The Impact of Growing Up with Emotionally Immature Parents

Adult children of emotionally immature parents often find themselves shouldering a significant emotional burden from a young age. This weight of responsibility can become so ingrained that it may take difficult adult experiences to fully realize the extent of this burden. Children with Emotionally Immature Parents often face challenges in understanding and effectively expressing their emotions. Clinical psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson has extensively examined this complex issue in her insightful books. The struggle of emotionally immature parents to meet their children's emotional needs can have lasting effects on the child's mental well-being and future relationships, a serious issue that Gibson's work brings to light.

Gibson's work emphasizes the importance of acknowledging these impacts and offers practical strategies for healing, such as establishing healthy boundaries and enhancing emotional intelligence. Overcoming the effects of being raised by emotionally immature parents is crucial for breaking harmful patterns and cultivating more profound, healthier, and stable interpersonal connections.

Characteristics of Emotionally Immature Parents

  • Emotional Reactivity: These parents frequently display heightened emotional reactions, indicating a challenge in effectively and healthily managing their emotions.

  • Lack of Empathy: Emotional immaturity often manifests as an inability to comprehend or connect with the emotions of others, particularly their children.

  • Poor Boundary Setting: Emotionally immature parents may find it difficult to establish appropriate personal boundaries, resulting in overly enmeshed or distant relationships with their children.

  • Toxic Behaviors: In some instances, harmful behaviors such as emotional manipulation, neglect, and belittling of emotions are prevalent.

When a parent lacks emotional maturity, they often parent from a place of unresolved attachment trauma, early abuse, or neglectful upbringing. Many emotionally immature parents fail to progress beyond their own childlike needs and self-centeredness, often due to their own experiences of abuse or neglect during childhood. Lindsay Gibson outlines four common types of Emotionally Immature Parents that contribute to feelings of disconnection and pain.

The Emotional Parent

The emotional parent is characterized by unpredictable and intense emotions, often driven by anxiety. This type of parent can be seen as the most immature of the four types, as they tend to drag their family along with them during their emotional meltdowns or periods of depression. The family members are directly impacted by the parent's emotions, experiencing feelings of anger, depression, joy, anxiety, or despair. In severe cases, the emotional parent may have an untreated mental illness such as Bipolar disorder or Personality Disorder. Due to their emotional foundation, living with an emotional parent can feel like walking on eggshells, never knowing what mood the parent will be in. This constant uncertainty can lead to hypervigilance in monitoring others' emotional "weather." Children of emotional parents may find themselves in the role of caretaker, looking after their parent during emotional lows or substance abuse episodes used to regulate emotions. This dynamic can lead to confusion about who the true parent is in the relationship.

The Driven Parent

Driven parents are constantly on the go, particularly in their careers, viewing their children as mere extensions of themselves. While these parents may appear successful on the surface, their relentless pursuit of achievement can negatively affect their children. Many parents seek therapy for their children who are experiencing depression, anxiety, or anger, only to discover that the root cause lies in their workaholic tendencies. Despite providing material comforts such as a lovely home and private school education, what children truly desire is quality time with their parents. The academic pressure placed on children by driven parents can be overwhelming. These parents struggle to pause and connect with their children on a deeper level, leading to feelings of inadequacy and shame in their offspring despite outward success.

The Passive Parent

At first glance, the Passive Parent may seem to have some level of connection with their children, but upon closer inspection, it becomes evident that this connection is superficial. This parent type may sometimes align with one of the other three. The defining characteristic of the Passive Parent is not what they do but rather what they fail to do. They may be preoccupied with personal hobbies or friendships or deliberately ignore severe issues within the family dynamic. While they may display moments of love and empathy, they are noticeably absent when faced with physically and emotionally challenging situations. This neglect can have profound consequences on a child, especially if the other parent is abusive. Many clients have shared stories where the deepest wounds were not solely inflicted by the abusive parent but also by the passive parent's inaction. The result is a deeply ingrained belief that one is unworthy of protection or investment. This can lead to a tendency to make excuses for others who exhibit similar passive or hurtful behaviors in adulthood.

The Rejecting Parent

The Rejecting Parent is often the most detrimental and can be emotionally abusive. Reflecting on the behavior of a rejecting parent may leave one questioning why they chose to have children in the first place. There is a pervasive sense of being disliked or even hated by the rejecting parent, causing profound emotional distress that can endure a lifetime. These parents build emotional barriers that create a somber atmosphere within the home. In my professional opinion, this type of parent inflicts the most harm. When a child enters the world, one of their fundamental needs is to feel wanted. When this need is denied, it can lead to significant challenges in forming healthy adult relationships, establishing a sense of identity, and fostering connections with others. Anger and fear often dominate these households, leaving children too afraid to seek help or enter toxic relationships as adults due to a distorted sense of self-worth.

The behaviors mentioned can range from mild to severe and are often a combination of two or more. Gibson further explores how individuals may either internalize the effects—taking the pain upon themselves—externalize the effects by projecting the pain onto others, or both. In either case, the root of the pain stems from unresolved past traumas exacerbated by unhealthy coping mechanisms in the present.

What Happens As A Result Of Growing Up With An Emotionally Immature Parent?

The impact of being raised by emotionally immature parents can have profound and lasting effects on a child's development. When parents fail to provide a secure attachment, their children may grow up with low self-esteem, feelings of emptiness and loneliness, depression, anxiety, trauma, substance abuse issues, and difficulties in forming healthy relationships. These adult children often struggle with the belief that they will not be loved if they show their true selves.

Without intervention, these individuals are likely to perpetuate the cycle of emotionally immature parenting with their children. They must recognize these patterns and actively work to break the cycle. The lack of emotional maturity in their upbringing can manifest in their friendships and romantic relationships, as they may unknowingly recreate the same dynamics they experienced as children.

The consequences of growing up with emotionally immature parents can have far-reaching implications on an individual's mental and emotional well-being.

What Does Healing From Growing Up With Emotionally Immature Parents Entail?

Healing from the effects of emotionally immature parents requires effort, but it is achievable. When you first acknowledge that this was the environment you were raised in, there are key points to consider:

  • Establish boundaries if necessary. It is acceptable to create distance between yourself and your parents to reflect on and comprehend their influence and determine what you want and need for yourself.

  • You may discover that you have disregarded your instincts and intuitive signals.

  • You may realize that you have been conforming to a role you believed was "acceptable." These roles or masks may include the peacemaker in relationships, always prioritizing others' needs over your own, the helper, the composed individual, the overachiever, the "I have everything under control" persona, the excessively self-sufficient individual, or hyper-independence.

  • Recognize that you cannot change your parents (as they may not acknowledge the impact of their emotionally immature parenting), so concentrate on yourself and the changes you need to implement to break the cycle.

  • Utilize mindfulness and self-compassion to connect with your emotions and express yourself in a manner that may have previously been unwelcome to others.

  • It is permissible to mourn a childhood that was never indeed a childhood, as you were responsible for your parents' emotions rather than the other way around. Grieving this is a crucial aspect of the healing process.

  • You may identify this pattern in other adult relationships, such as friendships and romantic partnerships. As the healing journey progresses, some friendships may drift away, and you may lose interest in romantic partners you were previously attracted to.

When feeling stagnant, consider engaging in therapy or other approaches that incorporate a trauma-informed perspective, such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Inner Child Healing Work, Brainspotting, Hypnotherapy, Trauma-Informed Yoga, Meditation, or Somatic interventions, which can help access unconscious emotions, thoughts, and beliefs and help heal them.

Recognizing parents' emotional immaturity can help alleviate feelings of emotional isolation as you come to understand that their emotional neglect was not a reflection of your worth but rather a result of their limitations. By identifying the unmet needs from your upbringing, you can cultivate self-love, patience, and grace to fulfill those needs for yourself. Self-care and introspection are essential for personal growth, healing, and emotional well-being.

References

Gibson, Lindsay C., (2015) Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, New Harbinger Publications.

Gibson, Lindsay C., (2019) Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents, New Harbinger Publications.

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Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Complex-PTSD