Are you being infantilized?

[@JewelApril13]

When I became an adult, my mother started infantilizing me more and more. After spending my whole life having to be the adult. Cleaning, and taking care of my mother. Then suddenly I can't go out with friends, I can't take the bus, I can't dress how I want. It still confuses me.

[@Mychannel67-wh4tc]

Golden children are infantilised, scapegoats are abandoned & expected to serve the needs of parents & siblings. There are double standards within a dysfunctional families. In my family girls were a disappointment & less valuable. Boys were infantilised & enmeshed.

[@HigoIndico]

I was infantilized the worst, as the family scapegoat. Anyone is fair game for infantilizing in narcissistic family system.

[@slsevans]

My mother used the silent treatment as a punishment all the time when I was growing up. It is the most triggering thing for me now as an adult and I can't handle it when anyone in my life does it. I think it's at the root of my struggles with imposter syndrome and feeling like I'm not good enough. I will never use the silent treatment on anyone.

[@3mi3mi]

TheraminTrees is one of my favorite channels - never seen anyone react/comment on them, glad to see this

[@amycatherinehull4680]

Ah yes. I remember the last Christmas before I finally cut my mother off for good. I was about 22 or 23. I told her I would be visiting town and would see her, but I would not be staying with her, I would be staying with my now-SIL (I had a boundary about never entering my mother's house, as she had a history of behaviour of locking me in there, trapping me, etc). She of course went on a rampage, but one thing in particular she did was she went on a massive grocery run, and dropped off the groceries at SIL's apartment. SIL and I were communicating via text the whole time, and it turned out she'd already bought the necessary groceries for hosting a guest before my mother did this. When I was communicating with my mother via text, she asked me "Did you really expect that [SIL] would spend her money on those groceries for you? That's so disrespectful, how could you put that strain on her?" And uh, yeah lol. I did expect that, because that's part of being an adult hosting another adult from out of town. I certainly bought the groceries I needed for hosting SIL when she came to visit me. I might even say it's my favourite part of the anticipation of having a guest come... going to the store, picking up their favourite snacks and drinks, planning meals to cook for them that you know they'll enjoy, feeling like a chef lol. So anyway, if you can't tell, I was the scapegoat child lol. My SIL also told me about how, when my brother (golden child) still lived at home with our mother and she'd visit, sometimes she'd want to cook dinner with my brother as a cutesy date night activity. They were never allowed. They had to sit down somewhere and wait for our mother to cook dinner for them, to the point that she would scream at them for having the audacity to ask to cook for themselves. So most of their dinners started happening at SIL's old apartment very quickly, which also upset our mother. Oh and btw, my brother is older than me lol. SIL had me over for dinner once at that old apartment and can confirm, she's a ✨chef✨.

[@nursemelissajane]

A parent's primary job is to ensure their child has all the skills necessary to survive when they are gone. In many ways I am so lucky I was the scapegoat and identified problem in my family bc my mother focused very hard on making me completely independent from a very young age. Of course, that constant pressure to never ask for help has its own problems, but at least I am a functional & resourceful adult. My brothers, however, were not raised this way. Since they were children it has always been about pitting them against eachother so they'd be isolated, then hacking away at their self-esteem & undermining and sabatoging any steps they took towards independence and growth that didn't include her. In elementary school it was "oh you have an art/history/math assignment? Your sister is really good at that stuff, she will help you" -- then she'd push me to just do it for them. If I tried to opt out or let them complete their own work she would criticize and belittle whatever they came up with until they were crying and begging me to "fix" it. In his 20s my youngest brother was somehow able to get away; he moved out of state, got a job he loved, really created a life of his own. So of course that shit couldn't stand. Our mother began a fear and guilt campaign where she lied to him about her health, told him she could die at any time to get him to come home. Since our sibling relationships were still very broken bc of how she'd raised us he didn't reach out to verify any of it, just reluctantly came back for what he thought would he a short stay. That was over 10 years ago. And now, of course, her health really is terrible so as angry as he is, he doesn't feel like he could leave again. Our other brother is even worse: after he was discharged from the Army for his alcohol use & returned home, he....just....stayed there. He's now in his 40s, and has only worked sporadically the last 20 years. He has had no close relationships in that time with anyone. There was a stretch where he worked his way up to manager at a McDonald's and seemed really happy for once. He did that for about 5 years and suddenly one day he stopped. Whatever happened to pull down his small tower of independence, there's no chance mom wasn't doing her absolute best to rip bricks out of the foundation until it happened. And since then they've just gotten more amd more enmeshed in their very toxic relationship. He still doesn't even do his own laundry. I have no idea what he'll do when she's dead. Of course -- whether it's lucky or unlucky can be debated -- that spiteful old woman will probably outlive us all.

[@ddeuerme]

My mother infantilizes my sister (68F). My younger sister (59F) is deemed an adult because she married and followed a “normal” life. I escaped by moving across the country and going gray rock. I’m trying to help my older sister escape and trying to walk the line of helping and encouraging her without giving opinions that would affect decisions she needs to make for herself.

[@lightningmcqueen4202]

This one hits so close to home 16 minutes in and im thinkinking about asking our family counolar for another singel season because theres just so much i missed

[@Biomagitech]

Same here. I never knew this stuff had a Name.

[@lightningmcqueen4202]

@Biomagitech I knew it was a thing but having words my grandma has said to me verbatim coming up in this video was shocking. I downplay my situation alot and this was so eye oepning I dead ass can't finish video without talking to one of my therapy team

[@Zekrom569]

Indeed infantilisation is a very insidious manipulative tactic, i am about 5 years independent from my family and relatively recently realized that i was being infantilised by them, i think the purpose of that is by sabotaging your development you can (theoretically) never leave them, at least that's how it was in my case, completely manipulative, but it can happen as well in other kinds of relationships. In most cases the intention is to slowly make you dependent on them, another place that infantilisation happens a lot is workplace, HR departments are highly using this so that they can overwork you, give you shit pay and still have a loyal employee, this tactic in short breeds unquestionable loyalty. Also my own experience taught me another form of infantilisation that is more sneaky, and has to do with chores around the house, instead of telling me "no you cannot clean your room you will make a mess", what happened was that i cleaned my room as usual, it was perfectly fine then my mother would swoop in while i was outside or taking a shower and would do the same chores again and the crazier thing was that this was happening while i was a full grown adult

[@jn1211]

Oh my goodness. I asked my mom to stop going through my garbage and I’ll take care of it my way. I just need help keeping kitchen clean because of disability. Naw fam. She thinks that taking hours out of my day to sort through literally every piece of garbage saves her money at tax season so that overrides my requests for her to stop going through my garbage. So then I have to hide garbage from her if I buy something I don’t want her to see. So healthy!

[@skankskunk-o8m]

That thumbnail lol.

[@Alex-bb9lc]

😂

[@Maximmmino]

I watch a lot of tlc 😭😭

[@lindatheheathen]

"what if you were aborted?" ... "can we do it now?" 😆😆😆

[@NikaNani686]

thank you for the video! it helped me understand some things

[@maamaablaacksheep]

i love theramin trees

[@kid5349]

i feel like i relate to this alot, i still am being talked to in my family as young and naive. They still dont believe i need to be on the medication I am now, because I wasnt when i was younger. Even though I desperately needed something to help me regulate myself.

[@mhw4658]

49:11 BINGO my exact reply every time someone asked me that same question

[@LennyLefebvre-qb6qx]

YAAAAS. No one wants this argument with me.

[@Dragonkrux]

I love the channel you're viewing today. Hasn't released anything in some time. Hope he comes back eventually.

[@420frogo]

Love your videos

[@sianwain1384]

As a married JW I would like to state that we are NOT told what kind of sex we can and can’t have. This guy needs to get his facts right.

[@nineteenfortyeight]

I just started but so far you're overgeneralizing. Infantilizing doesn't just mean doing too much for your kid. My parents never did a damn thing for me that I was physically able to do myself. That shoe was on the other foot infact, I was expected to do for them. Nonetheless they spoke to me, and spoke about me to others, as if I knew nothing and was totally incompetent. They felt justified in manipulating me any way they could to make me do what they thought best, because after all, I was just a dumb kid of 30 or whatever and they were parents. That is also infantilizing.

[@Mamaroo92]

In your case it’s sounds like the infantilizing took more of the form of verbal manipulation instead of physical control. Still 100% damaging to you, for sure.

[@mgr9232]

I recently learned about a thing called adultification, which I had only ever been aware/made aware of parentification, but reading what you wrote kind of makes me think of my own situation in some regards where I was dealing with a mix of infantilisation as well as adultification. There’s a pretty useful article and explanation on it that gets pretty in depth I’d say on Oliver drakeford therapy’s website if you’d care to look into it and see how it fits for you?

[@nenasadie]

This. My parents stopped taking care of me in any way at around ten years old. By fifteen I was a mess, and I went to stay in London for a week... with my adult friends. Not a flicker of parental concern, I kid you not. But they expected me to go out to work for a pittance (I left school at fifteen) and pay them money... while they went to university. Actually now I've written it out, that's straight up parentification. Well, damn.

[@tally551]

Sounds like my parents. My mum would yell "you don't live here!" At me in front of people when I was over talking about something. But then expect me to help her with chores... Except I didn't live there.

[@azuredystopia3751]

Gently, you were adultified. It's irrelevant really since it's all abusive and cruel. Your parents carried out the typical narcissistic smear campaign to assauge their guilt (a sure sign that they fully understood how abusive they were). No point getting hung up on semantics- we're all in the same boat because of monstrous parenting and should aim for empathy and solidarity. You deserve to be happy.

[@HarrisburgShopping]

no offense but why is your mustache having a war with itself. It looks like there is a serious DMZ between them...