The relationship that we have with our parents is crucially formative in determining how we relate to others as adults. As children, we need our parents to take care of us in all ways: to feed us, cloth us, provide us shelter and safety, connect us to others outside our family system, teach us about the world, and more. Before we can even talk or hold long-term memories, we learn how to access our parents when we need them so that we can stay taken care of and safe.
Further, as important as this relationship is for the child, it also impacts the adult’s identity as a supportive provider. The parenting relationship can offer purpose and represent the chance to pass on values and a legacy. Many parents draw a significant part of their identity from this role.
Since this relationship holds so much importance from the formative years and across the lifespan, parents and their adult children often face challenges. The parent-adult child relationship can be one of the most complex relationships in our lives. Navigating these relationships can be both healing and stressful for both parties.
To make matters more complicated, the path to healing is not straight-forward. Many adult child-parent relationships can benefit from therapy to work through difficult aspects of the relationship. This article will focus on the adult child-parent relationship and what you can expect from adult child-parent relationship therapy.
Adult Child Parent Relationship Therapy
If you face challenges as an adult with your parent or with your adult child, you are far from alone. These relationships can carry pain, resentments, and unresolved issues spanning an entire lifetime.
As a relationship and family therapist, some of the most common challenges I hear from clients about relationships with parents or adult children include:
Adjusting to changing roles:
As children grow, they require a healthy level of independence in order to figure out who they are as an individual. Parents can struggle to let go of their role as a caregiver or trust their child to make decisions aligned with their own values.
Generational differences:
Parents may hold expectations for their adult children based on a difference in religion, politics, or values that are common to vary across generations.
Expectations:
When children make choices that differ from their parents, the parents may take the decisions personally or perceive disrespect. Adult children may choose not to have children of their own or to carry out a different lifestyle from their parents, which can create misunderstanding. It can also create a sense of conditional love, where children feel their parents only love and care for them if they follow their parents’ preferences.
Resentment or unresolved issues:
The reality is, no parent can get it right 100% of the time. It’s impossible. Yet, certain moments of feeling hurt, ashamed, or alone can stay with a child. These unresolved emotions can lead to resentment toward the parents for not having been taken care of. Similarly, this emotions can result to negative behaviors in childhood which can cause parents to hold frustration and resentment toward their children as adults.
Improving a relationship with a parent can feel hopeless if pain has been present over time. You may wonder if it’s even possible to connect in a genuine way, as much as you long for a healthy relationship with your parent or child.
Yet, the support and the focus of a therapist can help parties understand one another’s positions and instill hope in the possibility of having a different kind of relationship. You could even say that adult child-parent relationship therapy is the most important form of couples therapy since it holds the root of attachment patterns and emotional traumas.
How Does Relationship Therapy Work?
Relationship therapy is a form of counseling where multiple individuals are present in the session with a mental health professional. The counselor will provide structure for each partner to express their positions and to hear about the impacts on the other.
There are may different kinds of relationship therapies based on different ideas of how relationships can change. Generally, the goal of relationship therapy is to create a new conversation in the therapy room that provides more understanding and connection between parents and adult children.
This new understanding will allow them to see their interactions differently and reduce conflict in the future. Plus, counseling will teach members to use skills and characteristics of a healthy relationship.
Emotion-focused family therapy is the leading model of relationship therapy to heal and create change that will last over time.
What To Expect From Adult Child Parent Relationship Therapy
Structured Conversation
Instead of going down rabbit holes of the content of fights and disagreements that have occurred over the years, a counselor will identify and help you stay focused on the parts of the conversation that are important and will actually lead to moving forward.
Speaking From Your Own Perspective
Rather than blaming or creating long lists of all the things you hold resentment toward your parent or adult-child for, your therapist will guide you to speak from your own perspective.
Instead of “you were never there for me when I needed you”, you may express “I felt so alone and afraid as a child when I asked you for help and you told me to figure it out on my own.”
The focus of your perspective is the emotions you felt and continue to carry about the experience, rather than arguing about the past and what did or did not happen.
Listening Without Defensiveness
Speaking from your own perspective about how different experiences felt for you leads to lower levels of defensiveness from the other. Breaking the cycle of blame-defend is absolutely crucial in healing bonds between parent and child. As such, in addition to speaking your voice, each partner will also learn active listening of the other member.
Remember, some messages are going to be difficult to hear. Plus, even in the same interaction, the other person’s experience and the essence they takeaway can be completely different from yours. Still, all points of view are respected and incorporated in the therapy room.
Acknowledge Impact of the Past
Hurting others close to us is inevitable. To move forward, family members need to know that they other person understands the impact moments of neglect or disconnection had on forming their psyche.
As members can hold accountability for their own actions and acknowledge the pain in other members, forgiveness and healing can begin.
Healing the Past
Over time, as safety is created to share and hear about the experiences of family members, healing begins to occur. Members understand one another differently and more deeply and can own the hurt and impact they have had on the other without going down a shame spiral.
As members heal the past together, they can create shared meaning and identity about the experience as a member of this family.
Creating Rituals for the Future
Adult children and parents may differ in their inclinations for how they connect over time. The decisions for how families will stay connected while maintaining individual identify over time will be intentional and collaborative.
For some families, meeting weekly for a Sunday dinner is a workable option for all members. For others, annual reunions around the holidays provide the space needed to come back together in a healthy way. Families should work to hear all members and create rituals that allow all members to feel comfortable and connected.
Can Therapy Save A Relationship Between Adult Child and Parent?
When potential clients ask me whether therapy can really save a parent adult child relationship, I always share that the only requirement for starting is the motivation of both parties. As long as both the adult child and parent are both interested in working on the relationship and are both motivated to participate fully in sessions, there is hope in restoring and healing.
(If there continue to be any ongoing patterns of abuse, relationship therapy is not appropriate.)
The relationship between a parent and child is difficult and complex. When address this relationship, you can heal individual emotional and mental health, as well as relationships with others in your world. This may be surprising, but is because we often hold emotional wounds from our parent relationships that can easily be projected unknowingly onto other relationships. So while the path of family therapy is difficult, the rewards are worth it.
I’d love to hear what you think!
- Have you been wanting to start adult child- parent therapy?
- Do you long to better connect with your parent or child?
- Do you have hope things can change?
- Are there any fears holding you back from working on this relationship in therapy?
Let me know in the comments below! I’d love to start a conversation.
Reach out for a consultation
If you are looking for a therapist to support you in working with your parent or adult child, we offer services conveniently online using the Emotion Focused Family Therapy model.
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