The experience of taking care of everyone else and growing up too fast is a concept often described in therapy as “parentified”. This can be tricky as being mature is often praised and seen as a good thing.
But what is the flip side of taking care of everyone else and what does it have to do with anxiety?
Chances of growing up too fast or of being parentified are significantly increased when growing up with emotionally immature parents. This is not every millennial’s story, but so many of us can relate to having one or two parents who struggled to name or feel their own emotions. Children who grow up too fast often suffer from anxiety because their early environment required them to take on roles that were far beyond their developmental capacity. When children are placed in these roles—whether as emotional caretakers, mediators, or even surrogate parents—they are forced to bypass their own needs in order to maintain family stability. This dynamic creates deep patterns of self-neglect, hypervigilance, and emotional suppression that can manifest as chronic anxiety later in life.
Here’s how these experiences contribute to anxiety:
Hypervigilance: Always taking the temperature of the room and knowing people’s moods
Parentified children learn early on that their safety (both emotional and physical) depends on anticipating the needs and moods of others—especially their parents. This constant scanning for danger, disapproval, or openness creates a nervous system wired for hypervigilance. What worked in childhood—always being on guard—becomes a default setting that fuels anxiety in adulthood.
Suppressing emotion– my feelings don’t matter
Emotionally immature parents often lack the capacity to attune to their child’s emotional needs. As a result, parentified children learn to suppress their own emotions in order to avoid burdening their caregivers. They learn early on what emotions, if any, are accepted or tolerated. This internalized message—my feelings don’t matter—creates a disconnect from core emotions like sadness, anger, or fear. Anxiety often rushes in to fill the void, acting as a protective layer that blocks access to more vulnerable feelings or the ones that were taboo growing up.
Perfectionism and Over-Responsibility
Parentified children are frequently praised for being mature or reliable, reinforcing the idea that their worth is tied to how well they take care of others. This pressure can create perfectionistic tendencies and a chronic sense of responsibility for other people’s well-being—both of which fuel anxiety when they inevitably fall short or feel out of control.
Parents are not consistently available
Emotionally immature parents often oscillate between being emotionally unavailable and overly reliant on their children. This doesn’t mean they were bad parents but without a consistent source of comfort or regulation from caregivers, children are left to manage overwhelming emotions on their own. This absence of co-regulation leaves the nervous system primed for anxiety, as there was not a safe and consistent external figure to help soothe distress.
Identity Confusion
When a child is forced to be the emotional caretaker, they lose access to the natural process of self-discovery. Instead of exploring who they are, they become who their family needs them to be. This fractured sense of self creates a profound inner emptiness that can amplify anxiety—especially when they reach adulthood and begin to ask, Who am I if I’m not taking care of others?
You Are Not Your Anxiety: Reframing Anxiety Through Internal Family Systems
Internal Family Systems (IFS) invites us to imagine our inner world as made up of different parts—distinct sub-personalities that each have their own thoughts, feelings, and roles. In this model, anxiety isn’t who you are—it’s a part of you. And more importantly, it’s a part trying to help in the only way it knows how.
That anxious part might show up as the racing thoughts before a big meeting, the pit in your stomach when you open your email, or the mental spiral at 3 a.m. It’s there to alert you to danger, to keep you vigilant—because somewhere along the way, it learned that staying on high alert was necessary to survive.
The key shift is this: you have an anxious part, but you are not your anxiety. When you can identify anxiety as one part of your internal system rather than your whole self, you create space. Space to notice other parts of you and to locate your core Self—the calm, curious, compassionate center of who you are.
Befriending Your Anxious Part
So how do you shift your relationship to anxiety?
- Identify the Anxious Part: Notice when anxiety shows up and gently name it—”Ah, here’s my anxious part again.”
- Get Curious: Ask your anxious part what it’s afraid would happen if it didn’t do its job. What is it trying to protect you from?
- Appreciate Its Intentions: Even if anxiety feels overwhelming, it’s trying to keep you safe. Thank this part for its efforts, even if you’d like it to find a different job or do things differently.
- Look Beneath the Anxiety: What feelings might be underneath? Is there sadness, fear, or anger that hasn’t been okay to feel?
- Invite Self-Compassion: Imagine what it would be like to meet your anxiety from a place of warmth and care rather than judgment or frustration.
You are not broken
The most important thing to remember is that you are not broken for feeling anxious—you’re human. Your anxiety is a part of you, not the whole of you. And just like every other part of your internal system, your anxious part deserves curiosity, compassion, and care.
By learning to befriend your anxious part, you open the door to something deeper—your own resilient, compassionate self, which has always been there, waiting to guide you home.
If this way of relating to anxiety resonates, consider working with a therapist trained in IFS (Internal Family System) or other somatic and experiential therapy modalities. Healing begins when we stop trying to banish our anxiety and instead learn to listen to what it has been trying to tell us all along.
