Parentification: The Trauma of High Performers, Perfectionists, and Workaholics

Workaholism, excessive independence, extreme conscientiousness, perfectionism, and competitiveness are often traits of high-performing individuals. However, beneath these traits, which are usually socially praised, frequently lies the trauma of parentification, which is a form of childhood trauma or developmental trauma, but which causes lifelong scars. Beneath the high performance and care for others usually lies an internal world of unmet needs, emptiness, confusion, feeling lost, lack of parental guidance, loneliness, and anger. There is a vulnerability that needs to remain isolated from intimacy, care, and love, which would bring up the pain of an emotional hunger too unbearable to face.

Workaholism, perfectionism, and caring for others are often byproducts of parentification—a form of childhood trauma resulting from a role reversal between child and parent. Through parentification, the parent imposes expectations on the child beyond the child's physical, cognitive, and emotional development. Parentification is the trauma of a child expected not only to grow up prematurely but also to take care of the parent's emotional state.

Not only were parentified individuals as children treated as adults, they were also expected to perform as adults. As a result, rather than in play, they may have found enjoyment in carrying out adult tasks and getting recognition for it. However, neither the children nor their parents realised that this enjoyment stemmed from the overt or covert praise they received for completing adult tasks. Since high performance is often linked to social praise, the behaviour of these children often received social recognition and reinforcement, contributing to their distress in their adulthood.

Parentification: Development of High-Performing and Workaholic Individuals with a Sense of Internal Emptiness and Directionlessness

One of the functions of healthy parents is to provide continuous guidance, approval, and other resources to help children cope with the difficulties of adult world. Parentified children, due to the reversed roles, never received such recognition. As a result, they learned to parent themselves "in response to the abdication of parenting" (Lackie, 1999, p. 141). Many of these children become the so-called ‘overly-functioning children’, so “children who function at high levels, well beyond their chronological years” (Robinson, 1999, p. 57).

As such, these individuals often feel deep down that they are inept at dealing with adult life but refuse to show this ineptness to others or even admit it to themselves. This sense of being smaller and incapable often manifests as anxiety and a general feeling of threat. The experience of being unable to live as adults stems from their childhood, where they faced adult chores and assumed adult responsibilities—an experience that never ended despite their physical maturation. This overfunctioning continued into adulthood. A child expected to take on adult tasks and function as an adult will inherently develop characteristics of high performance, perfectionism, and workaholism.

The Development of an Internal Sense of Emptiness, Meaninglessness, and Boredom

However, this high-performing identity is actually a house of cards, a facade, an empty shell that conceals a deeper void and lack of self-awareness. As children, these individuals were expected only to perform, without receiving proper guidance and resources to manage the adult world. As adults, they continue to be high-performing, often addicted to work. Their authenticity was never recognised, nor were they acknowledged for who they truly were. The genuine aspects of their identity were unseen—they were not understood—which is why the experience of being unseen or misunderstood carries into adulthood. Consequently, they develop a sense of emptiness, meaninglessness, purposelessness, and confusion beneath the surface. In adulthood, they continue to function like children taught to act as adults, rather than as adults who are adult. They remain highly functional outwardly but feel lost and confused underneath.

And where does the emptiness come from?

A child expected to fulfil an adult's role is not seen for who they truly are. They are only valued for their performance and their ability to please their parents and meet their parents' needs. Without fulfilling the parent's needs, the child goes unrecognised and unacknowledged. As the child perceives themselves as nothing unless they meet the parents' expectations, this creates a sense of internal emptiness. Similarly, the absence of parental guidance leads to confusion and a lack of direction. Additionally, the child may feel like they are 'too much' when they are anything other than a performing, need-fulfilling object for the parent. This entire process results in a lack of self and identity, hidden beneath a high-performing, workaholic shell. This internal emptiness is often concealed not only from others but also from the individual's conscious mind.

The Lost and Lonely Child Within a High Performing Adult

Parentified children who become high-performing adults and workaholics approach adult life by remaining children internally while adapting to the needs of adulthood, rather than truly growing up and maturing psychologically. Internally, they unconsciously remain stuck in this place, seeking recognition by meeting the needs of their demanding parent.

Take, for instance, a person who, as a child, was taught to behave in a way her parents deemed ‘appropriate’ to convey their family's perfection to others. This included excelling intellectually, attending the best schools, conducting herself appropriately, and succeeding professionally and socially. While meeting her father’s narcissistic need for her to be the most successful among her peers and later as a professional, she also had to navigate her mother’s dependency and self-absorption. As a child, she was only seen and recognised when she performed well, was socially adept, and showed respect and attention to others. Her authentic needs, aspirations, dreams, and concerns were never considered. Expressing her feelings was ridiculed and seen as weakness, as well as selfish and self-indulgent. This led her to develop an auxiliary identity as a high performer, workaholic, and people pleaser—an identity that masked underlying emptiness, an extreme sense of aloneness and loneliness, boredom, and purposelessness. To keep the feelings of loneliness, boredom, and emptiness unconscious, she turned to various forms of escapism, such as engaging in toxic relationships, alcohol, food, and impulsive travelling. Her beliefs, behaviour, appearance, and thought processes all indicated that she was psychologically still a child within a physically adult body. As such, “work addiction in children is viewed as a learned addictive response to a dysfunctional family of origin.” (Robinson, 1999, p. 61)

Chasing The Fantasy of Ultimate Success to Escape Relationships, the Pain of Intimacy, and Emptiness

While some may struggle with persistence and commitment to long-term goals, becoming discouraged or at least tired at times, the high-performing workaholic is usually tirelessly focused on their goals. What motivates them to stay on track is often some form of unconscious fantasy. This fantasy typically involves having their needs met, such as feeling seen and recognised, or finally being able to attend to themselves rather than others, by achieving ultimate success.

The paradox of this fantasy lies in the fact that, as a child, the parentified workaholic may have only felt seen when achieving success, leading them to unconsciously strive for this recognition as an adult. This often destroys their relationships and leaves them on a path of solitude and loneliness. Thus, their present life becomes a re-enactment of their childhood, where they continue seeking recognition for their performance—the same recognition they resented and loathed as children while feeling unseen by their parents. “Their overfunctioning becomes their drug that provides them good feelings about themselves while simultaneously causing them to have difficulty trusting, being intimate, and relinquishing control.” (Robinson, 1999, p. 59)

Although a workaholic, high-performance lifestyle can lead to a lack of authentic and intimate relationships, this is not simply a negative side effect of an individual's pathological attachment to performance, work, and success. In fact, the obsession with success, work, and perfectionism often serves to help one avoid intimacy and psychological contact with others. This perspective makes sense when considering the underlying childhood trauma of the parentified individuals. Their need for genuine contact and intimacy with their parents was violated when they were children, so they still experience the mere need for contact as painful, as well as any sign of others' genuine care and love.

Career as an Escape From Engulfment, Loosing Oneself, and Having to Take Care of Others

Even though parentified individuals who become workaholics and high achievers often seem resilient, resourceful, and excessively independent, they are, deep down, immensely dependent on others and often engage in codependent relationships—whether with their romantic partners, families of origin, or friends.

Their underlying dependency is reflected in their need to care for others, seek approval, and meet others' needs. This often leads them to relationships where they feel like hostages to others' demands. They may feel they are losing freedom because they must care for people, which prevents them from meeting their own needs. This can build into resentment towards others' needs, but this resentment is often unconscious, buried under layers of guilt and perceived selfishness if they choose to focus on themselves.

The experience of needing to attend to and care for others can create feelings of engulfment, smothering, suffocation, and losing oneself in the relationship. These feelings may be so strong that they feel like losing one’s identity. Workaholics and high-functioning individuals often attempt to escape these feelings by focusing on performance, work, and career. This is how they prevent losing themselves in relationships and feeling dependent and reliant.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, because high performance, workaholism, competitiveness, and high achievement are socially admired traits, the underlying trauma of parentification often goes unnoticed and unaddressed. These individuals remain isolated and alone in their empty worlds, rarely seeking help to escape. Stopping their pursuit of others' approval and stepping back from the need to perform and achieve might feel like a threat of annihilation to them.

Ales Zivkovic, MSc (TA Psych), CTA(P), PTSTA(P), Psychotherapist, Counsellor, Supervisor

Ales Zivkovic is a psychotherapist, counsellor, and clinical supervisor. He holds an MSc in Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy awarded by Middlesex University in London, UK. He is also a Provisional Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (PTSTA-P) and a Certified Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (CTA-P). Ales gained extensive experience during his work with individuals and groups in the UK National Health Service (NHS) and his private psychotherapy, counselling, and clinical supervision practice in central London, UK. He was also a member of the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP). Ales works with individuals, couples, and groups. In clinical setting, he especially focuses on the treatment of issues of childhood trauma, personality disorders, and relationship issues. A large proportion of his practice involves online psychotherapy as he works with clients from all over the world. Ales developed a distinct psychotherapeutic approach called interpretive dynamic transactional analysis psychotherapy (IDTAP). More about Ales, as well as how to reach him, can be found here.

References:

Lackie, B. (1999). Trauma, Invisibility, and Loss: Multiple Metaphores of Parentification. In Chase, N. D. (Ed.). (1999). Burdened children: Theory, research, and treatment of parentification. (pp. 141-153) Sage Publications, Inc.

Robinson, B. E. (1999). Workaholic Children: One Method of Fulfilling the Parentification Role. In Chase, N. D. (Ed.). (1999). Burdened children: Theory, research, and treatment of parentification. (pp. 56-74) Sage Publications, Inc.