I wonder if this isn't something we've been taught to do ...
Maybe it is, but who taught us. Family is the people who were around us for most of your early life, the ones in whose company we learned all the basic necessary things. Putting two and two together - realise things - cognition in a word, is always mixed up in our memories our stories, and there they are: the family.
I see it as something that is just as unescapable as the period of history you live in.
Psychotherapy is a strange monster, I agree on that. It masquerade as science, but it suffers from the same blind spots as religion. It creates powerful and dogmatic stories instead of uncovering the unknown. And then there's art story telling etc. It is only a fraction better, but at least it sometimes touch on truth and there's freedom in it. Psychotherapy always gave me the chills with its overly certain explanations.