Becky G Went to Therapy With Her Family, Says it Helped Her Shed ‘Parentified’ Big Sister Mindset
There is something about being an eldest daughter that carries weight and gravitas within the Latino community. From the moment a daughter becomes an older sister, she is thrust into a world of new responsibilities. Parents turn her into an extension of who they are, whether knowingly or unknowingly. For Becky G, she admits it was much of the same thing in her household.
In a recent interview on Jay Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast, the beauty mogul reveals that it wasn’t until she began therapy that she was able to shed this “rigid” mindset she had. She admits to Shetty that she credits therapy for helping her with “parts work.”
According to both the singer-actress and Shetty, parts work is when you actively learn the different parts of who you are. This practice proved to be revolutionary for the “CHANEL” singer’s mental health.
Becky admits that therapy opened her eyes to how different her lived experience was from her siblings
The “Blue Beetle” actress reveals to Shetty that therapy has been an “investment” and the lessons she’s learned from it are things she makes a “daily practice.” She also credits this practice for having helped her move away from her need to people please.
Another lesson Becky has learned has been how to “take inventory” of how situations and relationships in her life have affected her.
She begins, “I think when you take inventory on your life, you know, like really taking inventory on what your relationships with the people around you in your life look like and felt like from the moment you were born until this current day. Inventory on memories, you know, experiences that you’ve had and your recollections of them. And then also kind of revisiting those with those people and being like, ‘Hey, what was your experience like in this?’”
“You know, it’s the trippiest thing for me and my siblings [because] I’m like, ‘We deadass have the same parents, grew up with the same four walls around us and we’re all so different and we all process so different, right,’” she continues.
Therapy helped Becky and her family hold space for each other, helping her move away from a “parentified” big sister mentality
Going to therapy with her family allowed Becky and her family to establish a “deeper level of compassion and empathy” for one another. They also began “holding space,” something she called “beautiful.”
“So, going back to an even deeper level of compassion and empathy, holding space for each other in that way — so beautiful. Yeah, we didn’t get to really doing that until we went into family therapy together. So thankful for the resources and opportunity to do that because there’s-there’s a lot of times where I’m like, ‘Man, like, we things could have gone one or another way and we kept choosing, you know, family,’” she asserts.
She also questioned why families had to be “ride or die” and couldn’t “just be.”
“We got to a point where, like, choosing family, this right or die mentality of like, ‘Oh yeah, like why do we have to ride or die?’ Why can’t we just be, you know, like, nobody’s going to ask that question. And I was the big sister who was like, you know, parentified. I was like, ‘I’m their parent. They’re my…,’ and they’re like, ‘We just want you to be our big sister. We don’t need you to be our mom or dad,’” Becky reveals.
“And I’m like, ‘What do you mean?! I have to be,’ it’s like all those rigid rules and stuff, so taking inventory was super helpful for me,” the “Power Rangers” actress adds.
Becky’s “parts work” has helped her tap into the different aspects of herself
Something the singer-actress admitted she recently began doing was “parts work.” She credits the practice with having helped her learn about the different parts of herself that make her who is she.
“Recently, I started doing like parts work, which we were talking about all the parts, you know, like, ‘Oh, there’s a part of me that’s still a child.’ I’m still fricking afraid of the dark. I romanticize, I travel and I’m alone in my hotel room and I’m like, ‘I’m going to leave the TV on so it feels like somebody is here because it’s a little scary in here,” she admits to Shetty.
Becky notes that part of her is “a part of” who she is — the part of her “that’s still trying to figure […] things out.”
She continues, “So, it feels a little lonely. [There’s parts] that feel a little lost. There’s the boss part of me that feels super empowered and feels like such a visionary over the career that I’ve built for myself and excited to, like, continue to attack these parts of the industry that quite literally need to just be broken down, you know, so more and more me can get in there.”
She hopes her path through the world allows others to break through and break down barriers.
“When I say more of me, I mean other powerful women who have, you know, so much talent and so much just to offer in these spaces. Yeah, it’s-it’s beautiful. I love the parts work,” she affirmed.
