Once upon a time, families divvied up chores by task: trash, laundry, cooking, lawn. But in 2025, there’s a new category of labor lurking beneath the surface: emotional trigger management.

It’s not in the chore chart—but someone’s always doing it.

• “Don’t bring up politics around Grandpa—he’ll explode.”

• “Let me talk to Mom first; she listens to me.”

• “Can you tell your sister we’re running late? She won’t yell at you.”

• “Just pretend you forgot about the wedding RSVP. I’ll smooth it over later.”

This isn’t kindness.

This is invisible crisis brokerage.

A daily, unpaid job of managing other people’s dysregulated nervous systems.

In short: trigger management has become a family job, and most of the time, one person ends up doing it all.

And spoiler alert: it’s usually the most emotionally attuned, boundary-compromised, exhausted woman in the room.

You expect teens to withdraw. Slam doors. Listen to music you’re not allowed to ask about. Get strangely territorial about oat milk.

What you don’t expect is the parent to disappear first.

But it’s happening. More than you think.

Call it Parental Ghosting—a slow, barely perceptible exit from emotional availability.

Not physical abandonment, but something much more subtle.

The body is present, but the self has gone dim.

Smiling at dinner, but not in the room. Nodding, but not listening. Present in photos, but blurred at the edges of family life.

We’ve talked about ghosting in dating. In friendships. Even in workplaces.

But what happens when mom starts emotionally ghosting the family before her youngest hits senior year?

Or dad becomes a stoic specter in the house, emotionally AWOL but still in charge of the thermostat?

This isn’t neglect in the classic sense. It’s adult dissociation in slow motion, and it’s spreading in quiet, unacknowledged waves.

Why Am I Still So Mean to Myself?

You’ve read the books. You follow @BigFeelingsCoach.

You validate your kid’s frustration when they pour applesauce into the radiator. You whisper, “It’s okay to have big emotions,” while trying not to scream into your cardigan.

You are, in short, the embodiment of Gentle Parenting™.

And yet—at night, when the noise stops—you realize something awkward:
your inner child is healing... but your inner parent sounds suspiciously like a grumpy Victorian schoolmaster.

You might be practicing emotional regulation with your toddler, but internally?

You’re running a shame-based boarding school with no recess.