If you’ve been part of one, you already know this. And if you haven’t, welcome to the second instalment of our signature series: Family Business as a Concept Makes No Sense — where we unpack the real reasons families in business end up in conflict, and how to make sense of the chaos.
I’m John Kenfield, the Family Business Solutionist, based in Melbourne, Australia. For several decades I’ve worked with families whose business relationships have gone off the rails — helping them put the wheels back on the train after they’ve fallen off.
And here’s something I’ve learned over all those years:
Most family business conflicts aren’t about money. They’re about emotion.
They’re about relationships, history, resentment, misunderstanding, and unmet needs. And because of that, they respond far better to empathic problem‑solving than to threats, legal action, or emotional blackmail.
This series explores the 50 common causes of conflict I’ve seen repeatedly across family businesses of all sizes. Understanding these root causes gives families a fighting chance to fix problems in a way that stays fixed.
Today’s topic is one of the most destructive and most misunderstood causes of conflict:
Cause #2: Emotional Baggage
Emotional baggage is exactly what it sounds like — a heavy load of toxic memories, resentments, and feelings that someone has carried from childhood into adulthood. These burdens often date back decades, sometimes to events as early as age five or six.
Most people naturally process and resolve childhood hurts as they mature. But some don’t. For a variety of reasons — often delayed emotional maturity — they carry those unresolved feelings into adulthood, and eventually into the family business.
What Emotional Baggage Looks Like
People carrying emotional baggage often become:
- deeply resentful
- chronically unhappy
- depressed or depressing to be around
- convinced the world is against them
- stuck in old narratives that no longer match reality
And because they’re often protected by a powerful family member — commonly a parent — their behaviour becomes entrenched. The protector unintentionally creates confusion, mixed messages, and distorted decision‑making within the family.
This dynamic can poison an entire business.
Why Emotional Baggage Is So Hard to Understand
The consequences are easy to see. The causes are not.
Emotional baggage is usually an internal emotional construct — a story the sufferer built as a child, reinforced over years, and validated by selective evidence. They may have interpreted a childhood event incorrectly, then spent decades collecting “proof” that their interpretation was right.
No one else can see that internal story. No one else can understand why the person is so resentful. And without understanding, the family can’t fix it.
How to Address Emotional Baggage in a Family Business
The first step is to unpack the family’s history.
We need to understand what happened back then — the original event, the original hurt, the original misunderstanding. Only then can the family have an adult conversation in the present.
Sometimes this means:
- acknowledging the event
- validating the feelings
- apologizing
- making reparations
- reframing the story
- committing to new behaviours
These conversations can be uncomfortable, but they’re essential. When done well, they allow the sufferer to finally let go of the resentment they’ve carried for decades.
It’s not about denying the past. It’s about resolving it.
If the family can identify the root cause and deal with it respectfully, they can bury the hatchet, put the skeleton back in the closet, and move forward with new understanding and renewed commitment.
A Crucial Mindset Shift
When emotional baggage is present, the family must understand:
The sufferer is not in control of their emotions.
Emotion is trumping reason. They are at the mercy of a monster they themselves created.
So we treat the issue as real — because it is real to them — and we work out what will help them step down from the emotional hook they’ve hung themselves on.
Once that happens, they can begin interacting more comfortably with the family members they’ve fought with for years.
From there, we can:
- recognise the past
- accept the present
- plan for the future
And that’s how emotional baggage stops being a barrier to a happy, functional family and a successful business.
