As I sit here writing this, I find myself noticing I’m holding my breath. I hate it when I do this. As a child, I recall standing in the kitchen with my parents at the age of 16 discussing as if I was a third adult in the household how we were going to take care of my mother’s parents. I was only 16. And this was not the first time I had been asked to take on a burden well above my pay grade. I am holding my breath right now because recently this whole system of feeling more responsible for others lives than they feel for themselves has reared it’s ugly head for me.
Do any of you do this? Feel almost in a panic when someone else is making bad decisions in their lives? As if it is your responsibility to rush in and save them? It’s a horrible feeling. Almost as if it’s life or death. It’s not a matter of my thinking that I am somehow better equipped than they are to solve this problem, rather I feel almost a pressure that if I don’t fix it for them that I will be the one that’s in trouble. And not just in trouble. I will be so in trouble that it feels like it’s a life or death situation. That is what child parentification does. It doesn’t only steal a childhood, it steals an entire lifetime.
Something that I’ve learned in my healing as an adult, is that much of my growth is actually an unlearning rather than a learning. Or maybe it’s a combination of both. The growth edge is real. Meaning a real effort. Each and every time I find myself feeling compelled to solve someone else’s problems or suffer the consequence of failing them, I have to not only hold compassionate space for myself that this was a job that never should’ve been given to me by my parents, I also have to learn how to cope with watching someone painfully fumble in their life. I was never taught that skill. I was never given the choice to watch someone fail. I was given the responsibility to be their fail safe. And because that was what I was given, it’s robbed me of being able to walk away, set a boundary, take care of myself, without significant effort put into that process.
I wish I had words of wisdom to put on the page here for you. But I don’t. At least not specific instructions for how to make this easier if you are in a similar circumstance. I am here to cheerlead and support you in whatever way you need to work through this growth edge of yours. To heal from the years of being asked to be the one that fixed everything for everyone else. To heal from the absence of being allowed to be a child in your family. To heal from not knowing how to tolerate the distress you feel inside your body every time you watch someone struggle.
Self compassion and self-care are the best means to take on this unlearning and relearning in your life. I’ve done my best to offer resources on my learntoloveyourstory.com website, but honestly mostly what we need as we grow and heal is just to know that we’re not alone. That others have suffered the same way. And just like us, they are muddling through learning to take ownership only of what they need to do for themselves and let go of the impossible task of taking care of everyone around them. And just breathe.
In what areas of your life do you find yourself holding your breath? What next step do you need to take in your healing journey?