Parentification: Your Trauma as a Sensitive and Intense Person:
The parents are unable to love the child the way they need to be loved.
… immature parents may be emotionally unstable, punitive, controlling, and unable to separate their projections, desires, and wishes from their parentified child’s life.
It is not what was done but what was not done to the parentified child— the absence of physical presence, quality time, intellectual stimulation, meaningful conversations, family rituals, fun, and games.
… from the get-go, the parentified child learned that the only safe thing to do was to rise above their pain.
[Parentification] results in the psychodynamic process of ‘turning against oneself’, where we redirect anger and resentment for others internally toward ourselves. We started to interpret mistreatment as our fault or something we deserved.
If your parents have emotionally or physically abandoned you, you may, for your whole life, feel like an orphan spiritually. You feel misunderstood and alone in the world, unable to fit in. Your inner critic derails your self-esteem by comparing you to others, telling you they all have a happier, more ‘normal’ and fulfilling life.