Is It Normal for My Parents to Tell Me all Their Problems? (Parentification Explained)
You were the responsible one.
The emotionally aware one.
The “wise beyond your years” one.
The one they didn’t have to worry about.
Maybe you were the kid that knew when to stay quiet, when to step in, and held the family together like glue. Perhaps you were the kid that never caused problems because you were too busy solving everyone else’s. Or maybe, you were the kid your parents could confide in—a trusted confidant to manage and reduce emotional stress.
Now, as an adult you’re the go-to friend, the independent one, and again…the one no one “has to worry about.”
The independence and maturity might be characteristics that you take pride in, and ones that you attribute to your core personality. As a child it may have helped you to feel close to your parents—knowing the innerworkings of their emotional lives. However, you might also experience the challenges that come with this upbringing: the guilt you feel resting, the difficulty asking for help, and deprioritizing yourself in relationships.
This dynamic —parentification— can breed a sense of closeness and independence that doesn’t actually feel safe to the nervous system.
In this post, we’ll explore what parentification is, how it impacts adulthood and how therapy can help you navigate parentification trauma.
What is parentification?
Parentification is a form of emotional neglect where there is a role reversal in the parent-child dynamic and the child takes on emotional or practical roles that aren’t appropriate for their age. Instead of being cared for, the child becomes the caregiver instead—sometimes in subtle ways, other times very obviously.
This can look like:
Managing a parent’s emotions
Being the emotional confidant or mediator between parents
Feeling responsible for a parent’s or siblings wellbeing
Parentification often develops in families where parents are overwhelmed, emotionally unavailable, struggling with their own trauma, illness or mental health challenges, or families navigating structural barriers such as food insecurity. It may also occur more frequently in different culture contexts where high levels of independence are expected.
There are two primary types of parentification:
Emotional parentification is when a child becomes emotionally responsible for a parent.
This might look like:
Feeling like it’s your job to keep your parents happy, calm or stress-free
Mediating between your parents during spousal conflict
Your parents confiding in you about their relationship with others
Instrumental parentification often involves taking on adult tasks at a young age.
This might look like:
Managing finances for the household
Caring for siblings in a parental manner
Being responsible to cook for the household
“Is It Normal for My Parents to Tell Me Their Problems?”
It’s important to note that experiences such as babysitting a sibling, or one-off comments such as “ugh your dad is annoying me” typically don’t fall into the category of parentification. When the experiences are consistent, age inappropriate, and have a felt sense of emotional weight—that’s when parentification is occurring.
Many families blur boundaries without realizing it, whether due to their own familial experiences, trauma, illness, lack of emotional awareness or other factors. But intent doesn’t erase impact.
In the moment, it can feel like love, trust and closeness, but parentification actually creates a quiet emotional pressure on the child. It’s considered a form of emotional neglect, because the child’s feelings, limits and developmental needs are repeatedly deprioritized.
Signs You May Have Been Parentified
Many people don’t realize that they have experienced parentification until adulthood. Common signs include:
Feeling overly responsible for others’ feelings.
Struggling to say no or set boundaries.
Guilt when prioritizing your own needs.
Anxiety in relationships, fear of disappointing others.
Being “the helper,” “the peacemaker,” or “the therapist friend.”
How Parentification Shapes Adulthood?
Parentification creates lasting wounds that often carryover to adulthood—impacting our relationship with ourselves, others and the world.
Impact of Parentification in Relationships:
Many adults who were parentified find themselves in relationships where caretaking might feel familiar or expected.
You might:
Attract partners who need high levels of emotional support or physical caretaking
Have difficulty trusting that others will show up for you
Feel uncomfortable when others try to do things for you
Impact of Parentification on Work & Self-Esteem:
The skills that helped you survive often get rewarded in adulthood.
Parentified adults are frequently:
Overachievers
Perfectionistic
Burnt out from overworking
You might over function at work — taking on more than your nervous system has capacity for — and when you finally get home, you crash and shut down. Regardless how hard you work; you might notice a quiet voice that always reminds you that you’re not doing enough.
Emotional Impact of Parentification:
Emotionally, parentification often leaves people feeling uncomfortable or uncertain of their own needs and feelings. When you learned early to track other people’s emotions, and prioritize the experiences of others, your attention naturally turned outward. Over time, this can make your own inner world feel muted, confusing, or hard to access until emotions build up and spill over.
How to Heal From Parentification?
Healing parentification often begins with understanding how deeply your early experiences impacted you.
Recognize It Wasn’t Your Fault
As a child you learned that being capable, attuned and self-sufficient granted emotional stability—so continuing to use those strategies made sense because it kept you both safe and connected.
Parentification was something you responded to, not something that you caused. Naturally being more independent, empathic or emotionally aware didn’t erase the needs that you had as a child, and recognizing this can be helpful to combat shame.
Rebuild Boundaries
An important part in healing parentification is slowly learning where you begin and others end in relationships. This might look like:
Allowing others to experience discomfort without fixing it (hard, I know!)
Practicing saying no, even when it doesn’t feel good
Practicing allowing others to show up for you so reciprocity can exist
Boundaries help keep relationships as safe as possible (for both people). This means intentionally creating space for your needs too.
Reconnect With Yourself
Parentification doesn’t allow for the healthy development of one’s sense of self. As an adult, it can be hard to know what you like, dislike, want or need. Reconnecting with yourself can allow you to experience the play, rest, curiosity and emotional care that you’ve needed for so long.
Consider Therapy
Therapy can be a supportive space to unpack the layered emotions that often come with parentification — including guilt, anger, grief, and confusion around your needs.
Trauma-informed approaches such as IFS (Internal Family Systems), EFT (Emotion-Focused Therapy), EMDR, and other relational and somatic therapies can help you:
Understand family roles and emotional patterns
Rebuild boundaries with compassion
Reconnect with your emotions safely and at your own pace
At The Cognitive Corner, we offer trauma-informed and culturally responsive therapy across Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec with therapists who have experience working with parentification, emotional neglect, and family boundary concerns.
If you’re curious about starting therapy, you can book a free consultation with a therapist in to explore what support might feel right for you.
TL;DR
Parentification is a form of emotional neglect when a child is placed in a role where they take on adult responsibilities for their parent or family. It can be emotional (being a parent’s confidant, mediator, or emotional support) or instrumental (taking care of siblings, managing household tasks beyond what’s age-appropriate).
Occasional help—like babysitting a sibling or one-off comments such as “ugh, your dad is annoying me”—is not parentification. It becomes parentification when these experiences are consistent, age-inappropriate, and emotionally heavy.
Many people don’t realize they were parentified until adulthood, when it begins to show up in relationships, work, and self-esteem. Healing is possible, starting with awareness, learning boundaries, and, if needed, using therapy to process and unlearn these patterns.
Resources:
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay Gibson
