You may have finished your studies, know how to manage crisis situations at work or masterfully organize your family life, but one thing sometimes remains unchanged as you grow up: the feeling of annoyance that arises very quickly when one of your parents raises a sensitive subject with you. An unsolicited piece of advice, a question, or even a simple sigh from them can send you into a tizzy, even as an adult. But why do they have this power?
“With them, we sometimes become again the teenager we thought we left behind”
Psychologist Amélie Boukhobza often observes this: you were relaxed. Everything was fine. Then you spent ten minutes on the phone with your mother. Or shared lunch with your father. And suddenly, you find yourself irritated, defensive or ready to respond sharply to a seemingly innocuous remark.
This reaction is much more common than you might think.
“Parents always know where to press to make us unpin. They have that chic“, she observes with humor.
For what ? Quite simply because they are the people who have known us the longest. They witnessed our first fears, our failures, our anger, our complexes and our moments of vulnerability. They know our habits by heart. And, for our part, we also know theirs.
Result: where a similar remark coming from a colleague or friend would go almost unnoticed, the same sentence uttered by a parent can trigger a disproportionate emotional reaction.
A simple sentence can tell a whole story
The problem is often not the remark itself.
“As someone very close to you, you know exactly what is hidden behind a look, a facial expression, a sigh or a little word.“, explains the psychologist.
In other words, we are not just reacting to the current situation. We also react to everything that it awakens unconsciously.
A question as banal as “Are you sure of yourself?” can thus bring back memories of repeated criticism, a lack of confidence felt in childhood or a constant need to prove oneself.
“We never just hear the phrase of the moment. We also hear all those who came before her“, summarizes Amélie Boukhobza.
This explains why a family conversation can sometimes take on surprising proportions even though the subject seems trivial from the outside.
Why do we feel like we’re a child again?
According to the psychologist, another mechanism is at work: psychological regression. Rest assured, this is not a psychological disorder, but a completely normal phenomenon.
“Even as an adult, even as an independent person, even as a parent ourselves, we never fully present ourselves to our parents as we do to anyone else.“, she emphasizes.
Faced with them, a part of us unconsciously finds the place it once occupied within the family: the good student, the rebel, the discreet child or the one who had the feeling of never being sufficiently recognized.
These family roles, sometimes constructed from childhood, often continue to influence our reactions years later.
Roles that continue to exist despite the years
The phenomenon does not only concern children who have become adults. Parents also tend to return to their old position.
“The parents also return to their former position. That of the one who advises, who corrects, who worries, who thinks he knows better“, explains Amélie Boukhobza.
Attitudes that are often well-intentioned, but which can be experienced as intrusive by their children who have become independent.
The problem appears when these roles no longer correspond to current reality. On the one hand, there is the adult you have become. On the other hand, there is the place that the family sometimes continues to unconsciously assign to you.
Can we really get out of these patterns?
This is often the whole point of family meals, vacations or reunions.
Becoming aware of these mechanisms already allows us to better understand why certain discussions take an unexpected emotional turn.
“This doesn’t mean that tensions will magically disappear. But identifying what’s behind the annoyance often helps to gain some perspective.”
Because if your parents still have the power to make you roll your eyes or make you lose your patience in a matter of seconds, it’s not necessarily because they are wrong. This is mainly because they occupy a unique place in your story.
A place that no other relationship is quite like. And if hindsight doesn’t really help, do as many already do: grit your teeth during the meal… and tell yourself that this is what family is all about too.