"What Do I Owe My Hurtful Parents?" Is The Wrong Question! Do This Instead!
This Jungian Life Podcast
Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano
4.7 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 February 2026
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
DREAM WITH US, and we’ll teach you how to interpret them!
In the aftermath of the holidays, many people find themselves facing an old question in a new stage of life: what does an adult child owe aging parents, especially when the relationship was full of criticism, absence, harm, or disappointment? The pressure to visit, to host, to reconcile, or to perform affection can feel like a moral demand, and a trap.
In this episode, three Jungian analysts question the idea of filial duty that feels like debt and lift up new aspects of discernment. They explore the mythic elements of the parent-child bond, the power of the internalized parent, and the inner figures that govern Psyche through guilt, rage, duty, love, and refusal. They consider the power of cultural scripts, the tension between fleeing painful demands on the one hand and familial duty on the other, and the pressure to abandon one's inner life. They offer practical and safe ways to release parental wounds without collapsing back into obedience, define boundaries to protect your autonomy, and clarify care vs. intimacy. You'll discover there is a psychic cost to remembering in the wrong way.
Read along with the dream HERE.
LOOK & GROW
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | when we're evaluating how we're going to respond to an abusive parent, |
| 0:05.6 | we need to consider the narrative that we will be left with after they're gone. |
| 0:11.5 | And that's what you're saying, |
| 0:13.0 | that you may notice that there's a certain principle or value inside of you |
| 0:18.6 | that needs something from you, which has little to do with the parent. |
| 0:24.8 | So that 20 years after they pass and the parent comes to mind, do you have a story about you and the parent that you're okay with? |
| 0:39.9 | Welcome to this Jungian life. |
| 0:42.5 | Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart and Joseph Lee, |
| 0:47.9 | invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation |
| 0:51.5 | that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day. |
| 0:57.6 | I'm Lisa Marchiano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. |
| 1:01.7 | I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. |
| 1:06.2 | I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. |
| 1:21.6 | Music I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst, on Cape Cod. We're recording this in early January of 26, and we've all just come through the holidays, which, as you all may imagine, |
| 1:31.6 | can be a busy time for therapists. And an issue that perennially comes up this time of year, |
| 1:37.6 | both in my practice and in my life, is how do we handle relationships with our parents, especially parents with whom we may have |
| 1:46.5 | had a difficult relationship? So this is a time of year when we're expected to visit or to host, |
| 1:53.0 | and a lot of people feel really ambivalent about these expectations because their parents may |
| 1:59.7 | have been wounding or critical or unavailable. |
| 2:04.9 | And so I find myself sitting with a lot of people in, again, different areas of my life |
| 2:11.5 | with the question, what do we owe our parents? |
| 2:15.6 | We're adults, our parents are aging, they're going to have needs and expectations. |
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