By Darlene Lancer, JD, LMFT
OBJECTIFICATION
Objectification is a form of relational trauma that is often overlooked in therapy. Instead of a full person with their own thoughts, feelings, and needs, objectification means treating someone as an object — something to be controlled, used as a tool, a possession, or a source of emotional or physical benefit, or defined only as a problem or burden to manage, a symbol or trophy, or to be an extension of the another person to fulfill their ambition or pride. Objectification automatically includes the trauma of misattunement. Relational trauma often happens in dysfunctional families, especially where there is mental illness or substance abuse.
OBJECTIFICATION IS TRAUMATIC AND HARMFUL TO CHILDREN
Objectification is an aspect of relational trauma that deprives a child of their natural ego development. Children are still forming their identity. They see themselves through the eyes of the beholder. They internalize a distorted self-concept based on how they are perceived. Children internalize: “This is who I am, because this is who they say I am.” If they’re treated like a servant, they primarily see themselves in that limited role. If they’re viewed as sexy, they believe that is the value they have to others and dress and behave accordingly in adulthood. This is role-based identity formation.
Relational trauma is insidious and may be hard to recognize especially in families that have the appearance of normalcy. The families may be stable, polite, educated, and close-knit. But the trauma is covert, chronic, invisible, normal within the dysfunctional family system, and embedded in the members’ roles and expectations. Often physical and material needs are met, and everything looks fine to an onlooker.
Relational trauma is also called attachment trauma when it begins very early in development. Either one can lead to complex trauma (C-PTSD), even without overt physical or sexual abuse. Not all relational trauma leads to C-PTSD. PTSD becomes complex when there is long-term exposure that causes cumulative harm over years, dependency on the caregiver, no ability to escape, and the trauma occurring during developmental stages. Objectification is especially devastating in abusive relationships and is pronounced in authoritarian and narcissistic family systems.
DUAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Objectification causes a split in the child’s developing ego. They create a false self, while their true nature remains hidden or underdeveloped, and their primary identification is with the role they played.
A child learns to accommodate the parent’s (usually mother’s) needs in a passive role, sacrificing their own nature, including self-expression, spontaneity, and autonomy. This impairs their natural need to individuate – to become a separate, whole person with their own beliefs and perceptions and to value their feelings, needs, and wants. When a child speaks up to assert their individuality, they may be punished, criticized, or ignored, resulting in shame.
The rebel child expresses themselves in the opposite direction. Rather than collapsing into the parents’ expectations, the rebel pushes against them to protect the vulnerable self that feels unseen, intruded upon, or controlled. This defiance is actually a defensive posture shaped by the child’s fear of being absorbed into roles that do not match their inner experience. At the same time, the family frequently labels this child as “difficult” or “the problem,” and over time, the child internalizes that identity, forming a self-concept around resistance and emotional distance. Their sense of self becomes built not through free exploration and secure attachment, but through reacting against the system that objectifies them. In this way, the rebel is no less shaped by the parents’ needs and projections than the compliant child—both lose access to their authentic self, one through accommodation and the other through counter-dependence.
In interrupting healthy development, objectification teaches a child to believe:
“My feelings don’t matter.”
“I am here to satisfy others.”
“My value depends on what someone needs from me.”
“My needs are selfish or cause problems.”
“I’m unworthy, a burden, or too much.”
“Conflict is dangerous.”
TRAUMA BREEDS CODEPENDENCY
Codependency is a disorder of the self, often described as having “a lost self.” It stems from trauma that disrupts the development of authenticity and a stable sense of identity. When a child is objectified, parent-child boundaries can blur, creating enmeshment in which the child’s feelings and needs become entangled with the parent’s. This dynamic is especially pronounced in mother-daughter relationships, though sons can experience similar pressures when a single mother relies on them for support. The merging of roles forces the child to prioritize the parent’s needs over their own, limiting the development of an independent identity. As a result, a codependent’s thinking and behavior are often externalized. Rather than ask, “What do I feel and need?” they automatically ask, “What do they feel, think, and need from me now?” Typically, their own feelings, needs, and wants remain suppressed. Many report feeling disconnected from their true self, unsure of who they really are beneath the role they learned to play.
Many of my clients seek therapy for some of the following symptoms of codependency, but they’re unaware of the split and that they suffered early trauma. Although they may have successful careers, over time, the trauma catches up with them if it has sapped their sense of self or aliveness.
- anxiety
- lack of assertiveness and difficulty saying no
- depression – often mild
- relationship and intimacy issues
- people-pleasing
- feeling responsible for other people’s needs and feelings
- poor boundaries
- inability to identify and sustain their own wants, feelings, and opinions
- chronic guilt or shame
- indecision
- low self-esteem
EXAMPLES OF OBJECTIFICATION
There are many forms of objectification, including these common forms:
- Triangulation to moderate distance or conflict between the parents
- Seeing a child only for physical appearance
- Using a child to meet emotional needs
- Treating them like a burden, helper, companion
- Ignoring their boundaries
- Expecting compliance without respecting individuality
- Using a child for comfort or caretaking
- Using a child as a sex object, not necessarily for incest, but looking at a child sexually
- Parentification to fill adult responsibilities
- Trying to shape a child to live out parent’s dreams or ideals
Some examples explained:
Parentification:
Parentification occurs when a parent depends on a child to meet emotional or practical adult needs. Instead of being supported as a developing child, they are placed in roles such as caretaker, helper, mediator, or emotional stabilizer. This objectifies the child by positioning them as a function rather than a person with their own needs, limits, and vulnerabilities. This experience disrupts natural development and teaches the child that their value lies in meeting others’ expectations. As adults, they often struggle with guilt, anxiety, over-responsibility, and difficulty recognizing their own feelings or limits.
Using a child as a sexual object for adult needs:
Any behavior that involves treating a child in an inappropriate sexual or exploitative manner constitutes abuse. It may include merely inappropriate looks, compliments, sexual language, or jokes. In such situations, the child is reduced to a role or a body that serves the adult’s needs, erasing their humanity, safety, and boundaries. This form of objectification is profoundly damaging because it violates trust, distorts identity formation, and disrupts the child’s sense of bodily autonomy and safety. If a child is viewed as sexy, they believe that is their only value and behave that way in adulthood. It produces deep, long-term emotional and psychological consequences and is considered one of the most serious forms of trauma.
Using a child as an emotional partner (emotional incest, companion, or enmeshment):
Emotional incest doesn’t necessarily include sexual activity. It involves role reversal and inappropriate emotional reliance, where the child is expected to meet the parent’s emotional needs instead of being allowed to develop their own self. Using the child as a companion, best friend, or confidante. Classically, the child becomes a stand-in partner or a source of emotional support that a peer or adult would normally provide. In this dynamic, a parent turns to the child for emotional companionship that should come from another adult, treating the child as a confidant, best friend, or surrogate partner. The child becomes an emotional support object rather than a growing person with their own needs. This is traumatic because it makes the child responsible for the parent’s emotional well-being, often forcing them to suppress their own developing self. Later in life, they may struggle with boundaries, emotional independence, or forming healthy relationships. Their own emotional needs become secondary or invisible.
Using a child’s admiration to support the parent’s self-esteem (narcissistic parentification):
Here, a parent relies on the child’s praise, affection, or compliance to maintain their own sense of worth. The child becomes a source of validation rather than a separate individual with their own emotional life. They become a mirror, a source of ego supply, and a validation tool. This objectification is traumatic because the child learns that love depends on performing correctly or never disappointing the parent. Many grow up to be people-pleasers, afraid of rejection, or overly dependent on external approval to feel valuable.
SELF-OBJECTIFICATION
To me the saddest, most devastating aspect of objectification is that we learn to treat ourselves as an object, existing outside ourselves that we push, judge, and punish. Self-compassion and self-love are elusive. We avoid subjectivity and totally identify with our body, our mind, or role we play professionally or as a spouse or parent. It gives some satisfaction, but it’s an escape from the distress of freedom – freedom to choose my authentic self, that we may only dimly remember.
Growing up, and then in adult relationships, we choose connection to another (mother) over individuation, and we repress our vitality and aggression. Fear of independent behavior harkens back to a lack of separation from our mother. Being authentic risks abandonment, rage, withdrawal, punishment of those we love, or financial security. Safety comes from giving up parts of ourselves. To keep you, I have to lose me. Rather than choose an uncertain future of feeling unprotected and lonely, and taking responsibility for our identity and life, we choose to be an object rather than a subject, and allow someone else to define us and take responsibility for ourselves. We lose ourselves to be loved by someone else. Both options are painful. One destroys the relationship. The other destroys the self. But the choice happens so early in life, that as adults, alienation from ourselves feels natural, even loving. And when there is no obvious abuse to point to, we don’t even know why we’re unhappy.
Recovery of our authentic nature, even when we’re no longer in a codependent or abusive relationship, is a long slow road of individuation, which Carl Jung wrote spans a lifetime.
Start recovery by affirming your authentic self, building self-esteem, and becoming assertive.
© 2025 Darlene Lancer
This article was originally published here, and is reprinted with the author’s kind permission.