Book Summary: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
What happens when a child has emotionally immature parents? How do you recognize it and heal yourself? This episode is inspired by Lindsay C. Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents*. Understanding what an emotionally immature parent looks like gives you the power to judge for yourself the level of relationship you can have with them. Or anyone really. After this post, you’ll have the ability to better create boundaries with ease and focus on living from a true, authentic space. Rather than spending tons of time and energy on a parent who won’t change. Shoutout to Jenica from The Good Space community for recommending this book!
Today I want to talk about the effects of having emotionally immature parents and how to heal yourself. Inspired fully by Lindsay C. Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents*. Jenica from The Good Space community messaged me after reading it saying she thought it would be a great topic to speak on. She was without a doubt inspired to share it. Thank you Jenica because the book changed my life and I’m grateful for that and for you.
Understanding what an emotionally immature parent looks like gives you the power to judge for yourself the level of relationship you can have with them. Or anyone really. You’ll have the ability to create boundaries with ease and focus on living from a true, authentic space. Rather than spending tons of time and energy on a parent who won’t change.
The truth is emotional neglect isn’t about you. It’s the level they’re at and has nothing to do with your worth. Each of us has a unique journey and some may be at different stages of development. Part of our purpose is to accept and give space to people to be where they’re at and allow ourselves to keep moving forward and grow. I’m hoping what we talk about today will help you get more clarity on your own relationships with your parents or anyone else really.
I deeply believe that when you stay open to healing wounds and understanding your triggers God/Universe gives you exactly what you need to achieve it. This book, like dozens before it, fell into my lap right when I needed it. I hope this can be that moment for you, too.
Who are Emotionally Immature Parents?
Emotionally immature parents are ones that are afraid of emotional intimacy and often pull back or resist genuine emotional closeness. Children often feel painful emotional loneliness because of this. Even if they were well taken care of or verbally told they were loved that doesn’t mean their emotional needs were met. Emotional loneliness is a sign that they haven’t had enough emotional intimacy with other people.
Without this crucial emotional intimacy, various symptoms and behaviors can arise. Some children believe putting other people’s needs first is the price they have to pay to be in a relationship.
Both of my parents grew up in emotionally immature homes. My dad is from an abusive one. He left home at 17 to join the airforce, got a business degree, and swore to be the complete opposite of his family. He did a great job and broke a lot of cycles from his upbringing. But naturally, he also didn’t know how to process his emotions.
My mom was raised by two Italian immigrants who knew zero English when they moved to The United States. She had to pay their bills and take care of other tasks because they couldn’t. Although my grandparents were hard-working and big dreamers they, too, didn’t have certain emotional maturity.
The reason I share this is because having emotionally immature parents can stunt a lot of their children’s emotional growth but it doesn’t mean they’re bad people. Or unloveable. Quite the opposite. If anything, by understanding emotional immaturity my hope is you’ll feel more compassion and forgiveness for your parents or someone else’s parents. To be clear, that’s not the case in every situation. Some home environments can be truly toxic and even dangerous so don’t confuse this with condoning or excusing truly toxic behavior.
What is Emotional Intimacy?
When we feel anger or frustration sometimes it can be from a lack of understanding. When we don’t understand why we feel certain ways about our parents it can add not-so-good feelings in the mix. But once you start to understand better it can humanize them and hopefully give you the tools you need to decide how you want to move forward in the relationship. This book unravels a bit of the massive web that is human psychology and the complexity that’s added onto it with relationships.
What’s typically missing in a relationship with an immature parent is emotional intimacy. Here’s how Lindsay C. Gibson describes emotional intimacy in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents*:
“Emotional intimacy involves knowing that you have someone you can tell anything to, someone to go to with all your feelings, about anything and everything. You feel completely safe opening up to the other person, whether in the form of words, through an exchange of looks, or by just being together quietly in a state of connection. Emotional intimacy is profoundly fulfilling, creating a sense of being seen for who you really are. It can only exist when the other person seeks to know you, not judge you.”
With emotionally immature parents they don’t notice their child’s inner experiences. They often fear emotional intimacy because they’re uncomfortable with their own emotional needs and therefore can’t provide fulfillment of their child’s needs. Gibson says, “Such parents may even become nervous and angry if their children get upset, punishing them instead of comforting them.”
Symptoms from Having Emotionally Immature Parents
So what does it look like to be affected by emotionally immature parents? Some signs are that you:
Feel like you’ve never truly belonged to any group. As if you’re an outsider looking in.
Shut down your emotions instead of listening to them
Settle for emotional loneliness in relationships because that’s what you’re used to
Play whatever role you believe your parent wants you to play to try and strengthen connection
Don’t believe someone would want to have a relationship with you purely because of who you are. That you must always put them first to earn that place.
Feel guilty for feeling sad or down even if everything on the outside looks good
Lack confidence that others could be interested in you
Feel like a bother for telling someone else your needs
The book has an extensive list of statements that help you verify if you have an emotionally immature parent. There’s also an assessment you can fill out for each parent or stepparent you have. To keep things condensed I’ll name a few signs of emotionally immature parents but these are hardly everything:
Not validating your feelings and instincts
Overreaction to minor things
Lack of empathy or awareness
Saying or doing things without thinking of other’s feelings
Low-stress tolerance. They’re reactive and unable to anticipate the future instead of using coping mechanisms to “deny, distort, or replace reality” as shared by Gibson on page 29. Regulating emotions is tough for them and it’s often hard to calm down after getting upset.
Being inconsistent - sometimes wise, sometimes unreasonable
Conversations center on the parent’s interests or stories. Bringing it back to them.
Facts and logic were no match for their opinion
Black and white thinkers are not open to new ideas. They can become very successful when there’s a clear path in front of them. But when moments require emotional decisions they can be either rigid or impulsive and close their minds to other ideas. Becoming defensive when people have other ideas.
They do what feels best.
Internalizers vs. Externalizers
There are generally four types of immature parents which you can read more in-depth about in the book. But I wanted to share with you two coping styles the children of those parents tend to fall into: internalizers and externalizers. When you have immature parents you’re forced as a kid to adjust to their limitations. Obviously, you wouldn’t be aware of it. But kids want to fill that emotional void and feel it’s their fault. That it’s up to them to fix it. That it’s up to them to feel noticed, cared for, and engaged with.
That’s when the creation of a healing fantasy comes into play. The child imagines what would make them feel better and often think they need to change themselves to do it. You can read more about healing fantasies and role selves in the book. It’s important to understand the difference between this and the coping mechanisms because they all rob us of the vitality of our true selves.
As Gibson says, “You can’t forge a deep and satisfying relationship from the position of a role-self. You have to be able to express enough of your true self to give the other person something to relate to. Without that, the relationship is just playacting between two role-selves.”
Let’s get to the coping styles now of children with emotionally immature parents. Even if you have beliefs that fit in both styles based on your personality you’ll have adopted one style over the other. Ideally, you want to find a balance between the two. An extreme of either style can be detrimental. We’ll start with internalizers.
Internalizers
Here are some qualities of internalizers as outlined by Gibson in the book:
Mentally active and love to learn things
Problem-solving happens from the inside out. They self-reflect and try to learn from mistakes.
They’re sensitive
They try to understand cause and effect
Life is seen as a chance to develop themselves. They enjoy becoming more competent.
They believe making things better depends on trying harder.
Their biggest sources of guilt and anxiety: when they think they’ve displeased others or fear being exposed as an imposter.
Their biggest relationship downfall: overly self-sacrificing and then resenting how much they’ve done.
Externalizers
Children who externalize their problems believe it’s up to others to change things. Here are some qualities for them outlined as well by Gibson in the book:
Take action before they think.
They’re reactive and take impulsive action to alleviate anxiety.
They’re not as self-reflective and assign blame to other people or circumstances rather than themselves.
Life is a process of trial and error but rarely use their mistakes as a way to do better.
They see their happiness as dependent on change happening in the outside world.
Their coping style is often so destructive others have to step in the repair the damage.
They feel like victims and like competent people owe them help and that good comes to other unfairly.
They either have super low self-confidence or a sense of inflated superiority.
Since they depend on external soothing they can be susceptible to abuse, addictions, and immediate gratification.
Their biggest source of anxiety: being cut off from the external sources that give them security.
Their biggest relationship downfall: being attracted to impulsive people and being overly dependent on others for support and stability.
This barely taps the surface and Gibson continues on in the book about how each coping style interacts in the world. She gives examples and also recommendations about how to balance the two. We’ve linked the book in the show notes which you can find in this episode description. So go there if this speaks to you. I’m also curious to know which of the two you see yourself most in? Let me know by leaving a comment on our show notes linked in the description for this episode.
The Cure for Emotional Loneliness
Gibson says, “Emotional loneliness” is a term that suggests its own cure: being on the receiving end of another person’s sympathetic interest in what you’re feeling.” For emotional connection, it needs to be with someone who’s interested in really understanding you and your experience.
Start listening to your emotions and allowing them space to exist. When you allow your emotional needs to be known you can have a genuine connection with others. Allowing them to show up and be there for you.
Jenica was kind enough to share her biggest takeaways from the book so I want to share that here in her words:
“First and foremost: the tools that the author provides for interacting with emotionally immature people, as outlined on pages 146-150 have been freeing for me.
The description provided about becoming observational has helped me tremendously. (p. 146-148) I absorbed the steps by reminding myself:
1. Center yourself
2. Notice and name (focus on observing the other person and on your internal reactions)
3. Remind yourself to detach (if you still get triggered and it is necessary)
This is like a meditation. I feel that I am so much better equipped to stay balanced around my emotionally immature parent.
Affirmation
I allow myself to be who I truly am and interact in the world as a healed and whole self.
Writing Prompt
Am I an internalizer or an externalizer? What could I do this week to become a better communicator?
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