Burnt Out Before Ten - Breaking the cycle of invisible trauma, emotional perfectionism, and the pressure to be okay

The child kept everyone alive. But who kept them?

They called you mature.
They called you responsible.
They called you strong.

No one asked if you were tired.

Burnt Out Before Ten is a raw, unflinching look into the lives of children forced to become adults too soon — the ones who held the house together with trembling hands, who listened to their parents’ breakdowns and stayed quiet about their own.

This book peels back the silence around parentification — the invisible trauma of becoming the caregiver before you even had a chance to grow. Blending psychological insight, lyrical narrative, and haunting reflections, it traces the lifelong fractures left by stolen childhoods: hyper-independence, chronic guilt, and the grief of never being protected.

For anyone who was praised for surviving instead of being saved.
For the “old souls” who never got to be young.
For the ones who burned out before ten — and still carry the smoke.

You’re not broken.
You were overburdened.
And it’s time someone finally saw that.

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