Alfred Adler spoke about symptoms as having purpose—sometimes serving to safeguard the ego. For Adler, emotions were not simply things that happen to us. They were not accidental storms we are caught in. They were, in many cases, used—often outside of awareness—in the service of belonging, protection, and our position within a social world.
This can be difficult to accept at first.
We are accustomed to thinking:
“I feel anxious because something is wrong.”
“I feel angry because I’ve been hurt.”
“I feel depressed because life is heavy.”
Adler did not dismiss these experiences. But he invited a different question:
What is the feeling doing?
Not just where it comes from—but where it is going.
In Adlerian thought, emotions are part of a person’s style of life—a patterned way of moving through the world, shaped early and repeated because, in some way, it works (even if it comes at a cost).
Anxiety, for example, may function as a way of avoiding failure.
If I am too anxious to try, I am protected from discovering I might not succeed.
Anger may function as a way of establishing control.
If I escalate quickly, others step back, and I regain a sense of power.
Withdrawal may function as a way of preserving dignity.
If I disengage first, I cannot be rejected.
Even sadness can carry purpose.
It can draw others close, soften expectations, or communicate a need that cannot yet be spoken directly.
This does not mean people are choosing their suffering in any simple or conscious way. It means that emotions can become solutions—creative, human attempts to solve problems of belonging, worth, and safety.
And like many solutions, they can outlive their usefulness.
When we begin to view emotions this way, something shifts.
We stop asking:
“What’s wrong with you?”
And begin asking:
“What might this be helping you do?”
Or even more gently:
“What would happen if this feeling wasn’t here?”
Often, the answer reveals the hidden risk.
Without the anxiety, I might have to face the classroom alone.
Without the anger, I might feel small.
Without the withdrawal, I might have to risk being known.
Now the symptom is no longer random.
It is intelligent.
Protective.
Relational.
And importantly—it is connected to others.
This is where Adler and Salvador Minuchin begin to overlap in a meaningful way.
If emotions serve a purpose—and that purpose is social—then they do not exist in isolation. They are shaped, reinforced, and maintained within relationships.
A child’s anxiety is not just internal—it is part of a dance.
A partner’s distance is not just personal—it is part of a pattern.
A teenager’s anger is not just expression—it is communication within a system.
The work, then, is not to strip the emotion away.
It is to understand the role it plays—and to help create conditions where it is no longer needed.
The instinct in many psychological approaches is to locate problems inside people.
The anxious child.
The defiant teenager.
The depressed partner.
The system diagnoses—and quietly begins organizing the world around the idea that they are the issue.
But what if the symptom is not the problem?
What if it is a message?
Minuchin, one of the pioneers of family systems therapy, proposed something both simple and unsettling: pathology does not live neatly inside individuals. It lives in relationships—in patterns, in the invisible architecture of how people organize themselves around one another.
Adler similarly understood many psychological struggles as fundamentally interpersonal.
A child’s anxiety may not be a disorder to eliminate, but a signal—an expression of tension that has no other language.
A teenager’s defiance may not be rebellion for its own sake, but an attempt to restore balance in a system where roles have become blurred.
A partner’s withdrawal may not be indifference, but a way of surviving in a relationship where closeness has become overwhelming.
Seen this way, symptoms begin to look less like defects and more like adaptations.
Minuchin spoke of structure: the unseen rules that govern a family’s life.
Who holds authority?
Who is aligned with whom?
Who is too close—and who is too far away?
And this is where Barbara Coloroso brings the picture into focus.
Coloroso described three common parenting styles:
The brick wall — rigid, controlling, immovable.
The jellyfish — permissive, inconsistent, without structure.
The backbone — firm, flexible, and grounded.
These are not just parenting styles. They are relational structures.
A family once came into session because of their 10-year-old son.
He was refusing school. Complaining of stomach aches most mornings. Tearful at night. The language of anxiety was everywhere—and loud enough that it had become the center of the family’s life.
At first glance, it would have been easy to locate the problem in him.
But as we sat together, a different pattern emerged.
His mother spoke quickly, often answering for him, her voice filled with worry. His father sat back, quiet, stepping in only occasionally with firm, absolute statements about what should happen. When the parents spoke to each other, it was brief, functional, and edged with tension—something unresolved sitting just beneath the surface.
The boy watched them constantly.
When asked about school, he hesitated. Looked to his mother. Then to his father. Then down.
Nothing about this was random.
Through a structural lens, the picture became clearer.
The boundaries between mother and son were soft—almost fused. The father stood at a distance, entering mainly during moments of escalation. The parental subsystem—meant to provide leadership—was fractured.
In many ways, the child had become the emotional center of the system.
His anxiety was not simply his.
It was organizing the family.
It kept his parents aligned around a shared concern. It prevented deeper conflict from surfacing. It gave form to something that had no other expression.
In a different language, this was a blend of what Coloroso might call jellyfish and brick wall:
One parent over-involved, the other distant and firm.
Too much closeness in one direction, not enough in another.
No clear backbone.
The work was not to “fix” the child.
It was to gently reorganize the system.
To help the parents speak directly to each other, rather than through him.
To strengthen their shared leadership.
To create space where he no longer had to hold so much.
There was no dramatic breakthrough.
But over time, something shifted.
The mornings became quieter.
The stomach aches less frequent.
The boy began to look less at his parents—and more at the world in front of him.
This perspective does not remove responsibility—it redistributes it.
It asks each person:
How am I participating in this pattern?
What role have I taken on?
Where am I too close—or too far away?
What kind of structure am I helping to create?
Change, in this view, does not come from fixing a person. It comes from shifting relationships.
A parent softens without collapsing.
A parent steps forward without controlling.
A boundary is drawn where none existed before.
A conversation happens that has long been avoided.
These are small changes—but they reorganize the system.
They move a family, slowly, toward backbone.
There is something deeply humane in this way of seeing.
It allows us to hold compassion for the person who suffers without isolating them as the source of suffering. It invites curiosity instead of blame. And it reminds us that we are always participating in something larger than ourselves.
We live in systems—families, relationships, communities—each shaping and being shaped in return.
And sometimes, what looks like pathology is not a flaw in a person, but a reflection of the structure that surrounds them.
And the quiet, persistent hope is this:
When the structure changes, the symptom no longer needs to speak.