflicts.

Dysfunctional family roles examples

Dysfunctional family roles often occur in environments with various stressors, such as substance use disorder, mental health conditions, financial insecurity, abuse, neglect, a family member in prison, and divorce. 

When families experience stress, they may take on unhealthy roles to cope for several reasons:

1. To maintain the family’s stability during stressful or chaotic circumstances and environments
2. To protect the family image or unit
3. To avoid addressing underlying issues like abuse, substance use, and other stressors

The most common dysfunctional roles (included in the dysfunctional family roles PDF) include:

• The hero: A family member who strives to overachieve. As a perfectionist, the hero may take on too many responsibilities and feel pressured to keep up this high-achieving facade, but under the guise of keeping the family and home in order. As a result, they experience high levels of stress and burnout.
• The mascot: A family comedian and entertainer, the mascot might use humor and playfulness to defuse the tension at home. However, as this is an avoidance strategy, the mascot may struggle to express themselves and cope with their emotions.
• The scapegoat: A nonconformist who acts as a “problem child.” The scapegoat attracts the blame for the family’s problems. Sadly, the family avoids dealing with their issues by focusing on the scapegoat. The family members in this role feel misunderstood and rejected, and they may internalize the blame. 
• The lost child: This role is quiet, obedient, and almost invisible. The lost child avoids conflict through isolation and staying unnoticed. However, they may experience loneliness, difficulty connecting with others, and low self-worth. 
• The enabler: Also called the rescuer, the enabler protects the family by excusing poor behaviors and untreated mental health problems to shield them from the consequences. However, the enabler reinforces unhealthy behaviors and overlooks the family's needs. 

The family roles (scapegoat, hero, mascot) PDF is included in the worksheet you can download above. 

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How to use the dysfunctional family roles chart

Therapists can download the family roles worksheet and use it in several ways. 

You may use the worksheet as a family roles list PDF to draw the client’s attention to healthy and dysfunctional family roles.

Therapists can also use the dysfunctional family roles PDF in a family session as an activity to help them identify roles within their family unit. 

The family roles worksheet can also be used as a psychoeducational handout to review in between sessions and discuss at the following therapy appointment. 

Sources

• Gunn, H. E., & Eberhardt, K. R. (2019). Family Dynamics in Sleep Health and Hypertension. 
• Jabbari B, Schoo C, Rouster AS. (2003). Family Dynamics. StatPearls . Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing. 
• Zagefka, H., Jones, J., Caglar, A., Girish, R., & Matos, C. (2021). Family Roles, Family Dysfunction, and Depressive Symptoms.

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