I want you to try something with me. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself sitting across from your parents.

There is an invisible shield between you that protects you from any consequences, hurt feelings, and aftermath. At this moment, you can say everything you’ve been holding back. What will come out?

When I asked 100 people this question over the past few months, I expected a variety of answers. I was hoping for unique stories and individual issues. What I got instead was a pattern so vivid that I sat at my kitchen table staring at my notes with tears in my eyes.

Seven answers came up over and over again. Although the themes are not similar, the content is almost word for word. And the more I listened, the more I realized that we all walk with the same unspoken truths about our relationships with the people who raised us.

1) “I don’t want you to solve everything, I just want you to listen.”

This hit close to home. Growing up with an engineer father and a teacher mother, I quickly found solutions to every problem I brought home.

Bad grades? Here is the study plan. Friend trouble? This is exactly what I have to say tomorrow. Are you sad? Here are 5 ways to feel better.

The important thing is that sometimes you need to be heard. We need someone to sit with us and not rush to clean up our confusing emotions.

One woman said she still can’t share difficult things with her mother without receiving a 20-minute lecture on what she should have done differently. “I’m 45 years old,” she said. “I know how to solve problems. I just want my mom to say, ‘This sounds like a big deal,’ and give her a hug.”

When parents jump into problem-solving mode too quickly, they miss out on the connection that their children are actually looking for. And that pattern persists into adulthood, creating a strange dynamic where the kids who grow up don’t share at all because they know what’s going to happen.

2) “Your anxiety has become my anxiety.”

This reaction gave me pause every time. A significant number of them described themselves as emotional sponges, absorbing their parents’ concerns.

I remember being 12 years old and watching my mom pace the kitchen, worrying about money, grades, and whether I was popular enough at school. Her anxiety filled our home like smoke, and we all learned to breathe it in without realizing we were suffocating.

Participants who shared this response talked about developing anxiety disorders themselves, needing constant control, and not being able to relax even when objectively everything was fine. They inherited not only their parents’ eyes and noses, but also their intense thoughts and sleepless nights.

One man said, “I wish I could have told my father that he constantly worries about my future and that I am too scared to take risks. I have stayed safe all my life because I could not bear to be a source of his anxiety again.”

3) “I’m not your undoing.”

Every parent wants their child to have a better life than they did. But somewhere along the way, those noble intentions can turn stifling.

Nearly a third of the people I spoke to felt like they were living out their parents’ unfulfilled dreams.

A daughter who became a doctor because her mother could not afford to attend medical school. The son continued playing soccer after his father’s injury ended his career as an athlete. Endless piano lessons, debate teams, and honor rolls that have nothing to do with the child’s actual interests.

When I made a career change from financial analyst to writer, my performance-oriented parents didn’t understand. To them, I was giving up stability and success.

It took me years to realize that I couldn’t live for their approval, that their disappointment spoke more of their fear than my choices.

4) “Your marriage affected everything.”

This reaction always occurred whether my parents were unhappily living together or unhappily divorced. People described being hyper-vigilant of their parents’ moods, trying to keep the peace, and feeling responsible for their parents’ well-being.

“I became a family therapist at the age of 10,” one woman told me. “I wish I could have told them how hard it was to control their emotions when I didn’t even understand my own.”

Some talked about how their parents’ relationships became a template, for better or worse. They find themselves repeating patterns they swore they would never do, or running away from them too much and creating entirely new problems.

5) “I felt guilty for existing after seeing everything you sacrificed.”

This broke my heart every time. Children who grew up hearing that what their parents gave up, the money they saved, all the opportunities passed “for the children.” The weight of that sacrifice becomes a debt that can never be repaid.

These respondents talked about the feelings of guilt that accompany every accomplishment or moment of joy.

How can you enjoy your own success when it came at great cost to someone else? How can I make choices for my own happiness when I know how much I have sacrificed?

6) “Your emotional absence hurts more than you know.”

A physical presence without emotional capacity creates its own kind of hurt. Many described parents who were there but weren’t really there. Someone who attended every game but never once asked how he felt about the play. Someone who helped me with my homework but never asked me about my dreams.

“My father worked from home all my childhood,” said one. “He was literally always there. But I can count on one hand the number of actual conversations we had.”

This absence is hard to name and harder to grieve. How do you mourn something that never existed? How do you explain feeling orphaned because you never left your parents?

7) “I wish you would have shown me that it’s okay to not be okay.”

Generational silence regarding mental health has surfaced time and time again. Parents who overcame depression, self-medicated anxiety, and set an example that emotions are something to be overcome, not felt.

It took me until my 30s to have honest conversations with my parents about mental health and break generations of silence. When I finally told my mom about my anxiety, she said: “I’ve always felt that way. I thought everyone felt that way.”

Many of us have learned to hide our struggles because we have never seen our parents acknowledge them. We learned that being strong means being silent and that needing help is a lack of character.

find a way forward

After compiling these answers, I sat with them for a long time. The pattern was certainly heartbreaking, but it was also strangely comforting. We are not alone in feeling this way. That conversation you’ve rehearsed in your head a thousand times? Others are also rehearsing.

Here’s what I learned: Our parents were doing the best they could with the tools they had. It does not invalidate our pain or excuse harmful patterns. Both things could be true.

They loved us and hurt us. They made sacrifices for us and burdened us. They gave us life and unhealed wounds.

The question is not whether or not to have these conversations with your birth parents. Some people do that, some people don’t, but both choices are valid. The question is, what do we do with these truths that we have?

Can we nurture ourselves with the listening ear we need? Can we learn to be with our fears instead of letting them pass? Can we allow our children to be themselves instead of giving them a second chance?

Can we model emotional availability and healthy relationships? Can we make sacrifices without leaving the mark? Will it be possible to fully appear? Can suffering and healing be normalized?

Perhaps the most powerful thing we can do is recognize these universal wounds and decide that the pattern stops here.