When You Were the Emotional Comforter of a Needy Parent

Photo illustration by Marina113 / iStock

Some children grow up playing a special role in their families. They’re expected to emotionally manage an unstable and selfish parent for the sake of the family. In return for such caretaking, they’re given praise by the needy parent but are secretly hated by their siblings for getting extra attention. Often such children are chosen because of their innate nurturing qualities and strengths but are given no choice as the whole family insists they must play the caretaking role. Exploited children are required to fill in for emotionally absent spouses of self-absorbed parents, roles that are beyond their capacities to fulfill. Indeed, such privileged positions are no blessings. Child servants of selfish parents immeasureably suffer throughout their lives and often don’t understand why they are in pain or stuck in harmful patterns in their adult lives. They’d describe their childhood roles as anything but special.

Lifelong impact of parental servitude

Children continually placed in parental comforter roles essentially lose their childhoods forever. Instead of enjoying the innocence of having their own emotional needs met as children and establishing their own identities, they’re constantly on the alert to make sure that their insecure parents are being satisfied, and they forgo their own identities. They avoid play and normal developmental learning and instead become indentured family servants. Everything they say, do or think must reflect the perfection of selfish parents rather than allow them to build their own sense of self.

You already have everything you will ever need to handle any suffering sent to you.These children learn to pretend and tell people what they want to hear. They become expect actors at life and ultimate chameleons. However, such adultified children often remain endlessly empty and immature in their own adulthoods and have serious difficulty with spontaneity and self-assertion. They live with a deadness that cannot be put in words. Also, being the emotional servant of a demanding parent continually injects such children with shame as they are endlessly blamed for why their self-centered parents are dissatisfied. Having no boundaries with a contemptuous parent makes them feel they are never enough for that selfish parent, and they secretly live with feelings of overwhelming failure and inexplicable shame. They remain infinitely guarded and self-conscious in all adult interactions for fear that others will see them for who they really are – defective. Pretending and people-pleasing are their customary ways of relating to everybody. They live only to serve.

Ultimately, the loss of childhood, internalized shame, and pretending all make such persons selfless. They themselves often don’t know what they feel, need or want. They may be invisible to themselves, have a hard time describing themselves to others and cannot say who they really are. Typically they remain stuck in avoiding relationships altogether or else repeatedly choose uncaring partners in their adult romantic lives to caretake. Often they’re very likable but highly unreachable.

SEE ALSO  Allowing Others to Define Who We Are

Signals of selflessness and servitude

Although the past may have harmed you, it’s never too late to heal and grow. For every winter, there’s a spring. Start by seeing how you lack a self and how you allow people to walk all over you. Things need to be seen before they can change. Do any of the following apply to you?

  • Are you often worried about what others think of you?
  • Is it difficult to say no to or disagree with people you like?
  • Do you constantly pretend so that nobody knows the real you?
  • Do you shape yourself to conform to what you feel people want from you?
  • Are you typically uncomfortable with disappointing people?
  • Do you sometimes not know what you think, feel or want?
  • Are you terrified of being rejected by someone you like?
  • Do you typically underachieve in or avoid romantic relationships?
  • Have you allowed romantic partners to walk all over you?
  • Do you dread your own selfishness or being seen as selfish?
  • Do you derive most of your self-worth from making others happy?

Why do I continually allow people to exploit me?

It’s essential to realize that adults who were caretakers as children don’t really enjoy being in pain by having people walk all over them; it’s just that they can’t resist it. The only way they know how to attach to others is to be involved with uncaring persons. Early childhood exploitation has wired such adult’s brains to continually relive the traumatic patterns of childhood. It’s what feels normal. Sheldon Kopp, a famous psychoanalyst, said it best: “We prefer the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”

Moreover, there’s a perverse sense of safety in repeating destructive habits. If an adult caretaker were to get involved with a more loving person, there’d be great risk of the adult caretaker feeling exposed, seen as defective and rejected. Many adults stay in harmful patterns because they don’t want to run the risk of being truly loved. In their eyes, true love – what they felt as children toward their selfish parents – always results in psychic annihilation. Small children’s hearts get crushed when selfish parents reject them, and the memory of that experience lasts a lifetime. It’s like touching a hot stove. You never forget it, and you remain stuck in keeping love away. Finally, adult caretakers are so filled with shame that they feel undeserving of caring partners and, in fact, may seek out people to punish them. They feel they deserve to be treated badly because they are bad. All of these ways of feeling, thinking and behaving constitute the damage of children being used as parental comforters.

SEE ALSO  When You're In Your Head A Lot

Breaking traumatic patterns

A wise saying relates to recovery: “You already have everything you will ever need to handle any suffering sent to you.” You may be unaware of your inner strengths and personal support from others already available to you. You’ve already survived growing up with a selfish parent. Now’s your time to grow and break old patterns.

Read, Trapped in the Mirror by Elan Golomb, Ph.D. Examine the survey above and notice when and how you’re being selfless. Work on one pattern at a time and change it. For example, if you regularly act like the “yes man” to all your friends, rock the boat and disagree with them sometimes. If you typically pretend, stop pretending. You may be very anxious before and after such encounters. Get support from trusted friends, support groups like Alanon, Adult Children of Alcoholics and competent professional helpers.

Keep breaking selfless patterns. Give yourself a lifetime to try. The sky’s the limit. With support you can take major risks and conquer the unconquerable. Your victories in asserting yourself with thrill you beyond your wildest dreams. You won’t have to get people to like you because people will pick up on how much you like yourself, and they won’t leave you alone.

When you have a self, you have a life.


John H. Driggs, L.I.C.S.W., is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in private practice in St. Paul and co-author of Intimacy Between Men (Penguin Books, 1990). 

We may earn commission via some of the links on this page, at no cost to you. This article first appeared in the January 2005 issue of The Phoenix Spirit.

Last Updated on January 26, 2025

Leave a Reply

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