People Who Were Parentified as Children Often Develop These 13 Traits as Adults ...Saudi Arabia

It’s normal for parents to give their children responsibilities and chores. It teaches them life lessons, and as they grow up, they can take on more duties in the house to learn how to be an adult who can live on their own later. However, giving children household responsibilities that are far beyond their years or leaning on them emotionally can actually be detrimental to kids. This parenting behavior is called parentification, and it can have damaging effects on kids in the moment, as well as later on in life as adults.“In a parentified relationship, a primary caregiver or parent places a child in a type of role reversal, in which a child is expected to mentally, physically and/or emotionally take care of a parent's emotions, demands, needs or responsibilities,” Dr. Kim Sage, PsyD, MA, a licensed clinical psychologist based in California, tells Parade.In reversing the roles of parent and child, parents are (often unknowingly) creating trauma for that child, disrupting their development and creating lifelong issues related to this treatment. While that might be hard to wrap your head around—either because you were a victim of this behavior or because you’re a parent who might unconsciously do this—we’ve got you covered. Dr. Sage, along with the help of Lauren Auer, LCPC, a trauma therapist and founder of Steadfast Counseling, shares 13 traits that people who were parentified as children often have as adults. Related: People Who Were ‘Coddled’ as Children Often Develop These 11 Traits as Adults, Psychologists Say

There are two categories of parentification: emotional and instrumental. When a parent turns to a child to receive emotional support or psychological support from them, this is emotional parentification. And when a parent turns to a child for support through tasks and responsibilities in the home (cooking, cleaning, keeping track of bills, childcare, etc.), that is instrumental parentification. Dr. Sage says that they “both can occur simultaneously, and often do, but they do not have to co-occur.”With emotional parentification, it’s already unfair because a parent is reversing their role with their child. However, Dr. Sage also notes just how unequal it is in practice. “Although the roles are reversed, implying a two-way or reciprocal relationship, these are one-way relationships in which a child's role is to serve the parent's needs, emotions or demands,” she says.Parentification isn’t a case of just having kids help out around the house or do their chores, even if they’re old enough to do those things. In these environments, children are “expected and made to feel primarily responsible for these tasks, much the same way we would expect an adult to do,” she explains.Dr. Sage does note that, unfortunately, there are “impossible situations in life” where kids are thrown into positions like this and “needed earlier than they should be.” This can be in the case of divorce, mental health issues or crises, chronic illnesses or diseases, socioeconomic challenges, traumatic, life-changing events and more things that are unavoidable “because life is not perfect, nor is any childhood.”“It's important to validate these issues because most caring and loving parents feel guilty for ‘not getting it right,’ and in many cases, their need to rely on their children was unintentional, hard to avoid, etc.,” she explains.Parentification is still a form of emotional abuse, though, she points out, and “even with good reason,” they are “still forms of abuse” that “can cause significant harm for many children.”“While increased skills, like being more independent or resilient, can also provide some strengths for kids, it's important to remember that these skills were often forged in variously stressful and often traumatic environments and experiences,” she shares.Related: 16 Phrases Psychologists Are Begging Parents and Grandparents To Stop Saying to an Oldest Daughter

13 Traits People Parentified as Children Often Have as Adults, According to a Psychologist and Trauma Therapist

While everyone is different and parentification can impact some people more than others, Dr. Sage, a psychologist, and Auer, a trauma therapist, share traits that a lot of people might have as adults if they were parentified as kids. This highlights the long-lasting harm this behavior can have on impressionable and growing minds.

You’ll see this theme come up a lot with these different traits, but kids who were forced to constantly seek approval through the tasks they were given grow up to need that approval in any way they can get it when they grow up. This can show up as people-pleasing, which ultimately doesn’t satisfy that person because they’re always doing things for others, and they’re not listening to their own desires.“Adults who were parentified often can't stop people-pleasing because they learned their worth came from being helpful, so saying no feels dangerous,” Auer tells Parade. This people-pleasing nature, or fawning response, shows up as caring deeply about other people’s emotions and wants. They have to please someone else to avoid conflict and be seen as useful, and that’s all that matters. “Most feel responsible for everyone's emotions and think they can and should fix everyone's problems,” she says. Related: Individuals Who Grew Up as 'People-Pleasers' Usually Develop These 12 Traits as Adults, Psychologists Say

2. Neglect their needs

In that same vein, Dr. Sage shares that people who were parentified as kids often grow up to neglect their needs “in service of caretaking others.”“We were never taught how to identify our own needs, we have an outside-in orientation where we look to you first, and outside ourselves to determine how we feel, to be okay, to feel safe in relationships, etc.,” she explains. An outside-in orientation refers to prioritizing external outcomes or results for happiness or satisfaction. So you’re more interested in other people’s positive reactions to your actions rather than what you internally get satisfaction from, what might please you rather than others.She shares that if parentified kids are constantly caring for and about others, it means that they’re also denying their own needs.“Given we were kids, we made this our normal,” she says. “If we need something, it could take away from feeling valued, seen or safe by our caregivers; to be needless is to be of value.”

Branching off of that, when parentified children grow up, they’re always taking the role of caretaker. Whether that’s in relationships, at work, with friends or with family, they are often taking burdens on for other people to make their lives easier while bearing that weight themselves.“Our caregivers' big emotions, needs and demands spilled over too much and too often into our world,” Dr. Sage tells Parade. “And we learned that taking care of their needs and big feelings was a way to reduce stress and uncertainty; this reduces our anxiety as well and creates a loop where taking care of others helps us avoid and neglect our own deep wounds and lack of being seen by our parents—so we continue to stay stuck in cycles which re-enact these very familiar patterns.”Auer agrees and says that this can look like different things as adults, from actually caring and doing things for others, or just always being on the lookout for the next time they can be helpful.“They tend to be constantly watching everyone else, scanning for what others need or how they're feeling,” she says.As you can imagine, this not only puts undue stress on the parentified child-turned-adult, but it also really impacts who they have around them. This can lead to unhealthy relationships and friendships. “They're often drawn to people who need fixing, attracted to relationships where they can be the rescuer,” she explains.Related: 7 Behaviors That People-Pleasers Don’t Even Realize They’re Doing, a Psychotherapist Warns

4. Oblivious to their own needs

Due to the fact that these adults are just running around, only thinking of and caring for others’ wants, they are totally unaware of their own needs. “Many don't know what they actually need since they spent their childhood focused on everyone else's needs,” Auer says.Why is it important to address and change that? Well, other than the fact that you’re not catering to your needs if you don’t know what they are, you’re just furthering the dysregulation of your nervous system (and more).“Not knowing what our needs are or neglecting signs of our own body informing us that something is wrong,” Dr. Sage says. “We learned to push down, avoid or bury our needs in the service of caretakers.”

As you can probably imagine, if you’re always worrying about others and never yourself, you don’t have great boundaries. And that goes well beyond wants and needs. “We don't know what [boundaries] are because ours were ignored, and we don't want to risk conflict or displeasing others if we ask for a boundary to be set or for what we need, so we take the hit ourselves, avoid, endure, etc.,” Dr. Sage explains. She goes on to say that while any boundaries parentified kids might have instinctively tried to establish in childhood weren’t respected, they also weren’t taught how to do so in general. They didn’t have anyone modeling “healthy adult-child appropriate boundaries.” This leads to a lifelong struggle with establishing boundaries because they don’t like they’re “entitled” to them, whether that’s surrounding their bodies, who they are, their expected roles in relationships or more.

6. Disconnected from personal identity and feelings

Similar to how adults who experienced this role reversal as kids don’t know their own needs, they are also often disconnected from their own identities and feelings in general. If they aren’t helping others out, being a caretaker or emotionally regulating for others, they don’t know who they are.“Outside of being helpers, we don't know who we are or we’re not given the time or space to explore,” Dr. Sage says. “So we often find jobs in helping fields (ie, nurse, therapist, doctor, physical therapist, teacher, etc.).”She explains that kids can struggle with their identity and how they fit into the world in general. This is normal during the developmental stages of life. But since they were constantly expected to take care of the house and/or their parents—physically and emotionally—during this instrumental stage, they weren’t able to figure out anything outside of that role they were forced into.“They were acting like mini adults and being treated like adults,” she says. And in regard to feelings, Auer shares that many are disconnected from them, often “staying in their head, keeping endlessly busy or just ‘checking out’ because they learned to disconnect from their emotions to survive.” Related: 7 Signs of ‘High-Functioning Depression,’ According to a Columbia-Trained Psychiatrist

Just like how boundaries feel foreign and wrong for these adults, seeking help also feels like an unfair thing to do.“Getting support often feels wrong or ‘selfish,’ so they can't ask for help,” Auer says. Dr. Sage agrees and says that they’ve normalized self-sacrifice as an adult because that’s what they had to do as a kid to take care of everything handed to them. They’re so used to being “overly empathetic toward others,” and they’ve developed an “outside-in orientation,” which she mentioned before. This makes them “overly focus on what [others] feel” and what they need. “Caretaking a parent's emotions is a one-way road of empathy when the boundaries and roles are reversed,” she says.

8. Hyper-independent

Parentification makes hyper-independent children who turn into hyper-independent adults. They have to work independently to finish the tasks they were given as children, so they take that into adulthood. Oftentimes, to their detriment. Why? Because this is partly why they don’t know how to ask for help as adults; they either weren’t allowed to as kids or didn’t feel like they could. So they’ve learned they can figure things out on their own, and they do that for the rest of their lives if they don’t heal.“We were rewarded emotionally, psychologically or materially for being independent; this gave us a sense of value,” Dr. Sage says. “No one helped us, we were the helpers, so we don't know how to ask for help and don't believe we deserve it or should be expected to receive help.”Related: People Who Were Considered 'Strong-Willed' as Children Often Develop These 10 Traits as Adults

On that note, Auer says that adults who were parentified are often perfectionists as well. As kids, they gained praise for a job well done, so they need to achieve that level of success every time they do something.“Perfectionism and overachieving are common because they learned love depended on being ‘good enough,’” she tells Parade.  Related: The Biggest Obstacle To Repairing a Parent and Adult-Child Relationship, Psychologist Says

10. Judgemental

Remember when Dr. Sage said that parentified kids often turn into adults who do everything on their own? And Auer said that they need things to be perfect? Well, that leads many of them to be judgmental of others who can’t do that. And that person probably can’t do what they’re doing because they don’t work themselves to the bone like parentified adults do. “Judging other people who don't know how to do the types of adult tasks we were forced to do as a result of our own harsh self-judgment, or shame,” Dr. Sage says. “Being perfectionistic and having overly high expectations for ourselves and feeling like a failure if we aren't able to accomplish goals. Judging others helps us to unconsciously push down our shame and wounds from not being seen for who we were, but rather by what we could provide for others.”

If this all sounds extremely exhausting to you, it absolutely is. And that’s why Dr. Sage says that a lot of these adults experience chronic fatigue. Even if all of your people-pleasing perfectionism is emotional, that takes a toll on your overall mental fortitude, which can deplete you physically too. “A life defined by being in constant servitude is inherently draining,” Dr. Sage shares. “We are at risk for developing autoimmune disease, chronic illness, fibromyalgia, cancer, diabetes, IBS, etc.”Even in childhood, a parentified kid “might also be more likely to feel exhausted mentally and physically, and emotionally drained,” she says. Because of this (and just the responsibilities they have in general), they might not be able to attend age-appropriate events. Whether it was at school or with friends, they might have missed out on special occasions because they had to babysit or take care of a parent going through a meltdown or dealing with extreme loneliness. 

12. Continuing the cycle

If you don’t know that the way you’ve been treated or how you’ve lived isn’t fair or appropriate to you, then how are you going to stop the cycle? Dr. Sage states that adults who were parentified in childhood often re-enact their “trauma or childhood experiences” by always being the “go-to” person for other people and by unknowingly “creating enmeshment with their own kids or in other relationships.”“Doing what we’ve always done feels normal for us; we never learned how to set up relationships differently,” she explains.

13. Difficulty expressing feelings, especially anger

Considering these traits of adults who experience parentification as kids include a lot of denial of needs and sacrificing oneself for the comfort of others, it’s no surprise that one more trait is having difficulty expressing oneself. Particularly, trouble expressing anger.“[This] can look like we are unable to advocate for ourselves at work, home, friendships, relationships, etc.,” Dr. Sage says. “Since we've learned to please and caretake others, we often also avoid conflict by being agreeable, not advocating for ourselves, etc. So any signs of conflict can feel unsafe and dangerous.”Avoiding this kind of conflict while also pushing down your own frustration, fear, anger and more can be the perfect storm for an emotional outburst. So these adults might take their anger out on someone else or misdirect blame and frustration they feel at themselves onto a partner. They weren’t taught how to regulate emotions either, so this can easily be a breakdown waiting to happen.

As you might have guessed, the best way to help yourself heal from parentification and the lasting effects of it is to see therapy, specifically trauma-focused therapy, Dr. Sage says. This will help you learn “skills of self-compassion” and learn to be compassionate with your inner child, “while learning to cultivate a safe and gentle inner parent inside… (you are both your inner child and your own inner parent).”Therapy can also help you learn how to set boundaries and how to hold them, along with “identity work,” which can help you figure out who you are, what your morals and beliefs are, and what your own dreams and goals are and not just those that will please others. Through work with a trauma-focused mental health professional, you can also learn how to validate what you went through while also changing your mindset, skills and behaviors about what it means to be a helper or caretaker in the world by learning to say no,” Dr. Sage says. And overall, you can learn better self-care.Adults who were parentified in childhood can also help themselves heal by learning how to advocate for themselves, and also how to address (and express) their emotions—especially anger.“Heal and explore [your] attachment wounds and patterns by understanding [your] role in relationships, partners [you] choose and [your] role in re-enacting trauma cycles of the emotional abuse of parentification,” Dr. Sage. Auer also says therapy “helps a lot,” and notes that you can also start to heal by “understanding these patterns aren't personality flaws, but rather ways you learned to survive.” She also says that therapy that helps your nervous system “understand you’re safe now” is also great for healing.“There's often grief work,” she says as well. “Mourning the childhood you didn't know you lost.”She agrees that figuring out your needs and honoring them helps a ton, and so does sitting with other people’s problems and not running to fix or help them. Auer also says to start small with boundary-setting—“Maybe say no to one thing this week”—and “be patient with yourself.”“These patterns took years to develop, and they take time to change,” she shares. She also expresses that people should “be gentle with themselves” as they realize they are victims of parentification and work to heal themselves. “They survived by becoming incredibly capable and caring, and those aren't bad things,” she shares. “The work is learning you can keep those strengths while also having needs, boundaries and the right to be taken care of. That little kid who took care of everyone deserves someone to take care of them, and that someone can be you.”Up Next:

Related: People Who Were Raised by Helicopter Parents Often Develop These 9 Traits as Adults, a Psychologist Says

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