Reparenting oneself is a step towards healing

The first column was a deep dive into what parentification looks like and its long-term effects. This column focusses on how one can reparent oneself and work towards healing and building a better life.

A 33-year-old male client tells me, “I started dating someone who feels that I seem to be giving all the time and constantly taking on the role of a caregiver. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that my dad was an alcoholic and I spent a huge part of my childhood taking care of him and my younger sister. I played the role of a parent, therapist, cook, and even a provider as I started taking small jobs when I was 15 years old. The person I’m dating nudged me into therapy. Over the years, I had never really given it any thought, I had just accepted my reality.”

This was the client’s first session and what the client was mentioning is parentification, where children take on adult roles of caregiving - whether physical or emotional responsibilities for either their parents’ or their siblings’ wellbeing. Very often, when children take on these roles, they see it as the only choice, and don’t even realize that they are taking on roles and responsibilities which are inappropriate for their age and development. In fact, in therapy, very often clients talk about taking on these duties as a way of survival. However, as adults we can all choose to do the work and learn to deal with the effects of parentification.

Parentified adults, when they receive love and soothing in intimate relationships or friendships, they may begin to recognize that they don’t always have to be a caregiver to receive love. So many clients have talked about how having a partner who is loving, nurturing and soothing and at the same time knows how to self soothe and when to ask for help has helped them become aware of their own parentification patterns. Reparenting oneself may require learning to self soothe rather than suppress what one is feeling and thinking, which is something parentified adults do.

The space held for a client in therapy may help them become aware of these patterns when it comes to numbing uncomfortable feelings or intellectualizing and learn that it’s okay to be vulnerable and stay with what one is feeling. Giving oneself permission to feel, self-nurture and then self-soothe are goals to help create more spaciousness for one’s own needs. This requires adults acknowledging their own needs as an adult, identifying what felt unmet as a child and allowing oneself to grieve over a childhood that one never had. This process can be difficult as it can evoke many mixed emotions towards one’s own parents and even self. Learning to be self-compassionate and mindful that possibly our parents didn’t have the capacity to understand what they were doing and how it was impacting us is a huge part of moving on. As a parentified adult, if you feel anger, resentment, disappointment towards your parents or primary caregivers then it’s understandable. What’s important is that you choose to work through these big feelings and not let them fester. Setting guardrails when it comes to engaging with parents is necessary, learning when to step in and when to step back is very crucial. At a deeper level, trusting that our parents have the capacity to self soothe themselves and solve their own problems is an important part of healing too.

We may feel wounded by relationships at some stage in our life. At the same time, we need to remember that loving relationships where people care, value and are there for us are healing.

We become labels we put on ourselves. So, learning to not define one’s life by parentification and yet reparenting oneself is important and a way of moving forward, no matter how old you are.