6 Sad Reasons Why a Family Creates a Black Sheep

Key points

Families may create a black sheep through subtle emotional patterns.

The excluded child in a family is often sensitive, creative, or highly capable.

The dynamics that create a family's black sheep usually form without awareness or intent.

“I’m the black sheep of my family,” said the young man who sat before me in my therapy office. I tried to imagine this adorable, sad young man being the “black sheep” of anything. I couldn’t.

Generally considered the outcast of the family, the black sheep is typically assumed to be an oddball. Furthermore, the rest of the family believes that the black sheep brought this upon himself.

It is true that sometimes the black sheep is indeed different or problematic by anyone’s standards (sometimes the result of a hidden mental illness). Or s