"I'm Doing It For You"
March 5, 2025 – You would think those words — “I’m doing it for you” would be music to our ears. However, sometimes they point to something less altruistic and more sorrowful. I started to hear those words differently and the sadness underneath them over the course of therapy with one of my teen clients. It was a minor but pivotal revelation.
As parents, therapists, and other adolescent service providers, we want our teenagers and young adults to be paying attention to the world around them. Egocentricity, that intent, centered focus on the self, is inherent to the psychological and cognitive development during the adolescent years. So when a kid insists that they’re doing something for us or someone else, we celebrate! And rightly so. But there are times when we need to be curious rather than celebrate.
Irene’s ‘helpfulness’
Irene, a bright 17-year-old, lived with her dad and stepmom. Irene had experienced multiple attachment wounds since she was a toddler when her mother left Irene with her father in the midst of intense emotional distress. I began seeing Irene when she was 14 years old when her school referred her to me after reports of self-harming. Her parents reported a great deal of conflict between them and Irene that would result in Irene shutting down for days.
I worked with Irene and the family for several years. Her parents learned and implemented the process and practice of validation, all of them completed a course of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for adolescents, and, on the whole, all three were committed to the work. Irene’s self-harming behaviors eventually ceased, her absenteeism diminished, and her relationship with her parents improved.
Things got bumpy again when Irene was well into her 16th year, that period of time when both parents and kids are bearing down on young adulthood, independence, and responsibility. Irene came to her sessions simmering with resentment against her parents. She felt unappreciated in spite of all she did around the house. She followed through on the chores that were given to her, completed tasks unasked, but insisted that her parents were totally missing her efforts and all that she did. “I do everything they ask! I help out even when they don’t ask! I do it for them, and they always have something to say about how I did it or what I didn’t do!”
When we had a family meeting, I heard the same refrain. Her parents tried to validate Irene, but Irene kept saying, “You don’t get it! You really don’t get it.” This is always a clue that we’re missing a piece of the puzzle, that we haven’t gotten to the root of the issue. This is the sign that more curiosity is needed so we can understand what’s going on. That session with her parents was frustrating for everyone, me included. Definitely we needed to slow it down and bring in that compassionate curiosity to find out what Irene couldn’t express with her words.
The words under the words
The answer to the puzzle came when Irene told me, “I don’t do those things they ask me to do for me. I do it for them! I don’t have to, but I do. And it’s never good enough.” On the surface, it appeared that what Irene needed was the validation that her efforts were not appreciated. But it was the first part of her proclamation that caught my attention—I don’t do it for me. I realized that from Irene’s perspective, helping out around the house was about her parents, not her. She didn’t see the benefits of her contributions. Her parents’ gratitude wasn’t enough because that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Irene didn’t feel like she fully belonged in the household. It was her parents’ house, her parents’ things, her parents’ needs. She did it for them but not for herself because she didn’t feel she truly had a place there.
It made me wonder how many of our kids feel the same way. I know that’s how we raised our sons. It wasn’t that we felt that they didn’t belong, but we had a definitive perspective that they were living in our house. When I talked with Irene’s parents, they too saw the living arrangement this way. Their house, their rules, their way, and Irene should be grateful for all they did for her. And there’s the rub. They did it for her, and she did it for them. If we are going to be preparing our late-aged teenagers to go out on their own, we need to change our perspective—from “you are the child and I am the adult” to “we are all members of this household and all have a vested interest in it.”
A path forward
From there, we knew where to go and what the work was—the work of belonging. Irene needed to experience herself as a viable member of the family and household, with responsibilities not chores, that she was contributing not just checking off the task list.
What would it be like, I asked them, if you all belonged here? If you all knew that you were working hard, pitching in, asked and unasked because you all belonged? Because you were co-creating a family home?
Irene’s parents had only ever seen Irene as their daughter for whom they were responsible to raise right, so when she went out on her own she would be an accomplished adult. They had not considered that Irene needed to be seen as an accomplished adult-in-the-making while at home. Irene had only ever seen her parents as parents, rather one-dimensionally. She wasn’t aware of how much they did in the background, without pronouncement, and when she was aware of what they did, she didn’t understand how she was deeply connected to this.
I encouraged her parents to begin seeing Irene as a housemate as well as their daughter. I encouraged Irene to be more curious about her parents’ lives, what they contributed to the running of the house and the family and to not take that for granted. No contribution was more important than others. The parent who brought home the higher paycheck, the parent who did more of the day-to-day household management, the daughter who went to school and took responsibility for her share of the load—each person brought an essential thread to the weaving together of a family and family home, to the future of that family, and to Irene’s future.
It took some time for each to adjust to these new perspectives of one another and to take on the new roles. With the understanding of where that resentment came from, the family was committed to the work. They had, indeed, the last I heard, created a healthy home and family together, Irene more than ready to go out on her own.
Photo by: djoronimo