Understanding The Effects Of Parentification On Mental Health In Adulthood
How Being the “Parent” as a Child Shapes Who You Become
What Is Parentification?
Parentification is when the roles between parent and child become reversed - emotionally, physically, or logistically - usually during childhood or adolescence.
This might look like:
Taking care of siblings
Managing household responsibilities
Being your parent’s emotional support system
Mediating adult conflicts
Holding family secrets
Acting as “the responsible one” before you're developmentally ready
While small moments of responsibility can be healthy and even empowering, chronic or extreme parentification can be deeply impactful - especially when it leaves the child without space to have their own needs, emotions, or identity.
Note: In some cultures, children taking on family responsibility is normalized and culturally valued. This blog is written from a Western psychological lens, where individuality and interdependence are more emphasized.
Examples of Parentification:
You may have experienced parentification if any of the following sound familiar:
✨ Taking care of siblings - emotionally or physically
✨ Putting siblings to bed, feeding them, getting them to school
✨ Mediating your parents' conflicts
✨ Being the translator, bill-payer, or household manager
✨ Hearing graphic details about your parent's mental health or relationships
✨ Being your parent’s emotional caretaker or "therapist"
✨ Comforting or soothing your parent during their distress
✨ Hearing constant complaints about the other parent
✨ Being blamed for a parent's emotional state
✨ Holding family secrets or being the "glue" of the family
✨ Caring for a physically ill or emotionally unstable relative
✨ Witnessing emotional, physical, or self-harm behavior from a parent
✨ Feeling responsible for keeping peace in the home
✨ Enmeshment - “Your feelings are mine. Your pain is mine.”
What Does Parentification Do to a Child?
Children are meant to explore, play, and develop a secure sense of self.
When they’re forced into adult roles too soon, they lose access to emotional safety, freedom, and guidance - and it leaves invisible wounds.
Being parentified can:
Teach a child that their needs don’t matter
Prevent emotional development and self-awareness
Create the belief that love must be earned through helping
Set the foundation for codependent patterns later in life
Lead to deep emotional confusion, guilt, shame, and chronic self-blame
Disrupt the development of healthy identity and autonomy
These children often become adults who are extremely capable, outwardly successful - and completely disconnected from their own needs and feelings.
How It Shows Up in Adulthood
✨ Anxiety & depression
✨ Chronic guilt and responsibility for others
✨ People-pleasing and codependent relationships
✨ Suppressed emotions - or not knowing how you feel at all
✨ Struggling to identify your needs or desires
✨ Low self-worth and inner shame
✨ Perfectionism
✨ Difficulty with boundary-setting and assertiveness
✨ Digestive issues and chronic health symptoms (common with chronic stress or trauma)
You may feel emotionally exhausted, disconnected from who you really are, or unsure how to take up space without caring for someone else.
Why It’s So Impactful
When you’re raised to prioritize others before yourself - especially adults - you don’t get to develop emotional tools for your own life.
You don’t learn how to self-soothe, identify what you want, or believe your needs matter.
Instead, you learn:
To suppress your own emotions
To be the strong one
That your worth is based on how useful or helpful you are
That you’re “bad” or “selfish” if you set a boundary
It’s exhausting. And deeply lonely.
Can You Still Love Your Parents and Acknowledge the Impact?
Absolutely!
You can love your parents and recognize how their actions shaped you.
You can hold compassion for what they were going through and hold boundaries for yourself now.
Parentification often happens in families where the caregivers were overwhelmed, under-supported, or repeating generational cycles. That doesn’t make it your fault - and it doesn’t mean you have to continue the pattern.
The Good News: You Can Heal
If this resonates with you, know this:
Healing is possible.
And it starts with giving yourself the space you didn’t get before - to explore who you are when you’re not rescuing, fixing, or managing everyone else’s emotions.
✨ Therapy is one space where you get to focus fully on you.
✨ You can begin learning what your needs are - and how to honor them.
✨ You can set boundaries, release the guilt, and rewrite the beliefs that no longer serve you.
You don’t have to keep carrying the emotional weight of your family.
You deserve to feel light, free, and whole - just as you are!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi! I'm Alyssa! I’m a trauma therapist that specializes in helping women heal from relational trauma, c-ptsd, parentification, anxiety, codependency, and people pleasing patterns. My approach blends holistic, somatic, nervous system care, & EMDR.
✨ I provide online therapy to adults located in New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, and Maryland.
📩 Email me at alyssakushnerlcsw@gmail.com or schedule a free 15-minute consultation to get started.
💬 Follow me on Instagram for more tips, tools, and inspiration around healing, self-trust, and mental health.
✨Not ready for therapy yet? Stay connected by subscribing to my free monthly newsletter, where I share mental health tips, a free self love mini workbook, journal prompts, and upcoming offerings to support your healing journey.
I also run an online Women’s Relational Trauma, Anxiety, & Self-Trust Support Group. We meet Tuesdays from 4:30-5:45 est and cover topics related to this blog. If you want to learn more on these patterns and how to actually overcome them, if you want to gain the support of others who are struggling with similar challenges, and you want to heal in a community of women - please schedule a free phone consultation to learn more!
Disclaimer
This post is meant for educational purposes only and isn’t a substitute for diagnosis, assessment or treatment of mental conditions. If you need professional help, seek it out.
