"Do you feel you give life your best, work hard, try hard, but still can't give yourself credit? Are you constantly beating yourself up and thinking that somehow you should be more, do more, be better, and you don't measure up in your own mind?"

I stumbled upon an article the other day that hit a chord, or even multiple chords, close to home. It was Dr. Karyl McBride's 2014 article titled "Do You Feel Not Good Enough?", in PsychologyToday that immediately pulled me in by its subheadline: "Are you carrying the emotional burden of a dysfunctional family?" My article is an attempt to process the work of Dr. McBride, as well as to give my personal take and evaluation of a nagging sentiment that Dr. McBride captures perfectly among myself and so many of my peers at high-achieving Emory University.

Dr. McBride's own background works with dysfunctional family dynamics in narcissistic and abusive families - which she states as evidence for her experience with the feeling of constant dissatisfaction. She also finds that to first rid yourself of that feeling is to understand it emotionally and personally.

In the case of an alcoholic family, a young child sees a huge amount of inconsistency - sometimes the alcoholic parent is there, and sometimes the parent isn't depending on substance use. The child doesn't understand why that is - and the game becomes to fix the adult's behavior by adjusting their own behavior or performance. This can be either conscious or unconscious - a lot of times, the child will think something like this: "If I become a much better soccer, baseball, or basketball player, maybe Dad won't drink so much to come to my games."

In the case of a with a narcissistic or abusive family, the kid in Dr. McBride's example internalizes messages like these: "If I did better in school, my parents wouldn't fight." "If I listen to my parent's problems, maybe they will be less stressed." "If I do more chores or housework, maybe Mommy won't be so sad."

In sharing this article with some of my friends, this is the part that hooked them in. These messages in dysfunctional families are so universal, and it's not like the kids in these families suffer more or less than anyone else - every family, is, to some level, dysfunctional. The examples pique the interest of the reader because we've all had thoughts like these when our guardians and caregivers couldn't fulfill our childhood needs. Some kids try to be better by being a better and better kid, and others might do the opposite to act out to finally force their parents to focus on them and give them attention.

But the crux of the problem remains: "They are learning and internalizing that no matter what they do, they cannot fix their parent's problems. They are kids, and of course, this is not their problem to fix, but they don't know that yet. So, they keep trying." For me, this struck a nerve - and McBride ends the paragraph with the sentiment of the child being, "if only I could do more." The question, for the child-grown-adult, then becomes a notion of rejected acceptance: "so what? All this might be true, it has happened, so isn't it better to just forget about it and move on?"

But according to McBride "we parent ourselves, in the same manner, we were parented." I have long sensed the strong divide between intellectually knowing something, and emotionally accepting something - look no further than one of Robin Williams's most memorable scenes - the "it's your fault" scene. Will says "I know" to Sean's suggestion that the domestic violence he suffered as an orphan was not his fault several times. It is only when it is repeated, over and over, by a mentor Will profoundly respects, that Will is able to accept it and breaks down crying.

Yes, every family or unit has some level of dysfunction - that is a natural part of life. It's not uncommon or unusual to consider yourself lucky and think, "at least I'm not my friend, whose dad always slapped him around," or "at least I'm not my friend, who didn't even have a dad growing up," or "at least I'm not my friend, who didn't even have food on his plate or a roof over his head at times."

I know it's so common because a Vietnam War veteran once told me that's just what you think to survive - when his friends were shot right in front of him, the first feeling or thought wasn't an act of empathy or sympathy - it was always "at least it's not me, and I'm going to do whatever I need to make sure it's not me." It's not wrong - it's what you think when you're in the middle of your trauma and not ready to confront it - that's part of the process.

But any comparison in that regard is reductive because no one knows a person's life experience as well as the person living through those experiences. Even though your experiences are labeled under the same categories, if you and your best friend both had parents who were addicts, you won't understand 99% of that other person's experience because theirs was so unique - and they don't understand yours.

There's community in suffering because we're all in this together. Healing from the emotional burden of your dysfunctional family is something only you can do for yourself - with the help of trusted others.

McBride calls the true resolution to this acceptance as trauma resolution, "uncovering the deeper trauma in the child or adult brain and body and then releasing it." Trauma resolution involves releasing the burden of the baggage and realizing the message was wrong. It was a message they had to buy into to survive in that environment.

Throughout our lives, we recover by taking off the emotional burden one step at a time. We realize we are carrying the baggage of our family members through our pursuits, and each realization is the path to recovery. Sometimes, to be overly ambitious in being a professional, like being a doctor or lawyer. when you have absolutely no passion for it, is to carry a parent's burden. Sometimes, to be that kid that has it all together, that your parents never have to worry about, is the sense of having a sibling's burden. And sometimes, the goal isn't to be free of these burdens that are too much to let go of, but just realizing they're not yours goes a long way in realizing that some things just aren't your fault.

In all of McBride's years of therapy, the biggest breakthrough in her clients is when they realize they're carrying someone else's baggage. And here is the most liberating part of McBride's essay, that it's "more than possible to be accountable and realize that you can change yourself as an adult and be who you want to be," and not just be defined by your dysfunctional family.