01/12/2025
This is a lovely post about some solid boundaries to set with adult children. These are the issues that come up time and time again.
I especially like to explore a “non-pathologising boundary” with clients. I so often witness how the exhaustion of being projected upon impacts a lot of parents of adult children.
Social media encourages such lay diagnosis of parents. “Narcissistic.” “Emotionally immature.” “Emotionally unavailable.” And it often speaks more to the adult child’s experience of their parent in childhood than it does to the parent today.
It can be quite revolutionary then for adult children to come back to their present moment experiences of themselves, and simply notice there is something that might keep shifting their attention back onto their parent and away from themselves.
So many adult children take on far too much responsibility for their parent, trying to get them into therapy and trying to change them. So, for example, when a parent says “I accept myself as I am” (which is a pretty healthy thing to say!) it is viewed in a negative light. Self-compassion might get labelled as narcissism. Resistance to being pathologised might be seen as avoidance rather than healthy self esteem.
A boundary is the distance at which two people can stay in connection, so curiosity about both party’s own and each other’s needs is essential. It’s important to hold our beliefs lightly. Unfortunately, social media encourages a focus on what is “wrong” with the parent, rather than the attention being on the unmet need of the adult child (and their inner child within).
The focus of my work is in helping clients, both adult children and parents, to build a secure attachment to themselves, to let go of codependency and enmeshment, and to develop capacity to be curious about their own processes, feelings and unmet needs, and creating a self-compassionate relationship with themselves.
When we can relate to ourselves in a kinder way, it becomes easier to relate to others - even those who trigger us.
When we learn to experience our triggers, instead of avoiding them, the very triggers themselves transform into opportunities to explore our own inner processes.
It takes time and a dedication to do the exploration. As well as willingness, it also needs readiness. In the early stages of process, people don’t have the capacity to own their own experience. So for example, when someone in the early stages of process feels sad, it is because someone made them feel sad. They don’t have capacity to defuse their interpretation from their experience. Pre-therapy can be helpful at these stages.
As a client develops a capacity to own their own experience and start to get curious about it, then possibility opens us. All the time we are focused on someone else (the drama triangle!) we aren’t growing or healing. So bringing attention back to ourselves is an important step. I’d love to see more social media influencers sharing the idea that their followers would benefit from coming back to their own experiences, rather than focusing on what is wrong with the parent. But I suspect that isn’t as popular as click bait!
Challenging and difficult relationships with their adult children are a common prompt to come into therapy for a lot of parents. I personally think that is a good thing. They are often able to afford therapy and often they are at the stage of process to be able to get curious about their own inner workings. But for therapy to work, clients need to be ready to be there of their own volition, not because someone else is pathologising or pushing them. So a non-pathologising boundary can really help to protect that space, both before and during therapy.
NOT setting these boundaries helps neither you nor your grown children.
