My parents brag about how they had 2 daughters before having 2 sons because that meant they had their "little helpers" first. They're proud of parentifying us girls and praise us for being mini moms
Reading Twilight as a cautionary tale about the effects of parentification and not developing one's own identity in a normal way almost makes it a good book. Suddenly Bella's blank-slate personality and attraction to needy, controlling people makes sense.
If Stephanie Meyers was self aware she'd actually be a good writer. Bella is a very believable character, except that all the stuff that explains her, like the parental abuse and Bella's extreme poor self image, don't appear to be deliberate, it's fascinating. SMeyer clearly pays attention to people around her, she draws very real characters, but at the same time gives 0 thought to /why/ the people behave that way.
@@Sapphykins She probably lacks that in-depth analysis because Bella is a stand-in for Meyer herself. The whole series is based on a dream she had, in which she presumably was the lead character.
@@jasperkanes8522 i didnt know the dream thing, but i had a feeling bella was a self insert. its so obvious when you actually consider *how* accurate bella's response is to such bad parenting, but like yall said, without any of the self awareness. it would also partially explain bella's lack of personality. i notice similar about most self insert characters- im struggling to word this properly so sorry in advance, but people dont feel the need to write more for that character because to them, the gaps are obvious. most people arent self aware enough to properly write themselves into a story, especially as the main character, so the characters personality becomes more of a list of likes and dislikes than it does a fully fleshed out personality. in other words- you can really tell this was originally written as a fanfic.... she just replaced "Y/N" with "bella" and published that shit lmao
@@Sapphykins It might have to do with her mormon background. Mormonism has a huge emphasis on family (their spiritual beliefs around family are actually represented I'm the Cullen family, interestingly enough. There's a lot of sneaky mormonism in the Saga) and large families are highly regarded and encouraged. Adoption and fostering is very common (which is actually a bit sad in many ways because mormonism is so destructive and sad) and there's a lot of controversy around hormonal birth control within the church. People have very big families and the extremely misogynistic views of the church result in the girls in the family taking the brunt of the parentification, and it's seen as normal. Smeyer lacks self awareness around this because of cult indoctrination, and it's honestly really sad.
It wasn’t intentional. Don’t credit Meyer for that. Bella is herself, and she knows herself, and didn’t think to make sure that the readers know her too.
I feel myself heard as well. I am hearing impaired and have some learning difficulties so I was always behind everyone else . . . but my teachers I feel are half to blame. This one woman, Denise, she would take me out of Math, the thing I struggle most with, and bring me to the Library so she could scream and swear and insult me about how stupid and useless I am as she made me learn cursive. My handwriting is beautiful now, but my math skills are terrible. She was only one teacher who made school difficult. So they had a certain file on me and what I am capable of doing and placed me at a certain level and forced me to only do things at that level, but the books they made me read I found boring. At Dollar Store, I picked up a beaten up copy of the first Harry Potter book and mom agreed to buy it for me, so I began reading that and started asking my mom to get me the others as they came out. Instead of being amazed at how incredible it was that I was starting to read huge chapter books and understand them perfectly and be able to talk about them, my teachers tried to ban the books because of the witchcraft. They even tried to control what I was allowed to read at home but I am Thankful my mom was at least proud of me for being able to read something so ahead of what everyone decided I was able to do. I can't tell you how many times I have read through all those books I have collected. I have a entire bookshelf in my room dedicated to my favorite books. Harry Potter, a book of the complete series of Narnia stories, I have the trilogy of Lord Of The Rings and I have The Hobbit, I have the series of The Books Of Pellinor which I recommend people to take a look at and last year for my birthday I got the Prequel of the series, The Bone Queen. I have White Fang, and Baree (similar to White Fang) and a book of poems by my favorite poet, Robert Frost with the bookmark on The Road Not Taken, which is my favorite by him. I know what it's like to be way behind and yet leagues ahead of what is expected of me. Sorry about the long post. Anyway, I did own the Twilight series and then I donated them to them to Good Will as a sort of giving back to the store that changed a lot for me.
Every time someone says "you're very mature for your age" I want to say "thanks it was all the managing/mediation of the emotions I had to do for the adults around me as a young adolescent"
@@VibingMeike It did to me because I realised only in my mid-twenties that I've been emotionnaly neglected and had to act overly protective towards my mom. My parents never intended to hurt me, they really did their best, and that's why it was so hard for me to realise -and accept- that something was off.
Saaaaaaame. I always had to be the mature one in every family situation with my mom and it was exhausting. My mom didn't get to be my mom for a solid chunk of my life, I had to parent her instead because she was the reckless and childish one. She's gotten better but that didn't happen until I finished college and she managed to quit drinking. So every time I was told "you're so mature for your age" I always thought "yeah because I'm the parent, not my mom."
I hated Renee in the books and the movies. She dumped Bella on her dad, someone that she had only seen 2-3 months a year when growing up, and she took off to pursue her "dreams" which included and was limited to Phil. She was just horrible.
Oh PLEASE talk about all the problematic shit in Twilight. I have not seen the other person's videos on it (I probably should they sound interesting), but I would be really interested to see what your take on things are. I'm sure you have insights that are unique. Plus I don't think it ever hurts to have more voices talking about harmful things like this especially if professionally you all can agree on certain points. It can add validity and help those at risk understand these issues.
I have seen all the cinematherapy videos and they were great but I would love to see mickey’s take. I love jonathan and allan and think their perspective is so educational and fun. I’ll continue watching them. However, I do think it would be amazing to have a woman covering similar topics and subjects. ☺️ It’s still a niche area of the internet. Take up that space Mickey! 🎉
yesss Cinematherapy is amazing, I love their genuine reactions and real emotions. Mickey scratches my itch for more insightful and informational reactions, so they're not exactly the same but both channels are defnitely fun to watch!
In Midnight Sun Edward's description of Bella's mom, when he first hears her thoughts, is that her needs are so loud and overpowering that of course Bella felt compelled to take care of her even though she was the child and her mother the adult. Reading that description it suddenly clicked for me that she wasn't a good parent. It felt like I finally could see all the red flags I had missed before. Maybe it helped that I was reading from a different characters perpective. When reading from Bella's perpective, Bella often passes her mother's behavior off as normal and expected. She never questions her mother's behavior, so I never questioned it either. It would be nice to read a story where a character who is in an abusive relationship and doesn't realize it, is able to eventually recognize the abuse from an outside source. I think it could go a long way to help those in a simular situation realize that what is happening to them isn't okay.
I lived the outside source of that. I have a friend whose mother is abusive in a variety of ways (kind of line a toned-down Mother Gothel from Tangled) and he had no idea that her behavior wasn't kosher because it was the only behavior he knew. He's grown a hell of a lot since we first started chatting and come to recognize her failings more clearly.
this comment alone almost makes me want to read midnight sun even though I've long since abandoned the entire franchise because of the controlling and manipulative behaviour of Edward and Jacob
Mmm no HARD disagree. It was clear to me when reading the books, Bella never acted like it was a good thing. It was stated from Bellas perspective that her mom was flighty and flakey, and couldn't be relied on, as a responsible parent. She never said it was a normal thing that everyone else usually deals with too. It was said in a way.. where she understood there wasn't a lot she was able to do to about it, or to change it. Especially as a young child, and as a minor teenaged girl. So she chose to focus on the good aspects of her mom and their relationship, instead of dwelling on the obvious bad ones. Because it wasn't going to change anything, so there wasn't really a point. Not as in.. this is acceptable and fine. More as in.. this just is what it is. And why she was more comfortable with letting her mom go to be with Edward. Because she had Phil to manage her now... so she didn't have to worry as much, about how her mother would cope with not seeing her anymore. Which says more than enough if you ask me. Which absolutely does explain why Bella has a constant wall up around everyone she meets, and why she's always for there other people emotionally.. when they need someone for advice, or to lean on.. but doesn't let them be there for her. Not even Edward. Hence her eventual vampire superpower "The Sheild". Which she also doesn't fully drop until the last few seconds of the final movie, when she finally lets Edward COMPLETELY inside her thoughts. By letting him see the montage of them together through the entire series.
I actually do have a narcissistic abusive parent, and I am estranged from her through my own choice. I was parentified, in addition to being the scapegoat in the golden child/scapegoat dynamic with my brother. I appreciate that’s often not the case for others, but for me there is no grey area and the worst thing someone can say to me is some variation on “it’s your mother and she loves you!”
Yes you’re so right! It is absolutely the case for some people and I’m so sorry that it’s the case for you. Telling someone any iteration of the “blood is thicker” bs when they have abusive family like this is never ever okay.
I'm so sorry you had to live that :( My mom had a narcissistic abusive mother too and she rolled her eyes so often when she got told that a mother loves her child... She told me once that everytime we fought, she felt guilty because she remembered how she felt as a kid, and that that's not true that a mom always loves her child, but that the child always loves their mom, and a mom has some power with that that she has to be careful about. I think about it a lot now that I have my own kids.
When will people figure out that loving someone doesn't prevent you from severely hurting them, just because you love them doesn't mean you know what is best or what is right or what they need, it doesn't protect you from making mistakes, love is not and will never be an excuse and it will never on its own be enough to make up for the harm caused. Not to mention a lot of abusers genuinely don't love their kids, like your mother by the sound of it, but that doesn't even need to be the case for that to be an incredibly stupid defence.
I’m sorry you had to go through that. Both my mother and my birth father (I have an stepdad/adopted dad; he’s my mom’s second husband and Dad with a capital D for me) abused me as well. My mother always says that “I did my best” when she obviously didn’t. Having a kid with autism (me) isn’t easy, I get that-but you don’t spray a kid in the face with a squirt bottle during a meltdown.
I think it's also important to note that when we mention people "recovering" from or "overcoming" their childhood & other trauma, that doesn't mean the effects of that trauma go away. It's not an "oh this shitty thing happened to you but you talked about it in therapy and now you're better so it's more ok" situation, it's never going to be ok because those effects don't disappear. Some of them may, and you learn to deal with the rest, but it's never going to be what it should have been.
You learn to live with what the trauma turned you into and learn how to become your own person again, but the scars don’t go away. Some types of mental health problems are like a coat you can shed, with enough therapy and effort you’re able to return to a relatively normal life. But the scars of abuse will always be on your skin.
God yeah I wish more people talked about this, it's always either "it never goes away and you'll be suffering horribly forever" or "it goes away and you're completely normal and fine now yay" and nothing in between, when in reality it's all in between those two extremes. It doesn't go away because you can't change the past, but every day you get better at handling the feelings it brings up, it gets easier, you feel safer, you get triggered less and can be happy and content more, yeah whenever you think about what happened to you it will feel empty and cold and tragic but you'll also be able to look at everything that's happening to you in the present and see all the good things and the real love and everything that's beautiful to you and no matter how unfair it was that you had to push through the trauma to get there you will always be thankful that you did. It's no different than living with chronic pain or a disability really, your only choices are learn to function with it or don't and the don't path is unbearable. The do path is hard but at least there are rewards along the way.
@@Zaddy-Lu there are specific types of therapy for ptsd you could try? Idk what you’ve done already but I went to a facility where I stayed for 4 days and had daily EMDR and exposure therapy combined with psycho-education and tons of exercise to get back into your body. It was mild exercise though so everyone could participate. Everyone who went there felt like it really made a dent and about 80% of people are ptsd free after that treatment. I know for me that program was life changing.
I kind of want to see someone talk about the parentification of Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, because I think that would be really interesting as a dynamic where it's not inherently abusive but definitely had a not so great impact in the long-run (Rory Gilmore is not a great human being by the end of the series and in the follow up Year in the Life). I wouldn't expect you to do it because its a really long show, but it would be interesting to see especially since there is the dynamic of how Loreli came from an emotionally abusive household herself and having never healed from it and having had Rory so young just went wildly in the opposite direction with her own child.
Thank you for saying parentification isn’t always malicious, my parents are good people, and they’re good parents now, but they also have the financial/emotional/physical ability to be those parents now and they didn’t when I was growing up so I had to pick up a lot of pieces for them and grew up too fast. I’ve had learn that I’m allowed to be angry and hurt over the loss of my childhood, and I’m allowed to acknowledge that it is my parents doing, but I can still love and forgive them for it without neglecting my own feelings.
Personally, I've chosen NOT to forgive my parents. They were malicious and awful and abused me if chore didn't get done. And their parentification was a choice.
Growing up I got “old soul” a lot. Took me a long time to realize that that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Some positives came out of my parentification but some traumatic shit did too. I’m starting to feel more confident balancing those conflicting lenses. One thing I learned immediately with my own parenting journey is that there are a million more acceptable ways to teach the positive skills that came from my parentification that don’t involve parentification. I learned conflict resolution from diffusing my parents arguments. My daughter learns conflict resolution from modelling and gentle guidance in age appropriate conflicts. Like which kid gets to play with the Elsa toy.
I've never heard of parentification before! I'm a single mom with severe depression trying to break the cycle of emotional abuse that I received from my family. My daughters are my best friends and they're responsible and helpful but I definitely encourage them to pursue their own interests and remind them often that they are not in any way responsible for my emotions. That's my job to work through. Still, I'm definitely going to be more careful from now on to avoid parentifying them. Thank you!
A thing you can do, is maybe see a family therapist, or find one for your daughters. So they can have someone neutral to talk to, and also you can learn how to improve your interactions as a family. Glad you care for your daughters mental health. It's a really important thing that's often overlooked, even today. I wish you to get better. Take care !
My mom's mom hid everything from her. Anything bad was swept under the rug, and that lead to some serious emotional issues for my mom. Her response when raising me was to tell me everything. It led to us being incredibly close, she's long been my best friend. I've only just realized that I was emotionally parentified under the guise that she was being honest. She didn't do it on purpose, but when I first read Twilight I loved Rene and Bella relationship. Reminded me of me and my mom. It's been a hard pill to swallow and move on from
Woah, the bit about generational trauma and parentification really made me feel some kind of way. I keep trying to talk to my mom about her problems with oversharing and crossing my boundaries and she just keeps saying "well this is how I was raised" as if it's an excuse for her behavior. I'm happy to know that this issue has been identified and I hopefully don't have to put anyone else through that
The quote "This 'you're so mature for your age!' compliment is not actually a compliment because what you're usually complimenting is someone who's survived trauma." got me so hard. So many years growing up I always got that "old soul" "wise beyond her years" "so mature for her age" compliment from older adults yet in school my teachers were always saying "She's doing well and is on the cusp of being above average and could be doing even better if she just worked a little harder!" and as a kid with undiagnosed ADHD those two things were so conflicting for me. How could everyone outside of school think I was so wise but in school my teachers were always telling me to speak up more, focus more, stop making careless mistakes on tests, etc. I didn't even realize how much trauma came from parentification.
This has got me thinking about parent/child relationships on TV. I'd love to hear you talk about the relationship between the mothers and daughters on Gilmore Girls. It's rife with toxic parenting that's often painted as an ideal.
Agreed. It's one of my favorite shows, but there's a lot of dysfunctional things that happen in Gilmore Girls. Lorelai and Rory do NOT have a healthy relationship. It's fun to watch on screen, but not something any kid should want with their parent. Any time Lorelai would try to pull the "parent card" on Rory it almost always backfired on her. Rory did not grow up with any kind of consistent parenting.
Yes, this made me think of Gilmore Girls as well! I'd love to hear Mickey's thoughts on it. I loved Twilight and GG growing up but there's a lot of problematic content to unpack there.
I also would like to see that video, as this comment chain really made me look at why i enjoyed the problematic stuff in girlmore girls. I recognized it as such, but didnt put the peices together before as to why i enjoyed seeing that very flawed dynamic portrayed.
I feel you. My own unexpected realization journey began about three years ago when one of my professors brought up codependency and enmeshment. Make sure you take care of yourself and don't go too fast! If you are not ready now, you can always leave it and come back later. Best wishes for your recovery 💛
I was parentified instrumentally due to a divorce and parentified emotionally because my mother didn’t have a therapist or many close friends around to vent to. It was a trip learning that I’m not the only one to go through this and that it’s an unfortunately common enough phenomenon to have a a name. My mom isn’t a bad person, she just needs a therapist lmao. Researching parentification has helped me to reconcile with my experiences.
8:20 As someone who was heavily parentified (my little sister has cerebral palsy) I would summarise the adverse effects of parentification: When I was supposed to learn how to take care of my self I was too busy taking care of someone else. And actually selfcare and boundaries are still my bigest struggle till today...
Yes, this! Until I was about 14/15, I was also heavily parentified and one of my siblings even called me "mom" for a period of time. In my mid-late teens my mom started stepping up and trying to take back control of the parent role, but by then I had no idea both how NOT to "parent" everyone else around me and also how to actually take care of myself. Taking care of myself, particularly my emotional needs, is still my biggest struggle as a result. I also still feel the impulse to take care of everyone else in my life and feel guilty when I'm not able to for one reason or another.
I always saw Bella moving to her father's place as the very depressive teenager thinking "well, just because I'm unhappy doesn't mean that everyone should be as well. If I go to dad, mum can enjoy time with her new husband and dad will probably be happy". She shows no motivation for anything except for Edward, and then for adrenaline rushes and Jacob and has basically no self esteem. Reminds me of myself a bit (except my parents are still together, what I still don't understand) Anyway, I guess for me it was rather emotional, the "give me a hug , I'm no feeling well" was kind of an every day thing (depressive mother). But there are so many things messed up... No wonder I started therapy in January 2020, spent 4 months in the hospital/day clinic and am still trying to figure out my way in life.
I have always known that the responsibility put on me as a child probably wasn't good or healthy, that I didn't really wanted or liked being considered "wise" or "mature" for my age more that is was necessary, that I've always felt that part of my childhood was stolen from me, but it is very reaffirming and comforting to hear that there is a word for my experience. Thank you for that!
I know exactly what you mean. I don't remember a time when I didn't feel the need to take care of my mom. I was dealing with bill collectors at the age of 12 because she just 'couldn't'. I was taking care of my brother (17 months younger) and sister (12 years younger) since I can remember. I don't remember my mom really asking me to take care of her, but she never stopped me, so... Even when she died, I was saying things to make her passing easier for her, even though I knew most of it wasn't true for me. It was how she saw herself. So yeah, knowing that there is an actual WORD for that really does feel somewhat comforting. Helps also knowing that I'm not the only one who understands that it wasn't OK.
I am ALWAYS here for Renee hate content 🤣 Midnight Sun spoiler: it's revealed that Renee has the literal supernatural power to manipulate people into doing things she wants without realizing it which I think was S. Meyer's way of "fixing" how crappy she was 🙃
I am not there yet in the book but that kind of makes Renee more questionable in my opinion. I mean she manipulated her daughter into wanting to move to her father? Kind of messed up. And I think Renee was always so, so, so immature.
actually I kind of love that. As someone who has manipulative family members and has dated manipulators, that is such a fantastic supernatural metaphor for manipulative behaviour. It does seem to often come from pain and I do think it's often unintentional, but it's still real and incredibly damaging
That supernatural power is basically what NPD is. But I don't like how she was robbed of her responsibility in an Rowling-esque move to fix a mistake in older books.
As a survivor of this dynamic, parentification feels like the term I had been looking for years now! I am so tempted to just spew out my whole life story in the comments because this has struck such a strong chord for me. I am currently undergoing the growing pains I would have experienced as a teenager in my 20s. It's scary to see how much of my personality, habits, likes and dislikes, even hobbies and fucking beliefs were made *for* others instead of being my own discovery. It is a very scary journey and one that I have still not been able to fully commit to. I hope you know that you have brought a great deal relief to a part of me that has been grasping at words, trying to express itself for a long, long time.
Hearing you describe parentification like, struck me in an awful way. I’m the oldest of me and my two siblings, and there’s a 6 year and an 8 year age gap between me and them respectively. I basically raised those kids, because my mom was largely absent (even if physically there) for many years of their childhoods, and my dad worked all the time to like, keep us alive. So I changed their diapers more often than not, made sure they were entertained and fed, etc. I was hella parentified from a young age on, in the practical way and emotionally when I got older, and I always knew that wasn’t right or normal, but I never had a name for it. Thank you for validating all that.
I am glad that you talked about this because this was something I noticed when attempting to reread Twilight. Bella openly admitted that she was responsible for making sure they had food, that the bills were paid, and the fact that she saw her moving to Forks and Renee moving with Phil less as a transfer of custody of herself and more of a transfer of custody of Renee (to the point where she has to reassure herself that Phil will take over taking care of Renee as if Renee is some helpless toddler) says so much. I don’t know how Renee was able to obtain or retain custody of Bella given that she was an unfit parent, it honestly baffled me.
Because Bella wasn't being obviously abused, fighting for custody would take money he didn't have and... here's the big one... BELLA DIDN'T WANT TO LIVE WITH CHARLIE. Bella complained about how much she hated spending time in Forks as a kid and when Charlie realised it he stopped forcing her to go and instead went to visit her which wasn't often, again because of money and lack of time off. In defence of Charlie, Renee took Bella when she was a baby and moved to Arizona. He tried to be a parent as much as he could but it's hard to be a parent to a kid that does not want you around especially when they live so far away. He was kind of blindsided by all of a sudden having custody of this teenager who felt she was more grown up than she actually was and he floundered. So yeah, he wasn't a great parent but he tried and Bella fought back against it the entire way. Trying's more than Renee did.
Personally, the content on your channel is enough of a departure from the style and presentation of Cinema Therapy that it would be super great to see you do more videos on Twilight.
I was not expecting to identify with this, but when you started talking about illness, it made me realize that I WAS parentified by my dad in the last few months of his life. It wasn’t for very long, and I’m glad I had that time with him, but I developed very disordered eating habits when left to my own devices. I’ve had a hard time forgiving myself for that, but having this new way of looking at it helps!
Oh ohhh I'm here for this! Micky I'd watch ALL the Twilight videos you'd post, I hated Renee too, how could you just dump your kid like that?? She couldn't have just taken her with her, or like made arrangements to come back and see her every few months, you had to completely abandon the poor thing, no wonder Bella has questionable love interests
So turns out I was parentified. Don’t do it people! Parentification together with a bunch of other abuse from multiple places and people in my childhood lead me to develop anxiety, depression and an eating disorder. If you’ve experienced trauma once you’re also more likely to experience trauma again so when I was 15 I was in a situation that gave me ptsd. Now at the young age of 20 I’ve been diagnosed with not one but TWO personality disorders. Borderline and avoidant personality disorder. This is what happens (can happen) when you abuse your child. Just don’t do it. Even if you don’t mean to parentify your kid, you should stop as soon as you figure out you’re doing it. No what happened to me won’t happen to everyone and everyone’s story is different, but the fact is it did happen to me and it’s also not that rare for it to happen.
I've seen this kind of thing when I went through ABA therapy. The therapists made me feel like I had to be responsible for other people's comfort by forcing me not to stim which stimming is important and a self-soothing behavior. So this entire video makes a lot of sense to my life.
“Children should never feel like they are responsible for sacrificing their wants and needs to make their parents happy.” That one hit close to home 😭😭😭
I thing I kinda like about Bella is that if you look at her character a bit more she is actually kinda deep. Like other than parentification there is a whole discussion about Bella and autism.
I really never thought about how toxic it could be to convince myself that I was grateful for my trauma. I think that's how it was drilled into me over time, but this video made me think about how there is a big difference between being grateful that something happened and having accepted that something happened. Thank you very much for this video.
Honestly, Meyer's Mormon background very much influenced her characterization of Bella's parents, as well as Bella's relationship with both of them (ESPECIALLY Charlie. because he's a man and therefore even though he's been a bachelor for years has no idea how to take care of himself, to the point he can't even boil water). Like she didn't even try.
Not entirely sure but I seem to remember that Charlie mentions that he was able to take care of himself before she came around but that she didn't believe him and made it her job to take care of him. For me it was always a manifestation of her mother being irresponsible and forcing Bella to be the mature 'adult' in the house, even though she was only a teenager.
This definitely gave me some clarity. I have a cousin who is a year older than me who was diagnosed with ASD at 10. Everyone in the family suspected it for the large majority of his life before then. I was always put in charge of him when we would go to public playgrounds/mcdonalds play-place to make sure kids were not taking advantage of him and to prevent conflict between him and other kids. He also had a tendency to lie so I was always the one "telling the truth" if we got into a fight about something. If I failed to take care of him and put my own emotions aside (as a child) my grandmother would lecture me as she sobbed about how much I hurt her and him. I knew this had affected me but didn't know the full extent as to why.
Thank you for talking about this! It's a pet peeve of mine that people like to trash Twilight and call Bella an idiot but never acknowledge how she was set up to make the decisions that she did by her upbringing. The older I get the more I realize that media geared towards teens and kids normalizes shitty parenting.
Thank you for bringing a new lens to the series! We’ve all heard so much criticism of the problematic romantic relationships in Twilight, at this point it’s like beating a dead horse. I appreciate you pointing out something that is far more subtle but can be just as harmful.
I think the best/strongest example of parentification in media is Fiona from Shameless. If you ever decide to explore this issue further, I think it would be great to talk about her.
Fiona is a great example, because its very clear the whole show, its a huge part of her character and bc she leaves the family specifically to take care of herself as an adult.
@@leopardshadow333 SPOILERS FOR SHAMELESS: My only major issue with what happened in regards to her storyline is that she decides to become the legal guardian of her underage siblings during season 3 and by the time she just straight up hops on a plane and leaves in season 9, she essentially drops all of her responsibilities of serving as the guardian for Liam (who was the youngest child out of the family and he was about 10-11 years old when she left). Then in the last season, Liam is constantly worried about the house being sold because he's afraid that he's gonna end up homeless without anyone who is going to care for him (Debbie had a 4-5 year old daughter, Ian moved out and lived with Mickey, Carl just entered adulthood at 18-19 years old, etc). Lip had to reassure Liam that he doesn't have to worry about being abandoned and told him that he can stay with him, Tami, and Fred. I understood where Fiona was coming from and needed to figure out her own life as well, but the fact that Liam was left in that kind of position for a child just makes Fiona leaving on that plane look terrible. He did not deserve any of that and no kid should feel worried about becoming homeless or about a house being sold. It would made a lot more sense for Fiona to take only Liam with her so that she could continue sorting out her life while also continuing to fulfill her responsibilities of caring for Liam for several more years until he became 18 since the majority of the other Gallagher siblings were already adults by that point. Also, Frank died in the finale, so essentially Liam doesn't really have an official legal guardian. I assume that Lip became his next legal guardian and went to court to make it official, but it's very unclear with the situation is with Liam.
I love breaking down movies into the psychological horror fests many actually are. Honestly, it doesn’t even make me hate or like them more or less; my only problem is with movies and shows that portray blatantly toxic relationships like they’re goals or something extremely romantic which happens often but ultimately won’t ruin my experience with the movie.
I didn't even know this was a thing. Everything about my family makes so much more sense now that I heard you talk about it. I think this is a prevalent pattern in my mom's side of the family but because it was caused by some factors that were out of their control I couldn't think of it as a problem when I could sense that something was wrong. After you explained the concept I paused the video and asked my mother what she thought of it. And the conversation we had after that opened my eyes to so many things including stuff about my own upbringing. I'm writing this to thank you and maybe encourage you to please explain concepts like these that might be overlooked in everyday life, they are genuinely helpful. Thank youuuu
I'm less than two years from turning thirty and only realized this year just how much my mother's emotional parentification has fucked me up developmentally. No self-identity, no self-esteem, very few boundaries - I basically just let people attach themselves to me in exchange for even a crumb of validation. It's hard to accept that my mom, my "safe" parent, was never really all that safe to begin with. I know she didn't do it out of malicious intent, but that doesn't make me any less angry at her for putting me through that. Still, I'm glad I learned what parentification is - at least now I can name the beast and begin looking for therapists who can (hopefully) help me heal.
I often tell people that I've been an adult since I was 13 because I had to be. The adults in my life were dealing with the death of my grandma, so was I but my pain was somehow minimized, so I had to be the adult.
God, I wish you were my therapist. I learn so much about me from your videos and you don't even know me! Good lord. I've had one really good therapist but ever since then I've had no luck. And I'm definitely in that camp where I don't have an identity now. I struggle having boundaries and identifying bad people (like professional con man, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, bad people.)
I always found the relationships in twilight sus and I grew up in the twilight generation. However then I found out it was written by a devout Mormon… it made sense.
Yup. Explains a LOT IMO. I grew up in a strict Catholic household and, similar to Mormons and Evangelicals, strict Catholics have a fucked-up view of sexuality and "No sex before marriage" etc. etc. I haven't read the Twilight series, but hearing all the bullshit about "abstinence porn" was quite enough for me to stay awaaaaayyyy lol
@@boofdahpoo To be fair, Bella was very much interested in sex before marriage, Edward was more traditional (being the 1900 born guy he was, when it was not considered appropriate). I think that Stephenie Meyer couldn't shake her background completely, but she made the story accessible to a wider audience and I don't think religious messages are that imporant in the novel. There is a slight comment of Edwards believing he doesn't possess a soul as a vampire, but Bella thinks he does still have one, which balances the views out in my opinion. A writer can't shake off their own background completely, but in Twilight, it was handled with care.
Please do talk about Twilight some more! I've been looking at it in retrospect too and I'm noticing a lot of 'yikesy' things about it. Nonetheless though I'm also so very glad that this is being addressed. Going through PTSD counselling, I've come to realise that I bore the brunt of the parentification process of being the 'best friend', the 'peer', and the 'emotional anchor' of my parents. I'm not sure about my siblings (since they were already moved out when I was born) but mom never really could handle her emotions correctly and dad was just executively dysfunctional that I'd end up being the 'counsellor' for them at random points in time. It made me dread coming home from school or talking to them at all because I'd get so nervous and anxious to be like an adult which, at 12, I had no idea how to do so except shut myself off emotionally. It was expected that they could talk to me about anything so there was a lot of responsibility I took on that I'm now realising, "Oh yeah, that's kind of fucked up to have to be emotionally mature as a kid and not be allowed to express myself." I was always called an 'old soul' because I was 'mature for my age', which opened up a very icky can of worms that some people could guess at what happened next. I don't consider my parents bad people (well, mom anyway, dad was a piece of work) and I'm sure they meant well; they thought the best way to raise me was by showing that I could be on equal footing with them. But when I was dreading going home because I was guessing if they had a bad day at work and wanted to unload all that stress onto me, that was when it was getting bad. I appreciate that they tried to respect me, but it was just a wrong way to do it. I'm glad this was mentioned because I've had to wonder if it was all me just being messed up or not appreciating what I had well enough until I went into counselling and my therapist also said this too.
It's really frustrating when your mother makes you responsible for her emotions and then also imposes unreasonable boundaries on you. Like, either it's okay for your kid to take on an adult role and you give them space or you parent them and are the one who imposes boundaries.
ohh i relate to this so much! when I was a kid I would have to mediate my parents’ arguments and maybe-we-should-get-divorced conversations like i was their therapist lol I was like 12
I def latched onto this aspect of the book when I originally read them as a kid. I used to (self destructively) hold myself to something I called the "bella standard", where if I wasn't performing perfectly in school and taking care of all household maintenance I wasn't doing enough.
OMG thank you for describing emotional parentification. I always hated when my mom would say I was like her "big sister" and as an adult, it bothers me even more -- so nice to have an explanation of what exactly was going on and that it felt wrong because it was wrong
This video helped A LOT. On top of understanding my feelings that I used to word as "I feel like my parents are the children of the house and I am the parent." and realising that they are valid, I realised how many children's books I have read that normalised parentification and that's why I was able to relate to the main characters. So thank you. I love your content. Lot's of love frome Turkey.
Thanks for the video! I'm the oldest sibling of 5, and the youngest was born when I was 9. I definitely felt like a third parent sometimes and I recognise myself in a lot of things you said. I was always praised for being mature, when I was 14-16 all my friends were online and thought I was in my twenties until I told them. Led me to getting into a relationship with someone who was much older that should have known better and blaming myself for it afterwards
"Children being made to feel responsible for the emotions of the adults" - that as an example of parentification that explains why parents' measures to protect kids when they are really worried and overprotective can backfire. Parents like this tend to be so overcome with worry about their child's safety that they don't let the kid do much of anything (like my father, or the father in Finding Nemo who was a lot like my dad). And the thing with this kind of worry is - parents can't hide it, really, so whatever the parent might have intended (usually keeping their little one safe) the kid feels the burden of the parent's worry and feels responsible for making sure their parent doesn't worry (in a way that conflicts with the kid wanting to do things and make the thing they do less safe when they DO do them because they are carrying the burden of doing the thing AND the burden of protecting the parents from worry by hiding the thing and following guidelines they cannot pretend not to break even at the risk of their own safety). And so, in an attempt to protect their hold, these worrywart parents unintentionally parentify their kids, when in fact their intention was kind of the opposite - to protect the kid until the kid was "ready" (which might not happen even if the parent intended independence because that kind of worry never goes away unless the parent actually faces it and works through it). I wish this was explained more often, this sort of backfire effect, because there are quite a few parents out there, including my own dad, who fall into this trap, who unintentionally emotionally parentify their kids in an attempt to keep their child safe. And I am an adult and still have relational issues related to my dad's excessive worry - even though he is aging, his cognitive functions are starting to slip (as if they weren't compromised in some ways already by severe ADHD that was never treated or accommodated due to him being a Boomer) and lately I had to pull HIS chestnuts out of the fire. Which makes it all the more infuriating when I try to argue with him about something (that my mom is okay with) and he cannot evaluate the risks of what I am trying to do rationally - as if I didn't have enough mental health issues already (which is why I can't just get out - and it's not as if my parents are abusive, it's just that this one area, the worry, is a huge issue where nothing else is).
I didn't know that what I had experienced was named and dealt with in therapy. I grew up with 5 siblings. I was 2nd oldest and the oldest girl. Changing diapers and such were "normal chores" for me, as well as babysitting by the time I was 10. My mom died when I was 13. Friends of our family would always tell me it was my job "to be everyone's mom now." Sadly, I'm sure that if I'd talked with my father about it, he'd have said no, that's not the case. But at the same time, it wasn't like he could afford a nanny to take of the younger kids, so the role of raising them while he worked would've still been on me and my older brother. It wasn't until my mid-20s that it dawned on me that the responsibilities that had been placed on us were more than what we could handle appropriately at that point in our lives. I recognized my behaviors to be similar to what you've described here- I'm a "mother hen" at work. I've even been told by a teenage coworker that I'm more like a mom to her than her own mom. I show up even when I'm sick because I've never put my own health first (it wasn't until 2020 with being sent home from work whenever sick due to precautions that I ever actually started taking time for myself when I get sick), even though I demand my coworkers to take care of themselves and go home if they need to- "don't worry. I can handle it by myself," even when I'm overwhelmed and burnt out.
bruh the amount of „wow that sounds familiar“ and „oh now it makes sense“ I felt during this video is very eye opening. I never knew there was a word for this thing and that it is actually this harmful but now it makes a lot of sense, why I experience anxiety, panic attacks and frequently depression (and a type of anger towards my mom I could never quiet explain to myself before). This video is super important! I think most people don‘t know how harmful parentification really is because it’s oftentimes praised as a kid being „so mature for their age“ or „so independent“. I also feel especially girls are expected to be just naturally caregivers and caretakers of their younger siblings (like little moms). Of course not to forget the whole trope of a boy having to be the „man of the house“ when the father is absent/dead/etc.
Me watching this video: *I'm in this video and I don't like it* lmao But really, you described this so well. I didnt even realize until I went to college and cut my mother off (and only talked to my other family members every couple weeks or more) that I was really responsible for holding the entire household together and that everything went down the drain as soon as I left. It's also so difficult to not then blame yourself for that, i.e. leaving and then everything falling apart, even though becoming your own independent person with your own wants/needs/likes/dislikes/etc. is part of becoming an ACTUAL, healthy adult. It also really grinds my gears when people use my academic successes and achievements to rationalize my upbringing being ok. Just because it manifested in me as perfectionism, overachievement (often to the point of exhaustion), and hyper-organization doesnt make it any less of a shitty family dynamic.
I've been through a lot of this and am working through my confusing feelings of pride about stepping up at a young age and resentment towards missing a lot of my childhood. Thank you for giving this a voice and making me feel seen .
i was parentified from a very young age (practically my whole life), but I have a difficult time holding that against my mom because she was dealing with very severe untreated trauma and drug abuse. I appreciated that you added that people in these situations aren’t always being malicious or intentionally neglectful, sometimes it’s the result of generational trauma (not excusing it, just acknowledging the grey areas)
i’ve pretty much forgotten about this, but i’m told by my mom that during the time my dad was cheating on her (they didn’t end up divorcing, unfortunately), that i (a 9 year old) “helped her a lot” and “more than she (my mom) helped me” and it’s definitely i think the start of the rapid decaying of our relationship, with my dad too. also i don’t know if id call this parentification or just being rushed, but i was always pressured to drive as soon as i turned 16, go to college immediately after i graduated and have it all planned out, and just general things. i’m the youngest, and both of my parents were the youngest too, and i never saw them pressure my older brothers like they did to me- they might’ve but i don’t know- and i feel like that partially them trying to live through me, which has made me freeze and have 0 drive to do anything for 5 years
ALL of this hit so close to home for me! I was parentified a majority of my childhood, whether it was babysitting during summers, having to take my little sister with me to friends houses so she wasn't "bored" at home, or walking to a store at 10 years old for things a parent needed, but they couldn't get due to being hungover. I always thought it was a normal part of life for everyone. But as I started working on my traumas & going to therapy I've realized how much it still effects me today & how hard I try to avoid doing anything that's parentification to my own kiddos. I also grew up with a Mother of narcissistic tendencies & had to cut off all communication a year ago due to accountability issues & constant gaslighting when I'd speak about the things I went through as a child.
"You're very mature for your age!" I got that compliment all.the.time. And I hated it. I was abandoned by my father, parentified by my mother, and abused by my stepfather all before I was a teenager. Of course I was different than other kids. I didn't have a normal childhood.
I'm one of those people who has experienced parentification but not through abuse or intentional neglect. To me, it happened because I have a younger autistic sister, and my parents both had burnout and depression, so they often didn't have enough energy left to give me proper attention. That said, my parents have always tried their best and I don't hate them at all. I am currently in therapy for my parentification though, and my ADD struggles. I also think my ADD has had an influence on me acting like a parent towards my sister and mediating between my parents and/or my sister. So yeah, it's not always due to bad intentions, I'm glad you pointed that out!
Yeah I like that she acknowledged that, otherwise it kind of means only people who had full on abusive parents are likely to recognize it in their experience. I think some circumstances are likely to create some level of parentification no matter how much you try to prevent it? My situation is similar to yours in that my younger brother is autistic, on the high needs side of the spectrum (aka “low functioning” aka for him an intellectual disability is part of his autism), and I think I might have adhd too. I’m lucky in that my parents did try to allow me to keep my independence from him and I wouldn’t say that I felt I had to parent them. But I still relate to aspects of parentification in my relationship with my brother in that even though I don’t feel I was pressured to care for him as full time as my parents did/do my relationship to him is still one of like a third carer to him rather than that of a sibling. And I guess I kind of took up that role alongside my parents and related more to them than to him. Especially as we got older and he developed at a much slower pace than I did it was like the age difference between us got bigger and bigger, and whatever element of brother sister relationship we did have as kids dissipated.
I love my parents and they were really trying to do their best and I understand that now as an adult. With that being said as a teenager I was in charge of their emotions. When they had problems I was their therapist that they would rant to about the other person and I would try to fix the issues. My mom also gets overwhelmed and gives up easy so almost every Saturday I was sitting her down, talking through her emotions with, creating a grocery list and sending her out the door so we would have food the next week. It was exhausting and I'm still trying to retrain my brain that I'm not in charge of managing other people's emotions. Great video. Not a fan of twilight but I liked watching it anyway :)
Oh jeez, a video about my relationship with my mom! Even though Cinema Therapy has done an amazing job covering the Twilight series, I still love hearing your views! I would love to see you cover more media, whether it be movies or memes. I would also like to see you talk about more trauma related to neglectful parents and the different ways it can present itself in adulthood. As an adult child of addicts, I would like to hear your thoughts!
Oh my god. You’ve literally helped me to understand completely why I feel like I have no idea who I am.. i have spent a lot of time working on my boundaries, and working on how I am not responsible for everyone in my life, I am only responsible for me, but always troubling me underneath that is, I don’t know who ‘me’ is or what she needs. I cannot wait to bring this up with my own therapist and see if things can change for me. Thank you so much. 💖
Thank you for the video, I appreciates it. When you you mentioned parentification in your previous video, it truly blew my mind. At 37 years old, I had no idea there was a name for what I went through.
I never though I had trama in this way but it’s honestly too relatable. Being in between my parents and the main thing they’re arguing about is my well-being. ......I need to talk to my therapist.
I'd love to see your take on all of the problematic elements you find in Twilight! Even if someone else did it just as well it's still cool to get your stance. Awesome video!
Very interested to hear more about the other problematic ish in twilight. I used to get that comment about being more mature than my age when I was a kid... All the time. I don't even really know what the specific trauma was, though I have some ideas. There was a RUclips video that surprised me cause they said that moving is the second most traumatic event for someone, second only to a death in the family. When I turned ten we moved for the first time, and started moving every three years after that. It was really sad and difficult to be uprooted that much, and I feel like I'm really good at being a chameleon especially in large groups, but not always so great at just being myself. I found a twelve step program when I was seventeen, and it's so good to have a place that I can talk about how I feel... That was just completely taboo in a military family, even just having feelings was taboo
Military family here too. I saw a recent article saying the worst times for a kid to move is 10-13. The effects being lifelong anxiety/depression and addiction/suicide. I also didn't have a mother for age 13 as she was stationed in another country before we had the internet. Also, narcissist mom. I've moved roughly every three years my whole life, and I'm 38 now. You're not alone, and learning to take care of your mental health is a big thing. Parentification of the kids seems like part of the deal with military families. Also, I hope you're learning to and/or making time for having fun :) now that we're old enough to really appreciate it, I feel like fun is important.
Mickey’s words at 2:48 really resonate with me: My mom was a single parent with a lot of parental issues of her own (she grew up in a toxic religious household) and was constantly in relationships with men that would hurt her emotionally and, sometimes, physically. As a child, she hurt me a lot (as well as my 3 other siblings). So much so that I was constantly vying for her attention (positive or negative), approval, and love. Those feelings have made my adult relationship with my mom awkward and difficult. I’ve tried multiple times to have a conversation about it with my mom, and she shuts it down every time with “I did the best I could.” While I don’t doubt that, I feel that she also needs to understand and own up to all the wrong and hurt she did cause. My mom is a relatively good person (or at least she tries), and she’s a good grandmother to my son (so good that sometimes I find myself feeling both relieved and jealous all in one breath). It’s easier to hurt those closest to you, especially family, because you think it will be fine as “they’re your family and they should just understand”. I’m still working on this myself. Honest communication goes a long way.
Gosh this was uncomfy for me to listen too. Parentification is insidious and damaging, don't pass it down to your children (if you want them). This video served as a reminder that I really have a lot to unpack in this area.
My dad likes to tell me to take it easy and enjoy high school. "Don't worry too much about getting a job or college! Be a kid. Have fun!" and, I mean, I do. It's just that's not how life has taught me. I tend to expect myself to function as an adult would, when I have much less experience. It's uncomfortable for me. That's partially because of our life experiences though. My dad probably didn't face anything nearly as traumatic as what I've faced in the past y the time he was my age- and I'm not just saying that- we free up in very different family sotuations, and my childhood family situation was/is unique because all of my sibilings are adopted.
THANK YOU for saying come here and give me a hug. My parents did that every night before bed, then we went upstairs and put ourselves to bed. I knew I suffered parentification, but had a hard time putting my finger on it. Thank you!
My mum used to always wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me she’s scared and upset so she’d end up sleeping in my bed a lot. I used to think everyone’s parents were the same for a long time. Thank god I’m 22 and living with my boyfriend now
So good to hear someone online talk about this,more people need to be aware 🥰 I was parentified to the point that some of my family took to calling me Cinderella..I didn't find a prince charming though,I found many abusive man-children before I decided on being a hermit 🙃
Wow, thank you for explaining Parentification. I'd never heard that term, but now I can definitely identify friends and kids at school who experienced it.
My wife and I are adopting 2 young kids from foster care. Our 3 year old hides food and sneaks it to her 2yo little brother, she sticks up for him if we make him cry (no you can't drink the dog water, you have a sippy cup right here *cue melt down* kind of cry) or when the Dr gives him a shot she'll go toe to toe with the Dr. "DON'T HURT MY BROTHER!!!" Fearless in her care of her brother. We're working hard to assure her we will always take care of both of them, they are both safe, and she can be sister not Mom/bodyguard.
Ngl, I always wondered why people started saying I sounded mature for my age a few years ago. With how she described it, it did kinda fit how things went for me in a certain period of my life. I appreciated you bringing this up.
I... seriously didn't realize that I've been through this. I obviously knew that I grew up in a family where my mother was an addict, and there were a lot of trauma's I have experienced through that alone, but thank you for this video. I took care of my siblings as best I could, and took over the "normal mom roles" while my mother was passed out or useless. Things like making meals, waking my siblings to get to school on time, doing laundry or other cleaning, and being the emotional support beam for my siblings. Ouch. This video hurt. At least now I have a term for it. EDIT: In thinking about this more, I also realize that in the relationships I've chosen, I've chosen one where I am that "mom" role... to my husband. We don't have children, and by my own choice, never will, but I realize that all the things I do to care for my husband is because I've been programmed to do so from such a young age that I don't know how to untangle myself from it.
When I was about 12 some kids called 911 when it wasn't an emergency and the kids mom got mad at me because she thought her kids were my responsibility because I was the oldest. I was 12 add my parents hadn't told me to watch over anyone, I was just there to hang out in the church basement while they finished with singing practice (tbh we probably shouldn't have been left unattended when the oldest of us was 12, 2000's was a fucked up time man). And in that moment, I understood why her kids were so messed up.
Commenting again because I just have to say, watching this video introduced me to the concept of parentification, and it started me on a journey I will forever be grateful for. In the last few days, I have uncovered so many deep feelings from my early childhood, just my exploring my thoughts in regards to parentification, and I have finally began a journey of discovering who I really am with help from my own therapist. I will eternally thank you for putting concepts and ideas like this out there for ordinary people to see and understand. Just thank you.
As a person who experienced this in their childhood I found this really validating and helpful. Thanks so much for bringing this up. I’m going to share this with friends who went through this as well.
My parents brag about how they had 2 daughters before having 2 sons because that meant they had their "little helpers" first. They're proud of parentifying us girls and praise us for being mini moms
Yikes. Sometimes I just can’t believe how blind some parents are (including my own parents). Sorry that shit happened to you.
@@julieannelovesbooks thank you, we made it through!
@@raspberryitalia3464 I hope you are doing better now and worked on any trauma, if not that's okay too. Best wishes for you.
@@heatherhewitt3760 I only recently learned about parentification so therapy sounds like a good goal lol
My mom did that too, she left me and my older sister alone with our infant younger siblings for hours at a time everyday when we were little kids.
Reading Twilight as a cautionary tale about the effects of parentification and not developing one's own identity in a normal way almost makes it a good book. Suddenly Bella's blank-slate personality and attraction to needy, controlling people makes sense.
If Stephanie Meyers was self aware she'd actually be a good writer. Bella is a very believable character, except that all the stuff that explains her, like the parental abuse and Bella's extreme poor self image, don't appear to be deliberate, it's fascinating. SMeyer clearly pays attention to people around her, she draws very real characters, but at the same time gives 0 thought to /why/ the people behave that way.
@@Sapphykins She probably lacks that in-depth analysis because Bella is a stand-in for Meyer herself. The whole series is based on a dream she had, in which she presumably was the lead character.
@@jasperkanes8522 i didnt know the dream thing, but i had a feeling bella was a self insert. its so obvious when you actually consider *how* accurate bella's response is to such bad parenting, but like yall said, without any of the self awareness.
it would also partially explain bella's lack of personality. i notice similar about most self insert characters- im struggling to word this properly so sorry in advance, but people dont feel the need to write more for that character because to them, the gaps are obvious. most people arent self aware enough to properly write themselves into a story, especially as the main character, so the characters personality becomes more of a list of likes and dislikes than it does a fully fleshed out personality.
in other words- you can really tell this was originally written as a fanfic.... she just replaced "Y/N" with "bella" and published that shit lmao
@@Sapphykins
It might have to do with her mormon background. Mormonism has a huge emphasis on family (their spiritual beliefs around family are actually represented I'm the Cullen family, interestingly enough. There's a lot of sneaky mormonism in the Saga) and large families are highly regarded and encouraged.
Adoption and fostering is very common (which is actually a bit sad in many ways because mormonism is so destructive and sad) and there's a lot of controversy around hormonal birth control within the church. People have very big families and the extremely misogynistic views of the church result in the girls in the family taking the brunt of the parentification, and it's seen as normal.
Smeyer lacks self awareness around this because of cult indoctrination, and it's honestly really sad.
It wasn’t intentional. Don’t credit Meyer for that. Bella is herself, and she knows herself, and didn’t think to make sure that the readers know her too.
Ohhhh, this explains why I feel simultaneously way ahead of *and* leagues behind my peers. Cool.
Haha I feel heard by this. 🥲
Hey, noice pfp 🌚
@@nesser52 thank you!
I feel myself heard as well. I am hearing impaired and have some learning difficulties so I was always behind everyone else . . . but my teachers I feel are half to blame. This one woman, Denise, she would take me out of Math, the thing I struggle most with, and bring me to the Library so she could scream and swear and insult me about how stupid and useless I am as she made me learn cursive. My handwriting is beautiful now, but my math skills are terrible. She was only one teacher who made school difficult. So they had a certain file on me and what I am capable of doing and placed me at a certain level and forced me to only do things at that level, but the books they made me read I found boring. At Dollar Store, I picked up a beaten up copy of the first Harry Potter book and mom agreed to buy it for me, so I began reading that and started asking my mom to get me the others as they came out. Instead of being amazed at how incredible it was that I was starting to read huge chapter books and understand them perfectly and be able to talk about them, my teachers tried to ban the books because of the witchcraft. They even tried to control what I was allowed to read at home but I am Thankful my mom was at least proud of me for being able to read something so ahead of what everyone decided I was able to do. I can't tell you how many times I have read through all those books I have collected. I have a entire bookshelf in my room dedicated to my favorite books. Harry Potter, a book of the complete series of Narnia stories, I have the trilogy of Lord Of The Rings and I have The Hobbit, I have the series of The Books Of Pellinor which I recommend people to take a look at and last year for my birthday I got the Prequel of the series, The Bone Queen. I have White Fang, and Baree (similar to White Fang) and a book of poems by my favorite poet, Robert Frost with the bookmark on The Road Not Taken, which is my favorite by him. I know what it's like to be way behind and yet leagues ahead of what is expected of me.
Sorry about the long post. Anyway, I did own the Twilight series and then I donated them to them to Good Will as a sort of giving back to the store that changed a lot for me.
Every time someone says "you're very mature for your age" I want to say "thanks it was all the managing/mediation of the emotions I had to do for the adults around me as a young adolescent"
😂
"Thank you, years of good old trauma finally paid off" 😂
The 'you're very mature for your age' compliment has never sit well with me for this exact reason lol
@@VibingMeike
It did to me because I realised only in my mid-twenties that I've been emotionnaly neglected and had to act overly protective towards my mom. My parents never intended to hurt me, they really did their best, and that's why it was so hard for me to realise -and accept- that something was off.
Saaaaaaame. I always had to be the mature one in every family situation with my mom and it was exhausting. My mom didn't get to be my mom for a solid chunk of my life, I had to parent her instead because she was the reckless and childish one. She's gotten better but that didn't happen until I finished college and she managed to quit drinking. So every time I was told "you're so mature for your age" I always thought "yeah because I'm the parent, not my mom."
Hello, spiritual twin
I hated Renee in the books and the movies. She dumped Bella on her dad, someone that she had only seen 2-3 months a year when growing up, and she took off to pursue her "dreams" which included and was limited to Phil. She was just horrible.
and then in turn passed that attitude down to bella. once bella met edward any of bella’s hopes and dreams shifted to him
Oh PLEASE talk about all the problematic shit in Twilight. I have not seen the other person's videos on it (I probably should they sound interesting), but I would be really interested to see what your take on things are. I'm sure you have insights that are unique. Plus I don't think it ever hurts to have more voices talking about harmful things like this especially if professionally you all can agree on certain points. It can add validity and help those at risk understand these issues.
I have seen all the cinematherapy videos and they were great but I would love to see mickey’s take. I love jonathan and allan and think their perspective is so educational and fun. I’ll continue watching them. However, I do think it would be amazing to have a woman covering similar topics and subjects. ☺️ It’s still a niche area of the internet. Take up that space Mickey! 🎉
I agree, it couldn't hurt to have more voices/point of views on the subject.
yesss Cinematherapy is amazing, I love their genuine reactions and real emotions. Mickey scratches my itch for more insightful and informational reactions, so they're not exactly the same but both channels are defnitely fun to watch!
I haven’t seen the entirety of their Twilight vids, but i have seen some of their others and they are really interesting
Agree 100%!!
In Midnight Sun Edward's description of Bella's mom, when he first hears her thoughts, is that her needs are so loud and overpowering that of course Bella felt compelled to take care of her even though she was the child and her mother the adult. Reading that description it suddenly clicked for me that she wasn't a good parent. It felt like I finally could see all the red flags I had missed before.
Maybe it helped that I was reading from a different characters perpective. When reading from Bella's perpective, Bella often passes her mother's behavior off as normal and expected. She never questions her mother's behavior, so I never questioned it either.
It would be nice to read a story where a character who is in an abusive relationship and doesn't realize it, is able to eventually recognize the abuse from an outside source. I think it could go a long way to help those in a simular situation realize that what is happening to them isn't okay.
I lived the outside source of that. I have a friend whose mother is abusive in a variety of ways (kind of line a toned-down Mother Gothel from Tangled) and he had no idea that her behavior wasn't kosher because it was the only behavior he knew. He's grown a hell of a lot since we first started chatting and come to recognize her failings more clearly.
Yess!! I thought the same when reading that part like wow renee is really an awful mother. And that's why Bella is "so grown up for her age"
this comment alone almost makes me want to read midnight sun even though I've long since abandoned the entire franchise because of the controlling and manipulative behaviour of Edward and Jacob
@@jasperkanes8522 there was a youtube channel that uploaded the audiobook if you're interested
Mmm no HARD disagree. It was clear to me when reading the books, Bella never acted like it was a good thing. It was stated from Bellas perspective that her mom was flighty and flakey, and couldn't be relied on, as a responsible parent. She never said it was a normal thing that everyone else usually deals with too.
It was said in a way.. where she understood there wasn't a lot she was able to do to about it, or to change it. Especially as a young child, and as a minor teenaged girl.
So she chose to focus on the good aspects of her mom and their relationship, instead of dwelling on the obvious bad ones. Because it wasn't going to change anything, so there wasn't really a point. Not as in.. this is acceptable and fine. More as in.. this just is what it is.
And why she was more comfortable with letting her mom go to be with Edward. Because she had Phil to manage her now... so she didn't have to worry as much, about how her mother would cope with not seeing her anymore. Which says more than enough if you ask me.
Which absolutely does explain why Bella has a constant wall up around everyone she meets, and why she's always for there other people emotionally.. when they need someone for advice, or to lean on.. but doesn't let them be there for her. Not even Edward. Hence her eventual vampire superpower "The Sheild".
Which she also doesn't fully drop until the last few seconds of the final movie, when she finally lets Edward COMPLETELY inside her thoughts. By letting him see the montage of them together through the entire series.
I actually do have a narcissistic abusive parent, and I am estranged from her through my own choice. I was parentified, in addition to being the scapegoat in the golden child/scapegoat dynamic with my brother. I appreciate that’s often not the case for others, but for me there is no grey area and the worst thing someone can say to me is some variation on “it’s your mother and she loves you!”
Yes you’re so right! It is absolutely the case for some people and I’m so sorry that it’s the case for you. Telling someone any iteration of the “blood is thicker” bs when they have abusive family like this is never ever okay.
@@MickeyAtkins Love your parentification video. If you can can you make more of these? It's fabulous.
I'm so sorry you had to live that :(
My mom had a narcissistic abusive mother too and she rolled her eyes so often when she got told that a mother loves her child... She told me once that everytime we fought, she felt guilty because she remembered how she felt as a kid, and that that's not true that a mom always loves her child, but that the child always loves their mom, and a mom has some power with that that she has to be careful about. I think about it a lot now that I have my own kids.
When will people figure out that loving someone doesn't prevent you from severely hurting them, just because you love them doesn't mean you know what is best or what is right or what they need, it doesn't protect you from making mistakes, love is not and will never be an excuse and it will never on its own be enough to make up for the harm caused. Not to mention a lot of abusers genuinely don't love their kids, like your mother by the sound of it, but that doesn't even need to be the case for that to be an incredibly stupid defence.
I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Both my mother and my birth father (I have an stepdad/adopted dad; he’s my mom’s second husband and Dad with a capital D for me) abused me as well. My mother always says that “I did my best” when she obviously didn’t. Having a kid with autism (me) isn’t easy, I get that-but you don’t spray a kid in the face with a squirt bottle during a meltdown.
I think it's also important to note that when we mention people "recovering" from or "overcoming" their childhood & other trauma, that doesn't mean the effects of that trauma go away. It's not an "oh this shitty thing happened to you but you talked about it in therapy and now you're better so it's more ok" situation, it's never going to be ok because those effects don't disappear. Some of them may, and you learn to deal with the rest, but it's never going to be what it should have been.
You learn to live with what the trauma turned you into and learn how to become your own person again, but the scars don’t go away. Some types of mental health problems are like a coat you can shed, with enough therapy and effort you’re able to return to a relatively normal life. But the scars of abuse will always be on your skin.
God yeah I wish more people talked about this, it's always either "it never goes away and you'll be suffering horribly forever" or "it goes away and you're completely normal and fine now yay" and nothing in between, when in reality it's all in between those two extremes. It doesn't go away because you can't change the past, but every day you get better at handling the feelings it brings up, it gets easier, you feel safer, you get triggered less and can be happy and content more, yeah whenever you think about what happened to you it will feel empty and cold and tragic but you'll also be able to look at everything that's happening to you in the present and see all the good things and the real love and everything that's beautiful to you and no matter how unfair it was that you had to push through the trauma to get there you will always be thankful that you did. It's no different than living with chronic pain or a disability really, your only choices are learn to function with it or don't and the don't path is unbearable. The do path is hard but at least there are rewards along the way.
I'm 40 and been in therapy for years. The PTSD dreams and triggers (for example) have yet to "go away" and I doubt they ever will. I agree with you.
@@Zaddy-Lu there are specific types of therapy for ptsd you could try? Idk what you’ve done already but I went to a facility where I stayed for 4 days and had daily EMDR and exposure therapy combined with psycho-education and tons of exercise to get back into your body. It was mild exercise though so everyone could participate. Everyone who went there felt like it really made a dent and about 80% of people are ptsd free after that treatment. I know for me that program was life changing.
Yees, thank you so much for that!
Trauma stays with you forever. You just learn to live with it better.
I kind of want to see someone talk about the parentification of Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls, because I think that would be really interesting as a dynamic where it's not inherently abusive but definitely had a not so great impact in the long-run (Rory Gilmore is not a great human being by the end of the series and in the follow up Year in the Life). I wouldn't expect you to do it because its a really long show, but it would be interesting to see especially since there is the dynamic of how Loreli came from an emotionally abusive household herself and having never healed from it and having had Rory so young just went wildly in the opposite direction with her own child.
My mom (who parentified me) loved the relationship between Lorelai and Rory.
Thank you for saying parentification isn’t always malicious, my parents are good people, and they’re good parents now, but they also have the financial/emotional/physical ability to be those parents now and they didn’t when I was growing up so I had to pick up a lot of pieces for them and grew up too fast. I’ve had learn that I’m allowed to be angry and hurt over the loss of my childhood, and I’m allowed to acknowledge that it is my parents doing, but I can still love and forgive them for it without neglecting my own feelings.
Personally, I've chosen NOT to forgive my parents. They were malicious and awful and abused me if chore didn't get done. And their parentification was a choice.
Growing up I got “old soul” a lot. Took me a long time to realize that that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Some positives came out of my parentification but some traumatic shit did too. I’m starting to feel more confident balancing those conflicting lenses.
One thing I learned immediately with my own parenting journey is that there are a million more acceptable ways to teach the positive skills that came from my parentification that don’t involve parentification. I learned conflict resolution from diffusing my parents arguments. My daughter learns conflict resolution from modelling and gentle guidance in age appropriate conflicts. Like which kid gets to play with the Elsa toy.
I've never heard of parentification before!
I'm a single mom with severe depression trying to break the cycle of emotional abuse that I received from my family. My daughters are my best friends and they're responsible and helpful but I definitely encourage them to pursue their own interests and remind them often that they are not in any way responsible for my emotions. That's my job to work through.
Still, I'm definitely going to be more careful from now on to avoid parentifying them. Thank you!
Yeah, this video has me questioning my own parenting habits… I definitely lean on my daughter for emotional support. Damn
A thing you can do, is maybe see a family therapist, or find one for your daughters. So they can have someone neutral to talk to, and also you can learn how to improve your interactions as a family. Glad you care for your daughters mental health. It's a really important thing that's often overlooked, even today. I wish you to get better. Take care !
Remember they're your kids, not your friends; you'll be fine after that
I never heard of this either.
My mom's mom hid everything from her. Anything bad was swept under the rug, and that lead to some serious emotional issues for my mom. Her response when raising me was to tell me everything. It led to us being incredibly close, she's long been my best friend. I've only just realized that I was emotionally parentified under the guise that she was being honest. She didn't do it on purpose, but when I first read Twilight I loved Rene and Bella relationship. Reminded me of me and my mom. It's been a hard pill to swallow and move on from
Woah, the bit about generational trauma and parentification really made me feel some kind of way. I keep trying to talk to my mom about her problems with oversharing and crossing my boundaries and she just keeps saying "well this is how I was raised" as if it's an excuse for her behavior. I'm happy to know that this issue has been identified and I hopefully don't have to put anyone else through that
The quote "This 'you're so mature for your age!' compliment is not actually a compliment because what you're usually complimenting is someone who's survived trauma." got me so hard. So many years growing up I always got that "old soul" "wise beyond her years" "so mature for her age" compliment from older adults yet in school my teachers were always saying "She's doing well and is on the cusp of being above average and could be doing even better if she just worked a little harder!" and as a kid with undiagnosed ADHD those two things were so conflicting for me. How could everyone outside of school think I was so wise but in school my teachers were always telling me to speak up more, focus more, stop making careless mistakes on tests, etc. I didn't even realize how much trauma came from parentification.
This has got me thinking about parent/child relationships on TV. I'd love to hear you talk about the relationship between the mothers and daughters on Gilmore Girls. It's rife with toxic parenting that's often painted as an ideal.
Agreed. It's one of my favorite shows, but there's a lot of dysfunctional things that happen in Gilmore Girls. Lorelai and Rory do NOT have a healthy relationship. It's fun to watch on screen, but not something any kid should want with their parent. Any time Lorelai would try to pull the "parent card" on Rory it almost always backfired on her. Rory did not grow up with any kind of consistent parenting.
I was thinking the exact same thing! I know Dr Kirk Honda covered Gilmore Girls a while back but I would love to hear your take on it
Yes, this made me think of Gilmore Girls as well! I'd love to hear Mickey's thoughts on it. I loved Twilight and GG growing up but there's a lot of problematic content to unpack there.
I also would like to see that video, as this comment chain really made me look at why i enjoyed the problematic stuff in girlmore girls. I recognized it as such, but didnt put the peices together before as to why i enjoyed seeing that very flawed dynamic portrayed.
i was just thinking this omg
Damn, this video has made me realize things about myself that I wasn't necessarily ready for
I feel you. My own unexpected realization journey began about three years ago when one of my professors brought up codependency and enmeshment. Make sure you take care of yourself and don't go too fast! If you are not ready now, you can always leave it and come back later.
Best wishes for your recovery 💛
Same...
I was parentified instrumentally due to a divorce and parentified emotionally because my mother didn’t have a therapist or many close friends around to vent to. It was a trip learning that I’m not the only one to go through this and that it’s an unfortunately common enough phenomenon to have a a name. My mom isn’t a bad person, she just needs a therapist lmao. Researching parentification has helped me to reconcile with my experiences.
I feel this so hard.
8:20 As someone who was heavily parentified (my little sister has cerebral palsy) I would summarise the adverse effects of parentification: When I was supposed to learn how to take care of my self I was too busy taking care of someone else.
And actually selfcare and boundaries are still my bigest struggle till today...
Yes, this! Until I was about 14/15, I was also heavily parentified and one of my siblings even called me "mom" for a period of time. In my mid-late teens my mom started stepping up and trying to take back control of the parent role, but by then I had no idea both how NOT to "parent" everyone else around me and also how to actually take care of myself. Taking care of myself, particularly my emotional needs, is still my biggest struggle as a result. I also still feel the impulse to take care of everyone else in my life and feel guilty when I'm not able to for one reason or another.
I always saw Bella moving to her father's place as the very depressive teenager thinking "well, just because I'm unhappy doesn't mean that everyone should be as well. If I go to dad, mum can enjoy time with her new husband and dad will probably be happy".
She shows no motivation for anything except for Edward, and then for adrenaline rushes and Jacob and has basically no self esteem.
Reminds me of myself a bit (except my parents are still together, what I still don't understand)
Anyway, I guess for me it was rather emotional, the "give me a hug , I'm no feeling well" was kind of an every day thing (depressive mother). But there are so many things messed up... No wonder I started therapy in January 2020, spent 4 months in the hospital/day clinic and am still trying to figure out my way in life.
I have always known that the responsibility put on me as a child probably wasn't good or healthy, that I didn't really wanted or liked being considered "wise" or "mature" for my age more that is was necessary, that I've always felt that part of my childhood was stolen from me, but it is very reaffirming and comforting to hear that there is a word for my experience. Thank you for that!
I know exactly what you mean. I don't remember a time when I didn't feel the need to take care of my mom. I was dealing with bill collectors at the age of 12 because she just 'couldn't'. I was taking care of my brother (17 months younger) and sister (12 years younger) since I can remember. I don't remember my mom really asking me to take care of her, but she never stopped me, so...
Even when she died, I was saying things to make her passing easier for her, even though I knew most of it wasn't true for me. It was how she saw herself. So yeah, knowing that there is an actual WORD for that really does feel somewhat comforting. Helps also knowing that I'm not the only one who understands that it wasn't OK.
I am ALWAYS here for Renee hate content 🤣
Midnight Sun spoiler: it's revealed that Renee has the literal supernatural power to manipulate people into doing things she wants without realizing it which I think was S. Meyer's way of "fixing" how crappy she was 🙃
that’s a twist oof stephanie had to take the heat off of her somehow and ofc she does it by making renee the victim haha
Disagree.
I am not there yet in the book but that kind of makes Renee more questionable in my opinion. I mean she manipulated her daughter into wanting to move to her father? Kind of messed up. And I think Renee was always so, so, so immature.
actually I kind of love that. As someone who has manipulative family members and has dated manipulators, that is such a fantastic supernatural metaphor for manipulative behaviour. It does seem to often come from pain and I do think it's often unintentional, but it's still real and incredibly damaging
That supernatural power is basically what NPD is. But I don't like how she was robbed of her responsibility in an Rowling-esque move to fix a mistake in older books.
As a survivor of this dynamic, parentification feels like the term I had been looking for years now! I am so tempted to just spew out my whole life story in the comments because this has struck such a strong chord for me. I am currently undergoing the growing pains I would have experienced as a teenager in my 20s. It's scary to see how much of my personality, habits, likes and dislikes, even hobbies and fucking beliefs were made *for* others instead of being my own discovery.
It is a very scary journey and one that I have still not been able to fully commit to.
I hope you know that you have brought a great deal relief to a part of me that has been grasping at words, trying to express itself for a long, long time.
Hearing you describe parentification like, struck me in an awful way. I’m the oldest of me and my two siblings, and there’s a 6 year and an 8 year age gap between me and them respectively. I basically raised those kids, because my mom was largely absent (even if physically there) for many years of their childhoods, and my dad worked all the time to like, keep us alive. So I changed their diapers more often than not, made sure they were entertained and fed, etc. I was hella parentified from a young age on, in the practical way and emotionally when I got older, and I always knew that wasn’t right or normal, but I never had a name for it. Thank you for validating all that.
I am glad that you talked about this because this was something I noticed when attempting to reread Twilight. Bella openly admitted that she was responsible for making sure they had food, that the bills were paid, and the fact that she saw her moving to Forks and Renee moving with Phil less as a transfer of custody of herself and more of a transfer of custody of Renee (to the point where she has to reassure herself that Phil will take over taking care of Renee as if Renee is some helpless toddler) says so much. I don’t know how Renee was able to obtain or retain custody of Bella given that she was an unfit parent, it honestly baffled me.
Because Bella wasn't being obviously abused, fighting for custody would take money he didn't have and... here's the big one... BELLA DIDN'T WANT TO LIVE WITH CHARLIE. Bella complained about how much she hated spending time in Forks as a kid and when Charlie realised it he stopped forcing her to go and instead went to visit her which wasn't often, again because of money and lack of time off.
In defence of Charlie, Renee took Bella when she was a baby and moved to Arizona. He tried to be a parent as much as he could but it's hard to be a parent to a kid that does not want you around especially when they live so far away. He was kind of blindsided by all of a sudden having custody of this teenager who felt she was more grown up than she actually was and he floundered. So yeah, he wasn't a great parent but he tried and Bella fought back against it the entire way. Trying's more than Renee did.
Personally, the content on your channel is enough of a departure from the style and presentation of Cinema Therapy that it would be super great to see you do more videos on Twilight.
I was not expecting to identify with this, but when you started talking about illness, it made me realize that I WAS parentified by my dad in the last few months of his life. It wasn’t for very long, and I’m glad I had that time with him, but I developed very disordered eating habits when left to my own devices. I’ve had a hard time forgiving myself for that, but having this new way of looking at it helps!
Oh ohhh I'm here for this! Micky I'd watch ALL the Twilight videos you'd post, I hated Renee too, how could you just dump your kid like that?? She couldn't have just taken her with her, or like made arrangements to come back and see her every few months, you had to completely abandon the poor thing, no wonder Bella has questionable love interests
"some bland boy in phoenix" is actually the sickest burn I've heard in a long time. I need occasion to whip this out.
So turns out I was parentified. Don’t do it people! Parentification together with a bunch of other abuse from multiple places and people in my childhood lead me to develop anxiety, depression and an eating disorder. If you’ve experienced trauma once you’re also more likely to experience trauma again so when I was 15 I was in a situation that gave me ptsd. Now at the young age of 20 I’ve been diagnosed with not one but TWO personality disorders. Borderline and avoidant personality disorder. This is what happens (can happen) when you abuse your child. Just don’t do it. Even if you don’t mean to parentify your kid, you should stop as soon as you figure out you’re doing it. No what happened to me won’t happen to everyone and everyone’s story is different, but the fact is it did happen to me and it’s also not that rare for it to happen.
I've seen this kind of thing when I went through ABA therapy. The therapists made me feel like I had to be responsible for other people's comfort by forcing me not to stim which stimming is important and a self-soothing behavior. So this entire video makes a lot of sense to my life.
“Children should never feel like they are responsible for sacrificing their wants and needs to make their parents happy.” That one hit close to home 😭😭😭
I thing I kinda like about Bella is that if you look at her character a bit more she is actually kinda deep. Like other than parentification there is a whole discussion about Bella and autism.
I really never thought about how toxic it could be to convince myself that I was grateful for my trauma. I think that's how it was drilled into me over time, but this video made me think about how there is a big difference between being grateful that something happened and having accepted that something happened.
Thank you very much for this video.
Honestly, Meyer's Mormon background very much influenced her characterization of Bella's parents, as well as Bella's relationship with both of them (ESPECIALLY Charlie. because he's a man and therefore even though he's been a bachelor for years has no idea how to take care of himself, to the point he can't even boil water). Like she didn't even try.
Not entirely sure but I seem to remember that Charlie mentions that he was able to take care of himself before she came around but that she didn't believe him and made it her job to take care of him. For me it was always a manifestation of her mother being irresponsible and forcing Bella to be the mature 'adult' in the house, even though she was only a teenager.
This definitely gave me some clarity. I have a cousin who is a year older than me who was diagnosed with ASD at 10. Everyone in the family suspected it for the large majority of his life before then. I was always put in charge of him when we would go to public playgrounds/mcdonalds play-place to make sure kids were not taking advantage of him and to prevent conflict between him and other kids. He also had a tendency to lie so I was always the one "telling the truth" if we got into a fight about something. If I failed to take care of him and put my own emotions aside (as a child) my grandmother would lecture me as she sobbed about how much I hurt her and him. I knew this had affected me but didn't know the full extent as to why.
Thank you for talking about this! It's a pet peeve of mine that people like to trash Twilight and call Bella an idiot but never acknowledge how she was set up to make the decisions that she did by her upbringing. The older I get the more I realize that media geared towards teens and kids normalizes shitty parenting.
My synopsis of Twilight is “so Edward was there stalking and creeping me watching my sleep. But he’s hot so I don’t care.” 🤦🏼♀️
Interesting to consider that the reason why Bella didn't have a "self" was that she'd spent all her life taking care of her mom 🙃
Thank you for bringing a new lens to the series! We’ve all heard so much criticism of the problematic romantic relationships in Twilight, at this point it’s like beating a dead horse. I appreciate you pointing out something that is far more subtle but can be just as harmful.
I've watched the Cinrma Therapy videos and love them. However, I would love to hear your thoughts!
This is the most frighteningly accurate to my life explanation of my childhood in a way I didn't know about until I heard it explained.
I think the best/strongest example of parentification in media is Fiona from Shameless. If you ever decide to explore this issue further, I think it would be great to talk about her.
Fiona is a great example, because its very clear the whole show, its a huge part of her character and bc she leaves the family specifically to take care of herself as an adult.
@@leopardshadow333 SPOILERS FOR SHAMELESS:
My only major issue with what happened in regards to her storyline is that she decides to become the legal guardian of her underage siblings during season 3 and by the time she just straight up hops on a plane and leaves in season 9, she essentially drops all of her responsibilities of serving as the guardian for Liam (who was the youngest child out of the family and he was about 10-11 years old when she left). Then in the last season, Liam is constantly worried about the house being sold because he's afraid that he's gonna end up homeless without anyone who is going to care for him (Debbie had a 4-5 year old daughter, Ian moved out and lived with Mickey, Carl just entered adulthood at 18-19 years old, etc). Lip had to reassure Liam that he doesn't have to worry about being abandoned and told him that he can stay with him, Tami, and Fred.
I understood where Fiona was coming from and needed to figure out her own life as well, but the fact that Liam was left in that kind of position for a child just makes Fiona leaving on that plane look terrible. He did not deserve any of that and no kid should feel worried about becoming homeless or about a house being sold. It would made a lot more sense for Fiona to take only Liam with her so that she could continue sorting out her life while also continuing to fulfill her responsibilities of caring for Liam for several more years until he became 18 since the majority of the other Gallagher siblings were already adults by that point. Also, Frank died in the finale, so essentially Liam doesn't really have an official legal guardian. I assume that Lip became his next legal guardian and went to court to make it official, but it's very unclear with the situation is with Liam.
I'm so happy you shouted out Cinema Therapy!! I love those guys so much, anyone who likes your channel should check them out 😁
I love breaking down movies into the psychological horror fests many actually are. Honestly, it doesn’t even make me hate or like them more or less; my only problem is with movies and shows that portray blatantly toxic relationships like they’re goals or something extremely romantic which happens often but ultimately won’t ruin my experience with the movie.
I didn't even know this was a thing. Everything about my family makes so much more sense now that I heard you talk about it. I think this is a prevalent pattern in my mom's side of the family but because it was caused by some factors that were out of their control I couldn't think of it as a problem when I could sense that something was wrong. After you explained the concept I paused the video and asked my mother what she thought of it. And the conversation we had after that opened my eyes to so many things including stuff about my own upbringing. I'm writing this to thank you and maybe encourage you to please explain concepts like these that might be overlooked in everyday life, they are genuinely helpful. Thank youuuu
Loved Cinema Therapy's take on twilight, but this is SUCH a great angle to approach and analyze. Love your take on this!
I'm less than two years from turning thirty and only realized this year just how much my mother's emotional parentification has fucked me up developmentally. No self-identity, no self-esteem, very few boundaries - I basically just let people attach themselves to me in exchange for even a crumb of validation. It's hard to accept that my mom, my "safe" parent, was never really all that safe to begin with. I know she didn't do it out of malicious intent, but that doesn't make me any less angry at her for putting me through that.
Still, I'm glad I learned what parentification is - at least now I can name the beast and begin looking for therapists who can (hopefully) help me heal.
I often tell people that I've been an adult since I was 13 because I had to be. The adults in my life were dealing with the death of my grandma, so was I but my pain was somehow minimized, so I had to be the adult.
God, I wish you were my therapist. I learn so much about me from your videos and you don't even know me! Good lord. I've had one really good therapist but ever since then I've had no luck. And I'm definitely in that camp where I don't have an identity now. I struggle having boundaries and identifying bad people (like professional con man, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars, bad people.)
I always found the relationships in twilight sus and I grew up in the twilight generation. However then I found out it was written by a devout Mormon… it made sense.
Yup. Explains a LOT IMO. I grew up in a strict Catholic household and, similar to Mormons and Evangelicals, strict Catholics have a fucked-up view of sexuality and "No sex before marriage" etc. etc. I haven't read the Twilight series, but hearing all the bullshit about "abstinence porn" was quite enough for me to stay awaaaaayyyy lol
@@boofdahpoo To be fair, Bella was very much interested in sex before marriage, Edward was more traditional (being the 1900 born guy he was, when it was not considered appropriate). I think that Stephenie Meyer couldn't shake her background completely, but she made the story accessible to a wider audience and I don't think religious messages are that imporant in the novel. There is a slight comment of Edwards believing he doesn't possess a soul as a vampire, but Bella thinks he does still have one, which balances the views out in my opinion. A writer can't shake off their own background completely, but in Twilight, it was handled with care.
I'd love to hear your commentary on the toxic Mormon lens Meyer writes teen relationships through
Please do talk about Twilight some more! I've been looking at it in retrospect too and I'm noticing a lot of 'yikesy' things about it.
Nonetheless though I'm also so very glad that this is being addressed. Going through PTSD counselling, I've come to realise that I bore the brunt of the parentification process of being the 'best friend', the 'peer', and the 'emotional anchor' of my parents. I'm not sure about my siblings (since they were already moved out when I was born) but mom never really could handle her emotions correctly and dad was just executively dysfunctional that I'd end up being the 'counsellor' for them at random points in time. It made me dread coming home from school or talking to them at all because I'd get so nervous and anxious to be like an adult which, at 12, I had no idea how to do so except shut myself off emotionally.
It was expected that they could talk to me about anything so there was a lot of responsibility I took on that I'm now realising, "Oh yeah, that's kind of fucked up to have to be emotionally mature as a kid and not be allowed to express myself." I was always called an 'old soul' because I was 'mature for my age', which opened up a very icky can of worms that some people could guess at what happened next.
I don't consider my parents bad people (well, mom anyway, dad was a piece of work) and I'm sure they meant well; they thought the best way to raise me was by showing that I could be on equal footing with them. But when I was dreading going home because I was guessing if they had a bad day at work and wanted to unload all that stress onto me, that was when it was getting bad. I appreciate that they tried to respect me, but it was just a wrong way to do it.
I'm glad this was mentioned because I've had to wonder if it was all me just being messed up or not appreciating what I had well enough until I went into counselling and my therapist also said this too.
It's really frustrating when your mother makes you responsible for her emotions and then also imposes unreasonable boundaries on you. Like, either it's okay for your kid to take on an adult role and you give them space or you parent them and are the one who imposes boundaries.
"You just ruined my whole day!" - my mother, at least once a week. I tell my kids we can have a bad spot in a good day.
ohh i relate to this so much! when I was a kid I would have to mediate my parents’ arguments and maybe-we-should-get-divorced conversations like i was their therapist lol I was like 12
I def latched onto this aspect of the book when I originally read them as a kid.
I used to (self destructively) hold myself to something I called the "bella standard", where if I wasn't performing perfectly in school and taking care of all household maintenance I wasn't doing enough.
OMG thank you for describing emotional parentification. I always hated when my mom would say I was like her "big sister" and as an adult, it bothers me even more -- so nice to have an explanation of what exactly was going on and that it felt wrong because it was wrong
This video helped A LOT. On top of understanding my feelings that I used to word as "I feel like my parents are the children of the house and I am the parent." and realising that they are valid, I realised how many children's books I have read that normalised parentification and that's why I was able to relate to the main characters. So thank you. I love your content. Lot's of love frome Turkey.
Thanks for the video! I'm the oldest sibling of 5, and the youngest was born when I was 9. I definitely felt like a third parent sometimes and I recognise myself in a lot of things you said. I was always praised for being mature, when I was 14-16 all my friends were online and thought I was in my twenties until I told them. Led me to getting into a relationship with someone who was much older that should have known better and blaming myself for it afterwards
"Children being made to feel responsible for the emotions of the adults" - that as an example of parentification that explains why parents' measures to protect kids when they are really worried and overprotective can backfire. Parents like this tend to be so overcome with worry about their child's safety that they don't let the kid do much of anything (like my father, or the father in Finding Nemo who was a lot like my dad). And the thing with this kind of worry is - parents can't hide it, really, so whatever the parent might have intended (usually keeping their little one safe) the kid feels the burden of the parent's worry and feels responsible for making sure their parent doesn't worry (in a way that conflicts with the kid wanting to do things and make the thing they do less safe when they DO do them because they are carrying the burden of doing the thing AND the burden of protecting the parents from worry by hiding the thing and following guidelines they cannot pretend not to break even at the risk of their own safety).
And so, in an attempt to protect their hold, these worrywart parents unintentionally parentify their kids, when in fact their intention was kind of the opposite - to protect the kid until the kid was "ready" (which might not happen even if the parent intended independence because that kind of worry never goes away unless the parent actually faces it and works through it). I wish this was explained more often, this sort of backfire effect, because there are quite a few parents out there, including my own dad, who fall into this trap, who unintentionally emotionally parentify their kids in an attempt to keep their child safe.
And I am an adult and still have relational issues related to my dad's excessive worry - even though he is aging, his cognitive functions are starting to slip (as if they weren't compromised in some ways already by severe ADHD that was never treated or accommodated due to him being a Boomer) and lately I had to pull HIS chestnuts out of the fire. Which makes it all the more infuriating when I try to argue with him about something (that my mom is okay with) and he cannot evaluate the risks of what I am trying to do rationally - as if I didn't have enough mental health issues already (which is why I can't just get out - and it's not as if my parents are abusive, it's just that this one area, the worry, is a huge issue where nothing else is).
I feel like Esmé and Carlisle were there for her more than her actual parents
I was parentified and all I got was a normalized view of trauma dumping. Thanks, Mom.
I didn't know that what I had experienced was named and dealt with in therapy. I grew up with 5 siblings. I was 2nd oldest and the oldest girl. Changing diapers and such were "normal chores" for me, as well as babysitting by the time I was 10. My mom died when I was 13. Friends of our family would always tell me it was my job "to be everyone's mom now." Sadly, I'm sure that if I'd talked with my father about it, he'd have said no, that's not the case. But at the same time, it wasn't like he could afford a nanny to take of the younger kids, so the role of raising them while he worked would've still been on me and my older brother. It wasn't until my mid-20s that it dawned on me that the responsibilities that had been placed on us were more than what we could handle appropriately at that point in our lives. I recognized my behaviors to be similar to what you've described here- I'm a "mother hen" at work. I've even been told by a teenage coworker that I'm more like a mom to her than her own mom. I show up even when I'm sick because I've never put my own health first (it wasn't until 2020 with being sent home from work whenever sick due to precautions that I ever actually started taking time for myself when I get sick), even though I demand my coworkers to take care of themselves and go home if they need to- "don't worry. I can handle it by myself," even when I'm overwhelmed and burnt out.
bruh the amount of „wow that sounds familiar“ and „oh now it makes sense“ I felt during this video is very eye opening.
I never knew there was a word for this thing and that it is actually this harmful but now it makes a lot of sense, why I experience anxiety, panic attacks and frequently depression (and a type of anger towards my mom I could never quiet explain to myself before).
This video is super important! I think most people don‘t know how harmful parentification really is because it’s oftentimes praised as a kid being „so mature for their age“ or „so independent“. I also feel especially girls are expected to be just naturally caregivers and caretakers of their younger siblings (like little moms).
Of course not to forget the whole trope of a boy having to be the „man of the house“ when the father is absent/dead/etc.
Me watching this video: *I'm in this video and I don't like it* lmao
But really, you described this so well. I didnt even realize until I went to college and cut my mother off (and only talked to my other family members every couple weeks or more) that I was really responsible for holding the entire household together and that everything went down the drain as soon as I left. It's also so difficult to not then blame yourself for that, i.e. leaving and then everything falling apart, even though becoming your own independent person with your own wants/needs/likes/dislikes/etc. is part of becoming an ACTUAL, healthy adult.
It also really grinds my gears when people use my academic successes and achievements to rationalize my upbringing being ok. Just because it manifested in me as perfectionism, overachievement (often to the point of exhaustion), and hyper-organization doesnt make it any less of a shitty family dynamic.
I've been through a lot of this and am working through my confusing feelings of pride about stepping up at a young age and resentment towards missing a lot of my childhood. Thank you for giving this a voice and making me feel seen .
more light on twilight's problematic issues, yes pls!!
i was parentified from a very young age (practically my whole life), but I have a difficult time holding that against my mom because she was dealing with very severe untreated trauma and drug abuse. I appreciated that you added that people in these situations aren’t always being malicious or intentionally neglectful, sometimes it’s the result of generational trauma (not excusing it, just acknowledging the grey areas)
I’ve never been so early or so READY
i’ve pretty much forgotten about this, but i’m told by my mom that during the time my dad was cheating on her (they didn’t end up divorcing, unfortunately), that i (a 9 year old) “helped her a lot” and “more than she (my mom) helped me”
and it’s definitely i think the start of the rapid decaying of our relationship, with my dad too.
also i don’t know if id call this parentification or just being rushed, but i was always pressured to drive as soon as i turned 16, go to college immediately after i graduated and have it all planned out, and just general things. i’m the youngest, and both of my parents were the youngest too, and i never saw them pressure my older brothers like they did to me- they might’ve but i don’t know- and i feel like that partially them trying to live through me, which has made me freeze and have 0 drive to do anything for 5 years
BIG OOF with chronically ill parents. thanks for the midday realization lol at least i have therapy this afternoon hahaha
ALL of this hit so close to home for me! I was parentified a majority of my childhood, whether it was babysitting during summers, having to take my little sister with me to friends houses so she wasn't "bored" at home, or walking to a store at 10 years old for things a parent needed, but they couldn't get due to being hungover. I always thought it was a normal part of life for everyone. But as I started working on my traumas & going to therapy I've realized how much it still effects me today & how hard I try to avoid doing anything that's parentification to my own kiddos. I also grew up with a Mother of narcissistic tendencies & had to cut off all communication a year ago due to accountability issues & constant gaslighting when I'd speak about the things I went through as a child.
"You're very mature for your age!"
I got that compliment all.the.time. And I hated it. I was abandoned by my father, parentified by my mother, and abused by my stepfather all before I was a teenager. Of course I was different than other kids. I didn't have a normal childhood.
I'm one of those people who has experienced parentification but not through abuse or intentional neglect. To me, it happened because I have a younger autistic sister, and my parents both had burnout and depression, so they often didn't have enough energy left to give me proper attention. That said, my parents have always tried their best and I don't hate them at all. I am currently in therapy for my parentification though, and my ADD struggles. I also think my ADD has had an influence on me acting like a parent towards my sister and mediating between my parents and/or my sister. So yeah, it's not always due to bad intentions, I'm glad you pointed that out!
Yeah I like that she acknowledged that, otherwise it kind of means only people who had full on abusive parents are likely to recognize it in their experience. I think some circumstances are likely to create some level of parentification no matter how much you try to prevent it? My situation is similar to yours in that my younger brother is autistic, on the high needs side of the spectrum (aka “low functioning” aka for him an intellectual disability is part of his autism), and I think I might have adhd too. I’m lucky in that my parents did try to allow me to keep my independence from him and I wouldn’t say that I felt I had to parent them. But I still relate to aspects of parentification in my relationship with my brother in that even though I don’t feel I was pressured to care for him as full time as my parents did/do my relationship to him is still one of like a third carer to him rather than that of a sibling. And I guess I kind of took up that role alongside my parents and related more to them than to him. Especially as we got older and he developed at a much slower pace than I did it was like the age difference between us got bigger and bigger, and whatever element of brother sister relationship we did have as kids dissipated.
I love my parents and they were really trying to do their best and I understand that now as an adult. With that being said as a teenager I was in charge of their emotions. When they had problems I was their therapist that they would rant to about the other person and I would try to fix the issues. My mom also gets overwhelmed and gives up easy so almost every Saturday I was sitting her down, talking through her emotions with, creating a grocery list and sending her out the door so we would have food the next week. It was exhausting and I'm still trying to retrain my brain that I'm not in charge of managing other people's emotions.
Great video. Not a fan of twilight but I liked watching it anyway :)
Oh jeez, a video about my relationship with my mom!
Even though Cinema Therapy has done an amazing job covering the Twilight series, I still love hearing your views! I would love to see you cover more media, whether it be movies or memes.
I would also like to see you talk about more trauma related to neglectful parents and the different ways it can present itself in adulthood. As an adult child of addicts, I would like to hear your thoughts!
Oh my god. You’ve literally helped me to understand completely why I feel like I have no idea who I am.. i have spent a lot of time working on my boundaries, and working on how I am not responsible for everyone in my life, I am only responsible for me, but always troubling me underneath that is, I don’t know who ‘me’ is or what she needs. I cannot wait to bring this up with my own therapist and see if things can change for me. Thank you so much. 💖
Thank you for the video, I appreciates it. When you you mentioned parentification in your previous video, it truly blew my mind. At 37 years old, I had no idea there was a name for what I went through.
I never though I had trama in this way but it’s honestly too relatable. Being in between my parents and the main thing they’re arguing about is my well-being. ......I need to talk to my therapist.
I'd love to see your take on all of the problematic elements you find in Twilight! Even if someone else did it just as well it's still cool to get your stance. Awesome video!
I love that you’re talking about this in regards to twilight. I think we’ve seen enough about the main couple and the issues with that relationship.
Very interested to hear more about the other problematic ish in twilight. I used to get that comment about being more mature than my age when I was a kid... All the time. I don't even really know what the specific trauma was, though I have some ideas. There was a RUclips video that surprised me cause they said that moving is the second most traumatic event for someone, second only to a death in the family. When I turned ten we moved for the first time, and started moving every three years after that. It was really sad and difficult to be uprooted that much, and I feel like I'm really good at being a chameleon especially in large groups, but not always so great at just being myself. I found a twelve step program when I was seventeen, and it's so good to have a place that I can talk about how I feel... That was just completely taboo in a military family, even just having feelings was taboo
Military family here too. I saw a recent article saying the worst times for a kid to move is 10-13. The effects being lifelong anxiety/depression and addiction/suicide. I also didn't have a mother for age 13 as she was stationed in another country before we had the internet. Also, narcissist mom. I've moved roughly every three years my whole life, and I'm 38 now. You're not alone, and learning to take care of your mental health is a big thing. Parentification of the kids seems like part of the deal with military families. Also, I hope you're learning to and/or making time for having fun :) now that we're old enough to really appreciate it, I feel like fun is important.
Mickey’s words at 2:48 really resonate with me:
My mom was a single parent with a lot of parental issues of her own (she grew up in a toxic religious household) and was constantly in relationships with men that would hurt her emotionally and, sometimes, physically.
As a child, she hurt me a lot (as well as my 3 other siblings). So much so that I was constantly vying for her attention (positive or negative), approval, and love. Those feelings have made my adult relationship with my mom awkward and difficult. I’ve tried multiple times to have a conversation about it with my mom, and she shuts it down every time with “I did the best I could.” While I don’t doubt that, I feel that she also needs to understand and own up to all the wrong and hurt she did cause.
My mom is a relatively good person (or at least she tries), and she’s a good grandmother to my son (so good that sometimes I find myself feeling both relieved and jealous all in one breath).
It’s easier to hurt those closest to you, especially family, because you think it will be fine as “they’re your family and they should just understand”. I’m still working on this myself. Honest communication goes a long way.
Thank you for mentioning CinemaTherapy! They are really coold but still ^^ we do love to hear you put it into words too :))
Gosh this was uncomfy for me to listen too. Parentification is insidious and damaging, don't pass it down to your children (if you want them). This video served as a reminder that I really have a lot to unpack in this area.
My dad likes to tell me to take it easy and enjoy high school. "Don't worry too much about getting a job or college! Be a kid. Have fun!" and, I mean, I do. It's just that's not how life has taught me. I tend to expect myself to function as an adult would, when I have much less experience. It's uncomfortable for me. That's partially because of our life experiences though. My dad probably didn't face anything nearly as traumatic as what I've faced in the past y the time he was my age- and I'm not just saying that- we free up in very different family sotuations, and my childhood family situation was/is unique because all of my sibilings are adopted.
THANK YOU for saying come here and give me a hug. My parents did that every night before bed, then we went upstairs and put ourselves to bed.
I knew I suffered parentification, but had a hard time putting my finger on it. Thank you!
My mum used to always wake me up in the middle of the night and tell me she’s scared and upset so she’d end up sleeping in my bed a lot. I used to think everyone’s parents were the same for a long time. Thank god I’m 22 and living with my boyfriend now
So good to hear someone online talk about this,more people need to be aware 🥰 I was parentified to the point that some of my family took to calling me Cinderella..I didn't find a prince charming though,I found many abusive man-children before I decided on being a hermit 🙃
Wow, thank you for explaining Parentification. I'd never heard that term, but now I can definitely identify friends and kids at school who experienced it.
My wife and I are adopting 2 young kids from foster care. Our 3 year old hides food and sneaks it to her 2yo little brother, she sticks up for him if we make him cry (no you can't drink the dog water, you have a sippy cup right here *cue melt down* kind of cry) or when the Dr gives him a shot she'll go toe to toe with the Dr. "DON'T HURT MY BROTHER!!!" Fearless in her care of her brother. We're working hard to assure her we will always take care of both of them, they are both safe, and she can be sister not Mom/bodyguard.
Ngl, I always wondered why people started saying I sounded mature for my age a few years ago. With how she described it, it did kinda fit how things went for me in a certain period of my life. I appreciated you bringing this up.
I... seriously didn't realize that I've been through this. I obviously knew that I grew up in a family where my mother was an addict, and there were a lot of trauma's I have experienced through that alone, but thank you for this video. I took care of my siblings as best I could, and took over the "normal mom roles" while my mother was passed out or useless. Things like making meals, waking my siblings to get to school on time, doing laundry or other cleaning, and being the emotional support beam for my siblings. Ouch. This video hurt. At least now I have a term for it.
EDIT: In thinking about this more, I also realize that in the relationships I've chosen, I've chosen one where I am that "mom" role... to my husband. We don't have children, and by my own choice, never will, but I realize that all the things I do to care for my husband is because I've been programmed to do so from such a young age that I don't know how to untangle myself from it.
When I was about 12 some kids called 911 when it wasn't an emergency and the kids mom got mad at me because she thought her kids were my responsibility because I was the oldest. I was 12 add my parents hadn't told me to watch over anyone, I was just there to hang out in the church basement while they finished with singing practice (tbh we probably shouldn't have been left unattended when the oldest of us was 12, 2000's was a fucked up time man). And in that moment, I understood why her kids were so messed up.
Commenting again because I just have to say, watching this video introduced me to the concept of parentification, and it started me on a journey I will forever be grateful for. In the last few days, I have uncovered so many deep feelings from my early childhood, just my exploring my thoughts in regards to parentification, and I have finally began a journey of discovering who I really am with help from my own therapist. I will eternally thank you for putting concepts and ideas like this out there for ordinary people to see and understand. Just thank you.
As a person who experienced this in their childhood I found this really validating and helpful. Thanks so much for bringing this up. I’m going to share this with friends who went through this as well.
I was thinking about this when I read the first book recently. So glad to see you cover it!
I would love as video about the "sibling" relationships in the Cullen family and their dynamic