When the Child Becomes the Parent: Understanding Role Reversal in Childhood Through a Trauma-Informed Lens
Did you find yourself taking care of your parent(s) emotionally, practically, or mentally, instead of being taken care of as a child?
Did you learn to sense moods, mediate conflict or family dynamics, and take responsibility for your parents’ feelings when you were little?
This role confusion between child and parent is also known as parentification or role reversal, where children take on different responsibilities to care for their parents or siblings instead of being taken care of (Dariotis et al., 2023).
This article explores the issue of role reversal in early childhood from a trauma-informed perspective and shows how these early dynamics can unconsciously shape our nervous system, identity, relationships, and sense of self. It invites a deeper understanding of why many people struggle people-pleasing, exhaustion, and disconnection, even when they appear well-functioning on the outside.
How role reversal develops in childhood
Role reversal happens when a child is required, consciously or unconsciously, to step into roles that belong to the parent. This can take many forms, and may often not be visible from the outside. What defines role reversal is not the task itself, but the shift in responsibility, where the child becomes oriented toward the needs, stability, or emotional wellbeing of others rather than being supported in their own development (DiMarzio et al., 2021).
There are two main types of role reversal, that is:
Emotional role reversal occurs when a child becomes responsible for a parent’s emotional needs. This may look like being a source of comfort, being used for regulating a parent’s emotion, or being the one who provides a sense of meaning, validation, or stability for the parent. In some cases, mothers may even unconsciously use the child to feel loved, seen, needed, and emotionally soothed (Broughton, 2021) due to their own unresolved trauma and feelings of loneliness, emotional immaturity, and depression.
Practical role reversal happens when a child takes developmentally inappropriate responsibilites often out of necessity, for example managing household tasks and organizing the functioning of daily life, providing practical care to a parent, or becoming the primary caregiver for younger siblings (Dariotis et al., 2023). Common reasons include a parent being emotionally unstable, addicted, depressed, overwhelmed, or mostly absent.
There are many children who experience the above described dynamics to various degrees, often also in family systems that appear functional from the outside.
Trauma as a consequence
When the above described dynamics of parentification become repetitive or even part of a childs daily reality, this often results in trauma and can significantly impact the child’s emotional and psychological development. The child learns to suppress their own needs and feelings (Boumans & Dorant, 2018), and becomes especially attuned to their environment, others’ emotions, and behavior. Many people may argue that this fosters early independence, maturity, resilience, and competence without understanding the severe impact these experiences may have on the emotional and psychological development of the child from a trauma-informed perspective.
The child loses the experience of actually being a child who is being cared for, misses safety and healthy attachment, and instead learns that connection depends on being available, attuned, and emotionally responsive. The nervous system gets wired in a way where connection and belonging are associated with responsibility and obligation. As a result, the body often remains in a state of chronic activation, like hypervigilance, overfunctioning, constantly scanning the mood of a parent or others, feeling anxious and looking for potential threats (hyperarousal). When the burden and activation become too much, the body may shift into shutdown, numbing, depression and dissociation (hypoarousal).
From an IoPT perspective (Identity-oriented Psychotrauma Theory), trauma directly impacts the development of our self and identity (Who am I?). Trauma fragments our psyche into different inner parts: the trauma self, survival self, and healthy self. The trauma self, which can be described as our inner child parts carries our suppressed feelings and unmet needs, while the survival self develops different strategies to cope with the trauma (Ruppert, 2019). In the case of role reversal, the psyche of the child organizes itself around the necessary survival roles that ensure the functioning, caretaking, emotional regulation of others at the cost of suppressing personal needs. The whole focus is outward oriented and the internal question often becomes, “Who do I need to be to keep things stable?”. This can severely disrupt the development of a healthy self and lead to identity confusion, self-doubt, and a sense of emptiness later in life (Schorr & Goldner, 2023).
Impact in adulthood and long term consequences
Many people who have experienced trauma from role reversal often function well for years in adulthood. It is only later, when the nervous system can no longer sustain this level of vigilance and self-suppression, that symptoms begin to strongly affect the mental and physical wellbeing.
From a somatic perspective, one of the most significant long-term impacts is a loss of bodily orientation. When we have trauma related to role reversal, we often suffer from a deep disconnection from our body and inner experience. Instead our attention is directed outward, toward others’ needs, emotional states, and expectations, rather than inward toward our bodily signals. Feelings like hunger, fatigue, tension, pain, or emotional sensations may be ignored, overridden, or noticed only when they become severe. Our limits and boundaries may be difficult to sense and even harder to honor and maintain. This disconnection from the body reflects an early imprint in our psyche and nervous system that staying attuned to others was safer than staying connected to ourselves.
Common examples related to the somatic impact are:
Pushing through exhaustion or illness without realizing how depleted you are
Difficulty to recognize hunger, rest, or emotional needs until your body forces you to stop
Feeling disconnected from sensations such as pleasure, relaxation, or groundedness
Struggling to set boundaries, even when the body signals overwhelm or resistance
Feeling guilt or anxiety when you are resting, slowing down, or prioritizing yourself
Relationally, these patterns continue in subtle and unconscious ways, often also within our original family system. Many adults remain emotionally, practically, or psychologically responsible for their parents well into adulthood. We may continue to provide emotional regulation, problem solving, decision making, or a sense of stability, even when it comes at a significant personal cost. Contact with parents can activate old survival roles automatically, keeping the nervous system in a state of vigilance and obligation. At the same time, many people often overfunction in other relationships as well, for example by being a people-pleaser, or feeling drawn to partners, friends, or work environments where caretaking and overgiving are needed. Others may avoid closeness altogether, because intimacy unconsciously activates responsibility and fear rather than safety.
Common examples showing the relational impact include:
Feeling responsible for your parent’s emotional wellbeing or mental health
Trying to rescue, fix, or save your parent from their life choices, suffering, or consequences
Being the primary emotional support for your parent, even when it feels draining or overwhelming
Feeling intense guilt when setting boundaries or reducing contact with others
Choosing partners who need your ongoing care, guidance, or emotional support
Feeling uncomfortable receiving support, help, or care from others
Avoiding intimacy because closeness feels like a burden and responsibility rather than safety and comfort
Emotionally and psychologically, long-term consequences may show as a sense of emptiness, restlessness, or not knowing who I am beyond my roles and obligations. Joy, play, and spontaneity can feel unfamiliar or unsafe. Often we may also feel disconnected from our wants and needs, or being unable to make decisions without referring to others.
Examples may look like:
Difficulty answering simple questions such as “What do I want?” or “What feels right for me?”
Feeling valuable primarily when you feel useful or needed
Chronic self-doubt and strong reliance on external validation
Avoidance and depression of feelings like anger, grief, or sadness because these feelings feel threatening or inappropriate
Physically, many people experience that the body eventually begins to signal what has been suppressed for too long. Chronic stress, exhaustion, burnout, pain, digestive issues, immune challenges, or unexplained symptoms are very common. Trauma research and somatic psychology both emphasize that the body and nervous system can compensate only for so long before eventually saying stop (Maté, 2003; Ruppert et al., 2018). When symptoms emerge later in life, they are often misinterpreted as a sudden breakdown of the body or malfunction. In reality, they reflect a system that has been suppressing often decades of feelings and was living in survival mode for years without sufficient support, rest, or regulation.
Examples of physically symptoms may be:
Fatigue or burnout that does not resolve with rest
Chronic tension, headaches, pain in the jaw and joints
Digestive issues or autoimmune diseases
Feeling very sensitive to stress, noise, or emotional demands
Feeling disconnected from the body or experiencing dissociation or numbing
Understanding our symptoms and patterns through a trauma informed lens means to recognize that they are not a dysfunction of our body, but the delayed cost of unresolved early childhood trauma. Acknowledging this can help shift our inner narrative from self-criticism to more understanding and self-compassion, and opens the door to empathic curiosity and slowly healing our inner parts.
Breaking the pattern and healing our early wounds
Healing childhood trauma begins with starting to recognize that our symptoms, challenges and unhealthy patterns, are important signals from our body and psyche. Fatigue, anxiety, emotional overwhelm, or repeated struggles and patterns in relationships are often our nervous system’s way of communicating that old wounds and inner child parts are asking for our attention.
From a trauma-informed and IoPT perspective, healing requires turning inward and gently exploring our inner psychological parts and dynamics that have formed in response to our early experiences and childhood trauma. This means gently reconnecting with inner child parts and exploring our unmet needs from childhood. When we create space for these parts to be seen, felt, and expressed in a safe and trauma-informed environment, we can come in contact with suppressed emotions like grief, anger, sadness, or loneliness and start to release them safely.
An essential part of this process is also to work with the body. Trauma energy is stored in the body and psyche and our nervous system adapts accordingly to these experiences. Therefore, healing involves reconnecting with our bodily signals and supporting nervous system regulation. This includes learning to notice sensations, track our activation and shutdown responses, explore triggers, and learn how to support our body in resting and integration. As stored tension and survival energy are released, our body comes slowly more into regulation and balance.
Healing also involves strengthening the healthy adult self. This is the part in our psyche that can orient to the present, set healthy boundaries without guilt, and is attuned to our needs and wants (Ruppert, 2019). The healthy self is also the part from which we can soothe and connect with our inner child parts, without collapsing or shutting down. This creates a feeling of inner safety and self-connection.
Finally, breaking the trauma patterns requires integration into daily life. The insights we gain through therapy or self exploration need to be lived, not just understood. This may mean that we practice slowing down, changing relational patterns, honoring our bodily limits, practicing saying no, or asking for and allowing support where it once felt impossible. Over time, these choices create inner and outer structures that are no longer organized around survival, but around connection, presence, and self-trust. 💛
✏️ Questions for Reflection:
In what ways did I learn to prioritize others’ needs, emotions, or stability over my own?
Where do I notice a sense of obligation, guilt, or responsibility to show up in my relationships today?
Do I find myself still taking on emotional or practical responsibility for my parents or family members and in which situation becomes this activated?
What inner or outer resources support me in feeling more regulated, supported, and connected?
If this article resonated with you, I’d love to hear your reflections. Feel free to share your thoughts or insights in the comments below. If you are looking for guidance on your journey of self-connection and healing, I offer deeply trauma-informed, supportive sessions both online and in Oslo, where we can explore your nervous system, trauma patterns, and practical ways to support to yourself. 💙
With warmth
Julia
References
Boumans, N. P. G., & Dorant, E. (2018). A cross-sectional study on experiences of young adult carers compared to young adult noncarers: Parentification, coping and resilience. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(4), 1409–1417.
Broughton, V. (2021). Trauma and identity. Green Pharmacy Balloon Publishing.
Dariotis, J. K., Chen, F. R., Park, Y. R., Nowak, M. K., French, K. M., & Codamon, A. M. (2023). Parentification vulnerability, reactivity, resilience, and thriving: A mixed methods systematic literature review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(13), 6197.
DiMarzio, K., Parent, J., Forehand, R., Champion Thigpen, J., Acosta, J., Dale, C., & Compas, B. (2021). Parent-child role confusion: Exploring the role of family processes in the context of parental depression. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 51(6), 982–996.
Maté, G. (2003). When the body says no: Understanding the stress-disease connection. J. Wiley.
Ruppert, F., Banzhaf, H., & Broughton, V. (Eds.). (2018). My body, my trauma, my I: Constellating our intentions – exiting our traumabiography. Green Balloon Publishing.
Ruppert, F. (2019). Who am I in a traumatised and traumatising society? Green Pharmacy Balloon Publishing.
Schorr, S., & Goldner, L. (2023). “Like stepping on glass”: A theoretical model to understand the emotional experience of childhood parentification. Family Relations, 72(5), 3029–3048.