5 signs you were parentified as a child
What is parentification?
Parentification is a dysfunctional family dynamic where parent-child roles are reversed, and a child takes on responsibilities of an adult.
For some families, parentification may have occurred out of survival or necessity. No matter the reason, parentification is a form of emotional trauma that can be destructive and damaging for children.
What might be signs you were parentified as a child?
There are two types of parentification: instrumental parentification (a child taking on physical household tasks) and emotional parentification (a parent relying on their child to meet their emotional needs). You may have been parentified as a child if you:
Assumed household duties such as cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, or paying the bills.
Took care of the needs of younger siblings or relatives because your parents were unable to do so.
Provided emotional support, validation, or advice to your parents; listened to your parents’ marital or financial issues by playing the role of a therapist or mediator.
Took on the role of an emotionally or physically absent parent (also known as “spousification”).
Were often complimented as being “mature” and “responsible” beyond your age.
How might parentification impact you as an adult?
Shouldering adult responsibilities too early in life can cause emotional scars with lasting consequences into adulthood.
You may mourn the fact that you were forced to grow up too quickly and didn’t get to fully enjoy childhood. This sense of loss may result in feeling grief, anger, pain, resentment, or sadness.
Because you were programmed to prioritize the needs of others above your own, you have difficulty understanding and expressing your own needs and desires later in life. Expressing your needs may be coupled with feelings of fear, guilt, and anxiety.
You often feel compelled to become a caretaker (or rescuer) for others, even at the expense of your own well-being.
You easily fall into codependent relationships with emotional enmeshment.
You have difficulty setting, communicating, and holding healthy boundaries.
You frequently engage in self-abandonment behaviors, such as neglecting your own needs and rejecting or hiding parts of yourself to please others.
How do you begin to heal the parentified child?
As children, our parents are our entire world and we want to do whatever it takes to make them happy, even at a great cost to ourselves. Healing from parentification requires us to first acknowledge the reality of our experiences and the traumas we’ve endured. As you begin on this journey, it may be a good idea to work with a trauma informed mental health care professional to help guide you through the process.
Step 1 | Acknowledge your inner child
There’s child that lives within you - your younger self - who is yearning to be acknowledged. Begin practicing observing your inner child. Think back to the essence of who you were as a child – your playful and joyful spirit, the things you enjoyed doing. Witness and hold space for the traumas and emotional pain your inner child may carry.
Step 2 | Allow yourself to grieve
Allow yourself to grieve the childhood you wish you had. Allow yourself to mourn the kind of parenting you never received. Give yourself permission to cry, fully feel, and release whatever emotions that arise. Grieve for however long you need. Know that grief is not linear and it’s completely OK to feel sad for weeks, months, or even years. What’s most important is to give yourself the permission to fully feel your emotions so they can flow through you.
Step 3 | Meet your inner child with compassion
Having acknowledged your inner child and allowing yourself to grieve, embrace your inner child with love, compassion, and understanding. It may be a beneficial exercise to write a letter to your inner child from your adult self letting them know that they are loved, safe, and protected. Alternatively, write a letter from your inner child to your adult self to express all the ways in which they want to be seen, heard, and understood.
Step 4 | Begin the work of reparenting yourself
Reparenting is the act of learning to meet the needs of your inner child as your adult self. It’s the practice of giving yourself what you didn’t receive from your parents. This can be done through honoring your needs, building healthy habits, practicing self-care, and pursuing activities that bring you joy.
Recognizing and holding space for all the ways in which you were parentified as a child can be a deeply painful but transformative experience. It may also be helpful to acknowledge that parents can only give to their children what they were taught to receive. In many cases, our parents did their best in raising us with the tools, resources, and awareness they had at the time.
There’s freedom in releasing the expectation we place on our parents to give us what we need. While our caregivers may not have been able to provide what we needed physically and emotionally as children, we can love and nurture ourselves and our inner child as our adult selves. By integrating the compassion and wisdom of your adult self with your inner child, we can begin to heal and nurture a healthy relationship with ourselves and others.
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