Are you wondering if you were parentified as a child? The American Psychological Association defines the parentified child experience as the role reversal that occurs between parent/caregiver & child where the child assumes an adult role. Parentification occurs across a spectrum, and the duties that children are asked to do along with the impact that parentification has on an individual varies. Many children are forced into an adult role when parents or caregivers are unable to take care of themselves. Children may have to physically and/or emotionally attend and attune to parents. Kids may have household duties or a babysitter role for siblings that is wildly inappropriate for someone their age. In some cases, children become the referee amidst the adults’ conflict.
You may have been parentified as a child if you…
took care of your siblings like an adult caregiver would
were your parents therapist or mediator during conflict
often received compliments for being “so good” and “so responsible”
feel that being self-reliant is better than trying to trust others
don’t really remember “being a kid”
sacrifice your needs or wants to help others; it hurts, but also feels good
often find yourself becoming a caregiver for others
like to feel in control
have a tendency to over-empathize with others
tended to your parents’/caregivers’ needs because they were unable to take of themselves
A child who has been parentified supports their caregiver to a degree that typically comes with a cost to the kiddo’s emotional and mental stability as well as development. This dynamic has little to do with love, and is much more a reflection of contextual circumstances and the lack of the parent/caregiver’s ability to manage said circumstances along with their own stress and emotions. The adults in these situations are unaware that they are placing developmentally inappropriate tasks on their child. The caregiver is unable to see that their child is taking responsibility for maintaining peace and order in the home, protecting one parent from the other, and is behaving as if they are their parent’s best friend, confidant, and/or therapist. Parentified children often parent siblings and even manage the family’s social, financial, and medical needs.
Parentified children were forced into roles and situations that had them growing up too fast. As adults, parentified children may experience feeling confused as the awareness of the dysfunction and negative impact of the boundary-less relationship becomes increasingly clear. In some cases, the reasons for the role reversal is clearer due to unaddressed mental health, substance abuse, parental death, abuse, poverty, or even war. However, in other situations, being parentified may be difficult to label if there is no obvious excuse for burdening the child with adult responsibilities and issues.
The impact and manifestation of parentification differs across the lifespan. Below is a list of some of the possible presentations parentified children exhibit at different periods of their development.
As a young child, some symptoms you may see are…
Stress and anxiety - constant responsibility beyond what a child is capable of coping with can lead to stress and anxiety
Physical symptoms - a child may complain of stomach aches or headaches that don’t have a known source.
Disruptive behavior - aggressive behavior, academic difficulty, and social challenges may show up.
Curtailed development - children may be reluctant to take part in the kind of activities their peers engage in, and may not even enjoy playing around
As a teenager, some symptoms you may see are…
Inability to connect to their own feelings - a parentified child learns to ignore their own feelings; they figure out that if they want to feel close to their parents, they have to take over adult tasks; by putting the parent’s needs above their own, a teen loses the ability to put their feelings into words.
Self-blame and guilt - with no one on hand to validate their feelings, a parentified teen may engage in self-blame and self-doubt.
Loss of childhood - a sense of having lost out on their childhood can lead to feelings of anger and depression.
Substance use - teens may learn to self-medicate in an effort to dull the unpleasant emotions they feel.
As an adult, some long term effects you may experience are…
Relationships - struggle with boundaries, communicating thoughts, feelings, and needs; difficulties establishing and maintaining a secure attachment; have challenges trusting others and prefer to be self-reliant; may engage in unhealthy relationships and assume a caregiving role even when they don’t want to; have a constant and persistent worry about being abandoned.
Parenting - the parentified adult parent may try to have their unmet childhood needs met by their child; may struggle with appropriate boundaries between parent and child; less responsive to child’s needs
Physical and mental health - experience chronic physical and health disorders that impact the quality, longevity, and stability of life (i.e. chronic fatigue syndrome, autoimmune disorders, depression, PTSD, etc.)
Sense of self - strong experience of guilt and shame; the parentified child as an adult may perceive self as defective and bad when they are not able to tend to parents/caregivers; patterns of perfectionism are common; individuals are typically highly sensitive and hypersensitive to perceptions of rejection and abandonment.
Though there are negative mental and physical health outcomes from being parentified as a child, there are twistedly beautiful positives and strengths that come from this experience. Some strengths of the parentified child include an ability to empathize with others, attune to other’s needs, strong and dependable caregiver, deep understanding of positive attributes and strengths, and, if you cared for a sibling, you may have an incredibly deep, close relationship with that brother. sister, or sibling.
There are numerous tactics and frameworks for healing the parentified child, like Internal Family Systems (IFS Therapy), inner child work, and mindfulness, along with other neurobiological treatments, like Brainspotting therapy. These modalities help an individual regulate thoughts and emotions, become aware of boundaries, and release stored trauma. Working with a trained professional is recommended. Below are descriptions of how the therapies mentioned above can be used to process and heal the impact of parentification. Rest assured that there are many other therapies that work for this concern as well!
Internal Family Systems or IFS + Inner Child Work
Internal Family Systems Therapy, also known as IFS for short, is a psychological framework that conceptualizes the human psyche as being broken into certain subpersonalities that help a person function and survive in the world. Each subpersonality has its own unique viewpoints, capabilities, and qualities that impact the individual and the way they move through the life. Being parentified as a child can lead to the development of an inner child that feels shame, a young, feisty, and fiercely independent teenager that refuses help from others, an overly critical part that continues to berate you in an attempt to motivate you, and even a reactive part that acts in extreme ways to avoid pain, like drug abuse and self harm. Through the course of talk therapy and experiential exercises, you will gain an increased awareness of your inner childhood parts along with other personalities that are triggered, activated, or shut down based on what’s going on in the world around you. By increasing awareness of your parts and their functions within your mind and body, you can learn ways to attune to your inner child, meet its needs, and advocate for yourself. Through IFS, you have the beautiful opportunity to become the supportive parent you needed way back when in the now.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness describes the mental state that occurs when an individual is able to focus their awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. Our modern, Western world has taken people away from our natural, innate ability to be mindful. Our outer cortex has been programmed to remember the To Do list, process that thing the coworker just said, and be hyper-aware and analytical of our experience all in an instant. When we practice mindfulness, we essentially turn off the internal brain chatter and tune into our senses along with the world around us. We approach things, thoughts, and feelings with kindness and curiosity. We notice and simply observe.
A mindfulness practice is essential when stepping out of patterns of parentification. First, it’s important to have an awareness of triggers along with how your experience of being parentified manifests. Next, when you catch yourself thinking, speaking, or acting in the ways that signal you have been parentified, you stop, label the behavior, take a deep breath, focus on the sensations in your body, and move forward once you notice feeling more calm and stable. Mindfulness practices are also helpful when navigating triggering relationships or situations. Focus on your breath and if you notice becoming dysregulated, tune into your senses, disengage with thoughts, and re-regulate.
Brainspotting Therapy
Brainspotting therapy is a therapeutic treatment and tool that is used to address a wide variety of mental health concerns and is an incredible, revolutionary approach to assist embodied healing. Oftentimes, our conscious brain is in a disconnect from our body and physical felt sense. In the counseling setting, I often hear people say things along the lines of “I know that I don’t need to feel guilty or apologize for that, but I have this gnawing, dread feeling when I imagine not apologizing,” or “I know that I am worthy of love, but I don’t feel that way.” Brainspotting therapy is used to break through the conscious knowing and present-moment-feeling-block by unlocking the core sources of where trauma is stored in the brain. By releasing the trauma stemming from parentification, your body will integrate authentic beliefs around your worth and abilities while resetting the flow of the nervous system to its natural state before it endured a complicated relationship with a primary caregiver.
The internalization of a traumatic experience often manifests as feeling chronically unsafe, dysregulated, and hypervigilant. Trauma disrupts our capacity to cope and diminishes the ability to experience the full range of emotions. Prolonged trauma also negatively impacts one’s sense of self along with damaging how a person connects with others. Parentification is considered an attachment and developmental trauma, and due to the chronic stress that a child experiences when attempting to survive and navigate adult problems, the child’s nervous system subsequently ingrains and habituates to move through the world as if a constant threat is occurring. By activating the brain structures that house these habituated responses using the eyes in Brainspotting, the therapist can assist the client in releasing and reintegrating more healthy, homeostatic processes in the mind and body.
If you believe that you were parentified as a child, know that there are ways to unlearn and relearn mindful ways of being + healthy boundaries in relationships. Allow your guard to be down and reach out for help, you don’t have to do it all on your own anymore.
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