If you dealt with an emotionally unpredictable parent as a kid, you likely did whatever you could to keep them calm. So pushing back by establishing your own boundaries likely wasn’t a common, or even safe-feeling occurrence.
“If they tried to set [boundaries] as a kid, there would either be intense pushback to the point where it becomes not worth it, or a blow up to the point where it becomes not worth it,” Santorelli said. “Or even in extreme cases, it could feel dangerous, certainly emotionally unsafe, to set a boundary.”
This could make boundary-setting now feel really tough, and you likely find that you struggle to set boundaries with your eggshell parent, in addition to other people in your life.
If this sounds like you, there are ways to deal with it.
Both Moore and Santorelli noted that being aware that you were raised by an eggshell parent is the first step. With awareness, you can acknowledge that this pattern is going on and examine how it might have impacted you throughout your childhood.
From there, you should determine what you need to do to feel more comfortable around your eggshell parent, according to Moore. This could mean establishing boundaries around certain conversation topics that could trigger you or not agreeing to certain activities that result in you feeling bad. As you set these boundaries, it’s important to check in with yourself.
“When we start changing our behavior, especially when we start setting boundaries with people, is we get pushback, there’s going to be some resistance,” Moore said. “People don’t generally like it when we make changes, because they have a certain expectation about how we’re going to behave, and when we change that, it’s not matching their expectation.”
When it comes to setting boundaries with an eggshell parent, they tend to have rigid ideas about how you should behave with them, and when you set boundaries, you’re “essentially breaking the rules of that relationship and breaking the rules of the family system,” Moore noted.
This is going to feel hard and sad, and could even bring on feelings of guilt and shame.
“It’s not going to be easy. It’s probably going to require you having some support, whether that be some professional support, like working with a therapist or a life coach, or whether that be the social support of talking to a supportive friend who maybe has gone through something similar and can be a cheerleader for you,” Moore said.
As you heal and make changes, it’s important to have self-compassion if you struggle to stop people-pleasing or find yourself questioning your new boundaries, according to Santorelli.
All in all, it’s important that you recognize that “you have emotions, that your emotions are OK, and that you are not responsible anymore ― and never really were for [your parent’s] emotions,” Santorelli said.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
