How to Find Emotional Peace When Your Family Doesn't Show Up For You
The question haunts many of us, usually right after an awkward and painfully disappointing holiday dinner, or a frustrating phone call (or no call), or when no one volunteers to take you to, or pick you up from your hospital procedure. We ask, “What did I do to deserve these people?”
It’s the agonizing query that makes you wonder if you accidentally slighted a deity in a past life by stealing their parking spot. We feel this way because we’re constantly told that family is supposed to be this cozy, safe harbor of unconditional love, but when ours turns out to be more like a leaky dinghy during a hurricane, the disappointment is profound. It can make you feel lonely, untethered, abandoned and lost.
The truth? Your pain isn't a divine punishment you "deserve." It’s a very natural reaction to a very human—and very systemic—problem.
The Systemic Stress of Love and Labor (A Comedy of Errors)
Let’s be real: American capitalism is a demanding partner. It constantly whispers that your highest purpose is to be a productive cog, to prioritize the hustle and the deadline over... well, everything else. This intense pressure to work leaves us mentally and emotionally running on fumes when it comes time for emotional labor—the exhausting, essential work of tending to complex relationships.
This over-prioritization of the self-made, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps narrative also breeds a peculiar kind of toxic individualism. When everyone is encouraged to be the hero of their own movie, prioritizing their needs above all, it's a recipe for familial friction. Who has the bandwidth for empathy when you’re constantly stressed about the mortgage and your exploding email inbox?
What is familial love supposed to look like?
The revolutionary visionary, Bell Hooks saw through the façade of the “perfect” family. In her book, All About Love, she reminds us that our earliest family experiences set the benchmark for what we think love is. If our parents showed "love" while commingling with abuse and/or neglect, we might have gotten the wrong memo.
Hooks wisely suggests we need “courage to look at how we were taught [to] love and to begin to dismantle those teachings that do not serve our well-being.” It’s a call to action: stop conflating elements of love with elements of abuse. For there to be whole and true, healthy love between people, elements of abuse and neglect cannot exist alongside it. True love cannot exist with regular doses of disrespect and/or cruelty.
A Spiritual Shift: Stop Obsessing Over the Arrow’s Shooter
When dealing with deep, persistent disappointment, many of us turn to existential and/or spiritual concepts like karma for an answer. Buddhist Karmic Law, for example, suggests that our present relationships are part of a massive, long-running game of cause and effect, including ones that occurred in past lives. And while it’s comforting to think there’s a reason for the familial let-downs we're experiencing, we can also become stuck in that search for the "why," to the point where it becomes a trap.
The Buddha’s Parable of the Arrow (found in the Majjhima Nikaya) perfectly illustrates this trap. In the story, a man is shot with a poisoned arrow, but refuses treatment until he knows absolutely everything about the shooter: his name, his clan, his height, the brand of bowstring used. The Buddha simply points out that the man would die before he ever got any of that information.
The lesson for us? Stop trying to write the persecutor’s biography, and start treating the wound! When a family member disappoints us, we become consumed by the unanswerable: Why are they so difficult? Why can't they just be normal? Why can't they understand and accept me? This obsession with external blame and speculation only allows the suffering—the poison—to spread. Buddhist practice encourages a radical pivot: focus your energy on ending your own pain, not on performing a complex, multi-lifetime autopsy on your relationship.
The Path to Peace: Acceptance, Boundaries and Good Company
Healing means taking practical, slightly rebellious, and radical loving action towards yourself.
Acceptance:
It's okay to mourn the family you wished you had. Get those disappointment receipts out and have a good cry. Your grief is valid. But as Maya Angelou once said (despite my mangling of the saying), “When people show us who they are, we have to believe them.” Lowering the bar, so that our family members can do their limbo under it is the first step to not continuing to set them or ourselves up for ongoing disappointment and psychological pain.
Set Non-Negotiable Boundaries:
This is the most crucial step, and honestly, the most powerful. Boundaries are acts of self-love, not passive-aggressive revenge. Whether it’s limiting contact to once a year (on a Tuesday), refusing to discuss Uncle Juan’s Christian fundamentalism, or physically leaving the room, the house, or any gathering when the drama starts, you’re protecting your emotional safety and peace. You’re essentially telling your own mental health, “You are safe with me.”
Embrace Chosen Family:
Remember that the people who show up for you, who treat you with respect and kindness and respect, are your real family—regardless of DNA. Nurture the "families of affinity"—the friends, partners, and mentors—who provide the love that was missing from your origin story. They are not replacements; they are proof that love, and its foundational pillars of respect, responsibility, trust, communication, and care are available if we're willing to build it with people who value it.
You are not doomed by disappointing family members, nor are you required to spend your life as their unconditional punching bag, or on their emotional cleanup crew. By employing some knowledge about what love is (and what it is not), combining it with ancient wisdom, modern critical thought, and a healthy sense of limit-setting and boundaries, you stop wondering about what you deserve and start creating what you need for yourself.