If you’ve ever gone canoeing at camp, you probably remember the drill: life jacket first. Before anyone even touches a paddle, there’s that safety talk about how to tighten the straps, where the buckles go, and why, no matter how strong a swimmer you are, you don’t get in the boat without a PFD. (Thank you, Camp Asto Wamah, Columbia, CT.)
There’s a reason for that. If the boat tips, if you hit your head, if you panic and can’t find the surface the life jacket doesn’t swim for you, but it flips you upright. It gives your body a chance to do what it’s built to do: breathe, float, survive. The jacket doesn’t fix the chaos, but it makes it survivable. That’s what it’s for. That’s the bare minimum.
And that’s what this post is about.
I want to start with something that might not make sense yet, but it will:
I’m sorry no one gave you the damn life jacket.
I’m sorry you were made to feel like your needs were selfish. I’m sorry you had to stay calm so the adults wouldn’t lose it. I’m sorry your feelings were “too much” and your boundaries were punished. I’m sorry you were the one bailing out the boat while everyone else panicked or pretended everything was fine.
When I talk with clients, many of whom are functioning adults, successful professionals, and amazing parents, I hear the quiet confusion behind their words. They’ll say, “It wasn’t that bad,” or, “I guess I’m just sensitive.” But then they describe a childhood where their emotional safety was never guaranteed, where the rules were always shifting, and where love came with conditions. They grew up without the emotional equivalent of a life jacket.
So let’s talk about what parenting should mean.
Let’s talk about what happens when, instead of getting the life jacket, you were asked to be the lifejacket.
Over the years, I’ve worked with clients who don’t quite understand what being parented should have felt like. Not because they’re broken or clueless. They were raised in environments where parenting was transactional, manipulative, absent, or some combination of all three. And to make things even murkier, there were often aspects of being parented that weren’t overtly harmful. Maybe someone tucked them in sometimes. Maybe someone made soup when they were sick.
But the structure of the relationship was flawed because the child wasn’t allowed to be a child. The child was a tool, a mirror, an emotional regulator, a balm for the parent’s unmet needs. Or maybe worse: the child was the parent’s second chance at glory. A project. A perfect extension of their identity.
Clients who are often women and deeply self-aware, high-functioning, and exhausted will say things like:
“Well, they didn’t hit me…”
“I mean, we had food, I guess.”
“They weren’t all bad. Most of the time we were okay.”
And then the real stories start to come out.
We begin to un-peel the years of shame and confusion, and what we find is a childhood not spent being nurtured but being used. A life lived in service of maintaining the adult’s emotional temperature. A deep, persistent drive to be competent, to meet needs before they’re spoken, to earn love through hyper-functioning.
These are the kids who became emotional caretakers.
Who felt safest when they were invisible.
Who got nervous when they needed something.
Who knew the mood in the room before the door even closed behind them.
They knew when to tiptoe, when to joke, when to disappear.
That’s not being a child.
That’s being the emotional adult in the room.
That’s survival.
And the pathology from the parent doesn’t evaporate just because the child grows up. It shows up in adulthood. Oh, does it show up. It sounds like this:
“You think you’re better than me now, with your degree and your therapist?”
“I sacrificed everything for you. You’re so ungrateful.”
Or the seduce-and-slam voicemail:
“Happy birthday, sweetheart. Hope you’re well. By the way, I’m behind on rent again—thought maybe you could help. But I guess you’re too busy being selfish. You always put yourself first. You never appreciated me. I’m not mad; I’m just telling the truth. Happy Birthday!”
Or even more confusing are the polite and loving messages…and then not showing up or the occasional deeply critical commentary on how you live your life, how you parent or the choices you make.
Sweet. Twist. Slam.
This is a common trauma pattern, and it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves—because on the surface, everything might have looked “fine.” Maybe there was food on the table. Maybe there weren’t bruises. Maybe there were even family vacations and birthday cakes and framed photos.
But emotional neglect, narcissistic abuse, or inconsistent caregiving especially when these are chronic and unaddressed leave lasting marks in quieter places.
Psychologist Dr. Jonice Webb coined the term Childhood Emotional Neglect (CEN) to describe this exact experience: when a child’s emotional needs go unseen, invalidated, or ignored. CEN isn’t about what did happen, but what didn’t. It’s the absence of attunement. It’s not being asked how you felt after a hard day, not being comforted when you were scared, not being told that your feelings made sense.
(A note on language:) I’m generally wary of terms that don’t appear in official diagnostic manuals. That said, CEN or Childhood Emotional Neglect, can be useful shorthand in certain conversations. Still, mental health isn’t a TikTok trend. It’s complex, layered, and deeply individual. Viral content can offer glimpses, but not the whole picture. If something resonates with you, don’t stop at the label. Get support. Processing, not pathologizing, is what leads to healing.
Back to the point, here’s the rub: CEN often invisible. You can’t point to one moment and say, “That’s when I broke.”
Because what breaks is your internal compass—your ability to trust your own emotional signals, your belief that your needs matter, your very sense of safety.
Children raised in this kind of environment often grow into adults who feel vaguely “off” but can’t explain why. They may describe feeling hollow, chronically self-doubting, overwhelmed by relationships, or prone to perfectionism and overfunctioning.
Sound familiar? It’s like trying to win a game where you were never taught the rules—but you’re still convinced that losing is your fault.
One of the hardest parts is that people with CEN often minimize their experiences.
“Well, it wasn’t that bad,” they’ll say.
“My parents were doing the best they could.”
And maybe they were.
But doing your best doesn’t always mean meeting someone’s needs. And having your needs unmet repeatedly and without explanation rewires how you understand connection, safety, and even yourself.
These children learned to minimize themselves.
To regulate everyone else. They learned that their feelings were inconvenient, their boundaries were punishments, and their needs were optional.
And worst of all, they often don’t even realize it was trauma because it was normalized.
So let me say something loud and clear. Your needs were important. Hear this:
If you and your parent are in a boat that is about to go under and there’s one life jacket—the child gets the life jacket.
Yes, of course, on a basic level, parents need to meet their own needs in order to care for their children. You can’t pour from an empty cup. But that’s not what this is about. This is about the fundamental rule of caregiving: the child’s actual safety, physical and emotional, is the responsibility of the adult. Every time. The kid gets the PFD.
That is the order of the universe.
That is what parenting means.
Let’s not confuse this with today’s anxious over-parenting, where some parents micromanage every move to prevent even minor disappointment. That’s not what this is. Life has discomfort. Boo-boos happen. Struggles matter. Kids need those experiences to build confidence and resilience.
But I’m not talking about scraped knees.
I’m talking about emotional oxygen.
About life-preserving attachment.
About being seen, heard, and safe.
A real parent regardless of how tired, scared, or flawed they are gives the PFD to the child. Not because the child earned it. Not because the child is perfect. But because that’s the job.
But many of us were raised in homes where the opposite happened.
You were the life vest.
You were the one keeping someone else afloat. You were the one soothing adult tantrums, translating chaos, or being the “easy one” to avoid conflict. And you were taught to call that love.
Research from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child confirms that consistent, responsive caregiving is the foundation of resilience and healthy development. When caregivers fail to provide that emotional anchor when the child becomes the one responsible for maintaining the adult’s stability the child’s brain adapts to survive. This is known as toxic stress, and it disrupts the development of core brain structures tied to memory, emotion regulation, and sense of self.
As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes in The Body Keeps the Score:
“Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.”
If you never or rarely felt emotionally safe…
If you were taught your role was to serve someone else’s emotional needs…
If love felt like a minefield…
You weren’t defective.
You were adapting.
You were surviving.
But now?
Now you can swim.
You can grab your own damn jacket. You can stop apologizing for leaving a sinking system behind. You can choose your health, your peace—even if no one ever chose you.
You get to choose you.
It’s your time.
And that doesn’t make you cruel. That doesn’t mean you owe the people who harmed you anything more than your absence. It means you’ve chosen life. And you’ve chosen not to pass the harm forward.
I’ve had clients look at me with tears in their eyes and say:
“But even as a kid, wouldn’t giving myself the life jacket be selfish?”
No. That was the lie you were taught.
You were raised in a system where your autonomy was threatening. Where boundaries were betrayal.
When saying “no” was treated like emotional violence.
But real parenting isn’t about control. It’s about presence. Consistency. Boundaries.
It’s about knowing that if the boat’s going down, the kid gets the jacket.
So to everyone out there who’s been handed the role of life raft I see you.
And I’m here to say:
You’re allowed, no, you can swim even if they never gave you the freak’n jacket.
References & Further Reading
Jonice Webb. Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect. Morgan James Publishing, 2012.
American Psychological Association. Parenting and Child Development
Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson. The Power of Showing Up. Ballantine Books, 2020.
Diana Fosha. The Transforming Power of Affect: A Model for Accelerated Change. Basic Books, 2000.
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