5 Toxic Patterns + The Family Role You Didn’t Choose But Still Carry
Episode Notes
Have you ever noticed how quickly old patterns resurface when you're around family?
Maybe you find yourself walking on eggshells. Struggling to voice your preferences. Feeling responsible for everyone else's emotions. Or slipping back into roles you thought you'd left behind years ago.
In this episode, Dr. Alison revisits one of the most requested conversations from the podcast, exploring how the dynamics we experienced growing up continue to shape our relationships today.
Through the lens of attachment theory, boundaries, and family systems, Alison unpacks five common patterns that can influence the way we show up with the people we love—and how awareness is the first step toward healing.
You'll learn:
• Why family relationships can pull us back into old roles
• What enmeshment is—and how it differs from healthy closeness
• Five family patterns that often follow us into adulthood
• How childhood experiences shape the way we handle conflict, boundaries, and relationships
• Why naming a pattern isn't about blame—it's about healing
• Practical questions to help you begin breaking free from unhealthy dynamics
Healing doesn't require pretending your family was perfect.
It begins by telling the truth with wisdom, compassion, and grace—so you can love others without losing yourself.
More Resources:
You can now preorder Dr. Alison’s newest book, The Secure Soul, and immediately receive the first 3 chapters as well as early access to the companion guide!
Connect further with @dralisoncook on Instagram
Curious what Family Role may have shaped you? Take the Family Role Quiz to learn how you may be showing up in your relationships with others.
Want to hear more like this? Start here:
Episode 194: When Relationships Start to Drain You—Using Discernment to Stay Connected Without Losing Yourself
Episode 178 How to Recognize Toxic Tactics, and Stop Taking the Bait
📖 Find a full transcript and list of resources from this episode here
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TRANSCRIPT
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to this week's deep dive episode of The Best of You. We are closing
in on the 4th of July weekend. I cannot believe that. I cannot believe we're nearing July,
that the summer is already a month. behind us it's flown by i hope your summer is going well i hope
you're finding some spaciousness for your soul i know in my own experience with summer both when
the kids were little but also now as an empty nester i love summer but sometimes the absence of
structure it's it's more chaotic sometimes i can lose sight of my own boundaries my own rhythms the
things that keep my soul in healthy shape, if you want to put it that way. It can kind of feel off
kilter when everything's a little more chaotic. There's a lot more time with family and friends and
even some travel and sometimes family reunions and other types of reunions. And all of that can be
wonderful. And also some of that can begin to cause us to lose sight of our rhythms.
And even some of the boundaries that keep us sane and keep us healthy and keep us close to that way
that we always talk about on the podcast of living from love, right? Walking with love,
walking in step with God's Spirit versus just kind of being reactive and over-functioning and
working for love and trying to make everybody happy. And as I was thinking about myself and how I
can get off kilter in the summer, and I was thinking about you and wondering how that's going for
you. I thought this would be a great weekend to re-air an older episode. This is an episode from a
ways back. It resonated with many of you. In fact, I shaped this episode around questions I was
receiving from listeners. And it's all about this idea of enmeshment and how we can become
enmeshed, particularly in our... of origin from the past, but also it applies to our families in
the current day. And enmeshment is just the opposite of healthy boundaries. We'll get into that in
today's episode. But we also get into the importance of boundaries and how to watch out for these
toxic patterns, both patterns that shaped us back in the past,
but also patterns that can sneak up on us. in the present last week in my conversation with dr
stephen tracy we talked about something i think so many of us are trying to untangle and it's all
about how we honor scripture how we honor god while also telling the truth by not denying the toxic
patterns that are sneaking in or noticing harm and not being afraid to name it or at least protect
ourselves from it or protect our kids from it some of this means how do we remain tenderhearted
without becoming naive? How do we forgive without denying reality?
How do we honor our parents without abandoning ourselves? Maybe it's our in-laws that we're going
to be spending time with this summer. Maybe it's our parents. Maybe it's a sibling. Maybe it's a
friend group. And we're aware that some toxic dynamics can sneak in.
And we're not trying to blame anybody, but we are trying to be real and wise and grounded about
protecting ourselves and being wise before God? And these are big questions.
And for many of us, they're very real. They show up with a simple phone call.
from a parent where you immediately start to feel anxious or when you maybe set a boundary that you
really need to set for your own health or sanity, but suddenly you feel guilty or bad or maybe you
feel even judged by other family members or friends or they show up when you have a preference that
you're afraid to state or maybe your life looks a little differently and you're not sure how to
bring that change into a current friendship. And all of this makes me think of one of my favorite
verses. I mentioned it last week in my conversation with Dr. Stephen Tracy, and it applies whether
we're talking about spending time with people we love or whether we're walking into potentially
toxic situations. And it's what Jesus said in Matthew 10, 16.
He said, be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
This verse is just so striking to me because Jesus is holding two things together that many of us
tend to bifurcate, right? We keep them separate. He calls us to be innocent. And there's a
connotation of innocence, of being kind, of being open, of being available, of being receptive,
right? He doesn't want us to become cynical or shut down or closed off and definitely not cruel or
always assuming the worst. But Jesus also calls us to wisdom.
And again, I think about that snake, you know, the serpent. None of us like snakes. I know I can't
stand them. They terrify me. But when you think about them as an animal, they're low to the ground.
They're in the dirt. They're in the mud. They're in the muck. They're very aware of what's
happening, right? The dove is high above it all. She's not in the midst of it,
right? She's able to kind of stay outside of things and stay. innocent, but the serpent is in the
muck and the mud. And Jesus is calling us to both. Don't be naive.
That's the part like the serpent that's in the muck and sees what's around us. I'm walking into
something here that may go sideways. I'm walking into a situation where it's possible these toxic
patterns are going to reemerge. I need to be wise about that. I can't pretend that's not going to
happen. I want to be innocent and loving and available. And I also need to be wise and shrewd and
in some ways strategic and smart. about how I enter into this situation.
And this all means we have to learn to recognize what is actually happening in front of us. We need
to be able to discern patterns. We need to be able to pay attention to fruit. What's the fruit of a
certain situation? We need to be able to tell the truth when something is harmful or going down the
wrong path, even when that's happening with people we love, even within families.
And in today's episode, I talk in particular about our families of origin. These could be parents
or grandparents or even in-laws, people who had an impact on your early life or maybe your
spouse's early life. And one of the things I hear so often is about this,
one of the 10 commandments, right? One of the greatest commandments, one of the 10 commandments
that we are supposed to abide by is to honor your father and mother. And that can be challenging
for many people. Even if you had a healthy family, even if you have healthy relationship with your
parents, figuring out how to honor without necessarily losing yourself can be tricky.
Honoring our parents, honoring our family members is a way that we honor God. It's important.
And it also doesn't mean being naive. It doesn't mean pretending. It doesn't mean putting ourselves
in harm's way. It doesn't mean denying the impact of what's happening.
It doesn't mean carrying emotional responsibility that was never yours to carry.
And in fact, what I would argue is that sometimes the most honoring thing we can do for God,
for the other person, and for ourselves is to be honest and to name what's happening with clarity
and compassion. Because when we name the truth of what has happened either in the past or in the
present, we're not blaming. Naming isn't the same as blaming or shaming. Naming isn't about
punishing. Naming isn't about retaliation. Naming is about looking at the truth,
telling the truth, saying this pattern exists. It existed back then.
It exists now. It's still affecting me. It's still shaping me. It's still shaping my partner.
It's still shaping my sibling. This pattern is real. And with God's help, I will not let this
pattern continue to do harm. That's holy ground. That's not blaming.
That's not shaming. That's not being cruel. That's not punitive. That's the holy ground of healing.
The truth is every parent falls short. Every single family has wounds.
Every one of us has places where we need grace, repair, growth, and mercy,
right? All of that is true. And what's also true is that grace doesn't require denial.
And healing and growth can't happen when we're not telling the truth. So in today's episode,
we're going to look at five patterns that can shape us in childhood and that continue to affect us
well into adult. We're going to talk about unpredictability, parentification, criticism,
control, and rescuing. Some of these may apply to you. Some of them may not.
But all of it applies to this idea of how do we create healthy families and how do we heal from our
own wounds? Again, this isn't about shame. This is about awareness. It's about learning to say
there is a reason I tend to revert to this old pattern when I'm with this group of people,
or there's a reason why conflict spikes my anxiety, or there's a reason why I have such a hard time
stating a preference. or even knowing what I want. There's a reason I feel so criticized.
Once you can begin to name the reason, you can begin to get to the root underneath the reactions,
you can begin to heal. And this is why this work matters.
So today, as we revisit this conversation about how our childhood patterns shape us in adulthood,
I want you to listen with compassion. Compassion for your parents who were shaped by their own
stories. Compassion for yourself, because you may still be carrying these patterns you never chose.
And compassion for the people you are caring for now as you learn to show up differently.
Now, listen, before we get started, some of you may have really healthy relationships with your
parents. Maybe they're not perfect, but for the most part, your parents were reliable. They showed
up for you. They support you. And even when there were ruptures, you knew that you could repair.
You knew that you could find a way back to each other. For some of you listening,
there's no relationship anymore with your parents. The relationship got so toxic and the trauma was
so deep. You can't be. in relationship with those people. And that's so painful when you have to
remove yourself from those relationships. And for many of you listening, you're somewhere in the
middle. with your parents. There were some really good and supportive things that you got from your
parents. And there were also some hard things, some things you're trying to unlearn.
No matter where you fall on that spectrum, there are two crucibles where we typically become aware
of these childhood wounds. Number one is our intimate relationships, our relationships specifically
within marriage. That is so often the relationship where suddenly we begin to notice our own
patterns and we're like, oh my goodness, why can't I engage? in a healthy conversation about
conflict. I tend to just go into flight mode or I go into fight mode or I shut down or I withdraw.
Oh my goodness, that's what I did in my family of origin. That's great knowledge, but now I've got
to figure out how to heal so that I can show up in this. current relationship in a different way,
right? So that's one of the gifts of intimate relationships is they bring to the surface some of
these areas where we've got wounds from our past that we need to heal so that we can show up
differently in this current relationship going forward. The second big place where a lot of these
wounds begin to surface is when we have kids of our own. And we begin to realize, oh my goodness, I
didn't even realize. Now I'm trying to parent this child. I want to do it differently. And suddenly
I notice myself behaving in ways I don't like. I notice myself getting angry.
I notice myself getting avoidant. I notice myself avoiding these hard conversations.
Or I notice myself having a really hard time figuring out how to set boundaries.
Or I notice myself having a really hard time when I need to let my... find their own way apart from
me. We begin to notice some of these patterns that likely go all the way back to our own childhoods
when we begin to parent ourselves. And so the stakes can feel really high because we begin to
realize I've got to heal these patterns because I don't want to repeat them.
in these relationships I care so much about in this present day and age with my spouse,
with my kids, with my friends, right? And so I just want to say to you right at the top of this
episode, the goal is not perfection. That is not the goal.
This is a process, that awareness that, yeah, I've got some growing to do.
I've got some things from the past I have to undo. And it's going to take me a little while,
but just my ability to name those things and begin to even say some of those things to the people
that I love. Hey, I know I'm not great at conflict. I know sometimes I can actually flee any
conflict before it even surfaces. And I want to let you know that I'm aware of that. And I may not
be able to change that right away. but I'm going to work on it. And I promise you, I'm going to
keep coming back. Or you might need to say to those loved ones, you know, I know I've got some
anger. I can get really angry and I'm becoming more and more aware of it.
And I want you to know that I see it and I'm working on it. And when I notice it,
I can become more aware of it more quickly. And I can come back to you and say, I'm sorry that
didn't come out right. Can we do a take two on that conversation, right? There are lots of ways you
can let your loved ones know, I'm healing some stuff here. These patterns go way back.
I'm not going to change overnight, but I'm aware. I'm honoring that. And I'm committed to growing.
and healing, and moving forward in a new and better way. Even when you give yourself that
spaciousness, you're calming your nervous system, which allows you to show up more authentically,
with more calm, with more courage, with more confidence. If your spouse or your friend came to you
and said, hey, I know I still do this thing. It's got a long tail. It goes all the way back.
This is deeply rooted. I'm aware. I'm sorry. I know that's hard for you. You know,
we don't expect people to change on a dime, but that awareness is a huge step toward health in all
of our relationships. So remember, you're committing to this journey of healing,
this journey we often on the podcast use that Greek word sozo. in the Bible that means salvation,
that can also be translated as healing. We are on this journey of sanctification.
We are on this journey of being made more and more like Christ, which means being made more and
more like that person who God wants us to become the most beautiful version of ourselves.
This is a process that we will be on throughout our entire lifetime, but every single step you can
take to own it, to honor it, to name it. without shame, both to yourself and to your loved one,
is a huge step and a success in and of itself. I want to start off by naming some key anchoring
terms because I'm going to be using these terms a lot. And then I'm going to move into the five
toxic patterns of behaviors that may have impacted you as a child and that you're carrying with you
into adulthood. The first word I want to name is enmeshment. Sometimes the emotional bond between a
parent and child becomes so intertwined that it's hard to distinguish who you are and your own
feelings, your own thoughts, your own beliefs from that of your parents.
This is what we mean by enmeshment. We can actually become too close, too enmeshed.
We become so caught up in another person that we don't know where they end and I begin.
When you're a child, you are dependent on the adult who is caring for you to be the adult.
It's the adult's responsibility to help honor that balance,
that dance. I go deep into this topic in my book, The Best of You, but I call it that dance between
connection and autonomy, closeness and distance.
We need both in healthy relationships, and it's the parent's job.
to really delineate that dance of being close, but also honoring difference.
I love you. You are my child and you're different from me.
You're a unique individual. And it's my job sometimes to step back and see you for who you are as
someone different from me. That's a really nuanced dance between parent.
and child. And enmeshment occurs when a parent begins to blur those lines. And typically the parent
is depending too much on the child. They want to see the child as an extension of themselves.
This creates a blurred boundary between parent and child. Enmeshment can make the healthy process
of what psychologists call individuation, the process of becoming your own person,
really, really difficult. Even if you've created physical distance, that emotional hold can remain
really strong. And if you're someone who grew up in an amnesty relationship where your parent lived
their life through you, even when you moved away from home, even when you got your own job,
maybe even got married, even had kids yourself, you might find yourself struggling to know what you
think, know what you want, know your own feelings as separate from the people who raised you.
You might even feel guilty about that. That's because it's been really hard for you to individuate.
A parent's job is to essentially raise your child to leave you.
And I think about this in nature, right? We see these moms that there's a point at which you're
raising that child, you're nurturing that child, but eventually that child has to leave the nest.
and learn to fly without you. And so when you have that end game in mind,
when you understand that eventually your child needs to leave you, you're going to love that child,
but you're also going to equip them to leave you, to function on their own,
apart from you. That's your job. And when you do that well, your child will be delighted to
continue to stay connected to you because those roles are clear.
You've built that trust. You've made yourself a safe place for your child to return to as an adult
because paradoxically, you've honored their need to leave you.
You're not trying to keep them close to you in an unhealthy way. You get that your best way of
staying close to you child is to honor that they need to leave you. It's a beautiful paradox.
Now, the other term I want to throw out here is attachment theory. Some of you might be thinking
about attachment as I'm talking, and it can be a really helpful framework for understanding how our
earliest bonds with our caregivers shape our future relationship. But for today's purposes,
it's important to understand that a secure attachment happens when your parents offer that
consistent love and support where they're allowing you to feel safe with them.
But here's the thing, they're allowing you to feel safe with them so that you can explore life
independent from them. That's the essence of secure attachment.
I'm safe enough with these people who love me that I can go out into the world and explore it on my
own. And there are different milestones that I go through in the best of you of... that happens at
different junctures and different ages. But throughout your developing years as a child,
that's essentially what's happening in a healthy, secure attachment. There's that safety from those
parents at home that allows you to go out and explore the world independently. And when that
doesn't happen, we start to notice those anxious attachments, those avoidant attachments, those
mixed attachments, where we don't have that safety at home. And it inhibits our ability to explore
the world outside of us with confidence. So there are a lot of things that can disrupt secure
attachment. Abuse disrupts secure attachment. Neglect disrupts secure attachment.
And also enmeshment can disrupt secure attachment where it's not actually safety in the sense of
that stable home base where this person loves you but does not need you.
When enmeshment occurs, this person loves you to make themselves feel better.
They keep you close to them. There's a sense of closeness that you learn to understand as comfort
when you're doing what the caregiver wants and needs you to do for their sake.
That feels like it's comfort, but it's not actually safety.
So here's what I want you to remember. Healthy parent-child relationships are built on two key
building blocks, connection and separation. Both are necessary.
A parent's job is to help you develop a strong sense of self while also supporting you as you learn
to live your own life. And so this involves encouraging you to learn how to trust your own
instincts, how to make your own decisions, how to explore your own ideas and feelings.
And that leads to healthy individuation. When enmeshment occurs, that process gets thwarted.
You can feel like you're betraying your caregiver. You can feel like you should defer your own
needs, your own instincts, your own decision-making to fulfill the perceived needs of the parent.
Now, there's a really good book. I've recommended this book before. It's a best-selling book by
Lindsay Gibson. It's called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. And there's a reason
this book is everywhere, because she just so clearly lays out what some of these patterns look like
in emotionally immature. And so I'm going to give a really condensed version of how I have noticed
some of these behaviors of an emotionally immature parent showing up. But that's really what's
happening here. It's where a parent doesn't have the maturity to do what the child needs to become
a healthy, autonomous adult. Number one is unpredictability. When you're parents,
emotional states are unpredictable. Maybe they had an undiagnosed mental illness.
Maybe there was an addiction. Maybe they just had a lot of emotional outbursts or any difficulty
managing their own emotions where they couldn't take responsibility for their own emotions.
That can leave a child with that anxious attachment. There isn't that sense of safety.
It's like one day mom is great. The next day mom can't get out of bed. And there's nothing to
explain that. I want to be clear. It's not that parents can't struggle while raising kids.
We can. But we have to be able to name it for them. We have to be able to talk to our kids about
that. Listen, your dad struggles with depression. Sometimes you're going to notice that he has a
hard time getting up. It has nothing to do with you. He's getting help for that. We're working on
that. We love you. Here's what's happening. This isn't your fault, right? It's in the absence of
that communication and that honoring of what's truly happening, the kids begin to make up stories.
This is my fault. And kids start to connect dots that aren't meant to be connected when there's
unpredictability. I come home from school and my mom is really sad today and she's not naming that.
She's crying off in the corner and I can see that and that affects me, but she's not talking to me
about it. I don't know what's happening. So as a child in my little brain, what I assume is this is
my fault. I have to come home from school every day, super duper happy because somehow the way I'm
coming home from school. is making mom behave differently, even when that's not true. So again,
unpredictability is when a parent's emotional state is unpredictable and unaccounted for.
The parent does not take responsibility for what's happening. Another example, a parent loses their
temper and gets really angry. We don't love that. That's not great. That's hard for kids. But what
makes it even harder is when it goes unaddressed and unnamed and unrepaired. If a parent is
struggling with an anger issue and they sometimes come down hard, The ability to come back and say,
I got angry. I have a temper. That is not your fault. You did nothing to evoke that kind of
reaction in me. That's my fault. That's my job. to work through that anger.
That is not your fault, right? We're naming it, which allows the child to release the pain of that,
understand that it's not their fault, and see an adult be an adult. An adult takes responsibility,
an adult takes accountability, and hopefully and presumably the adult begins to make changes as
well. And so that unpredictability can also just be part of neglect. Sometimes a parent's just
absent. They are not in the room. They might not be yelling. They might not be crying. But due to
their own problems and their own heartaches and their own hardships, they're maybe going through
the motions of sitting at the dinner table, of getting you to bed, getting you to school, but
they're absent. There's no emotional presence. And it's erratic.
Sometimes they're present. A lot of times they're not. Kids make up narratives in the absence of
consistency. They will make up a narrative about that. Those narratives are almost always self
-shaming. It's me. It's my fault. I'm the problem, right? It's really hard for you to trust that
someone will show up consistently and reliably. Number two, the other one I see so commonly is what
we call parentification. This occurs when the parent relies on the child to meet the parent's
emotional needs. So if you were conditioned to take care of your parents' emotions,
you became the parent for your parents, you may struggle to understand healthy boundaries in adult
relationships. You may feel like it's your job to be the adult in the room for everyone around you.
You may take on more responsibility for other people's emotions than is your responsibility to
take. It's really hard to change this pattern if you were parentified as a child.
So for example, Even a well-meaning parent, maybe you're a highly empathetic kid.
You're pretty precocious and you can kind of read the cues and you can tell that mom is sad or dad
is upset. And you go to them and you say, oh man, are you okay? And slowly over time,
mom or dad or whoever the person is caring for you just begins to confide in you. Yeah, you know,
this is really hard. And you actually have the ability to be there for them, to...
them through those emotions, to cheer them up, to make them feel better. Maybe as you begin to get
a little older, you might even have wisdom for them. And slowly you start parenting your parent.
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Now listen, when you're in an adult relationship with your parent, this is going to happen a little
more. We do. move into two-way relationships a little bit with our parents as we become adults,
although it's always really a one-way relationship. A parent always has more power than the child,
even in adult parent-child relationships. But man, when you're a kid, if this is the primary means
by which you're relating to a parent is that you're caring for them, it's a big problem because two
things are happening there. Number one, you're learning how to always prioritize someone else over
your own needs. And number two, you're not getting your needs met.
Think about that. You're not getting your needs as a child met. Your parent isn't attuning to you
and attuning to your emotional states and saying things like, I love your empathy.
I love that you care about me, but I want you to know this is not your problem.
This is my problem. I'm the adult here. Thank you for noticing that I was sad.
I appreciate that. And this is not your problem to solve. This is my problem.
I'm an adult. I have other adults who will help me through this. I'm here for you.
I want to know what's going on with you, right? That's what a healthy parent does. In those
situations, it's not that we don't want to honor the empathy of our kids. It's beautiful. But we
don't want to take that slippery slope down to letting our kids parent us. And it happens all the
time. We have to watch that as parents because two things are happening there. They're
overdeveloping that attunement muscle to other people, but they're also underdeveloping what it
feels like to have someone else attune. to them. And this sets you up for all kinds of issues in
adult relationships. When you go into your adulthood, you don't know what it looks like to be in a
relationship with someone who's there for you. You only know how to show up for other people.
And that sets you up for a lot of codependency. It sets you up to be taken advantage. of by other
people. It sets you up for one-way relationships that are unsatisfying where a lack of intimacy
occurs. So this is a big one to understand if you see some of those patterns in your adult life
where you really have a hard time receiving care from others, asking for what you need,
even identifying what you need. It may well be that you grew up in an environment where you had to
be the adult way too soon. And so already from a very young age, you were pretty good at assessing
the needs around you, but you did not know how to be a child and receive the care of someone else.
And that's really important in healthy relationships, the ability to both give out and receive
care. Thirdly, we're going to talk about criticism. If you grew up in a culture of criticism,
constant criticism, this damages your core sense of self. It's really hard for a child to
understand that all of this criticism around me is not actually about me because these are my
parents. They know best. That's what kids think. So all of this criticism that I'm getting,
that must be the truth. I must be a bad kid. I must not be okay. They're criticizing me for a
reason. This is really unhealthy. We don't grow up with a healthy sense of our goodness,
of our God-given worth, of the beauty in our soul. We grow up feeling inferior,
feeling insecure, feeling unworthy. We don't understand inherently that we are a beloved child of
God. Now you can heal, but it is so important to begin to connect those dots and go, you know what?
Part of the reason I can't actually believe in myself and believe that I'm worthy of good love is
that I've never experienced it. I've been told in one way or another that I was worthless, that I
wouldn't amount to anything, that I was a failure, that I could never get anything right. the day I
was born. I don't have any other memories. So how would I know what it's like to internalize an
entirely different message, which is I am beloved. I am worth love.
I'm not perfect. Of course, who is? And I am a beautiful soul made in the image of God.
Number four, control comes in. If you grew up in an environment that was highly controlled.
Now again, Sometimes well-intended parents want to keep you overly safe and they want to control
everything. Sometimes it's out of a good intention. They don't let you take enough healthy risks.
Sometimes it's coming from a selfish motivation where they're more concerned about how they appear
in the world. And so they control your behavior so they can look good in the world to their
friends. They want you to go to the right school or play the right sport or have the right friends,
right? And that's really more about them than it is about you. So whether that's coming from a
desire to keep you from harm and they control too much, or if it's coming from that more self
-serving place. It makes it hard for you when you get into your adult world to understand how to
take healthy risks. So if you grew up in a highly controlled environment, you might go one of two
directions. You might take too many risks and overcorrect and blow everything up, or you might just
be really, really scared and stay really, really small because you've never learned how to develop
that healthy tolerance for some of the uncertainty, some of the stressors even, some of even the
hardships. of life. And then lastly, I want to talk about rescuing.
And I see this in certain types of families where the parents, out of usually a goodness of heart,
they're constantly swooping in and rescuing kids out of any discomfort, out of any hardship.
They're fighting their kids' battles. Now, sometimes as parents, we need to intervene on behalf of
our kids, right? Something's happening that is wrong. There's an injustice and we need to intervene
to protect our kids. That is absolutely true. But in parents who are rescuing, it's those normal,
everyday incidences that are hard. I didn't get invited to this birthday party. And no, they're not
ganging up and bullying me mercilessly. They're just not including me in their group. And it's
really painful. And as a parent, we got to help our kids honor that that's hard and also teach them
how to tolerate the pain of that. Two things can be true, right? You have to learn how to navigate
challenges in life. You have to learn how to do that with your parents there as that safe anchor.
They're never going to leave you, but they're also not always swooping in to rescue you out of it.
Sometimes doing things that are hard or even doing things where we try and we're not successful at
them are really important for our character and our growth. So this thing of rescuing can also
create a situation in which you arrive at adulthood without those necessary skills to tolerate the
things that come our way in life. As adults, there can sometimes be an entitlement.
There's just this constant kind of feeling of being disappointed by other people when maybe, in
fact, those other people are actually exhibiting normal behaviors. They're not taking
responsibility for something that isn't theirs to take. It's actually yours to take responsibility.
So all of this comes down to that separation and connection. How do I stay connected to people
while also understanding what's mine is mine and what's theirs is theirs? And so here are five
questions that you might ask yourself. Maybe you ask a loved one or a trusted advisor related to
these five parenting patterns. If you suspect that they may have an impact on you today, these are
just some questions to think about and notice and wonder about and get curious about because it
will help you begin to frame your experience so that you can take brave steps toward healing.
So the first one, as it relates to unpredictability, how do I react? when someone I care about is
emotionally volatile or inconsistent? Do I find myself constantly trying to manage their feelings
or walking on eggshells? And if you notice that inside of you, that when someone else is
emotionally volatile or inconsistent, it sort of triggers a part of you that's like, oh, I need to
do something to fix that. I need to change something about myself to fix their feelings.
That's a cue that there's a wound there. that you could begin to heal. Because the truth is,
if someone else is emotionally volatile, that's their responsibility to work through that.
It's your responsibility to be aware, to notice what happens inside of you, to take responsibility
for yourself in that moment. It's not your responsibility to try to fix their emotions.
Number two, as it relates to parentification, do I feel responsible for taking care of others'
emotional needs before my own? In my adult relationships, do I struggle to ask for help or set
boundaries because I'm so used to always prioritizing others? And just notice that.
Notice if that's true. My default is just to immediately take care of them, immediately go to their
needs, whether it's your friends, whether it's your spouse, whether it's your own parents. I've got
to take care of them. I've got to be the bigger person. I've got to do what they need. Versus
sitting with the sometimes uncomfortable feeling of I wonder what I need in this situation from
myself or from another person. And that may be just that beginning to notice the effects of that
parentification in your own adult life. And then number three, when it comes to criticism,
how do I respond to feedback or criticism from others? Do I immediately internalize it,
criticize myself, or feel like I need to perfect myself? to avoid being judged.
In other words, if I notice criticism around me or even any healthy feedback,
do I immediately assume I'm at fault? I must have gotten it wrong. I've got to do better.
And if so, that's something to notice. What if instead I could take a deep breath and wonder,
is it true? Is that criticism even about me? Or is it more about this other person?
It's possible this has nothing to do with me. It's possible I haven't done anything wrong.
And you can begin to build up that new muscle. Number four, control.
Do I find it difficult to make decisions without seeking approval or validation from others?
Am I able to pursue my own interests or do I feel pressure to live up to the expectations of
others? And just notice. If I were to vote a certain way, if I were to attend a certain church,
if I were to wear a certain article of clothing as an adult, is there just sort of this internal
backlash where it's like, I can't do that. I'd get in trouble. Even though I'm an adult and even
though I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm just doing something a little bit different than other
people. Just notice that. Begin to pay attention. What if I could challenge myself to take some
small steps toward autonomy, toward doing some things that I like to do,
even though they're different from what I was taught was okay.
And you might start with some low-hanging fruit, right? It might start with something you wear, a
food that you eat. That's just a little bit different than what you were allowed as a child.
And then number five, rescuing. When facing challenges, do I tend to rely on others to bail me out,
to fix things for me? Or do I feel empowered to tackle problems on my own? How comfortable am I
with allowing others to fail and learn from their mistakes? How often am I wanting to swoop in and
rescue others? That might be another way this shows up. And just notice that. And maybe ask for
feedback, again, from a trusted advisor, because you're beginning to identify patterns. There's a
reason you're this way. Likely this goes all the way back to childhood. So these questions should
help you identify how these early patterns might still be affecting your adult life and your
relationships. And I want you to remember this above all else. Healing starts with you.
No matter what happened in your past, you have the power to begin to change some of these patterns.
You can do this inside of you. It starts with just beginning to notice and name some of these
patterns and beginning to entertain just the thought, what if it could be different?
What if there was another way? And you will begin to unlock the natural God-given healing inside
of your soul. Because no matter what happened to you in the past, your body is designed with a bent
toward healing. Invite God's spirit into that process and ask God to begin to nudge you when one of
those patterns is showing up in your life. And I promise you, you will begin to see numerous
opportunities and numerous occasions to make a tiny change.
One brave step at a time.
Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Best of You. It would mean so much if you
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of who you are, you honor God, you heal others, and you stay true to your God-given self.