Helping adult children see what they didn’t get and what they should’ve ideally gotten from parents is one of the biggest tools in a therapist’s tool chest, and one that I go to on a daily basis. An analysis of a client’s childhood is useful because parents and siblings can powerfully shape identity, self-esteem, feelings of trust or safety in the world, and later, one’s ability to parent. Psychotherapists can be efficacious teachers about the relationship between the adult child’s functioning as an adult and the family’s contribution to those inadequacies, deficits, or conflicts.
