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Emily came to me after feeling overwhelmed by her role in her relationships and career. Growing up, Emily was the primary caretaker for her younger siblings while her parents struggled with substance abuse. She took on responsibilities such as managing the household and providing emotional support, roles that were far beyond her years.
In therapy, Emily described feeling perpetually responsible for others’ needs, often at the expense of her own well-being. She felt anxious whenever she received a call from one of her parents: “I just know it will be a crisis that I have to solve.”
She struggled with setting boundaries, leading to burnout and difficulty asserting her needs in both personal and professional contexts. Therapy helped her recognize how her early experiences of parentification shaped her current behaviors and self-perceptions.
Parentification occurs when a child is forced to take on the role of a parent, either by providing emotional support or managing household responsibilities beyond their years. This often arises in families where the parents are unable or unwilling to fulfill their roles, leading children to step up out of necessity.
Parentification can impact individuals in various ways, from struggles with counter-dependency, poor self-esteem, and poor self-image, to feeling like they are always giving more in relationships than they are getting. For many, healing is not about blame, as many times their caregivers were also dealing with their own traumas of parentification, abuse, abandonment, and other things that left them with few healthy or available tools.
Many survivors of parentification have to start the process of unlearning this pattern in adulthood to cultivate healthier relationships. Here are some of the steps I go over with survivors:
How to Begin Healing
1. Cultivate self-awareness. The first step in healing from parentification is acknowledging that it happened and understanding its effects. Recognizing that you were placed in an adult role as a child is crucial. It is important to start looking at the history of your situation, which often means facing uncomfortable memories.
Reflect on how this experience has shaped your beliefs, behaviors, and relationships. Understanding the psychological impact—such as difficulties with boundaries, trust issues, or anxiety—can provide clarity on what areas need attention.
Next, start to become aware of the ways that you are acting like the “parent” in a relationship, either with your caregiver or with a romantic partner. This can look like repeatedly having to pick up your partner’s clothes off the floor, making all the decisions, or taking care of appointments and other things for other adults/capable people within the household. This does not mean you have to change overnight, but just become aware that this is a pattern so you can work with your partner on ways to decrease it.
2. Identify any negative feelings that come up when you do not take on the parent role. This often means becoming more comfortable with the ways you may be emotionally dependent on others’ comfort. Emily described feelings of anxiety and even panic when she had a missed call from one of her parents because she knew it was going to be a crisis for her to solve: “I have been in the middle of a work presentation, or even my daughter’s dance recital and have had to drop everything to deal with their problems.”
Parentified children, particularly daughters, often develop unhealthy coping mechanisms when they are worried about others’ comfort and feelings in certain situations and, thus, base their own feelings and reactions on others’. This comes from having to be the emotional caretaker at an age when they were ill-equipped to handle those adult emotions and responsibilities. For Emily, not answering the phone, and not taking charge of their problem, set her into feelings of anxiety almost as bad as if she were to not take it on. She had been conditioned to take on her parents’ emotional stress and problems—quite literally. “I feel like a bad daughter or that it seems like I don’t care,” she said. “Besides, who will help if I don’t?”
Parentification can lead to ingrained negative beliefs about oneself, such as feelings of inadequacy or a sense of being unworthy of care. You can work on identifying and challenging these beliefs through cognitive restructuring techniques. Reframing negative thoughts into more balanced and positive perspectives can shift your self-perception and improve overall mental health.
Parentification Essential Reads
3. Relearn healthy boundaries for yourself and your relationships. A significant challenge for individuals who have experienced parentification is setting and maintaining healthy boundaries. You might find yourself struggling with overextending yourself or feeling responsible for others’ emotions and well-being. Learning to set boundaries involves recognizing your own needs and limits and practicing assertiveness. For many survivors, this often means having to learn what a boundary even is. If this is you, this is OK, as this is a normal experience for those who were parentified from a young age. It is worth putting in the effort to learn what boundaries mean to you. This allows you to start caring for yourself and your own needs, rather than putting the needs and desires of others before yours.
Knowing when you need extra support is crucial in healing. For some, this might mean getting the support of a therapist who understands dysfunctional family dynamics. To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.
