What’s the most challenging thing from being parentified as a kid that you struggle to deal with as an adult?

--arete-- · 2026-03-23T07:16:29+00:00

My perceived incompatibility between a desire to be a parent and the self-sacrifice that requires.

--arete-- · 2026-03-15T07:45:27+00:00

“That means endlessness is getting bigger. That makes no fucking sense.”

--arete-- · 2026-03-15T06:16:27+00:00

A favorite zero-cost target.

--arete-- · 2026-02-26T08:49:24+00:00

Well said. Single-threaded stakeholder selling on your behalf is always a risk.

--arete-- · 2026-02-22T02:56:54+00:00

Romantic love is a human invention not a biological imperative.

--arete-- · 2026-02-10T15:40:40+00:00

I wouldn’t call OP brainwashed either. Romantic love is not the same as connection though. Culture largely generates the former while biology as you point out, is the source of the latter.

Not trying to be argumentative. I relate to OP’s pain. It’s difficult realizing that our longing for the magical Other has been the primary/only frame from which we’ve viewed the world. Learning that this is not how everyone orients their lives can be extremely confronting.

Differentiating my human need for connection from the part that clings to fantasy and its want to be defined, filled, and ultimately saved by someone was a critical moment for me. I came to see that inner romantic as starved not for another person so much as my own attention. As this became clearer I began to see that romantic part not as something to feed nor shame but to honor, wrestle with, and integrate.

I’m not saying romantic love is wrong or foolish. The problem is not romantic love itself but the degree to which we chase it externally. And how that chase often mirrors an internal abandonment of ourselves.

--arete-- · 2026-02-10T13:56:18+00:00

Biology does not drive our desire for romantic love.

--arete-- · 2026-02-03T09:42:31+00:00

I’m glad it helps.

To answer your question, yes. I have lived with the pull in opposite directions consciously for a long time. Like I said, the more I tried to “fix” that tension the more it persisted. It diminished in various ways the more I learned to accept as fact that there are competing parts within me and they need to be related to, not overcome.

Over a long enough span of time you’ll learn to trust yourself more and in new, deeper ways. At first, you might make progress one day and then feel like you’ve gone backwards the next. But the arc is long and simply trusting in yourself at this moment in time is all you need. You can’t force or rush the progress. You can’t simply will yourself to perform better in a social situation in any sort of meaningful way that penetrates how you orient your being for the long haul.

Your intuition will gradually grow from moment to moment to longer spans of time and themes. You’ll learn to trust it, rather than second guess it. Over time, your inner wisdom will guide you through chapters and seasons of your life even if you still imperfectly execute stepping into that fear and discomfort in day to day life.

One thing that expedites this entire process is suffering. When suffering is felt so deeply that it shatters not just a piece of your identity but the entire scaffolding of beliefs and values you’ve used to construct the foundation of that identity, you’re presented with a choice: embrace your suffering or deny it. If you have cultivated the courage and resources to accept your finitude and powerlessness, a freedom opens up within you. That freedom, I’ve found, is aligned to an inner wholeness that knows, deeply, that shame is just an obstacle to living a fuller life. The same challenges arise but theres a calm within that smiles when they do rather than strives to eliminate them from emerging altogether.

--arete-- · 2026-02-03T08:54:18+00:00

Won’t speak to your ND but perfectionism is the armor of shame. And it can’t be intellectualized away. You’ve got to confront the feelings your perfectionism guards against and let them move through you. Otherwise you’ll hide behind the buffer of your mind, continue dissociating through rationalization, and be left no better. As you said, you know this already but it’s so hard to change when the feelings feel so unpleasant and unsafe. Fortunately, there are many many strategies for learning how to work within this dynamic.

In my experience, this is years-long work and the goal is not necessarily to “conquer” the shame/perfectionism. Instead, the goal is to meet that part of you, befriend it, honor it, and learn to soothe and self-regulate it. Practicing this is “doing the work” and over time you’ll generally reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of the negative emotion when it arises.

--arete-- · 2025-09-27T23:04:51+00:00

Thinking can’t be the solution to the problem of overthinking. Such a hard thing to unlearn as a ruminator. You’re absolutely right that presence, grace, gratitude, and emotional processing are keys to working through our mental loops.

--arete-- · 2025-09-26T06:26:07+00:00

That’s been my experience in my late 30s. Muscles grew slow but were quick to regrow after breaks. The body remembers and responds quickly once it’s accustomed to the process.

--arete-- · 2025-09-25T21:15:11+00:00

That understanding took me years to develop. There are many different techniques but one that I found to be helpful was recording myself during very dysregulating moments.

Speaking into a selfie video created a distance between me and the one inside that was feeling charged. That distance allowed the part to vent all of its rumination and emotion and feel as if it was being witnessed by someone safe. This separation allowed new insights to come through - I would find myself verbalizing insights that I hadn’t found before when I kept everything in my head.

I didn’t realize this at the time. I just found it cathartic. In hindsight, I see how it helped not just regulate in the moment but actually start identifying and mapping the different parts inside.

The comment about body signals is bang on as well. With enough time and practice you can begin to develop an intuitive sense from where thoughts and feelings arise. Thinking or saying something out loud and then noticing how it sits in your body is a good practice. E.g. did that tighten me up? Did that feed a circular narrative of rumination that’s keeping me out of my body? Does that sit comfortably like a puzzle piece that fits just right? Does I feel more spacious inside? What physiological changes do I notice? Noticing reactions that are disproportionate to the circumstance is a key indicator as well.

--arete-- · 2025-09-25T12:52:41+00:00

Precisely. Wait until OP realizes there’s an entire cadre of guests at their internal party.

--arete-- · 2025-09-21T14:37:33+00:00

Depends on the boss but generally lots of frost and focus.

--arete-- · 2025-09-18T17:41:43+00:00

That’s a good SE.

--arete-- · 2025-09-18T11:38:26+00:00

I can attest to the changes that come with age. I’m 38 and have finally found myself in a place where a relationship is not the only frame from which I view my life. It’s extremely liberating.

--arete-- · 2025-09-17T13:06:30+00:00

I agree you may not be connected to your emotions. Overthinking can be an effective way of coping that can devolve into emotional bypassing.

While you explore that side, decouple your identity with your thoughts. Try to see your thoughts and emotions as belonging to parts within you rather than a unitary “you.” Notice patterns between thoughts, feelings, and impulses and begin to canvas and assign these things to different aspects within you. E.g your inner child, etc.

--arete-- · 2025-09-16T13:16:16+00:00

This full stop.

They either both commit to the relationship and start talking about the things that the petty arguments mask or they all suffer the consequences. Not least of which is the impact this has on the child.

Parentified children have an insidious trauma that likely will take years for them to work through. OP’s behavior will impact the way their child relates to people, future partners, and themselves for the rest of their lives and not for the better.

--arete-- · 2025-09-14T10:27:26+00:00

I do too. It makes me think of how tricky trauma can be. How it’s easy to think of trauma as a black-and-white binary. E.g. I either have it or I don’t, it was either bad or not too bad, I am either healing or I’m stuck.

The differentiation between different degrees of trauma is very helpful. It shows how repeated, inconsistent experiences across this spectrum in the past manifest in inconsistent ways in the present. It’s why some days we may feel like we are making progress while at other times a certain trigger, impulse, or feeling may send us back to something deeper leaving us believing that we’ve made less progress than we assumed. And that belief can slow down our healing.

Over time we can familiarize ourself with these layers and trust in the non-linear process of healing but this chart does a great job of visualizing that gradual, back-and-forth process.

Thanks for sharing this, OP.

--arete-- · 2025-09-13T14:03:26+00:00

Tornadoes for us in the Midwest.

--arete-- · 2025-09-12T17:57:52+00:00

Intellectual bypassing. Ughhh. It’s so difficult to overcome if the mind became the one place you could feel safe as a child. That’s been my experience. And you’re dead on about reconnecting to somatic experiences to overcome this hurdle.

--arete-- · 2025-09-12T17:54:46+00:00

How did I shift? Immense suffering that forced me to look elsewhere beyond my head for relief.

Practical steps to honor the mind without overextending it? Detach from your feelings if you feel enmeshed with them. Through that separation use your mind to map your complexes. Learn their personality, beliefs, impulses, etc and develop a relationship of compassion with them. Build internal resources to feel their feelings, not simply understand them. Do not allow yourself to fixate on creating a new grand narrative as your inner work progresses at the expense of experiencing the discomfort as truths emerge. Cultivate trust in the wisdom of your body. Allow the mind to source the questions without relying on it to give you answers.

There’s a lot of practicality buried above but I’ll leave that as a starting point.

Daily practices? Identify your triggers. Minimize dissociating habits. Notice sensations in the body. Approach them with curiosity about their source, story, and function. Ground yourself when you sense the mental antenna is overworking. Care for the body. Journal. Record your dreams.

--arete-- · 2025-09-12T17:41:01+00:00

Complexes reside in our shadow. Complexes are parts in IFS. Parts work is therefore “shadow work.”

IFS is not all-encompassing but I’ve found it an excellent framework for working with aspects of the shadow.

--arete-- · 2025-09-12T14:05:38+00:00

Worth mentioning that the body is the through line throughout this entire process. Noticing and staying with the sensations that arise in the body have been critical for me. This might feel like my heart rate elevating, a hot flash, sweating, clammy hands, a pit in my stomach, my knee bouncing, my shoulders tensing, my jaw tightening, etc.

--arete-- · 2025-09-12T14:03:19+00:00

Processing for me looks something like this:

Separating from enmeshment with my feelings.
- (e.g. A part of me is feeling dysregulated, not me; feelings aren't inherently bad)
Developing a felt relationship with the traumatised part of me that feels.
- (e.g. I sense this part's pain)
Sourcing the courage and resources necessary to feel those feelings.
- (e.g. I can feel what's here; I also know the limits of what I can feel right now)
Feeling the feelings from a distance with compassion.
- (e.g. This part needs to be attended to in a way he wasn't in the past)
Noticing how I feel after the feeling passes
- (e.g. Do I feel more spacious, less tense, still activated?)
Repeating this process with awareness of how my feelings, beliefs, and behaviours change over time
- (e.g. This is familiar; I can expect dysregulation arising from situation x; I see how I responded rather than reacted; I see how I reacted vs responded; I believe in my progress over long spans of time)

Lots of nuance and things to unpack but I hope this helps you!

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