Healing from Parentification: When the “Gifted Child” Grows Up | Being Well

[00:00:00]Parentification is what happens when the child starts serving the needs of the parent. Kids who are put in this kind of position learn a lie. They learn that love is something that they earn by being useful or meeting the needs of other people. You're the one who listens while others speak. You're responsible for the emotional maintenance, the emotional housekeeping in the friend group or the relationship. Do you naturally draw yourself into that role?

[00:00:26]If you let something go in the past, you can reclaim it in the future. You're the one who gets to make choices here. Who are you? And is it okay to be you?

[00:00:37]All of you.

[00:00:39]Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.

[00:00:47]I want to start by describing a particular kind of kid. a sensitive, thoughtful kid who maybe seemed a little older than they were. They were very aware of their parents' emotions and they knew that those emotions were a big deal because after all, kids are reliant on their parents. So, they were a helper, a peacemaker, and accomplisher.

[00:01:08]They knew what they had to do to keep their parents happy. From the outside, that can look a lot like maturity or just a kid who's a genuinely good kid.

[00:01:16]And sometimes that is all that's going on there. But sometimes what's really happening is that child has taken on a kind of job and the job is to take care of people who were supposed to be taking care of them. This is called parentification. And I first learned about it from psychologist Alice Miller's 1979 book, The Drama of the Gifted Child. The gift these kids have is emotional sensitivity. And they get so good at shaping themselves around the emotional needs of other people that it's easy for them to lose touch with their own. This has real consequences for them. particularly as those children become adults. Today we're going to be talking about parentification, including what those consequences look like in adulthood, the patterns of behavior that are associated with them, and then really importantly here, how can we reconnect with who we actually are. To help me do that, I am joined by clinical psychologist and maybe particularly relevant for today's episode, my dad, Rick Hansen. So, Dad, how are you doing today?

[00:02:12]>> I'm good, Forest. I'm looking forward to this topic. Um Miller's book just really spoke very much to my to me personally and uh there's a lot about this material that I connect to myself.

[00:02:25]>> Yeah, same. I thought that it was really really interesting stuff. It was less for me about my own personal experience.

[00:02:32]I think that you guys did a tremendous job as parents of of literally of just not doing this to me. Um, but I think that we can all empathize with this feeling of taking on other people's emotions or values or desires for us, like parts of our story, the way that that other people write who we are. And then the way that we kind of perpetuate those patterns into adulthood, we're carrying around that uh that old learning that we did or those old stories other people's gave us. and we can then go through go through a process as an adult of deciding what do we want to keep on hanging on to and what do we want to uh reauthor or leave in the past or any of that good stuff. So that's part of what we're going to be talking about today. Before we get into it, I wanted to let people know that we are currently running an audience survey. We want to hear more from you and learn more about you. Uh where do you listen to the podcast? How often do you listen to the podcast? What kinds of topics would you like to hear from us in the future? You can fill out that survey at rickansson.com/servey.

[00:03:35]Very appropriate URL. Uh it just takes a couple of minutes. Shouldn't be very complicated. Really helps us out. So if you could take a moment again, that's rickson.com/servey.

[00:03:45]So dad, I want to start with you here.

[00:03:47]Uh what is parentification? I think it has a narrow meaning and a broader meaning and both are useful. uh in the narrow meaning it's basically has to do with a child starting to perform parental functions and um that is not the same as for example my dad growing up on a ranch in which the kids actually had really important roles even at a very young age in taking care of the animals driving trucks uh you know going to market and things like that that's not parentification you you have a legitimate role as as an adolescent or even younger child there. But it's a situation where for example, one of your parents has pretty depressed mood and your role in the family in some ways is to cheer them up. Or you have a parent who has an issue with drugs or alcohol uh and your job is to basically take care of the younger kids. So, I'm thinking of a client of mine who would routinely come home uh from school and his mom would be passed out on the couch and he'd be a fourth grader and suddenly it's his job to take care of his younger siblings, maybe one of whom is in a play pen with a dirty diaper and uh needs some food and tending. So, that's parentification of a certain kind.

[00:05:03]Another kind is also a little more subtle. You know, you have a parent maybe with some mood instability and your job is to sort of make sure everything goes fine in the family so that you know things the peace is kept.

[00:05:18]Uh a version of it too as well is to become a kind of surrogate husband or wife [snorts] for the other typically other gender parent. Uh you become a confidant. They start telling you things about their marriage. you become, you know, you're 12 years old and you're suddenly hearing your mom or dad talk about their sex life and how it's not going well and whoa, too much tmi. I think one of the markers of gratification is tmi. So, okay. So, >> you knew too much from too young an age is not a bad way to summarize a lot of this. Yeah. And a key piece of this is that uh to some extent sometimes parentification is pretty deliberate on the parents part and other times it's more just kind of how it unfolds in the family system. But any either way the child is being used in age inappropriate ways as a means to an end of others.

[00:06:18]means to an end of the parents gratification or emotional stability or marital stability or performing other um being a means to other ends in you know the family system. So I'll maybe stop there as I think that's a kind of narrow definition of parentification. What do you think about that?

[00:06:37]>> I think it's a it's a great definition.

[00:06:39]Uh technically there's this distinction between two different forms of parentification. One's called instrumental parentification. That's when the kid is doing the job of being the parent. So instrumentally taking care of of siblings or uh maybe even making money on behalf of the family.

[00:06:56]Then the second version is emotional parentification. And this is the child really serving as the parents like uh therapist, confidant, all of the other things that you were talking about, right? a person who from a pretty young age learned that they received love by sacrificing certain kinds of certain parts of who they are. Essentially, the child exchanges their childishness for love and support. Everything stays okay as long as the child stays relatively easy. And critically, this is developmentally inappropriate for that kid. like you were talking about. It's not just TMI, it's TMI about stuff that that kid should just not be thinking about at that kind of an age. And then you could probably see or you could uh think for yourself if you're listening to this how that kind of a an experience might influence that kid as they move through their life, right? The the kinds of learning that that kid does of, oh, in order to keep the train on the tracks in my family of origin, I need to show up a very particular kind of way.

[00:08:02]But what if that particular kind of way is not really consistent with the person that that kid actually is? Like what if that particular kind of way really forces that kid to leave aspects of themselves behind that, oh, they actually really care about or like, oh, they're actually really meaningful to them. Uh, and that's the adult form of parentification. Basically, that kid grows up. They're an adult moving through the world, but they've still got these various patterns based on those early experiences. Maybe like caretaking patterns, maybe choosing a particular kind of romantic partner over and over again. Maybe they're the uh the yes person at work who says, "Oh, sure. I'll do that." before even bothering to think about whether or not they can do that.

[00:08:45]All of that kind of stuff.

[00:08:46]>> It's very poignant, this material, by the way, and very tender. Um, and I think it's it's actually useful to track different ways this unfolds. The way it came down for me was much more like I very quickly learned in terms of um, attachment parenting to ask for very little and to keep my distance as a mode of resting in a loving relationship. In other words, avoidantly attached or bidding, not breaking away into individuation, but not landing in real emotional intimacy with either of my parents. I kind of learned how to do that. And then I also acquired a false self of being really smart, doing really well in school. Uh, and that got me the kind of positive regard I wanted, and it kept me off my parents radar. But I'm still acquiring a false self. The opportunity now is to have insight into these acts we put on, these false selves, these masks we acquired. And um this material we're getting into today is really great in terms of helping us move more into our authentic self. If you're listening to this and going, "Maybe me, maybe not me. How can I kind of figure this out?" Couple good diagnostic questions. First question, which way did care usually flow between you and your parent?

[00:10:15]>> At the most basic level, were they doing a lot more caring for you? Were you doing a lot more caring for them? If you're doing more than 20% 30% caring for your parent as a relatively young person, >> I think that's a lot of caring for your parent as an 8-year-old. Uh then another really big question here.

[00:10:34]Were you allowed to differentiate from them in healthy ways?

[00:10:39]and particularly did they support you in that. So that word can sound a little technical differentiation. Um more practically when you reached for the things that you cared about, your own wants, your own interests, your own needs, your own separateness, things that maybe they didn't care about, did they support that or was that kind of shut down? And that can be a really helpful question for people like was I allowed to be my own person fundamentally? Uh, I think that another way that we can get into this, Dad, is by me asking you, how does this tend to look like in adulthood for people when they've developed this sort of false self? Huge great question. Um, couple pieces into it. One has to do with how other directed a person is, how preoccupied they are, for example, with what other people think of them, how much they're caught up in patterns of approval seeking or trying to be impressive.

[00:11:35]How affected are they by praise or blame coming from the crowd? And also to what extent is there an internalized audience that they run various performances by internally in the simulator if you will of their own imagination and as they kind of figure out how to be that's that's a piece of this. A related piece of this um has to do with self- psychology and object relations and the degree to which the object the other looms really large in your mind. So that your sense of yourself as an individuated differentiated self-actualizing being um is very small in comparison to that big other. Related further to it um there's the question of what am I actually allowed to be? One of the ways I'll use myself as an example that this has shown up for me and I was parentified is that I was the kid of three who caused no problems in my family. I just got off the radar. That's how I kind of was able to pursue my own quiet schemes out in the wilderness around my home and all the rest of that.

[00:12:48]But I caused no problems and I was the guy who got the job done. And so now as an adult for example, I have to actually be a little careful about the tendency to function inside of a certain cage in which I'm not allowed to be a mess or I'm not allowed to be a mess about being a mess. If I'm a mess, but I have a very tidy description with a lot of mindfulness about being a mess, I'm that's allowed. But to be a mess about being a mess so that others have to move more into that responsible taking care of situation. Oh, that would be kind of scary. You know, that would be kind of unusual. So, that's kind of an example of how um on a given day it can be really hard to see sometimes your own masks, the scripts you're walking because they work. It's when you imagine being really different or imagining being someone else who's really different from you but acting that way yourself that suddenly you know when the willies factor comes up when you're getting the willies at imagining that that can be often very revealing. Yeah. Uh I think this relates to something that Miller really focused on in drama of the gifted child which was her sort of uh core diagnostic of this whole thing which are these twin poles of grandiosity on the one hand and depression on the other. And Terry Reel also talks about essentially his version of this uh inside of couples work. And Miller's observation was that these two things grandiosity and depression sounds like it sounds like opposites, but they're actually sort of two faces of the same problem because this is a kid that was needed.

[00:14:32]This is a kid that was high performing and special and reliable and all of those things that you were kind of saying about yourself, Dad. you know, your version of it, causing no problems, getting off the radar, uh, not being somebody who had an issue, right? So, the adult can easily build an identity out of this kind of accomplishment because that's how they earned love.

[00:14:52]They earned love by being highly functional.

[00:14:54]>> Yeah.

[00:14:54]>> And what could that look like an adult?

[00:14:57]Well, a little bit of grandiosity, right? Like, I am the kind of person who gets it done, does the thing, I'm capable in these ways, all of that. The flip side of this though is that nobody can keep accomplishing forever. We're all going to fall short eventually. You know, we're all going to make mistakes.

[00:15:12]And when this happens for a person, it it can surface material that is not just like ordinary, ah man, messed that up, right? Because the whole basis of the structure is I've got to keep on being effective in order to have other people love me. So if I stop being effective, what does that mean? And that's that depression pull, right? Uh this can also look like somebody who just doesn't know what they want. You ask them, you know, what do you want? What do you care about? What are your values? And they're like, I don't know. In part due to some of the object relation stuff you were talking about, Dad, like small, tiny self, big spooky other. Uh so the values and goals are other directed.

[00:15:54]Well, my what I want is what you want.

[00:15:56]You know, what I value is what you value. Well, I I don't know. Tell me what to want and I'll perform it really well. And those are some examples that uh maybe people can look inside of their own experience and see how that might be true to them.

[00:16:08]>> It's interesting like so for example sometimes it happens when that the child is actually gifted in some ways >> right?

[00:16:15]>> Sure.

[00:16:15]>> Musical talent athletic use you know artistic intellectual some kind of talent and the parent is getting a certain amount of reflected glory from that talent. And in that sense, certainly in the narrow sense of par parentification, you bet the child is performing some kind of function for the parent in that way that is um helping with the parents own narcissistic injuries from their childhood. And now the child's accomplishments reflect really well on the parent, well- behaved child. And on the other hand, this is where it's kind of complicated because children uh form beliefs that are the beliefs of a child. They're very understandable and they're often really wrong. So for example, a parent who out of love is prizing and celebrating some ability of a child. Wow, that's really really good art or wow you're really smart or wow you're really good at chess or whatever fill in the blank. From the parent side that could just be simply ordinary healthy gushing.

[00:17:22]You're so pleased and you're happy for your child because you know that for your child being bright or something else will be an advantage as they go forward in life. It's for you as a parent really clean. But the child I did this. The child can draw a conclusion in the logic of a 10-year-old's mind. Oh, I have to be smart to keep getting approval. Or, oh, my parent only loves me because I'm smart. Oh, or wow, I really love this kind of pricing. I'm going to, you know, hit that button more and more in the future. I'm going to be a smarty because I love the rewards I'm getting and I know how to be. And then later on maybe, oh, I'm going to blame my parents for, you know, putting me in that box. No, your parents didn't put you in that box.

[00:18:12]They were just celebrating you. And yet, you know, you understandably put yourself in that box yourself.

[00:18:18]>> Sure. Yeah. I I think that there's a a piece of this that is less about intent and more about impact. Yeah.

[00:18:24]>> You know what I mean? To make that kind of distinction.

[00:18:27]>> Yeah.

[00:18:27]>> Uh most parentification is accidental.

[00:18:30]>> Most parentification stems from the parents own content, personal history, uh you know, whatever's going on for them. And you know, I I think that people have a really personal relationship with the choices that they make about what they want their relationship with those parents to now look like in adulthood.

[00:18:50]We're going to talk about that a little bit as we get more into the what to do about all of this. Uh but I think it's worth flagging here that this is deeply individual. It's deeply personal. Us saying, "Oh, a lot of parents aren't doing that at all." Maybe your parent did.

[00:19:03]>> Yeah.

[00:19:03]>> You know, and when we say, "Oh, a lot of parents are are real about this kind of thing." maybe your parent wasn't like this is the nature of talking to a big audience on a podcast, right? So filter through your own experience. Take what's true for you, leave the rest, all of that good stuff.

[00:19:16]>> No, it's great. Um, the way it's landing for me a little bit is that I think back on my relationship with peers, you know, maybe we should do a version of parentification that has to do with your role in in your groups. You know, >> maybe it's peer antification.

[00:19:31]>> Yeah, there.

[00:19:33]That's clever. I saw what you did there.

[00:19:35]Yeah. Like for example, I felt a lot like I was excluded or pushed to the outskirts in the groups in fourth grade and 12th grade. Actually, when I look back, I think mostly I wasn't. I think mostly I just made that up. And uh they would have been perfectly welcoming, you know, like 10th grade high school students could be perfectly welcoming if I entered into it. And when I reset that, wow, it was I who constructed that whole narrative, when I recognized that I was the source of that narrative and I made it up and it wasn't actually true, a fair amount of the emotional force of that way of looking at things kind of releases. Yeah, I think that's right on. Totally. the stories we tell oursel about oursel is is a really interesting place to look like what are the stories that I've created about what a forest is >> and how can I get more uh space around the construction of those stories I mean this is a major thing we talk about on the podcast all the time with like the self-concept stuff um I would love to ask you here Dad just really practically for people what does this look like in adulthood like in somebody's romantic life what does this kind of pattern maybe look like really generalizing here and friendships, that kind of thing.

[00:21:03]>> Okay. Obvious uh first lowhanging fruit.

[00:21:07]Do you naturally draw yourself into paradigms of relationship or forms a relationship in which you're the caregiver of others?

[00:21:16]You're the giver in your social group who takes care of others. You're the one who listens while others speak. uh you're responsible for the emotional maintenance, the emotional housekeeping in the friend group or the relationship.

[00:21:33]Do you naturally draw yourself into that role? And then we throw into the complexities of gender, da da da da da.

[00:21:39]Uh but you know, that's a big question.

[00:21:41]Are you the caregiver in ways that feel again somehow beyond what would be kind of normal or optimal or authentic to you? Maybe you're just a naturally really loving, giving person. That's really cool. But if you start to feel like you're being sucked into certain scripts or there's a fundamental imbalance or other people are exploiting the ways in which you're drawn into this kind of a role, then that would be a big flag. So another way into this is to ask yourself, okay, in terms of my regular typical presentation of myself and its major features, what would be the opposite of that?

[00:22:22]And what would come up for me if I started experiencing that or other people started regarding me in that way?

[00:22:30]Like for me, let's just say, you know, my role lot was that I was sort of the well-behaved smart kid. Well, what if I was became really numb and chaotic and unregulated and a total hot mess? Oh, you know, another major feature of my psychology is agency. You know, I want to feel like I have some kind of fundamental potency to be completely helpless and helpless about being helpless and immobilized. Oh, so in those ways you could ask yourself, can you, for example, expand your range so that you're more comfortable just playing with in appropriate ways that which lies out the narrow range of the scripts, the slots, the ruts in which you normally function. That would be Yeah, I think a second way into this.

[00:23:24]And then I I think maybe I'll finish with third. Who are the people you choose? Uh are you choosing people that um are very comfortable with you performing a familiar role in the script you know that's familiar to you? Do you tend to pick them uh in ways that um let's say are not just understandable and positive for you but actually kind of reinforce you? Maybe your role is that you are a rescuer.

[00:23:49]So you find yourself in one relationship after another with people that are kind of birds with a broken wing that you're there to rescue and help and you know and as a result you keep deferring gosh your own full self-actualization. Before we get back to the show I wanted to quickly let you know that we want to know more about you. So, you can go to rickansson.com/servey and fill out our Beingwell podcast audience survey. We want to hear about the kinds of topics that you're interested in, when and where you listen to the show, uh the kinds of advertisers that you would like to hear us talk about in the future or have some kind of offer related to. It would really help us out to learn a little bit more about our listeners. So, again, that's ricken.com/servey.

[00:24:41]The survey should just take you a couple of minutes. It really helps us out. One of the big things that I've been really interested in recently, and it was the last episode that we did together, was why isn't knowing enough for people? If you're the kind of person who listens to a podcast like this, and you just heard heard Rick give this incredible description that sounds like he has had a hidden camera watching your life for the past, you know, at least 5 years, if not much longer than that.

[00:25:11]and you go at some level, I mean, this could be totally novel information for you, >> but it could also be on some level that you're like, "Yeah, I've known this for a long time, like, yeah, I do do. Yeah, and why isn't knowledge enough?"

[00:25:27]>> There's this incredible passage uh from Drama: The Gifted Child that I just want to read here. It is one of the turning points in analysis when the narcissistically disturbed patient comes to the emotional insight that all the love they captured with so much effort and self-denial was not meant for them as they really were. That the admiration for their beauty and achievements was aimed at this beauty and these achievements and not at the child themselves. In analysis, the small and lonely child that is hidden behind their achievements wakes up and asks, "What would have happened if I had appeared before you? Bad, ugly, angry, jealous, lazy, dirty, smelly. Where would your love have been then?" And Miller, of course, goes on from there. She's really talking about a different kind of insight.

[00:26:19]>> This isn't just knowing.

[00:26:21]>> Yeah.

[00:26:22]>> It's very evocative. It is a felt deep emotional experience. We can have thoughts about anything. And I'm not setting up just like a a thinking versus feeling binary here. I don't think it's a binary. I think these two things like really process together in our experience because we have intellectual moments of obtaining knowledge or, you know, listening to a podcast like this one or whatever that then can open up a different level of feeling about it. And then those two things kind of flow back and forth, right? And so part of the big question here is, have we gotten down to the feeling layer? And one of the things that Miller really emphasizes is that this work for people who have gone through the more extreme forms of parentification is predominantly grief work. M >> it's predominantly about feeling repressed feelings and having a sense of grief and mourning attached to the experiences that you did not have the childhood that you did not receive the ways in which you have to let go of the healing fantasy it's never coming back it was what it was okay now what that is often a very emotional process for people and we can do softer forms of that process without the assistance of a clinician maybe even on our own uh Miller's own story was that she started doing spontaneous artistic painting work and through that work which took place over about a decade she kind of peeled back her own childhood and this really uh beautiful process which it's worth naming is not formally psychoanalytic she was a psychoanalyst and the way her way in ended up being this like free flowing creative form of expression so there are a lot of ways in here but I think that that's part of the answer to like why doesn't knowledge lead to genuine insight that then catalyzes behavior age. It's like well cuz there's maybe a layer of it where it's not so much about uh seeing from above. It's more about uh experiencing under or connecting with the parts of oursel that we've left behind over time. And this then takes us to a lot of what to do, right? Like how to get into that kind of material or how to open the door to the things about you that are still really true these days. you know, you still really are that person with those values that maybe were kind of like left behind, but you need to do a little bit more deliberate work to actually kind of get back in touch with it. So, what are you thinking about this, Dad? As I'm just talking through this, I'm hearing our voices get softer.

[00:28:48]Yours here, for example, and mine. And I'm feeling more in my body and my heart area. And there, you know, I think you're right. There is a kind of a grieving for what we did not get or what we defended oursel from receiving. Uh for me that's part of the grief is to realize that as a very self-willed teenager certainly with a lot of awareness of myself I maintained walls and defenses that blocked the reception of what I really longed for. And you know there's a sadness about that. Uh you know there's there's that definitely kind of a grief there a realness there.

[00:29:34]Uh additionally I I keep kind of sensing into first I feel like for us there's a kind of release and breakthrough when we surface into awareness.

[00:29:56]what was underneath it all. And one of my favorite models of relationship of the psyche rather is are these three circles essentially. The outer circle is the act. That's the false self we present. The second circle is the scared self. That's who we're afraid we really are. And that's kind of the repository of a lot of disowned aspects of ourselves and non-experienced experience pushed down. And then there's the innermost circle of our being, who we really are kind of core aspects of our own psyche and then edging into something that increasingly feels sort of impersonal, transpersonal and universal. All right. When people move through those three layers and a lot of the work of transformation is to gradually break up the u act and risk the dreaded experiences of the scared self in the process of self-acceptance and also release so that increasingly the true self the underlying being is more and more accessible and is more and more the origin point the radiation outward point of of who you really are.

[00:31:04]And well here as people for example look back okay there was the act I put on as a kid. There were the experiences that I warded off as a result and there were the payoffs I got through that act I put on. And all the time underneath it all.

[00:31:23]Who was I really?

[00:31:26]>> Who I was really I guarantee you was a really sweet little kid. maybe this really sweet little 14-year-old, you know, or 18year-old or 18-month-old, but all along, who you really were underneath it all was beautiful and good. and retroactively getting in touch with that layer underneath it all. The knowing of that layer underneath it all. The wistfulness, the the goodness of that innermost being, you know, the givingness, the wanting the good, uh, you know, in that inner layer, that deep down layer. uh you know getting in touch with that now can can provide a lot of retroactive healing >> to make something that you're saying implicitly maybe even more explicit about the scared self.

[00:32:15]The whole model the kid is running on is this is the stuff I do to get love.

[00:32:21]>> Yeah.

[00:32:22]>> And that's how it shows up in our adult relationships and how we position oursel at work, our romantic relationships, all that. This is what I do to get love. So yeah, when you stop doing that stuff or when you move into a different way of relating to yourself, it's incredibly scary because this is how you have both trained others to relate to you and how you've learned to relate to yourself.

[00:32:44]This is how you become safe in relationships is through this kind of excessive competency emotionally with other people. Right?

[00:32:52]>> So if you let that go, what does that mean? What does that mean about the relationships you're going to have? Are people still going to like you? like this is really fraught stuff. So, it's really understandable that our knowledge doesn't necessarily immediately transform into into action here, right?

[00:33:07]Uh there's another thing that I wanted to to mention about what you were saying there, Dad. Um about the the kind of act that we put on Miller in her work had this really interesting kind of implicit warning about self-help in general because the goal that we're aiming for is authenticity here. And one of the things that she talked about in the book which is it was originally uh written as essentially a handbook for clinicians trying to work with this sort of person is that the false self is competent and very adaptive. So it's very good at performing recovery.

[00:33:41]So there are a million memes out there these days on Tik Tok and otherwise about like becoming your therapist's favorite client.

[00:33:48]>> Yeah. So, it's very easy for this kind of person to essentially become the model patient in therapy, right? They're going to adopt the therapist language to keep their approval. They're going to do the things they got to do to like show up as the person who's doing the good work and all of that, but are they actually contacting that deeper, messier, stinkier, dirtier layer of who they are that that Viller was talking about? Right? Um, and I think that you see this in in similar ways in other approaches to self-help that are all about soothing activation.

[00:34:19]>> So, for constantly soothing activation in order to stay in our, you know, window of presence or whatever language people are using, and there's a place for that language, but um, it can get a little it can become a kind of false idol and people are are seeking, oh, I'm just trying to regulate myself when they're really regulating themselves out of how they actually feel. They're regulating themselves out of connection with the authentic part of their personality. Uh Elizabeth has done a lot of talking on this channel about the importance of anger and and the importance of frustration and these kinds of more mobile messy emotions because they can be a bit of a doorway into your authentic inner experience. Um and so that's something to kind of keep an eye on here too.

[00:35:00]>> I'm really glad you said that. I mean I encountered a lot of that you know in the LA and the you know in the human potential scene. And also I I think we have I have to be careful about that myself. You know, how do you There's a difference between um being realized and performing realization.

[00:35:18]>> Yeah. Great way to put it. Great way to put it. Totally. Totally. And >> so what we're going here is like authentic contact with yourself.

[00:35:27]>> Yeah.

[00:35:27]>> You know, your own genuine self-expression. So any knowledge adding that we're doing from here to the end of the episode is great, but the purpose of that knowledge adding is getting you more into that place of contact.

[00:35:40]>> Yeah, they're very tender questions. Who are you?

[00:35:46]>> And is it okay to be you?

[00:35:49]All of you.

[00:35:53]Can you be you outwardly?

[00:35:57]what will happen if you be you outwardly.

[00:36:01]And maybe part of uh the takeaway here is for you and me to be really advocates for um finding people in your life around whom you can be you and to be the kind of person that other people can truly be their full selves around. So, I've kind of split this from here on out, Dad, into four tracks that I think capture a lot of this process, but I'm also open to additional commentary from you if you think that I've left any tracks out here. The first one relates to, I think, what we were just saying there, which is about becoming more visible to yourself.

[00:36:40]>> Those questions that you were asking, who are you? What's going on in there?

[00:36:43]Oh, what's happening? Um, and we're trying to kind of reconnect with that who we were before all of that other stuff happened or that kid you were talking about, that really beautiful um, kid that was still there all along even as this act was kind of going on. So, starting there, if you were working with somebody who wanted to get in touch with that, where would you go very often? First, just general body awareness >> because the body keeps the score to quote the famous book title and because for a lot of people uh there's some kind of line from I think James Joyce's book the Dubliners that Mr. Smith lived at some distance from himself, >> you know, something like that. And uh so just body awareness in general is great, especially for people like me, you know, who are like numb from the neck down when they landed in adulthood to gradually wake down as Samuel Bonder puts it, not just wake up. So that part I would say is really a good entry and um to just normalize what you feel.

[00:37:49]That's another key piece of it. For a lot of people, they're kind of horrified. Oh my god. Well, honestly, it's a zoo inside there, right? I'm just kind of amazed that we are able to, you know, walk down a street without murdering everyone in front of us. You know, it's like, let's be clear, there's a lot going on. It's really normal.

[00:38:10]Freud was right about the id. Most mental processes, most of the contents of consciousness are not verbal. They're not logical. they're not well behaved and put together, you know, to kind of make more room for the wild, right? Uh that bubbles around inside yourself. I think there, you know, there's there's room for that. Doesn't mean acting it out in ways that are problematic or abusive toward others, but just having more room. And that's where I do think also clocking more time in nature can have a weirdly beneficial effect in that when you start to experience yourself as simply part of the biosphere. You're a large land mammal. All right? You have your own nature. And there's something about that I think that calms people down. They don't get that weird. I think a lot of weirdness emerges when you think about the Victorian age and all the kinky strange stuff [laughter] that started brewing there. It's a little bit almost like, you know, it's a yin and the yang. The more that people move into this extreme stylized top- down regulated, mannered way of being, whoa, the the way the the more the wilderness starts emerging from the underbelly and creeping out. So, it's important to find some kind of balance. So I think paradoxically spending time in wilderness actually helps become helps people become more regulated uh eventually even when they return to civilization.

[00:39:43]>> Yeah, I think that's actually a really interesting idea, Dad. You know, if you've built your personality in large part around being responsive to other people, is it helpful to put yourself in a position where you don't have to be responsive to other people for a while?

[00:39:56]And that's part of what you're getting if you just wander out into nature for for a couple of days, if not a week or a month, if you're assuming your life allows you to do that kind of thing.

[00:40:06]>> But just being in almost a a more quiet environment relationally >> where you're not under that kind of constant pressure to perform is of course going to give you a little bit more space to investigate your own interior. Yeah, I think that's a great point.

[00:40:19]>> Yeah. and wilderness itself, >> you know, because you could get some of this, for example, being on a silent meditation retreat for a while, minimal interaction with other people or, you know, a solo retreat, but to actually be in nature, uh, I think we can underestimate the the benefits of that.

[00:40:37]>> Hey there, thanks for watching and sorry for the brief interruption, but it turns out that over 60% of the people watching this right now are not subscribed to the channel. So, if you could just take a moment to hit the subscribe button, it would really help me out. I'd appreciate it a lot. All right, back to the show.

[00:40:51]The second track that I have here, I'm calling building a coherent narrative.

[00:40:56]We've talked about this a ton on the podcast. A lot of this process is going to eventually coales into a kind of story for a person. What happened? Who did what? What did it cost you? What were the consequences of this? We've talked, as I said, a lot about developing coherent narratives on the podcast in the past. I don't want to be um entire I don't want to just be repetitive of that but I'm wondering if for this kind of a person dad there are aspects of this process that you would emphasize. It's really funny for us like routinely you'll ask questions that will snap me out of my coherent narrative as it were as a therapist with a lot of history there and look at things newly. So, I'm doing some looking newly and see if this rings right to you. When I look into this, what starts becoming increasingly foregrounded is a note that you put into the background notes for for this conversation that I don't think you've used that word yet, which is bargain. M >> and in the narrative in the coherent narrative there's a really key element which has to do with a kind of a bargain that was struck between the child and the parents along the lines essentially transactionally of you know I will give you X or be X or do X so that you give me Y or don't give me Z right and then the question becomes first what is that bargain? And then second, how do we uh orient to that bargain? What's the meaning that we give it? What's the frame in which we hold it? And one frame for it is that uh we were forced into a bad deal.

[00:42:50]We didn't have any choice about it. We were shoved into that role. It was pushed on us. There truth there is truth to that.

[00:43:01]There is also a lot of truth often in which the child themselves uh was an agent in the making of that bargain and then how do we manage that extent of agency in the making of that bargain. So to me those are both elements in the formation of a coherent narrative. the ways in which we were at effect in the making of the bargain, the ways in which we were at cause in the making of the bargain, and the nature of the bargain itself.

[00:43:33]>> That's me thinking newly about the formation of a coherent narrative in this particular area.

[00:43:41]What do you what do you make of that?

[00:43:43]>> I think it's a great thing to focus on this idea of what are the trades we made and why did we make them, >> you know, like what were we getting from those trades? the trades, yeah, horse trading, you know, what were the trades that we made, why did we make them, what are the consequences of those trades, all of that that can kind of come together as a part of this process. Uh, one of the things I've heard you say in the past, Dad, is this idea of writing a letter that you might not send. You know, you can write a version of a letter that's pretty pissed off. You can write a version of the letter that's pretty sad. And you can write a version that's one you would actually think about sending to whoever you're sending this letter to. Are you sending it to your past self?

[00:44:20]>> Yeah. Are you sending it to a parent?

[00:44:22]Are you sending it to somebody else in your life who had a big influence for one reason or the other? The process of writing that letter kind of forces you to pull together how you actually think and feel about things. And the freedom of not sending it is you got to be purely authentic in this process.

[00:44:40]>> That's right.

[00:44:41]>> You know, you don't need that editor.

[00:44:43]And that's a lot of what the false self is. It's a kind of editor that's um you know, scoping us out all the time. Yeah, >> assessing our behavior and going, is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay?

[00:44:54]That's kind of constantly running in the background. And so just putting that down through an experiential process like that, I think can be really helpful.

[00:45:01]>> Yeah. And then far as what happens when people um do this and then >> start reflecting on the present >> like what are their opportunities for example as they deepen their understanding of this bargain these trades that they were doing that uh what are the opportunities for them for them to to feel hey I don't have to do that anymore.

[00:45:24]>> Yeah. I think that's the whole crux is what does it feel like? Can you let yourself get to that?

[00:45:29]>> Because to some extent we're talking about psychological defenses here >> and a parts frame could be helpful for people.

[00:45:37]>> You've had a function that has worked really effectively up until now. And to some extent we're asking you to upset the apple cart of your interior here.

[00:45:48]And there are going to be parts of your personality structure that do not like that idea that go, "Hey, this has worked really well for a long time. Why are we messing with this? Call those protector parts or firefighters or whatever you want to call them using IFS lingo. Call them psychological defenses and more kind of a psychoanalytic approach. Sure, use whatever terminology you want here.

[00:46:08]You've done stuff and that stuff has worked. Okay.

[00:46:14]It can be really hard for a person to get to that I don't have to do this realization because there's a part of them that's going yes, you do have to do this. like this is how you earn love, right? And that's the defense speaking.

[00:46:28]Um, and so I think that coming up with alternatives can be really helpful for somebody. Like if not this, then what?

[00:46:36]If I'm not performing this behavior, then what am I doing? Why am I doing it?

[00:46:41]And this can take somebody really quickly into something like an act approach, sort of a values orientation.

[00:46:47]uh what's down there that's been left behind as something you really talk about dad as part of a reparing process which was going to be my third track here. Uh we did a formal episode on reparing so I would mostly refer to that for the material but one of the things that you really talked about was this idea of enabling thwarted success. Mhm.

[00:47:05]>> So if you're a parentified kid, you're giving stuff up in order to step into that kind of performative role, right?

[00:47:14]Your bandwidth went to family management or emotional management in different kinds of ways. And maybe you said, "H, you know, I'm not going to get as involved with fill-in- thelank capacity that I have because my parent didn't like it when I tried to differentiate myself." So one form that this could take for a person in adulthood is like what do I want to reclaim from that?

[00:47:34]What do I want to look at from that list of stuff and go you know what I actually want to develop that? I want to support that. And then that can be a kind of way in to figuring out things like wants and values and emotions that can feel initially more inaccessible to a person.

[00:47:50]But all of a sudden, when they're fill in the blank, when they're painting, when they're dancing, when they're uh pursuing their interest in, I don't know, underwater basket weaving, whatever it is that you're doing, like all of a sudden you're you're acting from a different part, to put it a certain kind of way. Um, that part's actually who you are. You know, it's your authentic self, but it is also inside of your current personality structure functioning as a part. And when you do that, all of a sudden, these other thoughts and feelings and emotions start bubbling up. So that could be a way in for somebody that I think is maybe an interesting answer to your question.

[00:48:24]>> Yeah. When you what I find is that when people really name and own the bargain and they are uh able to unpack the elements of it uh and find out and explore the ways in which they were at the effect of parents and others who had a lot more power than they did. while on the other hand recognize the ways in which they they bought into the bargain.

[00:48:51]They made the bargain and then they acted accordingly maybe because they had to. When people do that, I find they get kind of mad about it often and liberated from it like okay and maybe they come to a point of well what the heck you know I did that then I had to do it then they were messed up. I was a kid fine but I've had it up to here with that kind of a bargain. I ain't going to do that no more. So that's often a natural thing.

[00:49:18]And then what gets really interesting is that you make the distinction and I talk about this in different ways sometimes between the noble pony and the naughty pony. What I mean by that is that you realize that I made that bargain maybe for neurotic reasons or necessary reasons, but there were aspects of what I did in the context of that problematic bargain that are pure and noble and virtuous and wonderful and wholesome.

[00:49:46]Like, okay, I was someone who was very empathic about the needs of others. All right. So now, as an adult, it doesn't mean I'm going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and no longer be empathic about the needs of others, but I'm going to do it for the right reasons. Now, I'm not doing it to keep the peace of my family or to keep my dad's, you know, emotions on an even keel or to prevent him from going into an explosive rage when he's drinking too much. I'm not doing it for those reasons anymore. Those neurotic ponies are no longer what's carrying my cart down the road, but I'm left with my good reasons for being who I am. We can step out of the scripting of parentification and placating and appeasing uh for the you know to accomplish certain purposes. We can step out of that while still appreciating our own virtues. And I think a lot of this is really pragmatic.

[00:50:43]So there's a piece of it that's this forming a relationship with yourself, you know, seeing the true self, relating to the true self, reconnecting with it, all that, all that good stuff. Who am I actually underneath it all? Love that.

[00:50:56]And then there's the question of behavior. What are we actually going to do? How are we going to act differently on this basis? And I think that the recent episodes that we did on avoidance and then going from insight to action are really relevant here because what can be helpful is once you get a sense of what your behavioral pattern is to start to see what we talked about in those episodes, the kinds of assumptions that live underneath that pattern, the expectations that you have about how other people will relate to you if you do something different. And then you can go through the whole process that we outlined in those episodes of figuring out what those predictions are in the different domains we talked about like how bad will it be? How will uh how long will it go on for? How will it feel for me? Will I be able to cope with it or not? All of that and hold it in your mind and treat it as a kind of experiment. It's a highstakes experiment. It can feel like a very emotionally exposed experiment. So you want to do all the things we talked about again. You want to pick a the right sized challenge. You want to go through this in a careful kind of way, but you're thinking, "Huh, okay. I normally do A. I'm going to deliberately do B, and we're going to see what happens." And then you go from there.

[00:52:06]And a big important and kind of dicey place to do this in is in your relationship with the people who helped you create these patterns, aka your family of origin. Uh, and this is now the fourth track that I would get to, which is figuring out how to build a new bargain with those people, assuming that you're still in relationship with them.

[00:52:25]Uh, and I got to imagine that that this is something that you've talked with people about like dealing with uh relating to their parents or other members of their family when they want to kind of change how that looks or they want to change some aspect of themselves. And I'm wondering what do you think helps it go well?

[00:52:44]>> Credit cards and motel and your own transportation.

[00:52:49][laughter] I mean >> separation baby.

[00:52:52]>> Yeah. What I mean by that Yeah. It's hard to do this with the the players and if you're an adult uh and you've got really aging parents. Uh it's sometimes very hard for your aging parents to step out of these familiar roles and to stop trying to cast you into these very familiar roles. So to some extent you may find yourself um just kind of putting up with a certain amount of u behavior on their part because they're not going to change. and internally retaining a certain freedom inside that you're not buying into it. You're, you know, buffering yourself from the impact of what they're saying. You're kind of nodding sweetly and then you're changing the subject. Things like that. Other times you find yourself resizing the relationship. Like that's why I said initially credit cards, motel, and your own transportation, you know, and family visits, vacations, things like that.

[00:53:45]You're just, you know, you're you're stepping back from it because they're not going to budge. Other times um you can find that it's actually helpful to talk about it with someone to for example I've known and I've encouraged in a very common setup uh mothers who are doing way more than their share of housework uh in their family just coming home and saying you know I'm just not going to do this anymore. I'm just not going to prepare more than my share of meals or I'm just not going to manage your dishes. Uh, I'm not going to do your laundry. Something like that. They just say, "I'm going to step out of that way of doing it." Um, or sometimes people would say, you know, in a friendship, I'm just not going to be the person who listens and listens and listens. Uh, and then gets pushed away when I try to talk about what's true for myself. I'm just not going to be that anymore. And you, you know, might find your way to talk about it. or last you just um you realize maybe after a few efforts, you know, there's no cheese down the tunnel of trying to negotiate this with other people, they're bound determined to keep casting me into a certain role. I'm just not going to function in that role anymore. I'm just not. I'm not going to do emotional caretaking for them. I'm not going to do more than my share of planning for events. Let's say you've talked about that for us yourself in the past. Uh I'm just not going to do it. I'm not going to make a big announcement about it. I'm just not going to do it. Or what I am going to do is step out of a certain cage I've been in and maybe become more emotionally expressive. Uh I'm going to just be more that way and um people can, you know, deal with it. I'm going to let the chips fly wherever they fly. I'm going to be more of a mess. I'm going to be more revealed about how I am. I'm going to be more overtly sad and not all buoyant and happy because I'm the person who's the cheerleader previously in our in our group system. I'm just going to be different and that's the way it's going to be. So, I've seen those different forms in how people do this.

[00:55:55]And I think most fundamentally it's really helpful to be guided by your deepest nature because at the end of the day it's really neither the act nor the scared self are who we most deeply are.

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[00:57:40]I would just like to use the bit of time that we have at the end to maybe just give a couple of, hey, be aware of this because a lot of the time when people are going through this kind of a renegotiation process, they can really feel like they're doing it wrong or like something is wrong with them. You know, is do other people face these problems?

[00:58:01]Like, wow, this is really hard. Why is this just hard for me? And so, hey, maybe just a couple of heads ups here.

[00:58:07]The first heads up is about something that's called an extinction burst. So this comes from behaviorism and and these very formal experiments that they'll do around modifying behavior.

[00:58:17]And typically what happens when you try to stop say a kid from doing a certain kind of behavior or in these experiments it's typically like a mouse from doing this kind of a given behavior. They actually initially do the behavior even more. You know they do it more intensely. They reject the attempt at correction by doubling down on the thing that you don't like. All of that kind of stuff.

[00:58:41]>> So, as you change your little puzzle piece in the family system, >> you're putting pressure on all the other puzzle pieces.

[00:58:48]>> They don't like that. And they might kind of fight that by being like, "Well, screw you. I'm going to be even more the way that you don't like." It's very natural to get that response and then go, "I'm going to throw my hands up. Not worth it. Whoa. just got too intense. Of course, you can totally choose to back away from that. You know, you can choose got too intense. Don't want to deal with this. Okay, I'm going to make my own choices here. Or you can say, hey, this is going to go on for a little while and then there's a good chance that it gets better, assuming that the other people are capable of change and flexibility on some level. So, extinction burst, really, really normal thing. Other thing that I would say is uh something that Lindsay Gibson really focused on when we talked for a recent conversation that we had. There's this thing you can maybe think of it as like the compassion trap.

[00:59:38]If you are this kind of person, you are again emotionally sensitive by definition. If you are in the gifted child category, so when you perceive other people as going through a difficult emotional experience based on your behavior, it's going to be doubly difficult for you to keep on keeping on with being your authentic self.

[00:59:57]you're going to really feel that and want to modify around it. And you can modify around it. Again, it's up to you, but just be aware that this can be kind of weaponized by other people and they can go, "Ah, I'm dealing with a sensitive person. They're probably going to kind of fold before I am here." So, again, just something to be aware of that this can be a kind of dynamic. Um, I think those are the two things that I would really want people to just have in their back of their minds as they're going through that sort of renegotiation process. and you handled a lot of the pragmatics really well, Dad.

[01:00:29]>> That's really great. And another thing that can sometimes happen uh is that other people were not actually caught up in your internalized script. They didn't even care that much. They weren't really invested in you being that particular way that you've brought in from your family background. So that when you do change, they don't even notice it and they're fine. And you can kind of sometimes I've definitely experienced this that you're looking around the room and you're sort of waiting for a negative reaction or some kind of reaction and other people are just going, "Yeah, fine. Yeah, no big deal." So that might happen as well. As we get to the end here, Dad, is there anything that you have had in the back of your mind that you've been orbiting around that you've been thinking about as we've been having this conversation that you want to uh get on wax here?

[01:01:25]>> One, when I rewind the hour we spent here, >> it has felt very modulated >> step by step. Yeah.

[01:01:33]>> Yeah. And the way we've even spoken has felt within a maybe a tighter range often than we explore. Just modulated here. And that modulated quality can underestimate or seemingly under indicate the degree to which that actually sometimes in some families in some environments this issue is hugely important of developing a false self and to becoming increasingly alienated from who we most deeply are in including in ways that with let's say gaslighting or abusive contexts or the so-called Stockholm syndrome or trauma bonding can be really really painful for people >> and really difficult to work your way out of and >> there are intense [clears throat] versions of this that are very intense.

[01:02:33]Yeah.

[01:02:33]>> Yeah. And have cost you a lot. I mean the examples we're giving particularly in our own cases, you know, a certain amount of distress, a certain amount of, you know, >> fairly mild. Yeah.

[01:02:43]>> Yeah. Caught up in chasing certain dreams that are really other people's dreams for you. They're not really your own dreams find. But there's sometimes it happens that it is a huge horrible thing. So I want to name that. Second thing I want to name is culture. And culture really plays a role. Uh different cultures are more comfortable with full emotional self-expression.

[01:03:07]Certain cultures are more comfortable with um aggression coming right out and being very straightforward with anger.

[01:03:15]Right? And so I want to just name the ways in which you might want to think about the culture in which you grew up and the culture in which your parents grew up and other influential people in your life grew up as uh factors in the formation of the act and scripting that you cultivated over time. Really glad you gave that at the end of this episode. It's possible we should have given that at the front end of this episode, but I think that it was based a little bit on the shape of the actual conversation that we had. I think that as issues get broader and messier and fuzzier and deeper, there's sometimes a bit of a desire to put them on what can feel like a manageable track.

[01:04:01]>> Mhm. And I think that's a little bit what I was doing here as I was setting up the structure for this episode. This can feel so amorphous and big and how do I even get into this here?

[01:04:14]>> Yeah.

[01:04:15]>> That you want to give people a road map.

[01:04:18]>> Sure.

[01:04:18]>> But I think you're also right, Dad, that we don't want to misrepresent with this road map how fuzzy and messy this process can be for people and how intense and meaningful it can also be.

[01:04:33]Even at the very mild end of the spectrum, when I look at my own experiences, I've gotten huge value out of doing this kind of internal inquiry.

[01:04:42]>> Yeah. which has really been about seeing my defenses and my tendencies and the ways that I shaped a version of who I was to be functional and socially acceptable and lovable by other people and all of that good stuff, but also had aspects of who I was that I viewed as problematic >> or very sensitive, too sensitive to be shown Maybe.

[01:05:13]Turns out as I got older and older and learned more and more about this and did some personal development work in different kinds of ways, those are actually some of my favorite parts of myself. And those are some of the parts of myself that I think people actually relate to the most positively these days are all of this material that I thought was kind of too much or not quite right or uh whatever.

[01:05:37]And man, that was a big old learning process for me. Uh, and even so, putting it on a platter in front of yourself, let alone other people initially, can be a real mess.

[01:05:49]>> Yeah.

[01:05:49]>> Uh, so that's I guess my my closing reflection here. In a way, we're talking about uh on what basis are you expressing yourself in the broadest sense, including how you act behaviorally, you know, expression of thought, word, and deed, deed included.

[01:06:07]And are you expressing yourself based on these very top-down regulations and controls and structures and constrictions that you acquired growing up? Is that the basis of your self-expression or is the basis of your self-expression much more from the bottom upwelling from your innermost being out into the world? I think there's a place for a light regulation of what comes bubbling up that you know there's a place for not saying certain things because there'll be wounding to others and there's a place for regulating especially anger and aggression even violence you know as it might arise or there's a little place for that but on the whole that's what we're talking about. How can people loosen top-down controls acquired in relationship with them and live more freely and spontaneously uh from the bottom up of their own upwelling being. Great way to put a stamp on it. Thanks so much for doing this with me today, Dad. Really loved this one. always love talking with you and uh appreciate you know also how self-disclosing you are during these conversations. You're you're really up for talking about your own stuff and there are a lot of uh teacher types who are often much less comfortable with that kind of thing sometimes for understandable reasons but I think that your willingness to do that uh really you know puts a puts a great element into the podcast. Oh, and I'm always really for your own upwelling, uncensored uh expressions of being. [laughter] >> Well, thank you, Dad. And I would say that we got a Yeah, we have a pretty high communication relationship as father son relationships go here. And likewise. Yeah.

[01:07:50]>> Yeah. All you take care.

[01:07:53]I really appreciated Rick joining me for today's conversation about parentification and what adults could do if they were parentified as a child.

[01:08:02]Parentification is what happens when there is an inversion of what's supposed to happen when somebody's a kid. Healthy childhood is the parent serving the developmental needs of the kid. This includes their emotional needs. And parentification is what happens when the child starts serving the needs of the parent. Swiss psychologist Alice Miller used the phrase gifted child to describe these kids. And their gifts are gifts of emotional sensitivity. The child becomes the confident, the mediator, the plug-in module, to use a phrase that Rick used during the conversation that supports the parents emotional needs. The child usually doesn't do this because they are explicitly instructed to by the parent, but they are both attuned and dependent, right? They really have a sense for what's going on in the family system and they also recognize that they are highly reliant on their parent. So when the parent is emotionally stable, when the parent feels good, the kids life improves, this leads to a kind of bargain being struck between the parent and the child. The child gets love and safety and emotional support when they also support the parent. Everything stays okay as long as the kid stays easy. So the kid converts their child identity into something else, something that's developmentally inappropriate for them. They lose touch with their authentic self and they build a version of who they are that is constructed around meeting the needs of somebody else. So their own feelings and wants and desires, their own authentic sense of who they are is slowly pushed down over time. Now you wear that mask for 18 years, for 30 years, for 70 years, and it can start to really look like who you actually are. The subtitle of the drama of The Gifted Child, This is Alice Miller's book, is the search for the truth self. And that's what we talked about today. Because kids who are put in this kind of position learn a lie. They learn that love is something that they earn by being useful or meeting the needs of other people. And gifted kids are almost inherently anxious. They're constantly monitoring and their self-worth becomes dependent. They perceive that their worth is based on the ability to receive things like approval or love from other people. And they get really good at receiving that approval and love, typically by performing different kinds of functions.

[01:10:27]So our goal here is to look beneath all of that, to look beneath those developed patterns, those perspectives that we've built about what we need to do in order to earn love and support from other people.

[01:10:40]We see the parts of oursel that are more constructed, the assumptions that we make about the way that we have to be around others, uh what's actually safe, what's not actually safe, all of that good stuff. And we start re-evaluating that in adulthood. I'm an adult now.

[01:10:54]I've got a different set of circumstances than I did back then.

[01:10:58]Maybe I've got different capabilities.

[01:11:00]Maybe I know more. Maybe I'm more comfortable with who I am. Maybe I have friends who support me more and so on and so on and so on. So, your circumstances are meaningfully different, which allows you to explore meaningfully different aspects of who you are. Particularly when you're on the more mild end of the parentification spectrum, it can actually be helpful to recognize aspects of your own influence in the creation of these patterns. So Rick really emphasized this throughout the conversation. I think it's uh easy for people to kind of misunderstand what he was saying. So I want to be clear about what I think he meant and certainly what I mean when I talk about this. For myself on the more mild end of the spectrum, I learned a certain way of being that was really good at protecting aspects of who I was, protecting my emotions, making me feel like a more capable person, helping me increasingly feel like somebody who could move through the world without being overwhelmed by it or without being excessively punished by other kids in different kinds of ways. I had to perform a certain kind of version of who I was in order to receive that. And then I I learned how to do that. I put on that act. I wore that mask. And I did that actively. I knew I was making choices. I knew that there were parts of me that I wasn't putting on the table. I knew that if I acted a certain kind of way, I would be praised. And if I acted a certain kind of way, I would be punished by them. And so, I deliberately leaned into the things that earned me praise. And that had consequences over time, including as I become a more, you know, authentic version of myself. Um, I saw what I let go of or what I left behind by virtue of doing that. And that reflection can then be kind of empowering. If you let something go in the past, you can reclaim it in the future. You're the one who gets to make choices here. We talked a bit about the twin poles of grandiosity and depression. Gifted children are skilled.

[01:12:56]They are capable. And it's easy for that skilled and capableness to become a big part of their personality. This is grandiosity. But then we all fall short eventually, right? And if your internal structure is that I get love by being good at stuff, when you're not good at something, when a mistake is made, when you fall short, again, we all fall short. This is inevitable. It doesn't mean you did something wrong. This is just being human. Well, what happens?

[01:13:20]Well, then you fall into the pit of depression. We then talked a little bit about why insight isn't enough. the way that these patterns can show up specifically in adulthood and Miller's general caution about self-help work broadly where we don't want uh self-help work knowledge accumulation to become another kind of performance right and it's really easy for these emotionally sensitive highly competent people to use that sensitivity to really understand what somebody else wants from them including in this kind of therapeutic work that people will do you know all the memes out about becoming your therapist's favorite client. But what we're trying to do is come into authentic contact with our own experience, warts and all. And then we talked about some different ways to do that. I laid out four tracks. First, becoming more visible to yourself. This is reconnecting with the parts of yourself that got pushed down over time.

[01:14:15]Uh different questions that could help you figure out how to do that are uh what emotions were you permitted as a child? Like which got punished, which got ignored by other people? What roles did you have to inhabit? Were you more of a helper or an achiever or a peacekeeper? What function were you performing? And then third, what did you have to do in order to earn love?

[01:14:35]There's a great phrase from Paul Gilbert that I think really gets to a lot of what Alice Miller was talking about, and it's grief, not shame.

[01:14:43]Miller really emphasized this process as a process of grief work which connects with the second track of forming a coherent narrative. You're seeing what happened, why it happened, your part in the process. Rick really emphasized forming a coherent narrative related to that sense of a bargain. What are you trading? What are you getting? And what are you giving up inside of this process? Then third track, we talked about reparing the more unseen or underintegrated parts of who you are.

[01:15:12]Uh, we did a whole reparing episode recently. I would mostly just refer to that. But Rick has this idea of thwarted success as a key part of this process that I wanted to name and mention. And it's just the idea that we leave parts of ourselves behind. And those could even be parts of oursel that include very authentic wants or desires or skills and capabilities that we've kind of, you know, thrown the baby out with the bathwater. So, what can we now reclaim as an adult? Then fourth, we talked about reforming the relationship that you have with uh your family of origin or with some of these other people that were involved in this reparing process. That is a very complicated topic for people. We've done whole episodes on it in the past, including an episode on arangement that we did a number of years ago, and if you would like to learn more about it, I would recommend checking those episodes out. So, as I get to the very end here, another quick reminder about the survey that we currently have up. That's rickson.com/servey.

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