06/18/2018
Heartbreaking and very true!😥💔
A role-reversal relationship is one in which the child is used to meet the parent’s emotional and psychological needs.
In normal and healthy parent-child relationships, the child uses the parent to meet the child’s emotional and psychological needs.
In a normal and healthy parent-child relationship, the parent is said to act as a “regulatory object” for the child.
In a normal and healthy parent-child relationship, when the child becomes upset and distressed (dysregulated), the parent acts in soothing and structuring ways to bring the child back into an emotionally and behaviorally organized and regulated state. The parent acts as a “regulatory object” – also called a “regulatory other” – for the child.
This is normal and healthy. The child is using the parent to meet the child’s needs. The parent is an external “regulatory other” for the child.
In a role-reversal relationship, however, this normal and healthy parent-child relationship is turned upside down. In a role-reversal relationship, the parent uses the child to meet the parent’s emotional and psychological needs.
In a role-reversal relationship, the parent uses the child as a “regulatory object” to stabilize the parent’s emotional and psychological state. When the parent is upset and distressed, the child responds in ways that soothe the parent, keeping the parent in an organized and regulated state. The child becomes an external “regulatory object” for the parent.
A role-reversal relationship is extremely pathological and damaging to the healthy emotional and psychological development of the child. It robs the child of self-authenticity and damages self-structure development.
Instead, in a role-reversal relationship, the child continually monitors the parent’s emotional and psychological state and must become who the unstable parent needs the child to be in order to keep the parent in an emotionally and psychologically organized and regulated state.
In clinical and developmental psychology, a role-reversal relationship is considered a psychological “boundary violation” that violates the child’s psychological integrity. At its more extreme, a role-reversal relationship is essentially a form of psychological in**st in which the parent psychologically violates and intrudes into the psychological integrity of the child so that the parent can meet the parent’s own emotional and psychological needs by using the child as a “regulatory object” for the parent’s fragile and damaged emotional and psychological state.
A role-reversal relationship is extremely pathological.
Dr. Craig Childress
