Are You Your Mom’s Therapist or Your Dad’s Peacekeeper?

When my midlife women clients start to describe their anxiety, I often picture a pot of boiling water. The steam, racing thoughts, emotional overwhelm, sleep issues, is what we see. But the real issue is the fire underneath. And for so many women in this life stage, that fire is often fueled by unresolved relationships with emotionally immature parents.

If you're someone who feels a pit in your stomach when your mom calls… if your dad vents to you about your siblings or his marriage… if you've always been the emotional go-to in your family… you may be caught in powerful and draining dynamics that began in childhood.

Attachment Wounds: How It Starts in Childhood

Many of my midlife women clients come into therapy thinking their anxiety is the problem. But when we trace the roots, we often find attachment wounds, early emotional injuries from relationships that were inconsistent, neglectful, or overly demanding.

In a healthy childhood, a parent meets a child’s physical and emotional needs predictably and lovingly. This creates secure attachment, a deep belief that love is safe, consistent, and not something you have to earn.

But when a parent is emotionally immature—dealing with their own trauma, addiction, overworking, or mood instability, those needs might only be met sometimes. This creates anxious attachment, where love feels conditional. Children in this pattern learn:

• If I’m helpful, I get more attention.

• If I stay quiet, I don’t make things worse.

• If I take care of Mom or soothe Dad, I’m safe.

These early adaptations become powerful roles, roles like therapist, peacekeeper, or rescuer. And it’s important to name that it is fundamentally unfair to place children in these roles. They are asked to hold emotional weight that belongs to the adults in their lives, often without the skills or support to carry it. And while they may have helped you survive emotionally as a child, they become unsustainable in adulthood, especially in midlife, when anxiety is already heightened and your capacity is stretched thin.

This dynamic is known as parentification, when a child becomes a caregiver, emotionally or practically, to a parent. You were the helper, the counselor, the emotional anchor. It felt normal. But it wasn't fair.

It often goes hand-in-hand with enmeshment, where emotional boundaries between you and your parent are so blurred that you confuse their emotional state with your own. There’s little room for your identity because you’ve been carrying theirs for so long.

Many of my midlife clients start connecting the dots during therapy sessions. They realize that what they’ve labeled “family stress” is actually a result of dealing with emotionally immature parents. These parents are often emotionally unavailable, reactive, or unable to see you as a separate, autonomous adult. And when you’ve been raised by one, you may default into caregiving roles without realizing it, even when it’s hurting you.

Midlife is already a time of emotional re-evaluation. You’re navigating hormonal shifts, career changes, aging parents, grown or growing children, and evolving relationships. This emotional collision intensifies everything, including long-held family roles. If your relationship with your parents has always drained you, midlife is often when the cost of those dynamics becomes too high to ignore.

For many of my clients, the signs aren’t dramatic, but they are exhausting. You might feel emotionally flooded after every phone call with a parent. You might be expected to mediate family drama or hear, "you’re the only one who understands me." You carry guilt if you don't respond right away. You feel responsible for someone else’s well-being while already managing your own family.

You may have learned early on that being the “good one” earned you love or attention. That if you were calm, helpful, or emotionally available, it made everything better. But at what cost?

This role reversal, where the child becomes the parent’s emotional anchor, leaves many women feeling burnt out, anxious, disconnected from themselves, and unsure how to say no without feeling immense guilt. This isn’t just about needing better time management. It’s about recognizing how emotionally immature parenting has shaped your emotional blueprint.

So what can you do about it?

Start by naming it. Understanding that this is parentification and enmeshment, not normal closeness, is a powerful first step. Then, pay attention to your body. Do you feel dread when your phone lights up? Guilt when you take space? That’s your body telling the truth your mind is trying to manage.

Next, prepare for change. These dynamics are deeply embedded. Changing them often triggers guilt, fear, or grief. Modalities like EMDR and Brainspotting are powerful tools we use in online anxiety therapy for midlife women to safely process these layers before making external shifts.

Practice your boundaries. Try phrases like: “I’m not available for this right now. Can we talk about something lighter?” or “I think it might be time to talk to a therapist about this stuff.” Pushback is normal when you stop playing the role someone relies on.

Boundary work doesn’t mean cutting someone off, it means shifting the emotional contract. It might look like limiting how often you take their calls, changing the subject when conversations get emotionally loaded, refusing to be the middle person between parents and siblings, or taking longer to respond to emotionally charged texts. These aren’t punishments. They’re acts of self-respect.

Even actual therapists can’t work with family. That’s because emotional entanglement distorts boundaries and makes it impossible to be objective or supported. If you’ve felt like your parent’s therapist or emotional regulator, I want you to hear this: you are not responsible for their healing.

You didn’t cause their pain—and you cannot be the one who fixes it. That’s their job, and therapy is their path, not yours to manage.

If this blog stirred something in you, that’s your inner self saying, “I’m tired of carrying what was never mine.” Whether you're in Austin, Dallas, Houston, the Rio Grande Valley or anywhere in Texas, online anxiety therapy for midlife women offers flexible, trauma-informed support designed for this kind of emotional healing.

You don’t have to be your mom’s therapist or your dad’s peacekeeper. You can create a new relationship with your parents, one that respects your energy, your truth, and your peace.

Let’s begin that work, together.

Remember to care for yourself like you care for everyone else. 💜

Keely
Trauma-Informed Therapist for Midlife Women in Texas