How Hurt Parents Parentify Children (Clip: Narcissism Summaries Channel)

One thing that is often ignored is the fact that even completely mentally healthy parents completely mentally healthy, for example, mothers can and do infantilize, regress in the wake of an experience that is traumatic. When a completely healthy person completely normal person with no shred or hint of a personality disorder, a highly secure person, very mature, an adult in the fullest sense of the word when such an adult, such a person, such a human being experiences overwhelming trauma destabilizing and disintegrating pain the kind of hurt that is all-pervasive, ubiquitous, all-permeating these adults regardless of the fact that they're mentally healthy that they're mentally put psychologically well put together they fall apart. It's very common. Trauma and abuse lead to infantilization and regression and if at the same time they happen to have a child then this child becomes automatically parentified. Even worse childbirth often regresses mothers the mother to an infantile state. Many mothers react very badly to the process of pregnancy and childbirth. Postpartum depression is much more common than we admit. Probably 1/3 of mothers, that's one of every three mothers experiences a modicum of dysphoria after giving birth in the wake of giving birth. And these mothers and other mothers, they don't cope well with the disability that is pregnancy. It's an advanced all-pervasive systemic state of disability. In effect, it's a The baby is like a parasite feeding off the mother. And so it's very traumatic, although no one would admit to it. It's politically incorrect to say all of this. But this is the truth. And so childbirth regresses many mothers to an infantile state. And at that point, the mother would parentify the child in order to regain a sense of secure base, to regain a sense of mastery, control, safety, stability, predictability, certainty, determinacy, and agency. The mother would convert the child into a parental figure. She herself had been rendered an infant by the pregnancy and childbirth or by some trauma and abuse. And in this very vulnerable state, she needs a parental figure. And the person at hand, the person available, is the child. The immediacy of the presence of the child serves as a soothing self-soothing mechanism and process. The The mother or the parent self-soothes, self-comforts via the child. Now, what happens is the parentified child internalizes the parentifying mother or the parentifying father. The parentified child creates an internal object, an introject, an avatar, a snapshot, a representation of the parentifying parent in his in its mind. The child ends up with having an internal parentifying mother, an internal parentifying father. And these introjects, these internal objects that represent real mother and real father, they continue to parentify the child forever, basically. And because the child has a parentified um father figure or a parentified mother figure inside his or her head, this >> [snorts] >> causes the child to want to give birth. The parentified child wishes to give birth to a new child. Now, this is a very, very complex web of interactions and self-reinforced reinforcing feedback loops. And you need to be very attuned to understand where I'm leading you and what I'm saying. The child the the child who has been parentified bears in his mind, carries in his mind an imago, an image, a representation, an introject of the parentifying parent. Could be mother, could be father. The parentifying parent, this internal object, continues to regard the child as a parental figure. In reality, the parentifying mother or the parentifying father treated the child as a parental figure. They relegated to the child. They delegated to the child parental roles. The mother, the parentifying mother, became an infant. The parentifying father became a toddler. And it is the child who took care of them. The child became a caregiver. Inevitably, the internal objects, the snapshots, the introjects that represent this kind of parents in the child's mind treat the child, and later on the adult, treat this child, even when the child becomes an adult, as a parental figure. In other words, the child carries with him representations of his parents who demand, which demand of him to act as a parent. These introjects, these imagos, these internal objects that represent parentifying mother and parentifying father, they insist on a continuation of the parentification. They insist, they demand from the child, they insist that the child must perform parental function. The child must act as a parent of these introjects, as a parent of these internal objects, as a parent of these snapshots and representation. The parental role is never interrupted. It's continuous. Obviously, as a parental figure, the child would develop parental aspirations. For example, to have a child. So, the parentified child wishes to give birth to a new child. It's not a real child. The parentified child later, having become an adult, the parentified child wants to create an internal child. This internal child can then take care care of the internalized parents. In reality, there's a real family. There's a mother, there's a father, and there's a child. The mother and the father parentify the child. They become infantilized. They become toddlers. The child takes care of. As the child takes care of the parentifying parents, the child internalizes them, introjects them, incorporates them. The child creates two child creates representations of these parents. These representations are representations of parentifying parents. So, these representations continue to demand parentification. They continue to demand from the child to perform the role of a parent. In order to complete the family inside, because outside the family is complete. There's mother, father, and a parentified child. But inside, there's only mother and only father. So, to complete the internal family system, to complete the internal family, the parentified child wishes to give birth to a new child, to a child internal object, an internal child, an introjected child, not a real child, but um representation of a child inside the mind of the parentified child, and this representation of the child would take care of the representations of the parentifying mother and the parentifying father. This internal child would actually be a replica, a copy of the real child. But, because it is an an internal object, it would have access to the internal objects of the mother and the father. The parentified child, therefore, not only performs outside caregiving roles. The parentified child not only acts, not only makes decisions and choices in the real world, but the parentified child internalizes the total situation. It creates a whole environment in his own mind with a representation of the parentifying mother, a representation of a parentifying father, and a representation of the parentified child. And this parentified representation of the parentified child, this internal object, this introject of the parentified child, takes care of the introject, the internal object, the representation of the parentifying parents. So, there's a complete resonance and conformity and correspondence between the external real-life family, real mother, real father, real child, and the internal family. The internal family comprise of a representation of the real parentifying mother, a representation of the real parentifying father, and a representation of the parentified child. And of course, this kind of arrangement, internal arrangement, internal landscape, continues throughout the lifespan, well into adulthood. By creating an internal child an internal child who is parentified. The real-life parentified child secures the approval of the parental introjects.