As an adult, navigating your relationship with your parents isn’t always easy. Even if everyone involved is grown up and equal, the existing dynamic of one person taking charge of and being accountable to another can be difficult to shake. For some parents, giving up that authority is a problem…and they try to make it someone else’s problem.
TikTok founder Elisabeth (who posts as @elisabethrhe_) recently made a video highlighting this common problem.
“Can we normalize and stop tiptoeing around your parents?” she began. She began to tell a story about a time when she didn’t take her mother’s advice. Then her father sent a text message:
“When your mother gives you advice [sic] Just say yes or talk to you later. … ‘No, I don’t want to do that’ was her trigger.
“Is it that hard? Just get over it?” she said confused. Seriously, if you’re triggered by a boundary, you’re not exactly the one to say ‘no,’ are you?
Elizabeth said that when she continued to hold on to her views, her father warned her to “pick up the poison.”
“I was like, ‘What poison? There’s no poison! This is a conversation that an adult should be able to have without being triggered by someone saying, ‘No, I don’t want to do this.’
“My whole life I have chosen my words and kept silent so as not to offend her and keep her from getting emotional, and so did my father, but I won’t do that again,” she concluded. “We’ve all grown up. I’ve learned to control my emotions and not act impulsively or take things too personally, and you need to do the same.
Elizabeth’s message resonated, with more than 450,000 likes and nearly 6,500 comments as of press time.
“I realized my parents didn’t grow up at all,” one commenter said. “They just had a baby.”
“This is a generation that yells at us for being ‘sensitive’ but their feelings are always hurt,” said another.
When one commenter suggested the mother get therapy, Elizabeth lamented that she did went, but eventually got support from her therapist… Frankly, it felt clear when the father used the word “triggering” to describe not being able to hear the word “no” from her child.
Many others have heard the words of Dr. Seema Bryant: “I was taught that keeping quiet kept the peace, until I realized: Whose peace does this keep?”
It can be difficult to establish boundaries with someone who has set them for you. This may feel uncomfortable or even wrong. But ultimately, adults having a relationship with adult dynamics is the healthiest way forward.
