Are you a "parentified" child? The holidays are a good time to find out.

Everyone thinks Halloween is exciting. The holidays that follow, however, are the times when the ghosts come out. These holidays are when we gather with family, and patterns that we thought were long dead can spring back to life. No one wants to be carrying a wooden stake or garlic necklace to Christmas dinner, so how do you know if you’re trapped in one of those dysfunctional patterns, even as an adult?

When my mother became very ill this Fall, I was amazed at the speed with which I abandoned my own needs and stepped in to care for her! I rediscovered all the ways I took the role of the emotional care giver in our relationship. While I gained a lot of great skills as the young adult who learned to regulate my mother, it wasn’t healthy for me to slip back into that role. As the crisis abated, I began to recover my footing and balance (mostly). I am so grateful for my knowledge of systemic constellation work as that understanding helped me quickly realize what was going on and be able to consciously choose when I would prioritize her needs and when mine needed to take center stage. It is a delicate balance. My mother is not out of the woods by any means, and it’s still challenging to keep my footing, yet because of the constellation work, I have a guidance system.

Parenting is the most challenging and potentially most rewarding job humans can have. The relationship between child and parent is rich and complex and is co-created out of their interactions over time. For the most part, these interactions are successful and produce reasonably functional adults. When I talk about the parentified child, I’m not talking here about the occasional times when a young child comforts a parent (like this sweet earnest young boy with his distraught parent in the photo). I’m talking about chronic situations where the child gets enrolled inappropriately over and over to meet the parent’s need - a need that should have been met by their parents or a partner. Parents are people, too, with their own wounds and traumas. Children who grow up as a parent’s parent gain precocious skills, but have to fill shoes that are several sizes too big. As a consequence they are often insecure and anxious.

The traditional psychology list of parentified kid clues is nicely summarized here, and while I appreciate these topics and their sage advice, I think they miss a few useful ideas. The good news is that the "talents” you developed in filling those oversized shoes can be transformed into useful skills that can support you in beneficial ways when they are consciously transformed.

How do you tell if you are or were a parentified child?

1. You prioritize others needs over your own.

You do not know the difference between sacrifice and service and give at cost to yourself. Usually the most difficult thing a parentified child must do is give up the project of “saving” their parent. Honoring your parent’s fate and withdrawing from the role of rescuer is the first move in learning how to balance your needs with your parents in a healthy and fair way (even if your parent doesn’t like it at first). I found that the step of honoring your parent’s fate is usually the difficult stumbling block. Being curious about what shaped your parent is the first step in being able to bow and withdraw from the role of helper.

2. You’re good at reading what people want from you (but not so good at knowing what you want). You also miss cues from others that might be useful to you if they don’t fall into the “what do I need to do to make you okay” category, including praise and support for you.

The ability to read others wants AND your own allows you to start creating fair relationships instead of one-sided ones. Plus once you realize those around you may be more willing to give more than that parent, you may discover you can receive as well as give.

3. You enjoy others’ experiences of satisfaction more than your own - if you even know what that feels like.

If you seek satisfaction by pleasing others, you may need to learn to receive and enjoy positive experiences in your own life. Beginning to look for how these show up in small (and big) ways and believing you deserve this without having to give away your soul is the first step to discovering simple joys that are all around you.

4. You feel fear if you think you’ve disappointed someone.

Whether that is fear of the loss of parental affection or approval - conditional, insecure love - even actual loss of the parent through death or divorce, the key point here is that fear, not love, is motivating your response. Healthy relationships are not built on fear. They are built on mutual respect, trust, and care. When you feel this fear, pause, take a deep breath, let it out slowly and ask yourself if this situation is really the same as the situation you faced with that parent as a child. Probably not! Take another deep breath, let go of that old fear, and look around. You may be surprised to learn others around you perceive your situation differently than you do.

5. You don’t defend yourself from unfair interactions or downright abusive exchanges, feeling it’s probably your fault things went sideways.

One should not displease the gods! A small, powerless child has to please or placate the all-powerful adult in order to survive. If you find yourself collapsing in front of a reasonable challenge from someone important to you, just as described in the item above, stop and do a reality check. Are you really as powerless as you were when you were a child?

6. You come from a one-down position to anyone who is close or powerful, without even realizing you do that.

Similar to item 5, you have a secret assumption that everyone else is more powerful and deserving than you are. As you reality-test your reflexive responses, breathe through those old fears and value yourself, you will learn how to respect your own sovereignty as well as the sovereignty of others.

Recently I’ve been reading David Graber’s book, The Utopia of Rules which explores the nature of bureaucracy. He points out that an implicit or explicit violence holds in place the tyranny of rules imposed by our modern bureaucracies. In reading this, I realized that there is an implicit (and sometimes explicit!) violence in the relationship between parent and child in the parentified child. There is the threat of loss - loss of parent, loss of place in the family, loss of being a “good child”. Children who parent their parents are often subtly rewarded for being precocious in a way that is subtly coercive (“what a good child you are for taking care of mommy!”) When a child is parentified, there is a violation of their sovereignty, the needs and well-being of their body-being for the parent’s benefit. The flow of life is reversed. These are one-self systems. And holidays are a good place to discover them. On the other hand, children treated with respectful yet loving boundaries and who are loved for themselves, rather than what they provide or what problem they solve for the parent, don’t need violence to keep them in check. Fear is not the operating currency.

In individualistic cultures such as the United States, we suffer these asymmetrical relations more keenly. In collectivist cultures, everyone is equally responsible and rewarded by membership for participating in the well-being of the whole group. This is not so much felt as a sacrifice as it is a communal project that everyone is involved in. The key to watch for is whether violence, implied or overt, is needed to hold these relations in place.

The holidays put us square in the midst of these situations. Do you find yourself fighting with your partner over which family of origin’s needs will be given priority and feeling terribly trapped by the need to choose? If you find yourself fretting excessively about the right dish to bring to the family potluck, or paralyzed with fear of not finding the right present for your parent, you may be discovering an underlying parentification.

What to do if you suspect parentification is part of your history?

In addition to all the great inner child therapy available and workbooks like Sarah Peyton’s Your Resonant Self Workbook, that guide you through a process of self-compassion and renegotiating old unconscious contracts, here are a few tips for transforming these knee-jerk reactions into useful skills.

1. Come home to your own body.

If you start to sense your actual experiences and feelings, likely the first feelings you’ll encounter are fear (a feeling most of us prefer to avoid), and other feelings that lurk beneath that fear such as anger at the unfairness of the situation and sadness of abandoning yourself to preserve your parent. These aren’t pleasant, however, you can learn to work with them and they are your teachers. Once you learn that those fears no long need control you as an adult, you can begin to reclaim your body as your own sovereign domain and listen to what your body needs. As constellation facilitators know, bodies are incredibly aware of their place in the world and how you really feel about your situation. Learn to listen.

2. Grow a self.

You grew up in a one-self system where the parents’ needs were valued over yours. Growing up this way separates you from yourself and you miss opportunities to learn about yourself - what you genuinely like and thrive with. Taking the time to find out what activities and situations bring life and vitality into your being is key to learning who you are beyond of the parentified relationship.

3. Learn to value and care for that self.

Begin to sort for the messages you may have ignored about your intrinsic value, the value you have in this world just because there is only one of you! You do not need to serve your parent perfectly or make someone else happy in order to be a good and worthy person. Learn to be kind to yourself. Learn what it means to be human, and naturally imperfect. Self-compassion is the foundation of self-esteem.

4. Convert the negative properties of this pattern into positive strengths.

   •   Sacrifice with appropriate self-care can become true service.

   •   Perception of others’ needs can be broadened (with a little detachment) into a skillful perception of others’ states - without the knee-jerk need to leap in and take care of those needs.

   •   Disappointment doesn’t mean that you will be disowned. You can learn to tolerate and even handle with grace others’ disappointment when you value and care for yourself appropriately.

   •   Your skill at creating experiences that please others can be expanded to create experiences that include your pleasure as well so that everyone, including you, enjoys themselves.

   •   Most relations are not an either/or proposition. Learning something like Non-Violent Communication can equip you to look out for yourself without going the route of defiance or defensiveness.

   •   Once you learn to respect and value yourself, you will naturally treat others with respect and kindness as well. This is a magic balm for most relationships

The exquisite balance of give and take in healthy relationships is not something that all of us have had modeled for us in our family of origin. I found systemic constellation work filled in missing pieces and taught me to be more skillful in managing my own relationships as well as being able to guide clients through difficult relationships without having to resort to “burning bridges.” Participating in our Facilitating Systemic Family Constellations training is a great way to master these skills.