There’s an aspect of myself I’ve been dancing around lately, and as we’re rounding out the end of 2025 already (where did the time go?), I feel it’s appropriate to face any current healing or introspection that should be left behind with the end of the year. Next year will come with its own growth and challenges – let’s leave the things we face today in the time they belong.

I always thought of myself as the caretaker of any group I integrate into. Whether emotionally or physically, I notice myself taking on the role of being the person to check on everyone else constantly. I share my snacks/lunch with friends at work I noticed haven’t eaten all day; I text people to make sure they got home safe. I am always here to lend money if needed, or to listen while someone shares what’s been troubling them. I am a classic example of the “parent friend” of my friend group. And I’ve always loved it.

There is a great deal of happiness it brings me to be the person everyone can rely on. Even at times when I stretch myself a bit too thin, I gain strength in knowing that I’m making a difference in people’s lives that they may not be getting elsewhere.

But over the years, I’m learning not to give my energy and effort to just anyone this way. Tearing off bits of yourself to give to people only take – hoping one day they’ll wake up changed by your generosity – is how you lose yourself. I learned that the hard way and have had to spend time rebuilding the pieces of me lost to people I should have never have let into my life. But I’m learning, and while I am more selective about those I decide to give my energy and time to now, I will never dull my generosity or empathy. I’m just wiser about how to use them than I used to be.

That being said, I have been a caregiver to someone very important in my life for years now. This person, I’d give the world to if I could. I’d take their burdens from them in a heartbeat; the things that have only grown to weigh on them more heavily each year, I’d take all upon my shoulders and let it break my spine if it meant they could get a decent night’s sleep without worry of what difficulties lay ahead tomorrow. This person is not a lover, nor just a friend. I’ve known them my whole life and have spent that entire time trying to protect them from everything I possibly could. And when we grew up and became adults ready to take on the world, I became the stabilizer for our new life. The provider: the one who made sure things didn’t fall apart.

Even while studying full-time, I worked full-time to keep us afloat. And when we both graduated college, I upheld my role as the financial pillar of our small household. I took on that responsibility for years with the understanding it wouldn’t be forever. But I was content to be that provision for them.

As I’ve grown this year and am coming into a different stage of my life, I can feel myself outgrowing this old role. I am ready not to provide for anyone other than myself for a while. I want the freedom to explore the things that interest me without considering someone else’s feelings and thoughts. I am ready to know what it means to just be me; alone and free.

I have spoken to this person about what this means for us, and we are both in the agreement that it may be time next year to go our separate ways. We are preparing for a move that will change both of our lives, knowing that we’ll miss each other, but our separation doesn’t mean we won’t see each other again. The hardest step sometimes is that first realization of what needs to happen because there is a sadness that comes with it. It’s inevitable, of course, but that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt to leave the person you grew up with and love deeply.

After the discussion we’ve had about the timing of this change I’ve noticed two primary emotions fighting for dominance in my heart and mind. The first is the excitement of leading a new life centered around only me. I’ve never had that before, and while I am a little nervous to meet that version of me who lives alone and only has themselves to worry about daily, I am excited to see how I grow and come into my full power.

The second emotion, the one I mentioned at the very beginning of the post, and the one I have been avoiding confronting for months because I’m not sure how to overcome it yet: the emptiness I feel at no longer being needed. Being the support became the main staple of my life and has been since I was a kid. While I am a bit burnt out on playing that role, admittedly, I don’t know who that part of me is without it. And that’s an uncomfortable thing to face, isn’t it? But maybe that discomfort is exactly where the healing begins.

Undoubtedly, I evolved into that role because of my childhood. Growing up in constant distress, my siblings and I subconsciously learned to take on different roles just to survive. This is a common psychological tactic, among others, that kids in our position can grow into to endure those living conditions. I have a friend whom I talk to regularly about these things when I’m feeling stuck or like I’m nearly to the conclusion of a point in my head but can’t quite get to the end of it alone. To say she’s intelligent is an understatement – she has a world of knowledge and experience inside of her mind. Let’s call her Echo for now.

When talking to her about this realization I had been avoiding for months, the pain of not being needed anymore, she shared with me that children in my position in childhood will often take on one of five main roles, all of which can be attributed to the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response to trauma. She is not a licensed psychiatrist or counselor, but she has read a lot of psychology books specifically around trauma out of interest for the matter that plagues so many people of our generation. Those 5 roles are as follows:

• The Peacekeeper
• The Fighter/Challenger
• The Lost One/ Avoider
• The Rescuer
• The Parental Figure

She briefly explained these roles to me, how they helped us through, and why each one carries its own kind of importance. After asking me some questions about my siblings and how I perceived them growing up versus in their adult lives, she was able to share her thoughts on the roles we all played as kids.

My older sibling – The Fighter/Parental Figure. This one may seem obvious, them being the oldest. I’m sure this is something other eldest children can relate to. There was a very strong disconnect between my older sibling and our parents, particularly the parent of the same gender (I will continue to hold off on these specific details as they are not important to this current story, and because should anyone I know read this post, it may be the tipping point to someone knowing who I am). I saw them constantly at war with each other, always hurting the other with their words and actions, neither willing to budge an inch on their position. Both were so determined to be right that they didn’t see the fallout of their actions, though honestly, constant fighting became such a norm in our house that it barely stood out anymore.

My older sibling was the one to fight back against them the strongest and most frequent out of us three. I never understood where they found the strength for those battles. I was often too terrified of disturbing our fragile, counterfeit peace to dare try to disagree with either parent on anything. I wouldn’t say the fighting back was good or bad. It didn’t help things, but I suppose it must have been necessary in its own way.

As the oldest child, the role of the parent would naturally fall to their shoulders when our own parents were lacking in caretaking skills. This is one of the things I perceived differently from my older sibling’s understanding of our childhood, and most likely neither of us is fully right. From their point of view, they were always the parent; the one holding things together when our real parents couldn’t. But that’s where my memories differ. I do remember sometimes them being the one to cook us dinner or lunch from time to time, or play school with us outside while mom and dad were inside. But it doesn’t feel like it was nearly as often as they would describe it now. That’s not to discount the times they did spend being a parent when they should never have been burdened with that, but it’s another reminder to myself that maybe my own recount of my childhood is just as skewed in areas that I must be mindful of. Echo tells me that my older sibling didn’t consciously distort the reality of things. She relayed, “In families with trauma, perception of role is often more emotionally real than the practical actions taken.” Being our “parent” may have been my older sibling’s coping identity because they may have needed to believe they were our caretaker to help make sense of their own childhood experience. Their coping mechanism was that they protected my younger sibling and I because that was the only way they could feel useful or important in the chaotic household. That I can understand – their love for us and their need to make sense of the Hell we went through made them feel like the parent we never truly had, and I would never hold that against them or tell them they were wrong for thinking that way.

My younger sibling is a different story. My younger sibling is tougher in ways that I’m not; stubborn, head-strong, and not afraid to speak their mind. They come across as a natural leader; to those who don’t know them, they look like the kind of person to take charge of a situation while everyone else is frozen wondering what to do. But when we’re alone and away from the outside world, I know them differently. They are not weak, but they are stuck. Caught in old thinking patterns and habits cultivated out of that horrid place. Stuck in a way that makes them unable to gain any forward momentum in life. Stuck with the knowledge that they must move forward but freeze when it actually comes time to take action. They know they need help to break free but can’t bring themselves to ask.

My younger sibling – The Freezer/Avoider.

As I explain their actions and behaviors as I perceive them to Echo, this one she seems more confident about (though still reminding me she has no professional authority to diagnose any of us). She said this is a common role for the youngest sibling, just as the role of the parental figure is common for the oldest child. This role causes a “lack of movement” that often resembles laziness or immaturity to most. In actuality, she says it can stem from multiple characteristics: a fear of failure, a fear of independence, learned helplessness (“If I try and it falls apart, I’m exposed.”), emotional paralysis from growing up in chaos, where safety means not rocking the boat or stepping into responsibility, and/or the subconscious belief that someone stronger will always need to “rescue” them because that’s the family script they learned from our childhood. Growing up in chaos can teach you that safety comes from not standing out or taking risks. Sometimes, people learn to survive by being capable; others, by being helpless enough for someone stronger to step in.

Growing up with two overprotective, older siblings who constantly tried to shield each other from the pain of our childhood? Yeah, I could see how that would cause this in my younger sibling now. I would bet that they don’t see their freeze reaction when it comes to being independent as them stepping back into that state of helplessness they learned kept them safe all those years. Because now that we’re adults with the knowledge that we’re fully capable of taking care of ourselves, I feel like they would see it as being called weak rather than a pattern recognition of lingering trauma. It kills me not to be able to help them out of this. God knows I’ve tried to force my help into the situation, but some lessons can’t be carried for someone else – they have to live them one uncertain step at a time.

Strangely enough, my younger sibling, despite their tendency to take on the persona of the “baby” of the family, still had something I never did as a kid: the will to fight back against our parents. They did it differently from my older sibling; less frequently, but they, too, were one to put up a fight and express their contempt for the actions of our parents and the unjustness we endured. After Echo was done explaining the freeze/avoidant type to me, I couldn’t shake this detail from my mind. The contradiction gnawed at me until I asked her about it. Echo thought for a moment and explained further how trauma responses we step into aren’t static boxes you put a single tick mark int. She said there’s no such thing as being only freeze or only fight type. They’re adaptive systems, flexible enough that the nervous system switches between depending on the situation, level of threat, and sense of safety. “They learned to survive by freezing, by standing still so the chaos couldn’t touch them,” Echo reasoned, “But sometimes, the stillness cracked, the immediate threat grew, and all the anger that had been trapped underneath would spill out. It probably wasn’t rebellion as much as a stressed nervous system fighting for air.”

And then there’s me: the middle child. Growing up, I wore the label ‘mature for my age’ like a medal, but now I only see it as a type of armor. My grades were spotless, my behavior flawless, though if you were to ask my siblings they’d tell you I got away with more than my fair share of troublemaking (in reality, I did). I wasn’t the ‘perfect child’ because I was destined to be. I wasn’t fearless or naturally easy; I was managing something much bigger than myself. I favored friendships with adults over kids my age; always the one to listen to commands and obey instantly, afraid of the backlash that may occur from not doing so. The one to cry and get panic attacks at the mere thought of getting in trouble. I was the regulator, the emotional mediator, the diffuser of bombs some people didn’t even know where there. I learned early that if I could be good, dependable, and calm, then maybe the chaos around me would quiet down. I didn’t just follow the rules; I upheld the peace at any cost. Echo had a name for my role, too.

The middle sibling – The Fawn/Manager/Peacekeeper.

The fawn response is a trauma adaptation that develops when someone learns that keeping peace equals staying safe. It’s not about meekness or lack of strength: it’s about hyper-attunement. Echo tells me that I learned early on to read the emotional temperature of a room like a weather forecast; to take acts of precaution before the storms could even start. That meant soothing others, diffusing tension, being helpful, and staying agreeable, all to keep myself and those I loved out of danger. The older I got, the more I learned not only how to calm the chaos but also how to control it and anticipate it before it even began. I took on the identity of holding everything together, keeping people/relationships functioning, being the emotional glue of the family. I was responsible for the harmony. She gave me a breakdown of how those attributes often show up psychologically:

Emotionally – You sense other people’s moods instantly and adjust yourself to make them comfortable, sometimes without knowing you’re doing it.

Mentally – You tend to overthink before you speak or act – “Will this upset someone? How could this cause conflict?”

Relationally – You take on the caretaker role (sound familiar?), whether emotionally or practically, because it feels like love and safety are earned through being needed or being reliable.

Internally – You might suppress your own needs because expressing them can feel risky – like it will upset the balance or disappoint someone.

As Echo continued to elaborate, all I could do was stare off at the same spot on the wall and let it sink in. Though she wasn’t there for my childhood, it sounded like she somehow had a front row seat to my life during that time. The things she described were so accurate, I couldn’t do anything but sit there and nod along silently. She explained how being good, responsible, and reliable wasn’t just about success – it was about security. “And the adults around you likely rewarded that behavior,” she surmised, “which probably only reinforced that pattern.”

My brain learned that if I did everything right, no one would be upset. If I pleased people, maybe they’d stay calm and I stay safe. If I remained helpful, maybe I wouldn’t get hurt. That’s the fawn response in motion: the instinct to preemptively smooth things over and to earn peace through compliance, perfection, and emotional caretaking became who I was. My “manager” role was to keep things organized, keep people happy, and hold the thin strings of peace together no matter what it took to do so, even if it meant ignoring my needs completely.

And suddenly this current issue I’ve been struggling with about no longer being needed snapped into clarity: my whole life I had been unknowingly taught that being the provider meant peace. Now the loss of that role is sounding an old alarm somewhere primal in my brain: If I am no longer the provider, then I am no longer safe.

I still don’t know exactly how to overcome it, but I understand now where it comes from and why letting go of that role feels so impossible. The emptiness I currently feel at no longer being the provider of my roommate is a direct result of going against the very idea I adopted as a child to remain safe. I feel uncomfortable with that idea of no one relying on me now because somewhere inside of me, my younger self is still scared and crying, trying desperately to keep me in the familiar patterns that kept us safe all those years. It’s heartbreaking but also humbling. And now that I know where the fear comes from, it’s my responsibility to rewire the behaviors my mind had learned equated to safety to continue growing.

The truth is that my siblings and I learned how to survive in a household where emotional stability was never guaranteed. We each found roles that made us feel safe. None were right or wrong – just necessary. Now that we’re no longer living in that world, I can finally take a step back and see how those roles shaped us. And maybe now, it’s time to turn what once kept me safe into something that helps me grow.

I used to manage chaos because I was afraid of it.

Now I create peace because I choose to.

Peace and harmony don’t have to be things that are only managed; they can be purposefully chosen.

I am learning that I can be calm without controlling everything, and I can be loved without earning it. The part of me that once fawned and managed everything and everyone is still here, but she’s softer now. I’m learning to use those same instincts to nurture myself in this new chapter in my life, and to build a life for myself that’s peaceful, not because I’m maintaining the peace for everyone else but because I’m finally learning to give me the care and love I’ve always given others.

I still catch myself wanting to fix, to help, to be needed from time to time. But now I pause and reflect with myself, “What if I need me right now?” In that space, I’m slowly rewiring the patterns from survival to self-trust; from being the caretaker to being cared for.

It will take time, I know. That kind of conditioning from trauma can’t be undone in a day. But I have to say, I’m falling more in love with the version of myself that’s taking the steps to get there.