Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson
This is just a reflection on my relationship as a woman to my emotionally immature mother using this book and it is so incredible to have a piece of literature that makes me feel less alone and reflect on where the negative feelings I have had throughout my life came from.
Chapter 1: How Emotionally Immature Parents Affect Their Adult Children's Lives
They were never a safe space to run to thus creating feelings of isolation, loneliness, and feeling like nobody else is like you. I felt like I never had anyone to talk to about what I was feeling, so I ran to journaling on here. Most my posts are negative on this platform because I had to get those feelings out to keep my sanity. I didn't know that the feelings of loneliness led to the suicidal thoughts in my teen and early adult years. As a child, you don't understand why you feel these things and you just think it's normal. As an adult, you see others have a good relationship with their moms since she was a safe space for them. That was never the case for me. I had to learn how to comprehend my emotions on my own which led to being different from a lot of people and not knowing how to regulate my thoughts. Kids from emotionally immature parents are always trying to show others that nothing is wrong, they are willing to help others at any given moment to distract people from thinking things are worse than they seem, and grow up fast to be independent but still feel lonely at their core. They have sex and make sure to have the freedom of an adult as teens, end up getting into relationships with emotionally immature people when they're young, marry the wrong person quickly, and stay in shitty jobs as a teen/young adult because they grew up too fast and had to settle. As a teen/young adult, you feel guilty for not being happy and I did. This chapter mentions that no matter how much you do for your parent, they will still say "you don't do anything for me and you don't love me." As an adult, you can present yourself well by having a good job but still have underlying anxiety and thoughts of being lonely and unsupported thus minimizing your achievements to others. I feel called out lol. Chapter 1 describes me exactly.
Chapter 2: Recognizing the Emotionally Immature Parent
Describes my mom perfectly and how I had to walk on eggshells around her explosive unregulated emotions my whole life. "If she's in a bad mood, I stay away. If she's in a good mood, I can talk to her." "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" mentality. Expressing your joy/sadness for something but it gets minimized because she's more joyful or more sad about what she's doing teaches you to not be able to express emotions. Must be why I can't cry even when I'm really sad. I just blankly stare. The parent will overreact so frequently that over time, you just learn to tune them out in order to gain control of your own emotions. They have a lot of contradictory emotions and sometimes come off as emotionally strong to others, but their kids see the truth. Emotions are black and white to them and they can't ever see any gray areas (aka closed minded to new ideas or thoughts outside of their own). They only become nurturing when the child is sick and they need to be nursed back to health. Must be why my siblings were always sick. They were craving love and that's really sad. Children of these parents can become imaginative and intellectual at a young age and as teens start to self reflect. Emotionally immature people don't have the ability to self reflect and since they are at the mercy of their emotions, they don't have the same intellect as an emotionally mature person and refuse to try to educate themselves on psychology and emotional regulation. A story in this chapter mentioned a man who thought phone conversations were mundane and unstimulating and it was because she talked about what was going on at that exact moment like what he was doing and what the weather was like or just talked about herself. The conversations never had any substance. I remember dreading answering the phone when my mom would call because it would be such a long phone call of repetitive conversation, mostly about her. Sometimes I'd even set my phone down on the counter at a distance and just let her ramble while saying the occasional "mhm" and "yeah that's cool" sayings and then sometimes I'd feel guilty for not caring about the conversation because she's my mom and I should care right?
Chapter 3: How It Feels to Have a Relationship With an Emotionally Immature Parent
You may have tried to find a way to connect only to feel invisible and unheard time and time again. "She thinks we are so close, but for me, it's not a satisfying relationship. It makes me crazy when she tells people that I am her best friend." I have said this before and so have many others mentioned in this book. Communication feels one sided and they want everyone to be interested only in what they are talking about. If other people are getting more attention, they find ways to bring the attention back to themselves. "My mother is only interested in herself. She only wants to know what I'm doing so she can brag to her friends." One example of this for me is, I went to college for an associates in Architectural Engineering and got a good job drawing blueprints with AutoCAD while I was in that program. She was telling everyone I was an Architect. Anyone who know anything about this field knows how long it takes to actually become an Architect. It would never be straight out of a 2 year program and when I stepped in to correct her, she would be disappointed or try to overshadow what I said by being louder and say "oh I thought you were an architect". "I feel so guilty for the amount of anger I have when I'm around her." I never feel happy in her presence. Always anger or emptiness. Kids will internalize their anger and turn it back on themselves thus making them depressed and have suicidal feelings. If there is a rift in the relationship, the only way to keep it going is by ignoring the problem and continuing on as if nothing ever happened since the parent doesn't have the ability to self reflect nor do they want to hear what they did wrong. They think they are so perfect, they can do no wrong. They respond to even mild criticism of their behavior with things like "well I guess I must be the worst mother ever." The parent gets highly upset if their child doesn't act the way they want them to. They see roles as sacred and you must comply. They are your authority figure so you must obey them. This is called role entitlement meaning they can overstep boundaries because they are the mother so anything they say goes. Then there is role coercion meaning bullying the kids into being who you want them to be by ignoring their needs, punishing them, or getting other family members to gang up on them. My mom does this by having her best friend's family and her brothers gang up on my brother. I think she didn't do this to me because I fit the role she wanted me to be in as a kid. Drink with her, pretend we are best friends, be compliant when spending the night at her best friend's house, go to every family event, overlook the bad parts. I was her perfect friend until I started reflecting. She hated my sister for never wanting to spend the night and always told her to suck it up so she could stay and drink. My dad would go home with her and my mom hated him for that. Emotionally immature people are disconnected from time. I have many examples of her bringing things up from 15 years ago to make them relevant to the present day issues. She thinks the issues are all the same no matter when it happened.
Chapter 4: Four Types of Emotionally Immature Parents
I chose what describes my mom from this chapter.
Emotional - She has explosive emotions on purpose for the household to soothe her. She threatens suicide often and then disappears making the kids forget their own needs to figure out what to do. These people often have narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder. Substance abuse makes them more unbalanced. They present themselves as being a helpless victim. Fluctuating moods make them unreliable and intimidating and makes the household walk on eggshells around them, but they are good at controlling themselves outside of the family to present themselves as having a structured role.
Driven - presenting themselves to others as being so focused on their child's successes that you wouldn't notice anything unhealthy about them.
Passive & Rejective - she didn't really fit these 2.
Chapter 5: How Different Children React to Emotionally Immature Parenting
I'm taking what I believe are traits that I have from this chapter.
Externalizers - being impulsive and taking action without thinking. Depending on external soothing which makes them prone to substance abuse, addictive relationships, and other immediate forms of gratification.
Internalizers - suffering in silence and presenting themselves as being just fine so their peers never know that they needed help. Relationship example: internalizers like to problem solve by discussing with their partner why they are unhappy but if they are not listened to or dismissed, their needs are not met and they have an externalizer approach by having an affair to get their need met outside of their relationship. Internalizers also externalize by abusing substances. This resonates with me because I spoke up about my emotional needs being un-met in my marriage for quite some time while simultaneously abusing substances. At this time, it was just alcohol and weed and I was feeling very lonely and sad. I ended up drinking with another guy and spent the weekend with him. A week later, my ex-husband and I had tickets to a concert a few hours away, so we went together and stayed in that city. He tried initiating sex with me and I just couldn't do it after doing what I did. On the drive home, I asked him for a divorce. We never talked about the cheating but there's no way he couldn't have known. It didn't seem like I was sorry because I still hung out with the guy during our separation, but I am truly sorry. Looking back, I realize how fucked up that was and I hate myself for doing that to someone else especially knowing how it feels to be cheated on. Shortly after, I moved back home and began abusing cocaine and alcohol. I also did molly and psychedelics during this time. I look back at these actions and think about how awful I acted and I'm doing everything in my power to change for the better. I would never do that again and I live with the guilt everyday that I shattered someone's heart for my own personal benefit and how wrong that is when I could have just left. I became cocky and arrogant during my time abusing drugs. I had a hoe phase during this time and it added to my insane ego trip. I wasn't able to truly reflect while my mind was being numbed and my vision blurred. I'm thankful I got clean. Like the saying goes: hurt people, hurt people. Back then, I was hurt and that is not an excuse for how I acted and treated others but it is a reason for it. Now, I'm trying to heal so I can treat people with respect and carefully think before taking any action. I do not want to be an externalizer.
Chapter 6: What it's Like to Be an Internalizer
Traits of an internalizer: sensitive, notice other people's emotions, and notice everything around them. Strong emotions but they don't act out their emotions immediately so their feelings have a chance to intensify while held inside where as externalizers act out their emotions before being able to internalize them. Internalizers know that there is strength in being independent. They make meaningful emotional connections outside of the family and similar emotional connections through pets. They may feel emotionally nurtured as they resonate with the beauty of nature, art, and spirituality. They are apologetic about needing help and downplay their suffering.
Chapter 7: Breaking Down and Awakening
Your true self gets hidden by being minimized through childhood. The more you learn, the more your true self pushes its way out and helps you step out of your role-self and helps you become a more positive and confident person. Emotional distress can be positive. Once you're exhausted of pretending to be your role-self for so long, your true self fights its way through and causes panic and the need to get help to be happy. You start to question what your authority figure told you was right and figure out that they were actually wrong. Anger could be a positive emotion once you reflect on why you are angry instead of dismissing it as "everything irritates me so I must be broken." No, that anger is coming from somewhere and can be accepted. While playing your role-self, some people ignore the need for rest even when they're sick to stay in that role because they believe they have to help and fix everything no matter what and end up ignoring their own needs. They over-do things trying to be perfect in their hobbies. I used to tell people I never knew how to relax. I didn't know it was stemming from not feeling safe as a child. You learn to ignore your strengths and not acknowledge them. It takes work and a lot of time to see the good in yourself.
Chapter 8: How to Avoid Getting Hooked by an Emotionally Immature Parent
Forget the fantasy that they will change and learn how to show yourself love. In adulthood, the child will learn healthy communication skills and be hopeful that applying them will help the relationship with the parent grow only to be disappointed by it not working. You have to find a way forward without seeking emotional intimacy with your parent. Processing what happened to you is more important than what actually happened to you. Emotionally immature parents don't do the work to process their own trauma thus creating issues in thinking that what they went through will always trump what you go through. It'll always be a competition. The parent typically cares about superficial surface level relationships more than deep emotional connection. My mom does this by caring more about what her Facebook followers think of her than actually developing a good relationship with us. I think having us not be part of her life puts a damper on how people view her societally and that's why she doesn't like the distance. It has nothing to do with us actually being friends. Emotionally immature parents prefer an enmeshed relationship because they like over stepping boundaries. In an enmeshed family, they will go talk to another family member about you instead of directly talking to you. My mom talks so much shit about me and my siblings to her family and friends. It's unbelievable. She's constantly trying to prove that we are the bad guys. Meditation and teaching your brain to detach emotionally your parent is how you gain control over emotions regarding your parent. You'll come at the relationship with an observational attitude. Also, observe your own emotions and if they become too intense, find a way to distance yourself from the interaction and do something that brings you peace. Focus on the outcome of each interaction, not the relationship.
This book helped me look back on where my negative emotions were coming from and taught me how to criticize myself a lot less. I can't control if other people change or not, but I can control how I react to things and how I can change in my own ways. There are a lot of posts on this tumblr account about how sad and down I was feeling from my teen years into adulthood. Healing is not linear, so I cannot say those posts will never be made again, but I can confidently say now that overall, I'm doing very well. I successfully quit doing cocaine a couple years ago and stopped smoking nicotine. At most, I'll have occasional drinks and maybe a molly night once a year where I ask to hit a vape or two lol, but I can confidently say that I'm not addicted to anything anymore and not using these substances to numb the pain any longer. It's just been recreational and for social fun. I've been able to see clearly and regulate how I'm feeling better than ever before. I have a great exercise routine. Those natural endorphins are amazing. I've developed a love for being alive. This may have to do with keeping a huge distance from my mom and if that's the case, I'm so glad I can be happy without her. I hope one day to fully go no contact so both of us can move on. Journaling and reading has been so therapeutic <3
