“Emotional Parentification” Could Be The Reason You’re An Exhausted People-Pleaser

You feel anxious all the time but don’t actually know what you need to fix it. You’d like to rest more but it’s hard when you feel like being productive and contributing is how you stay in everyone’s good graces. And even when others do try to care for you, it’s uncomfortable — you kind of wish they just wouldn’t try. If any of these thoughts sound familiar, you might have experienced parentification.

If that’s a new term for you, you’re not alone, though parentification has become a hot topic of conversation online in recent years. So, what is emotional parentification, and how might it be affecting you as an adult?

What is emotional parentification?

Put simply, emotional parentification is when a child “is placed in the role of being responsible for meeting their parent’s emotional needs,” says Doriel Jacov, JD, LCSW, a psychotherapist specializing in trauma, attachment, and relationship dynamics.

“The parentified child becomes responsible for providing emotional support, comfort, guidance, and stability to their parent. The child often feels like their parent’s therapist, a trusted confidant and emotional support system. The child may feel like a mediator and emotional caretaker, and they often carry that into adulthood,” he says.

When they’re emotionally parentified, kids will attempt to prevent or protect their parents from emotional distress, says Dr. Patty Johnson, PsyD, clinical psychologist and owner of Nia Integrative Healing.

Emotional parentification is not the same as giving kids developmentally appropriate chores or asking older siblings to care for younger ones on occasion, Jacov explains — it’s defined by developmentally inappropriate involvement of kids in their parents’ emotional management. It can look like the child:

• Being expected to comfort a parent in emotional distress.
• Being treated like a friend, confidant, therapist, or partner.
• Feeling responsible for a parent's happiness and well-being.
• Being told intimate details about the parents’ relationship, sex life, finances, or other grown-up issues.
• Hearing from the parent, “You’re the only one who understands me.”
• Suppressing their needs so they don’t stress out their parent, or feeling guilty when they do have needs.
• Having to care for younger siblings on a frequent basis, at the expense of time to play, study, and be a kid.
• Feeling responsible for keeping peace in the home.
• Acting as a mediator in parents’ conflicts.
• Being expected to keep a big family secret.
• Being blamed for a mistake your parent made at work because you stressed them out in some way.

Emotionally parentified kids may also grow up too soon, enough so that other people around them notice. “Many parentified kids become what everyone praises as ‘the mature one,’ ‘the easy child,’ or ‘the old soul.’ What people don’t see is that maturity often came at the expense of their own childhood,” says Nina Batista, a licensed clinical social worker specializing in trauma and recovery from emotionally abusive relationship dynamics.

Why does emotional parentification happen?

Essentially, when a parent isn’t able to have their emotional needs met elsewhere, or to self-regulate effectively, “the child is unconsciously placed in that role,” says Jacov. “Most parents who parentify their children don’t do so intentionally; it’s often because they lack adequate internal and external support. This often happens in families affected by divorce, illness, addiction, mental health struggles, grief, financial hardship, or high conflict.”

In immigrant families, emotional parentification can also happen unintentionally due to language or cultural barriers, says Johnson. She adds that parents who have experienced emotional trauma or abuse may not have the tools “to provide nurturing to their children, and therefore impose the pressures of adults onto their children.”

Chronic illness and just plain overwhelm can lead to parentifying behaviors too, Batista says. “Unfortunately, children don’t have the developmental capacity to carry adult emotional burdens. They don’t have the skills to show up as adults yet. What feels like closeness to the parent can feel like responsibility to the child.”

Signs You Were Parentified As A Child

Maybe you can recall instances where you sat between your arguing parents and mediated the conversation, or maybe the way you were emotionally parentified was subtler. What matters most is whether your experiences impact you negatively today. According to these three experts, adults who were emotionally parentified as kids may:

• Have difficulty setting boundaries or feel guilty saying no.
• Deal with anxiety, chronic stress, or burnout.
• Be highly attuned to others’ needs and emotional states, often at the expense of their own.
• Monitor the room with vigilance to anticipate others’ needs and avoid conflict.
• Have gone into careers where they are “helpers,” like therapists.
• Feel responsible for other people’s emotions, even if those emotions have nothing to do with them.
• Struggle to identify their own needs.
• Feel guilty setting boundaries and limits.
• Feel discomfort when asking for or receiving help.
• Be drawn to emotionally dependent partners.
• Feel valuable or worthy of love only when providing for others.
• Not feel able to truly rest.
• Grow into people pleasers, even though they don’t want to be.

Adults who were parentified as children may also be highly independent and resourceful, Johnson notes.

“Many parentified children grow into adults who are incredibly competent. They’re the friend everyone calls. They’re the employee who takes on extra work. They’re the partner who does all the emotional labor,” Batista adds. “One of the most common things I hear in my office is, ‘I know how to take care of everyone else, but I have no idea what I need.’ That’s often the legacy of parentification,” Batista says.

How To Heal From Emotional Parentification

The first step toward giving yourself what you need is to interrogate some of the narratives your upbringing created for you, says Johnson.

“Parentified adults must examine values that are meaningful to them and separate them from values that were forced onto them. For instance, the adult child is not responsible for everyone’s problems and emotions. They do not have to be on standby to wait on others as they sacrifice their own emotional needs and time,” she says.

Next step: Practice setting boundaries. “It can be incredibly healing to begin learning to set boundaries and tolerate conflict,” says Jacov. “This often involves sitting with feelings of guilt and worries around rejection.” You will also need to practice “forming and maintaining relationships that are mutually reciprocal,” he says. Over time, this will help you genuinely feel and believe that you have inherent worth, instead of believing your value is rooted in what you provide the people around you.

Many mental health experts also recommend reading Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Dr. Lindsay Gibson as a starting place for healing from any kind of toxic parent relationship (even the kind where your parents didn’t intentionally mistreat you). Of course, sifting through your childhood is a massive undertaking — don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health professional for help healing and improving your quality of life.