What is parentification? With parentification, an immature child is made responsible for the well-being of one or both parents. This is a skewed situation: The child develops differently because it takes on an adult role too soon. The child is also made responsible for something for which he or she should not be responsible. In this way, the child can start to feel like a ‘caring angel’ or a ‘super child’.

If you have developed this mechanism in your childhood, chances are that you will continue it in your adult life. Once grown up, you continue to feel overly responsible for the well-being of others.

As an adult, you are of course responsible for the well-being of your children (and perhaps also for the well-being of completely needy family members). As an adult, you can also take on all kinds of responsibilities as an employee, volunteer or friend, but it becomes unhealthy if that is at your expense. In that case, you are probably taking on too much responsibility.

Responsible at the expense of yourself

Being caring at the expense of yourself is a harmful mechanism that many people with a parentification history suffer from. Then you find the needs of others increasingly more important than your own needs. Maybe you always take over work from colleagues with problems or you take on a lot of private responsibilities, without taking into account what is good for yourself.

It may also be that you never let customers, friends, clients or colleagues wait. even if you yourself feel the need for rest, relaxation, variation in work or a little less responsibility.

parentification burn-out stress

You can even start to feel responsible for the feelings of the people with whom or for whom you work and live. This while everyone is of course responsible for his or her own feelings in the first place. Others can also (unconsciously) manipulate you.

Burnout by parentification

If you suffer from the above mechanisms, you become extra susceptible to burnout. You tend to work hard to meet all your perceived ‘responsibilities’. You immediately feel tension when someone’s needs are not met.

Taking a step back if your work or private life becomes too much, too heavy or too responsible does not seem to be an option. You always go on and you can’t or don’t want to feel that it’s not good for you anymore. Eventually you will end up in stress, exhaustion and burnout.

Burnout in health care

In health care, many people are burnt-out as a result of a parenting history. The work motivation of some of them stems solely from their cunning parentification patterns rather than from an intrinsic motivation. Often they only find this out after self-reflection which, hopefully, follows a burnout.

parentification burn-out health care

Parentification solutions

Parentification is usually deeply embedded in your behavior and in your thought pattern. It is not easy to break that, but it is worth it. If you succeed you gain strength. You are not likely to become indifferent to the needs of others, but you have more choice about who and when you help.

Because you have more energy and make more conscious choices, you become a happier and more powerful person. And a more powerful person can help better, if he or she wants to.

Take yourself seriously

Pay attention to your own feelings. Angry, frightened, Sad, Happy and expressions of that in your body are the basic feelings, besides that there are many derived feelings.

In a situation, consider what your feelings are telling you. Then consider what you would normally like to do. Consider whether what you normally do is really your responsibility. Or are you doing it because someone else says so (while you are already doing a lot of work), because no one is doing it and it has to happen anyway, because the other person is so pathetic.

parentification burn-out talk about it

If you don’t think it is (completely) your responsibility after all, you can discuss it with someone you trust. This is how you focus your thoughts. Also discuss with that person what you could do to balance your efforts with your responsibilities and (healthy) possibilities. Then speak to the person(s) who can help you improve the situation.

If you can’t feel so good about yourself yet, try to get in touch with the things that make you feel good. Activities that can help are for example dancing, creative hobbies, reading books, having fun with your children, watching (sentimental) films, many kinds of workshops, etc. Moments or activities with a ‘stillness’ and space to feel without distractions help you not to get past your feelings too quickly.

Take care of yourself

Make taking good care of yourself a basic attitude .As soon as you do that better, you’ll notice it faster when you do things for others at your own expense.

Build rest-relaxation moments in every day and every week. Possibilities are quiet walking in nature, listening to beautiful music or enjoying the view on a bench. Also build only active relaxation moments in every week such as sports, dancing, other activities you like.

stress parentification burn-out relax

Find things that are important and nice to you and do them regularly. That can be anything like doing things with friends and/or family, hobbies, good cooking, healthy food, relaxing moments, making your home beautiful or clean or anything that suits you.

Work on self-insight and new behavior.

Get to know your patterns, as described above, and change your behavior step by step in favor of yourself. You are worth it!

If you can’t get out on your own, and with the help of family and friends, you can seek help through coaching or therapy. Go a little deeper than an assertiveness training, because that works too shallowly and you have a chance to fall back into old behavior in the more difficult situations.

Can we help you?

Leave us your information and one of our coaches will contact you.

Training and coaching

Milltain provides training and coaching for private individuals and organisations. Our team consists of 35 coaches and trainers who have now helped thousands of people struggling with stress and burnouts.

Milltain for private individuals:

Are you stuck in life because of stress or a burnout? We developed an effective online program that is fully focused on the complete recovery from a burnout. More than 2000 people have successfully completed this training!

Movement and nature play prominent roles in this training. Recovery is a process that contains peaks and troughs, and that’s something we know all about. Our highly experienced coaches provide you with active support.

Learn more: Stress and burnout coaching

Conquer burnout and stress

Reducing stress and recovering from burnout can be quite the challenge. With the help of our professional coaches, we are convinced that a full recovery is within reach. Our years of experience has taught us what stepping stones will help you reach your goal more effectively and how to make sure the changes you make will be of help to you for the rest of your life. Let’s turn your burnout or stress into your best life ever.

Similar Posts

42 Comments

  1. It is really a nice and helpful piece of information. I am glad that you shared this helpful information with us. Please stay us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.

  2. I think other web site proprietors should take this site as an model, very clean and great user genial style and design, as well as the content. You’re an expert in this topic!

  3. Hey! I know this is kinda off topic however I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest authoring a blog article or vice-versa? My blog addresses a lot of the same topics as yours and I believe we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re interested feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing from you! Superb blog by the way!

  4. you’re actually a excellent webmaster. The website loading pace is incredible. It kind of feels that you’re doing any distinctive trick. Furthermore, The contents are masterpiece. you’ve performed a fantastic task on this topic!

  5. What i do not realize is actually how you’re not really much more well-liked than you might be right now. You’re very intelligent. You realize thus considerably relating to this subject, produced me personally consider it from so many varied angles. Its like men and women aren’t fascinated unless it’s one thing to accomplish with Lady gaga! Your own stuffs great. Always maintain it up!

  6. Hello, i feel that i noticed you visited my site so i got here to “return the prefer”.I am trying to in finding things to enhance my site!I suppose its good enough to use a few of your ideas!!

  7. Greetings from Idaho! I’m bored to death at work so I decided to check out your blog on my iphone during lunch break. I really like the info you present here and can’t wait to take a look when I get home. I’m amazed at how quick your blog loaded on my cell phone .. I’m not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow, superb site!

  8. Hey there just wanted to give you a quick heads up. The words in your content seem to be running off the screen in Internet explorer. I’m not sure if this is a format issue or something to do with web browser compatibility but I thought I’d post to let you know. The design and style look great though! Hope you get the problem fixed soon. Many thanks

  9. Hey this is kinda of off topic but I was wondering if blogs use WYSIWYG editors or if you have to manually code with HTML. I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding knowledge so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!

  10. Can I simply say what a relief to search out someone who truly is aware of what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know the way to deliver a problem to gentle and make it important. Extra folks have to learn this and perceive this aspect of the story. I cant imagine youre no more in style because you positively have the gift.

  11. When I initially commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get several e-mails with the same comment. Is there any way you can remove me from that service? Thanks a lot!

  12. I like this website very much, Its a real nice position to read and find information. “God cannot alter the past, but historians can.” by Samuel Butler.

  13. An impressive share, I just given this onto a colleague who was doing a little analysis on this. And he in fact bought me breakfast because I found it for him.. smile. So let me reword that: Thnx for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for spending the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love reading more on this topic. If possible, as you become expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this blog post!

  14. Hi my friend! I wish to say that this article is awesome, nice written and come with approximately all significant infos. I’d like to peer extra posts like this .

  15. I think other site proprietors should take this site as an model, very clean and excellent user friendly style and design, as well as the content. You’re an expert in this topic!

  16. Greetings! I know this is kind of off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this website? I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had issues with hackers and I’m looking at alternatives for another platform. I would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.

  17. I was recommended this blog by means of my cousin. I’m now not certain whether this publish is written by way of him as no one else recognize such specific approximately my trouble. You are incredible! Thanks!

  18. Good – I should certainly pronounce, impressed with your site. I had no trouble navigating through all tabs as well as related information ended up being truly simple to do to access. I recently found what I hoped for before you know it in the least. Quite unusual. Is likely to appreciate it for those who add forums or anything, website theme . a tones way for your customer to communicate. Excellent task..

  19. Excellent read, I just passed this onto a friend who was doing some research on that. And he actually bought me lunch as I found it for him smile Therefore let me rephrase that: Thank you for lunch!

  20. Hello, you used to write wonderful, but the last several posts have been kinda boring?K I miss your super writings. Past few posts are just a bit out of track! come on!

  21. I do not even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I don’t know who you are but definitely you’re going to a famous blogger if you aren’t already 😉 Cheers!

  22. Thanks for every other wonderful post. Where else could anyone get that type of information in such an ideal means of writing? I have a presentation subsequent week, and I’m on the search for such info.

  23. Hey there! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m not seeing very good results. If you know of any please share. Many thanks!

  24. Hello There. I found your weblog the usage of msn. That is an extremely well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and come back to read extra of your useful information. Thanks for the post. I’ll certainly comeback.

  25. I have been surfing on-line greater than 3 hours nowadays, yet I never found any fascinating article like yours. It is pretty value enough for me. Personally, if all site owners and bloggers made just right content material as you did, the internet will probably be a lot more useful than ever before.

  26. Today, I went to the beach front with my children. I found a sea shell and gave it to
    my 4 year old daughter and said “You can hear the ocean if you put this to your ear.” She placed the shell to
    her ear and screamed. There was a hermit crab inside and it pinched her ear.
    She never wants to go back! LoL I know this is entirely off topic
    but I had to tell someone!

  27. Wow, amazing blog layout! How lengthy have you ever been blogging for?
    you make running a blog glance easy. The full glance of your
    web site is magnificent, let alone the content material!

  28. Greetings I am so thrilled I found your blog page, I really found you by accident, while I was looking on Yahoo
    for something else, Anyways I am here now and would just like to say cheers for a marvelous post and a all
    round interesting blog (I also love the theme/design), I don’t have time
    to browse it all at the moment but I have saved it and also added in your RSS feeds, so when I
    have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please
    do keep up the excellent job.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *