One of the most common examples of this is during a divorce. Both parents are vying for the emotional support of the children. They are consciously manipulating the children to align with them. This might take the form of comments …
Tag: psychotherapy
Statements of Self-Validation
HERE IS A QUICK ‘GO TO’ TILE FOR VALIDATING STATEMENTS. Keep these on your screen saver, print them, and put them next to your bed, where you brush your teeth. While we are changing our inner landscape, it takes a …
Tips for Self-Validation
Self-validation CAN be learnt. It is so important because validating ourselves re-connects us with our inner knowing and intuition. Self-validation is particularly important when growing up in an environment with mixed messages, where the adults around us have denied our …
Self-Validation
As a child, we look to our parents for validation about ourselves and the world around us. When we don’t receive that validation, it can be incredibly detrimental to our mental health as adults. It might sound like, “I heard …
The Emotionally Attuned Parent
It is so easy to be dismissive when we are parenting. We are too busy and distracted to stop and listen to what is needed. When we don’t attend to children, they learn they are not important, their feelings and …
Journalling for Parentified Children
I have found journaling to be an invaluable part of my healing journey. It is time just for me to contemplate my life, think about relationships, and have space to allow my intuition, different perspectives and ideas to come through. …
The Critics & Bravery
I have this in the back of my mind ALL the time. We live in an age where social media allows us to hide our real identity or hide behind the physical distance this form of ‘socialising’ allows. It is …
Why You Find Caregiving Exhausting as a Parentified Child
As a parentified child, one of the ways you received love and acceptance was through caring for your siblings and/or parents. This may have been expressed as a compulsion as an adult, which may have contributed to moving naturally into …
Healing for Those Who Were Parentified
Once you have connected with your inner child, the next thing to do is validate their feelings about their childhood experiences. This process can be painful and might be best done with a therapist. Over time, your inner child needs …
Parentification in Action
You might find this interesting! A study of 783 university students into the links between parentification and later adult wellness showed those who experienced parentification have an increased risk of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and substance abuse (Hooper, Marotta, & …