Why do I feel like I'm suffocating in the role my family chose for me?

Because you're carrying a role that was designed around someone else's identity, not yours. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, tells the story of a Middle Eastern founder's oldest son who told him directly. He told his father he admired what was built but couldn't breathe inside the headquarters. He wasn't ungrateful. He didn't lack ambition. He didn't want to be his father, and the role required him to act like one. The suffocation is real. It shows up as anxiety, dread before family meetings, declining health, withdrawing from the family. The fix is rarely to tough it out. It's to surface the truth and let the family redesign the role. The son in Kluver's story now runs an international shipping business. The father invested. Both thrived.