Shitshow Saturday #204 - When Your Parent Shared Too Much or Not EnoughShitshow Saturday #204 - When Your Parent Shared Too Much or Not Enough
Adult Child
Community members from Adult Child share how parents who either overshared or stayed silent shaped their beliefs, relationships and boundaries. Their stories show both the pain of those patterns and the early steps of healing through therapy, self-awareness and supportive community.
36:25•9 May 2026
Too Much, Not Enough: Growing Up as the Parent’s Secret Keeper
Episode Overview
- Parents who share too much can turn a child into their therapist, teaching them that other people’s feelings matter more than their own.
- Families that “don’t talk about it” leave kids doubting their perceptions and lacking words for their emotions.
- These patterns often resurface in adulthood as conflict avoidance, choosing emotionally unavailable partners and struggling to receive support.
- Therapeutic work, including IFS and group sharing, helps identify wounded inner parts and long-standing relational patterns.
- Setting clear boundaries and putting one’s own wellbeing first can feel terrifying but is a crucial step towards healthier relationships.
“Being an adult child is fucking rough. It is a whole thing.”
What drives someone to seek a life without chaos when chaos is all they’ve ever known at home? This Shitshow Saturday episode of *Adult Child* circles around one powerful theme: what happens when parents either share way too much or say almost nothing at all. Andrea brings together community members who unpack their childhoods with raw honesty.
One shares about being “my mom’s therapist” in a house where an alcoholic dad and staged ‘perfect family’ image meant everything messy stayed hidden. Another talks about a brother who secretly lost his wife, a family network that spreads news behind people’s backs, and the painful absurdity of a “white picket fence” family that was “pretty dark” once the door shut.
Others talk about how these patterns show up now: freezing before hard conversations, especially around money; picking partners who need saving; shutting down during conflict; or oversharing one minute and staying on the surface the next. As one member puts it bluntly, “being an adult child is fucking rough. It is a whole thing.” There’s also real movement and healing.
Someone describes doing IFS therapy and finally recognising their “parts”, another sets a firm boundary with an ex and a parent on the same day, and a mother recognises how her own unspoken terror shaped her parenting and begins to see her traumatised mum in a different light. Another speaker beautifully reframes recovery as finding that “diamond self that’s inside.” The tone swings between heavy and darkly funny, but it’s always honest, non-judgmental, and very human.
If you grew up with secrets, emotional parentification, or the rule that “we don’t talk about this”, you’ll likely feel seen here. Which side feels more familiar to you: too much, not enough, or painfully both?
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