Why Over Idealising Your Parents Might Be Stopping You From Recovering

If you’re experiencing anxiety, depression or internalised rage (whether menopausal or not) and you believed you had a happy childhood, you MAY be over idealising your parents.  Read the blog to gain more insight.

Now, before we dive in, I totally understand that this may well be a paradigm shifting read, but if you've found your way here, it's likely that you're already starting to take the rose coloured spectacles off. 

Be kind to yourself as you read this, you really don't need anything else to beat yourself up about. 

Take a breath.  

Believing you had a happy childhood does not make you exempt from having Complex Trauma which may be underlying your anxiety and depression.  Complex PTSD arises as a result of the quality of our attachments in early life.   

The obvious issues are abuse and neglect, but the less obvious ones are:

🥺 Not being allowed to rebel and find yourself (rebellion is how we find ourselves).
🥺 Feeling like you had to keep the peace (it's not your job to keep the peace as a child, it's your job to be allowed to be authentic).
🥺 Having too much freedom (all children need a certain amount of stability and predictability).
🥺 A parent saying 'I only ever want you to be happy' (what about when you are sad, disappointed or stressed - are you not acceptable?).

Many of my clients come to me believing they had a happy childhood, but can't understand why they are experiencing mental health problems.  

Ok, back to 'over idealising'.

Let's take a look at how you know if you’re over idealising your parents?

🍭 You view them as flawless and infallible and defend them if anyone tries to highlight red flags in their behaviors. 

🍭 You find it incredibly uncomfortable to look at them through a critical lens, maybe even feeling guilty or reactive if a therapist asks you to do this.

🍭 You excuse their behaviour even if it’s highly critical or manipulative and may even say that “it was for my own good.”

🍭 You feel guilty for trying to live your life with autonomy. 

🍭 You prioritise your parents demands and requests over your chosen family, failing to set boundaries. 

🍭 You compare your other relationships unfavourably to your parents (whether consciously or unconsciously)

And breathe….interesting isn’t it?

It’s so important to take the time to deconstruct, especially if we want to accept the invitation of the menopause transition to metamorphosize. 

Maybe you’re recognising some of this and you want to know what causes this type of over idealisation or maybe you’re feeling a bit defensive and you want to leave it there to digest this.  If that’s you, I totally understand, maybe come back to this later. 

For those who want more, you might be curious to know, what causes us to overly idealise our parents then? 

This is where it gets interesting. 

When we are younger, our survival depends on it so we HAD to over idealise them to maintain our attachment to them.  But if we’re still doing that when we’ve become an adult, chances are, we’ve not fully individuated and a big chunk of our psyche is still stuck in childhood.   [Enter irrational fears/phobias/emotional reactions/vulnerable narcissism/depression/anxiety.]

Usually the reasons why we fail to individuate is because we were over controlled and not given enough autonomy to find ourselves.   This can happen when parents don’t trust the world and don’t fully understand what is required in order for a child to develop their own sense of self.   

For a child to develop their own sense of self they need to be afforded the ability to make mistakes, to get things wrong and actually rebel (rebellion is a healthy part of being a teenager).  Then they need to be able to use their intuition (along with some compassionate parental coaching) to figure out what they need for THEM.

If they don’t get this opportunity, they don’t develop a fully realised intuition which can leave them incredibly dysregulated.  

If you were over protected, coddled, controlled or given strict rules to follow, chances are you won’t have fully individuated and you’ll be living with the consequences of this arrested development hidden in your anxiety, depression and rage.  

Without getting too personal, this was me for a VERY long time.  When I finally woke up at age 42, it was a pivotal moment. 

So what else causes us to over idealise our parents? Here are some bullets. 

🌸 We might have adopted the role of the ‘good girl’ when we were younger in order to keep the peace and no self respecting good girl will want to rock the boat by taking a critical look at her parents.  She’s all about doing the right thing and brushing things under the carpet to preserve her socially appeasing ‘good girl’ identity.  

🌸 Also we get to stay in victim mode.  Sorry to use that phrase, but staying in victim mode means we don’t have to destroy the happy childhood illusion (which may feel like the only comforting thing we can lean on).  We get to maintain the idea that “there’s no rhyme or reason for why I am the way I am.  Shit things just happen to me, I am one of 'those people'.” 

🌸 We might also get to live in denial of those early experiences that might have caused us rejection or shame.  Those are incredibly difficult feelings to process, especially if we’ve never been shown how to experience shame without judgement. 

So… 

What are the consequences of over idealising your parents when you’re a fully fledged adult?

🚫You might lack self definition because you’re defaulting to your parents ideals that have nothing to do with what YOU really value on the inside.  

🚫You continue to make decisions based on helplessness rather than autonomy even though you may think you’re being proactive and trying ‘all the things’. (‘All the things’ don’t work because you have a major blindspot.  You’re looking for the ‘thing’ to heal you, instead of taking off the rose coloured spectacles and turning your gaze inward.)  

🚫 You’re stuck in your thoughts, you get incredibly overwhelmed and dysregulated because you keep blaming yourself, just like a child would.  

🚫 Failing to individuate means you get stuck in rage, projections, triggers and dysfunctional attachments.

Ok, so what’s the antidote? 

Reading this blog is a good starting point.  

But in a nutshell,  it’s about deciding to look at your childhood through a critical lens, facing the challenging feelings of individuation, energetic separation, flying the nest, untethering, confronting reality and taking the rose coloured spectacles off.   

And just for the record, this isn’t about becoming hyper independent either, that’s a trauma wound in and of itself and doesn’t mean you’ve individuated. 

This process may look different from person to person and each person may have their nuances and resistances that need to be navigated carefully.  

Also, this doesn’t have to be done all in one go.  In fact I recommend that it’s titrated.  You can do this with a good therapist who has experience in this area.  I’m happy to help, if you want to go on that journey with me, but feel free to do your research and feel into who is right for you. 

Once you’ve uncovered the reality, THEN it’s about turning inward and going on a journey of self discovery so that you can become way more self resourced.  

Who ARE you without this hyper attachment to your parents? 

One way to find out who you really are is to unearth your core values.  To go through a reflective process of discovering the values hidden underneath how you spend your time, your money, what you watch on Netflix, who you follow on social media, where you go on holiday. 

To discover the values hidden underneath your most fulfilling experiences and the values suppressed in your most unfulfilling experiences, is the most wonderful thing. 

Unearthing our values from our experiences reveals a treasure trove of self knowledge providing food for our self actualisation.  

Everything I’ve written here today, comes from my own experience.  I’m not telling you anything I haven’t been through or healed myself.  

And there are a few different ways I can help you.  

If you’re reading this before Saturday 8th March 2025, then my small group workshop around redefining your values might be something for you.  You can learn more about that here.  https://www.sallygarozzo.com/Re-Define-Your-Values-at-Menopause 

If you’re reading this after that date, you can still take that workshop as a replay (same link).  

Or if you're feeling like you need something more 121, have a look at my 30 Day Transformational Rapid Rewire using the power of the hypnotic state.   https://www.sallygarozzo.com/ 

Thank you for reading to the bottom… 

Happy Individuating!