When Being Needed Becomes Who You Are.

By Tanisha R. Sanders, LCSW-C, LICSW

In writing this, I want each and every person who reads it to know that I know how heavy it can be to be “that person,” the one everyone needs. And I want you to know that you are not failing because you can’t just execute “good boundaries.” Turns out boundaries are a lot more involved than just saying no.

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Recently, I was sitting with someone who was in tremendous pain. Not only because someone they loved was engaging in destructive behavior, but also because they believed it was within their power to stop that person.

The person I was sitting with had tried to help. Tried to reason. Tried to intervene. Tried to find the right thing to say or the right thing to do that might change what was happening with their loved one. And underneath the fear and sadness was shame: the belief that somehow, if they had done something differently, tried harder, recognized something sooner, been more persuasive, more patient, or more available, they might have been able to prevent the negative consequences of their loved one’s destructive behavior.

Unfortunately, this was not the first conversation of the day I would have, nor would it be the last, where I sat with someone carrying that kind of pain and misplaced sense of responsibility. I wish I didn’t know that feeling personally, but I do, and sadly, countless other people do too.

When people come to therapy carrying this kind of burden, the therapist will eventually turn the focus toward the client. The client might hear a therapist say things like:

“You cannot control another person.”
“You have to focus on your own life.”
“You need boundaries.”

From the client’s perspective, the response is usually, “Well, duh.”

This has to be the most annoying thing any person anywhere could say to help this kind of client (no matter how nicely it is phrased). It is truly a crass oversimplification of an extremely complex problem that has implications for pretty much every aspect of the client’s life thus far.

What does it actually mean to “focus on yourself” when you have spent a significant portion of your life, if not all of it, conditioned to orient yourself toward the needs of other people? What does a boundary mean when caring for, anticipating, protecting, helping, fixing, and sometimes rescuing other people is no longer just something you do?

Instead, it is who you are.

We are talking about the parentified adult, or parentified person.

Many parentified people became load-bearing: the thing the rest of the family was quietly built on top of, long before they were old enough to know what that would cost them.

A person becomes parentified when there is a vacancy among the adults meant to be caregivers and, by extension, create stability in a child’s life. The vacancy isn’t always the result of a caregiver doing something terrible. A child can become parentified when a parent is sick, chronically at work, or, yes, struggling with some form of addiction. Any number of circumstances can make an adult unavailable. Regardless of why it happens, someone the child depends on is unavailable, and there is chaos or abandonment in that void.

The child registers the void. They see someone they love struggling. Sometimes they are explicitly asked to do more than a child their age should be expected to do, and sometimes they aren’t. Regardless, the child recognizes that something is wrong and begins trying to correct it. This is when they step into the void and rally their limited skills to make a difference. And sometimes they are remarkably good at it.

The parentified person becomes helpful. Responsible. Mature. Dependable. They learn how to read the room and anticipate what other people need. They learn when to step in. They may become the child who doesn’t cause problems because the family already has enough problems, or the one everyone can count on because someone has to be. Maybe they are the one who is fearless and always in trouble but brings home money for the family to eat and the bills to be paid. Or maybe they are the one a parent confided in, the one who was a child’s age but an adult’s emotional support.

There is something powerful about discovering how capable you are when you are very young. There is something scary about it too. The child learns this lesson, and often, that lesson is reinforced throughout their life.

People are grateful. Families depend on them. Friends call them. Employers value them. They become the person who knows what to do when something goes wrong. There can be tremendous meaning, connection, pride, and even love attached to being that person. “This is who I am for people,” they learn. “This is the way I was created.”

But like anything load-bearing, there is also tremendous strain in being this person.

The parentified person can experience both the gratitude and the cost of this role for many years before eventually finding themselves in a therapy chair dealing with chronic anxiety, depression, exhaustion, resentment, or relationships in which they continually take responsibility for things that are not entirely theirs to carry.

So when someone they love is self-destructing or a job is asking for extra hours instead of hiring additional staff, the parentified person may dig in and work harder. Even when they intellectually understand that the situation is outside their control, something in them continues looking for the solution.

Their mind circles wildly: “What haven’t I tried?” “What am I missing?” “What else can I do?”

And when nothing works, the conclusion isn’t always simply, “This wasn’t mine to control.”

Too often, the conclusion is, “I failed.”

That is why I think a parentified person’s healing journey is more complicated than telling someone to have better boundaries.

In therapy, we aren’t simply asking this individual to stop doing too much. We may be asking them to reconsider a commitment they have carried for much of their life.

We may be asking them to question something they have been trained to do extraordinarily well.

And we may be asking them to give up a component, maybe a very large portion, of their identity.

Who am I if I cannot help my family?

What does it mean about me if someone I love is destroying themselves and I cannot stop them?

What does loving someone look like when helping them does not change what they do?

How do I know when I have done enough?

And perhaps one of the hardest questions:

Can I allow someone I love to live with the consequences of choices I desperately wish they would not make?

When you boil it all down, having boundaries can sound a lot like “minding one’s business.” If the premise the parentified person has lived by is that family and friends have been their business for as long as they can remember, then the idea of boundaries might need to be fleshed out a bit if it’s going to be a useful clinical suggestion.

Don’t you think?!