who are you when you’re not pleasing anyone? - by lina

growing up, i figured out how to listen like i’m translating someone back to themselves. how to respond just enough to feel intimate, but not enough to feel messy. people would leave conversations with me feeling understood, and i often left feeling erased. this never felt strange at the time, if anything it felt familiar. because when you grow up with emotionally immature or dysregulated parents, love becomes conditional on your usefulness. and so you do exactly that, you become useful, become good. you learn to co-regulate people who never learned to regulate themselves. and in doing so, you start abandoning yourself without even realising it. psychologists call this emotional parentification, a form of role reversal where a child becomes responsible for a parent’s emotional state. but what’s less often talked about is how this rewires your sense of self. studies show that children who experience emotional parentification often develop what’s called alexithymia, a reduced ability to

growing up, i figured out how to listen like i’m translating someone back to themselves. how to respond just enough to feel intimate, but not enough to feel messy. people would leave conversations with me feeling understood, and i often left feeling erased. this never felt strange at the time, if anything it felt familiar. because when you grow up with emotionally immature or dysregulated parents, love becomes conditional on your usefulness. and so you do exactly that, you become useful, become good. you learn to co-regulate people who never learned to regulate themselves. and in doing so, you