People Who Had To Parent Themselves As Kids Often Develop These 4 Behaviors Later In Life
When you can't seem to rely on other people, you may have had to become an adult way too soon.
Jakub Flis | Unsplash Abandonment issues lurk under the surface of your life, often raising their ugly heads when you least expect them. They are caused by a painful experience of being left by someone important, like a parent, spouse, sibling, or very close friend, and a persistent fear of abandonment can result. It can also result from having to parent yourself as a kid.
Over a much longer time than necessary, you may search for rejections or potential abandonment everywhere, and your brain may continually hold you back from taking healthy emotional risks in your life. This is the very definition of “abandonment issues.” But how can you tell if you need to work through this?
People who had to parent themselves as kids often develop these four behaviors as adults:
1. Avoid initiating plans with people
This likely applies not only to new friends and acquaintances. You may have the same fear about suggesting plans with those you’re close to.
The experience of parentification can create a pattern of prioritizing others' needs and desires, which can lead to a reluctance or fear of initiating plans, as it may feel selfish or disruptive to others' well-being. A 2019 study explained that healing from parentification involves developing self-compassion, setting healthy boundaries, and seeking support to address these challenges.
2. Feel deeply hurt or angry when someone lets you down
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You might have an extreme reaction to the everyday failures of the people in your life. It’s hard for you to take in the other person’s circumstances as an explanation. Instead, you feel it personally and deeply.
3. Reluctant to depend on other people
Depending on others emotionally is scary, so you prefer to keep your relationships feeling safe. You may be great at taking care of others emotionally, but you’re afraid to let others take care of you.
This tendency is a protective mechanism developed in childhood to cope with a lack of emotional support and safety. An article by the Newport Academy indicated that the original experience of parentification can create a deep-seated fear of abandonment, leading to a cautious approach to relationships and a tendency to protect oneself from potential hurt.
4. Downplay the importance of people in your life
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You may find yourself pretending you care less than you do about certain people and what they do.
“I don’t care if you’re there or not.” “Either way, it’s good with me.” “You can do whatever you want, and it won’t matter to me” are things you may hear yourself saying.
The following three key factors can make you more vulnerable to developing abandonment issues:
- The abandonment is sudden or unexpected
- Your abandonment experience happens in your childhood (Childhood Emotional Neglect)
- You have a general tendency to downplay or ignore your feelings
There are two different types of abandonment. The first is physical abandonment. Most people think of abandonment as a physical experience. In other words, when a child is abandoned, it means that his parents physically left him.
Many children have this painful event happen when a parent dies or leaves them for another reason. Adults can be physically abandoned by their spouse leaving, or when another important person in their lives dies or moves away.
The second is emotional abandonment which is far less obvious, yet equally painful. Emotional abandonment happens when an important person you believe cares about and loves you seems to stop caring and loving you.
Abandonment issues are a coping response. The experience of being abandoned, either physically or emotionally, prompts a very predictable response in your human brain. Your brain automatically goes on high alert, becoming hyper-vigilant for any whiff of anything that could lead you to be hurt by another abandonment.
If you do not acknowledge and work through how you feel about the abandonment experience, your brain’s hypervigilance becomes more intense and continues longer.
Childhood emotional neglect happens when your parents fail to respond enough to your emotions as they raise you. When you grow up this way, you receive a powerful, unspoken message throughout your childhood that your emotions do not matter.
Being raised to ignore your feelings sets you up to downplay your emotional reactions to all of the things that happen throughout your entire life, and that includes your abandonment experience. Unfortunately, ignoring and downplaying your feelings about the abandonment prevents you from being able to work through them healthily.
All that old hurt, sadness, anger, and fear stay with you, keeping your brain on high alert and holding you back from new relationships and experiences. All of this may happen outside of your awareness.
If you see these signs of abandonment issues in yourself, become aware of your abandonment fear. Accepting your sensitivity to abandonment and the event that caused it is an important key. Once you see your fear and what caused it, you can begin to take control of it.
Secondly, become aware of the emotional neglect in your childhood. Just as Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) sets you up to be vulnerable to abandonment issues, healing your childhood neglect will help you resolve them.
Learning to pay attention to your feelings and how to value and use them (all part of recovery from CEN) will not only go far toward solving your abandonment issues but will make you stronger in many other areas of your life, too.
Jonice Webb, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and best-selling author of two self-help books. She specializes in childhood emotional neglect, relationships, communication issues, and mental health. Dr. Webb has appeared on CBS News and NPR, and her work has been cited by many publications.
