Thank you for this great piece! For the longest time, I've always felt massive resistance and restraint, only to recently have found out that I'm experiencing the symptoms of parentification.
For much of my life I have been parentified and it's now made me that much resentful. All this time, putting myself last, trying to be my parents' savior/rescuer felt noble and virtuous, but if I'm being honest all it really did was cause me to abandon myself even more. That light at the end of the tunnel never came; and to this day my parents are pretty clueless of how, as you say, early and seriously they put that obligation and responsibility on me. It took me having to emmigrate to realize the way in which my North American peers carry themselves, how they do things with a certain conviction - one which doesn't feel bound and restrained, all because they are allowed to make mistakes. To me, they are the byproduct of having been allowed to be themselves, that they belong to themselves! They are not owned, nor do they owe anything to anybody else. As a result, they are fully allowed to unleash their potential without guilt and shame wearing them down. The individualistic society here really helps integrate the idea of boundaries and overall, societal relations and expectations factor that in vs the largely codependent muck in South Asian societies.
Yes, definitely, parentified kids have had to wear different hats for their parents and I still feel a strong sense of shame and guilt over small incidents which in my adolescent years caused me to inconvenience my parents in the past. Up until very recently, now in my adulthood, I had a massive fear of being an imposition and it definitely kept me small - and playing small. That kind of conditioning is so deeply embedded, it bleeds into all aspects of life. It's such a cancer to the soul. I'm seeing how damaging and dysfunctional parentification is, and worse, how infantile it can keep us. We are, in a sense, "institutionalized". Much in the way prisoners after serving longterm incarceration cannot fully integrate back into society, neither can parentified kids integrate into adulthood, from an emotional point of view - no matter if they are living with parents or emmigrated. By extension, I am also seeing (through a lot of self-help and therapy), that for me to have still been admittedly, emotionally immature, so have my parents.
I'm now actively trying to charter the path I was deprived of, and for that I have to do it unfettered. It's definitely brought about a change in my beliefs, values, and personality - something that my Indian parents are finding jarring. But then again, I don't think we were ever close, parentification saw to that. I am just now being validated on all this is all. Now and then, I feel bad and guilty, but also realize that I can no longer afford this duality of having selective boundaries - it's been an expensive experience! It's been very tough having to take such a hard and close look, especially now with this much needed distance and perspective, but it's offered a lot of insight and truth.
Thanks for this article - it was very cathartic. I'll be reading it again and some of your other ones too!
Thank you for this great piece! For the longest time, I've always felt massive resistance and restraint, only to recently have found out that I'm experiencing the symptoms of parentification.
For much of my life I have been parentified and it's now made me that much resentful. All this time, putting myself last, trying to be my parents' savior/rescuer felt noble and virtuous, but if I'm being honest all it really did was cause me to abandon myself even more. That light at the end of the tunnel never came; and to this day my parents are pretty clueless of how, as you say, early and seriously they put that obligation and responsibility on me. It took me having to emmigrate to realize the way in which my North American peers carry themselves, how they do things with a certain conviction - one which doesn't feel bound and restrained, all because they are allowed to make mistakes. To me, they are the byproduct of having been allowed to be themselves, that they belong to themselves! They are not owned, nor do they owe anything to anybody else. As a result, they are fully allowed to unleash their potential without guilt and shame wearing them down. The individualistic society here really helps integrate the idea of boundaries and overall, societal relations and expectations factor that in vs the largely codependent muck in South Asian societies.
Yes, definitely, parentified kids have had to wear different hats for their parents and I still feel a strong sense of shame and guilt over small incidents which in my adolescent years caused me to inconvenience my parents in the past. Up until very recently, now in my adulthood, I had a massive fear of being an imposition and it definitely kept me small - and playing small. That kind of conditioning is so deeply embedded, it bleeds into all aspects of life. It's such a cancer to the soul. I'm seeing how damaging and dysfunctional parentification is, and worse, how infantile it can keep us. We are, in a sense, "institutionalized". Much in the way prisoners after serving longterm incarceration cannot fully integrate back into society, neither can parentified kids integrate into adulthood, from an emotional point of view - no matter if they are living with parents or emmigrated. By extension, I am also seeing (through a lot of self-help and therapy), that for me to have still been admittedly, emotionally immature, so have my parents.
I'm now actively trying to charter the path I was deprived of, and for that I have to do it unfettered. It's definitely brought about a change in my beliefs, values, and personality - something that my Indian parents are finding jarring. But then again, I don't think we were ever close, parentification saw to that. I am just now being validated on all this is all. Now and then, I feel bad and guilty, but also realize that I can no longer afford this duality of having selective boundaries - it's been an expensive experience! It's been very tough having to take such a hard and close look, especially now with this much needed distance and perspective, but it's offered a lot of insight and truth.
Thanks for this article - it was very cathartic. I'll be reading it again and some of your other ones too!