Parentification.
What is it?
What are the signs?
Is it always a problem?
And what are the long term impacts of it?
We are going to get into all of that.
So stay tuned For those of you who are new to my channel,
my name is Barbara Heffernan and I am a psychotherapist, anonline life coach, and I have been helping
people recover from anxiety, improve their lives.
And I bring in a little Buddhist philosophy, a little bit of meditation.
So if you support the work that I'm doing here, please subscribe to my channel.
Give me a thumbs up if you like this video and comment below, I'll make sure I respond.
So today I'm going to walk you through what is parentification, what are the signs that
you or someone you know may have been parentified and whether it's always a problem or why it's
a problem.
And then also what the longterm impacts are.
And next week I will release a video on healing and whether parentification is at the root
of your anxiety or some of your current day problems as an adult.
So again, if you subscribe to the channel, you'll be notified when that video gets released
next week.
And if you're watching this a couple of months down the line, I will link that video here
as well.
Parentification is basically a process of role reversal where the child is required
to act as a parent to either one parent, both parents, their siblings, or maybe even the
whole family.
And parentification can have two different formats.
One is basically instrumental where the child performs the tasks of a parent and the other
is emotional, where the child takes on responsibility to emotionally caretake for a parent.
We're going to talk about both of them a little bit here.
So for instrumental parentification, people can also often feel confused, like is it a
problem if I ask my kid to make dinner once in awhile?
Well, it depends what age they are, how much help you're providing, and how much responsibility
is falling on that child shoulders.
And is it age appropriate?
So for a 16 year old to be responsible to make dinner once in awhile, no problem.
For a 10 year old to be responsible to help in choosing a menu, helping to cook - not
a problem with parental support.
So analyzing whether instrumental tasks are appropriate for a child or not is all about
the child's developmental stage.
So this is not about giving kids chores, chores, a great responsibilities.
Again, age-appropriate responsibilities are terrific.
This is much more where the child is expected to step up and take charge of something that
would usually not be asked of a child of that age.
So for example, a young kid handling family finances or feeling responsible for the family
finances or young kid paying bills because their parents don't.
So there are many examples where children will step into a role that's needed for the
family because the parents aren't able to do it or handle it.
And I sometimes listen to other YouTube videos on the topics that I'm doing just so I know
what's kind of out there and see what other people are saying.
And I listened to one where the person was specifically saying that this is where kids
are told to do these tasks and required to and punished if they don't.
But actually parentification often happens in a void.
So the child's never told to do it, but they know that if they don't get up and prepare
the meal neither them or their siblings are going to eat, or they take on the role of
cleaning because the house is just disastrous that they can't find anything or they help
their younger siblings tie their shoes, get dressed because of the absence of a parent.
So it's not, it's sometimes is instructed by the parent, but I would say most often
it's because the child is stepping into a void that is created by some type of situation
where the parents can't function in an inappropriate role.
So emotional parentification is where the child is basically expected to take care of
the parent's emotions.
So if there is one parent whose emotions dominate the household, everybody tip toes around this
person.
Everybody worries about keeping that person calm or not angry or not depressed or in a
good mood.
Then the child can take on this role that that that's their job to support emotionally
the other parent.
The other place that emotional parentification happens a lot is when the parent turns to
the child for the emotional connection that they are lacking with a spouse or a best friend
or a family member so they're not getting emotional support elsewhere and they turn
to their child and somewhat manipulate the situation so that their own emotional needs
get met.
And I'll also say about these two different types of parentification is they often go
together.
If a child is parentified in terms of carrying out instrumental tasks that should be done
by a parent, very often they are also the emotional caretaker
of the family.
Those things are kind of linked.
Does that make sense?
Before I move on, would you comment below and let me know whether this makes sense?
The concept of the functional parentification being linked to the emotional parentification.
They don't always go together, but sometimes they do.
And overall, just to let me know if this concept of parentification is making sense to you.
So I'll give you some examples from people that I've worked with.
And again, when I do talk about clients, I always change the specifics or the gender
or something so that the person's privacy is completely protected.
And I will also say that in these types of examples, these are so common they could apply
to many, many people.
So for example, let's take a child who spills, paint his painting and just makes a mess,
which would be normal for a kid, right?
I don't care.
Five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, right?
The kid makes a mess and the parent makes it about them.
So the parent gets very upset, basically tells the kid that they're bad, lazy, stupid, either
in those words or via their actions and their tone.
And the parent basically focuses on, you've made such a mess for me.
You've created this problem for me.
And they blow what is basically a normal childhood accident into an emotional crisis that really
focuses on them.
So that would be an example of really emotional abuse, which is requiring the child to take
on the parent's view of the situation and emotionally caretake the parent.
And the other thing that happens in that situation is the child is also taking on these labels
and believing that about themselves, which then that obviously can create problems later
in life as well.
I've also had multiple clients who had childhood experiences where one parent took the child
with them to the home of the person that the spouse was having an affair with - are you
with me?
And basically confronted the person who was having an affair with their spouse.
And I've seen this happen both with dads and with moms and had the child involved kind
of as a pawn in that whole thing.
So completely inappropriate emotionally for that child.
There's also a subset of parentification called spousification, which is actually kind of
a horrendous word, right?
But that is where the parent basically treats the child as if they're the spouse.
And I've seen this happen a lot of times where one parent is very absent.
Either they're away working all the time or they're alcoholic or severely mentally ill,
but that parent's not available to this one, the healthy one and the healthy one co-ops
a child to pretty much act as their spouse, confiding in them emotionally, relying on
them to do the things a spouse would do and sort of really emotionally bonding with that
child in a way that's not appropriate within a, what we would call a healthy family system.
So hopefully that gives you a good sense of what parentification is.
So what are the signs that you've been parentified?
I think there are seven signals and signs that can help you figure out whether or not
you were parentified.
One, a feeling of having lost your childhood.
I've heard from many people like, I never got to be a kid.
I never got to play.
I never got to be carefree.
Those are very critical, important developmental stages for a child.
So really feeling like you've lost your childhood.
Number two could be that as an adult you're overly self-reliant.
You don't trust anybody else.
You don't think anybody else can take care of you, help you, you don't trust anyone else
and you are determined to be completely independent, which might serve you very well in some areas
but probably limits your emotional connection on an intimate level.
Number three would be that you often find yourself telling other people what to do.
You might tell your family member what to do.
You might still tell your parents or your siblings what to do.
You might tell your primary partner what to do, your children, you're telling everybody
what to do and they're not listening to you and you're really frustrated.
That would be a sign that you were probably parentified.
You were given that role as a child and you are still acting out the habitual patterns
of that role.
Four would be that you fall into the role of the caretaker in most of your relationships.
So it's a little bit different than the advice giver, although it's sometimes can go together,
but basically you are the one who is always doing for others, so that could be tied to
having been parentified as a child.
Sign number five is a little bit different than the others.
Sign number five would be if you have a really,
really close identification with your parents where it is almost hard for you to even acknowledge
that they might have done something that wasn't great parenting.
You're very, very fused with your parents values, assessments, view of the world.
It's like this.
So an over identification with your parents to the lack of having an independent identity
could be a sign of having been parentified as a child.
Number six I would say is resentment.
Resentment is a feeling that is rampant in adults who were parentified as children.
Because you're always doing for others, you are giving too much and you resent it.
And so if you feel resentment a lot in your life, resentment is actually, we always think
of resentment as something like the other person should change.
So I don't feel resentful, but actually resentment is a feeling we need to take care of.
It's a signal to us to change how we are behaving to stop doing so much, to take better care
of ourselves.
So that's a long topic.
And then sign number seven is anxiety.
If you feel a lot of anxiety, you may have been parentified as a child.
Parentified children learn some great coping skills, right?
They can actually sometimes be the hero in the family.
They can be the achiever, they can do well in the work world, but they always feel this
underlying anxiety because if you take that role as a child, it is an impossible role.
You can not take care of other people's emotions.
You cannot take care of things that are beyond your developmental years.
So I will have clients who will say to me, but I was smarter than everybody else.
I was more capable than any anybody else.
And they may have been true, but probably the view of themselves in those situations
is an already parentified view.
They're not viewing the world through the child's eyes.
So those are seven signs that you've been parentified.
So is parentification always a problem?
I get this question a lot because many of my clients would feel like the difficulties
that they handled in childhood really set them up to be able to deal with a lot of things
in the world.
And I totally understand that perspective.
And I think that the parentification has contributed to anxiety, depression, dysfunctional relationships.
So you can be very high achieving and have reached a lot of societal success and still
internally be kind of miserable.
Either always feel like a fraud or always be dissatisfied with your relationships are
never kind of quite figure out what it is you're doing wrong.
And parentification can be at the core.
So I would say the parentification is always a problem because it is not taking into account
the developmental needs of the child when they have them.
We have certain developmental stages that we need to go through to grow up and be fully
functioning, happy adults and parentification interrupts that process.
So you might have learned great coping tools and those coping tools might really be helping
you in life and they might be limiting you and causing major problems in the more emotional
areas.
So again, I'm curious whether that makes sense to you.
And if you leave me a comment below I'll know and it helps me for future videos.
So that'd be great.
And before I move on to talk about the longterm impacts of parentification, I would like to
mention that I have an online coaching program called the Awakened Joy Journey.
And I designed this program to pull together mindfulness meditation information and the
experience of healthy boundaries, deep self knowledge, self exploration, and a true understanding
of your feelings, which will help you make better choices in life and also a healing
portion of your negative core beliefs.
So if you're one of those children who grew up in a household where you grew up feeling
like I'm bad or I'm not good enough, or I can never do things right, how do you heal
that?
So I have pulled all of those things together in a six month online coaching program.
I'm going to show you a picture of it here, include the link below, check it out, any
questions you have about it, let me know and let's move on to longterm impact.
So let's go onto the last topic, which is the longterm impact, which I've already kind
of alluded to, but I'm just going to summarize quickly.
And then in another week or two I will do a video on healing from parentification.
How do you heal?
How do you change?
How do you stop some of the habitual patterns that are holding you back while holding on
to some of the coping tools that have helped you succeed in life?
So I'd say the longterm impact of parentification is primarily in the emotional arena.
How happy you are, how strong your emotional relationships are, particularly your primary
partner, your most intimate relationships.
So that's the biggest impact that I see for parentified children.
Now, while some people who are parentified as children grow up and function okay until
they hit adolescence and then they might go off the rails with an addiction or some other
major problem like that.
Many parentified children grow up and achieve, achieve, achieve.
And the focus is on pleasing others, achieving what society wants you to achieve, but not
on really figuring out what makes me happy.
If I'm always focused on what's making somebody else happy, I'm not learning what to my emotions
mean.
What do I need and how do I become healthy?
So very often, people who grew up parentified end up in dysfunctional marriages where similar
patterns are replicated.
They may end up being the primary wage earner, the primary parent, the one who functions
the one who does everything, and their partner might be fairly dysfunctional.
So that would be a common pattern.
They may end up in an abusive relationship or they may end up in a neglectful relationship.
So it's really in these primary intimate relationships where a lot of dysfunction can show up.
People who grow up parentified don't learn to trust other people, they don't learn inter
dependence, right?
Being completely independent limits our intimacy and being overly dependent is not healthy.
What does interdependence mean?
What is a healthy relationship?
What is a relationship that has given take you take care of some things.
Once in a while I take care of them.
Some of the time we can rely on each other because humans are interdependent, social
creatures and learning that kind of trusting relationship is very important.
And there is also research that shows that people who are parentified as children have
a higher rate of anxiety, depression, eating disorders and substance abuse disorders.
So help is available.
I will be releasing a video and if you're watching this in the future, I'll link it
here.
But I will be releasing a video in a couple of weeks on healing from parentification.
And I also would love to have you check out the program that I'm offering, which really
it's, it isn't called healing from parentification, but it really addresses all the issues of
the adult who was parentified as a child.
So let me know if you have any questions, comments, thank you for signing on.
And I'll see you soon.