Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

"Although you may have learned to reject yourself thanks to an overly critical inner voice that expects perfection, you can reclaim your true self . . . .You're free to extend compassion to yourself and even grieve what you've lost as a result of having emotionally immature parents. . . . You no longer have to exhaust yourself with excessive empathy for other people. In addition, you're likely to find that your relationship with your parents becomes more tolerable as you relinquish the need for their emotional acceptance. And as you shed your old family role, you can relate to your parents more honestly, without needing them to change." p. 176

This is actually a book from 2015, but it seems to have hit the cultural zeitgeist during Covid. Lindsay Gibson eloquently spells out the effects of emotionally immature parents on people and how it contributes to people’s mental health. It is 200 pages long and seems like it could be a quick read. However, there is a lot to unpack, even in the title. Several times, I would re read a passage or a paragraph to really chew on what she was saying. A friend mentioned having read it and she said, “I felt personally attacked” in the 1st few chapters. I did not feel attacked, but it resonated, both personally and with the work I do with people who have have developmental and attachment traumas. My parents were great as yours may have been, but they weren’t perfect. As the book progressed, there were helpful tips on relating to emotionally immature parents, recognizing emotionally mature people, and how to be emotionally mature yourself.

What is This Book About According to a Robot?

ChatGPT says this and it is accurate: “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" is a book written by Lindsay C. Gibson that explores the impact of emotionally immature parents on their adult children.

The book is divided into three parts: Understanding Emotional Immaturity, The Impact on Adult Children, and Recovery and Healing. In the first part, Gibson defines emotional immaturity and provides examples of behaviors that emotionally immature parents exhibit, such as being self-centered, critical, and controlling.

In the second part, Gibson explores the impact of growing up with emotionally immature parents, such as a lack of emotional support, boundary violations, and an inability to develop a strong sense of self. The author provides case studies and examples of how these impacts can manifest in adulthood, such as difficulty with relationships, low self-esteem, and a fear of intimacy.

In the third part, Gibson offers strategies for recovery and healing, including setting boundaries, learning to assert oneself, and developing a strong sense of self. The author also addresses the challenges of healing from the impact of emotionally immature parents and provides guidance on how to navigate this process.

Overall, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents" is a comprehensive and insightful book that can help readers understand the impact of growing up with emotionally immature parents and offer guidance on how to heal and recover from these experiences.”

What is This Book About According to a Therapist who Works with Childhood Trauma?

Also, I don’t know the ethics of using ChatGPT, but was having fun playing with it. I quoted it to avoid robot plagiarism, if that is a thing. Here is what I say the book is about. I think this book is about healing, which starts with recognizing parents who were doing their best with what they had, but maybe fell short and had an impact on you. There are many reasons parents might be emotionally immature, including how they were parented, their own traumas, and living in a Western culture that encourages us to dissociate from our feelings. Nothing in this book felt like it was about blame or encouraging people to cut off their parents. Rather, it is another way of understanding your own emotional responses, relationship patterns, and how to let go of the hurt you might feel from your parents. Lindsay Gibson writes, “Freedom from unhealthy roles and relationships starts within each of us, not in our interactions and confrontations with others.”

A popular topic right now is knowing your attachment style, which is important, but not everything. I feel that this book does a good job of going beyond simply understanding your attachment style and offers more depth in understanding yourself. I happen to work with a lot of sensitive, empathetic, caring, emotionally attuned people who have a deep longing for connection. Lindsay Gibson categorizes these people as the internalizers. Internalizers and externalizers exist on a continuum, but internalizers tend to be introspective, self reflective, and want to make things better. Externalizers tend to be reactive, blaming, and have external behavior like addictions, or being overly dependent on others. Both are ways of getting needs met and most people coming to therapy fall more on the internalizing side of things.

What is an Emotionally Immature Parent?

For the right brained people, this book has a lot of checklists and headings that are helpful to conceptualize what an emotionally immature parent is. Without listing off her checklists, she categorizes emotionally immature parents as 4 types including emotional, driven, passive, and rejecting parents. To recognize an emotionally immature person, you might notice that they are egocentric, self preoccupied, have a low stress tolerance, emotionally insensitive, not reflective, rigid, and tend to do what feels best in the moment. Another takeaway is that they have low emotional capacity, as in shallow emotions, and would prefer to not talk about emotions. One thing that hit me is that these parents might focus on the physical safety and nourishment, but neglect the emotional side of things. I have worked with countless people who had all the physical and material privileges, yet feel lonely, unable to connect, are overly independent, and don’t feel seen by others, all signs of emotional neglect.

For my high achieving, overly independent folks out there, this quote might resonate with you: “Remember, emotionally immature parents related on the basis of roles, not individuality. If you had an independent, self-reliant personality, your parent wouldn’t have seen you as a needy child for whom he or she could play the role of rescuing parent”.

What to Do With This Information?

The opening passage of this book defines emotional loneliness as an exsistential, vague, private experience that isn’t easy to see and describe, yet it is a painful and empty feeling. Knowing the cause of this gnawing feeling is the 1st step in having more intimate relationships, less loneliness, and being able to connect with others in a meaningful way. We end up in the same patterns in our adult relationships, because familiarity feels safe. It is familiar, so we know how to deal with it. Dealing with life and enjoying life are two different things.

Chapter 8 of this book offers helpful advice for how to not get hooked by an emotionally immature parent. Some of her advice is to accept the limitations, observe in a detached way, and focus on relatedness instead of a relationship. For me, Chapter 9 and 10 are the real juicy bits for people to be able to move forward. These chapters outline how to recognize emotionally mature people and briefly, how to be emotionally mature. I hope that there is a separate book on being an emotionally mature person, so we can break these cultural cycles. There is a spiritual and inspiring book, Lighter, by Yung Pueblo that offers great guidance on cultivating emotional maturity.

From the author: “Emotional maturity means a person is capable of thinking objectively and conceptually while sustaining deep emotional connections to others. People who are emotionally mature can function independently while also having deep emotional attachments, smoothly incorporating both into daily life. They are direct about pursuing what they want, yet do so without exploiting other people. “ There are again helpful checklists and a basic summary is that emotionally mature people are reciprocal, responsive, and reliable.

Thoughts from a Trauma Therapist

I think there are a lot of great parents out there. I believe that mostly all parents really love their children and are offering what they can to their children. Parents aren’t perfect and even if they are close to perfect, no one leaves childhood unscathed. So, I appreciate that this book is not about blame, villainizing parents, or saying that we are all traumatized by our parents. I love that the focus is on you recognizing your own patterns, how you want to relate, and understanding that emotional connection is normal. With that being said, there are parents out there who don’t act in a loving way and are obviously abusive, neglectful, and cause a lot of wounding and harm to their children. Most people, not all, who have been through these types of trauma are able to identify that as trauma and hopefully, take steps to heal. For these people, I appreciate that she cuts through the bullshit cultural expectations about needing to have a relationship with harmful people because they are your parents.

This book addresses the not so obvious trauma, emotional neglect, that causes a lot of people pain and brings many people to therapy. In my office, it presents itself as social anxiety, people pleasing, perfectionism, depression, and a persistent sense of loneliness. Some savvy people might call it developmental or attachment trauma, which it is. Much of therapy is about reparenting yourself, grieving what you didn’t receive and should have, and staying in connection with others. Like any theory and idea out there, people can overidentify, take it as gospel, and to explain every one of their behaviors. I hope that people don’t do that with this book, but that this book can increase understanding, self compassion, and empower people to make different choices in their relationships.

10/10 Recommended for nearly all therapy clients!