Being Human with Steve Cuss Are You Carrying Your Family's Emotional Baggage? with Steve & Lisa Cuss
Mar 2, 2026
They explore how family of origin hands down emotional assets and liabilities that shape relationships. They use a backpack metaphor and genograms to map hidden patterns. They discuss permitted emotions, family propaganda, childhood vows, and how stress reveals inherited habits. They offer a gospel-centered, non-blaming approach and point to tools for doing long, practical family work.
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Family Origins Shape Your Personal Gospel
- Family of origin hands each person a mix of assets and liabilities that shape relationships and self-understanding.
- Steve frames this as overlap or divergence between the gospel and a family's implicit "gospel," changing what freedom looks like.
Check Your Relational Backpack Under Stress
- Notice what's in your relational backpack before you react under stress; stress reveals hidden habits.
- Steve and Lisa teach this to couples and teams so people can manage dynamics instead of being managed by them.
Creating An Eight Foot Genogram Revealed Blind Spots
- Steve recounts making a genogram as a 24-year-old chaplain and mapping back to great-grandparents to reveal family emotional patterns.
- His genogram spanned about eight feet and exposed generational dynamics he hadn't seen before.
