I’m sitting in my therapist’s office, crying into a tissue that’s basically disintegrated, and he asks me a question that stops me cold:
“Whose anxiety are you actually managing right now?”
I start to answer, “My daughter’s,” but the words catch in my throat. Because the truth – the uncomfortable, rage-inducing truth – is that I’m managing my own anxiety about my daughter’s anxiety.
If you’re over 60 and still emotionally tethered to your adult children’s every mood swing, this might be the most important thing you read today.
The Emotional Manager Role We Never Applied For
Nobody sat us down and said, “Your job for the next 40 years is to monitor everyone’s emotional temperature and adjust accordingly.” We just… started doing it. Probably when they were infants and actually needed us to regulate their emotions because they couldn’t do it themselves.
But here’s what happened: we never stopped.
Our kids grew up, moved out, had their own lives, but we’re still over here monitoring their emotional weather like some kind of feelings meteorologist, constantly preparing for the next storm.
She’s stressed about work? You’re stressed about her stress.
He’s fighting with his partner? You’re losing sleep over his relationship.
They’re struggling financially? You’re drowning in anxiety about their choices.
We became emotional managers for entire households that aren’t even ours anymore.
The Health Cost of Other People’s Feelings
Let me share some uncomfortable data with you: chronic stress is linked to literally every health issue that plagues women over 60. Heart disease. Diabetes. Autoimmune conditions. Cognitive decline.
And what creates chronic stress? Living in a constant state of vigilance about other people’s problems.
My blood pressure was through the roof. My doctor kept increasing my medication, but the real problem wasn’t medical – it was emotional. I was carrying the weight of four adult people’s emotional lives in addition to my own.
After I finally started setting boundaries around emotional management, my blood pressure normalized. My sleep improved. The tension headaches that had been my constant companion for years? Gone.
The prescription I needed wasn’t pharmaceutical. It was permission to stop managing everyone else’s feelings.
What Changes When You Hand Back Their Emotions
The first time I said, “That sounds really hard, and I trust you to figure it out,” my daughter was shocked. Hurt, even. She’d learned that calling Mom meant handing over her uncomfortable feelings and receiving back either solutions or shared anxiety.
When I stopped accepting delivery of her anxiety, she had to learn to sit with it herself.
Was that comfortable for me? Absolutely not. I had to sit with MY anxiety about her anxiety, which turns out is much harder than just jumping in and trying to fix everything.
But here’s what happened over the next few months:
She stopped calling me every time something went wrong. Not because we weren’t close, but because she learned she could handle her own emotional weather.
She made better decisions. When I wasn’t there to absorb all the emotional fallout, she had to think through consequences before acting.
Our conversations became more enjoyable. Instead of crisis management sessions, we actually talked about ideas, memories, dreams. We laughed again.
The Drama Dies When You Stop Feeding It
Some of our adult children have learned that emotional drama gets them attention. Not consciously, necessarily, but they’ve learned the pattern: express extreme emotion, and Mom will drop everything.
When you stop being the audience for the drama, something interesting happens: the drama decreases.
I’m not saying their problems aren’t real. I’m saying that the way they present those problems to you is often amplified by the response they’ve learned to expect.
Turns out, when you’re not getting an emotional hit from Mom’s anxiety, regular problems feel more manageable.
The Boundary That Sounds Mean but Isn’t
“I can see you’re really upset, and I’m confident you’ll figure this out.”
That sentence feels impossible to say when you’re used to jumping into emotional rescue mode. It feels cold. Unloving. Like you’re abandoning them.
But let me ask you this: Is it loving to teach your adult children that they’re incapable of managing their own emotions? Is it kind to model that women should sacrifice their health and peace to absorb everyone else’s distress?
The boundary isn’t about not caring. It’s about caring in a way that actually helps them grow instead of keeping them dependent.
What You Get Back
When you stop managing everyone else’s emotions, you get your life back.
You have energy for your own interests. You can make plans without wondering if you’ll have to cancel because of someone else’s crisis. You sleep through the night.
You remember who you are outside of being everyone’s emotional support animal.
Your relationships with your adult children actually improve because they’re no longer built on codependence and resentment. You can enjoy them instead of constantly worry about them.
And here’s the beautiful part: they grow up. Finally. They develop emotional resilience. They learn to self-soothe. They become actual adults instead of overgrown children who still need Mommy to regulate their feelings.
The Practice
Start small. The next time an adult child calls with a problem, try this:
Listen without immediately problem-solving. Acknowledge their feelings without absorbing them. Express confidence in their ability to handle it. End the conversation before you take on their anxiety.
It will feel unnatural at first. You might feel guilty. They might feel abandoned. Sit with that discomfort. It’s the growing pain of a healthier relationship.
The Permission Slip
You don’t need anyone’s permission to stop managing everyone else’s emotions. But if you’re waiting for it, here it is:
- You are allowed to have your own emotional life without carrying everyone else’s.
- You are allowed to be unavailable for other people’s drama.
- You are allowed to trust your adult children to be competent, capable humans.
- You are allowed to prioritize your health and peace.
- You are allowed to stop rescuing.
The crisis you’re afraid will happen if you step back? It probably won’t. And if it does, they’ll handle it. Because they can. Because they’re adults.
The real crisis is what the constant emotional management is doing to YOU.
Stop managing. Start living. The rest will follow.
If you struggle in this area, check out my Marriage and Motherhood Survival Method to help you break free from the rescue and regret cycle.
Let’s Get Uncomfortably Honest:
- How many times this WEEK have you dropped everything for an adult child’s ’emergency’?
- How many of those emergencies actually required your immediate intervention?
- What did rescuing cost YOU? (Sleep? Work time? Your own plans? Your health?)
- What might have happened if you hadn’t intervened?
- Be honest: Were you rescuing them, or were you rescuing yourself from the discomfort of watching them struggle?
