299. The psychology of emotionally immature parents

What happens when the people who were supposed to guide and nurture us were never taught to emotionally grow up themselves? In today’s episode, we dive into the psychology of emotionally immature parents - their behaviours, their blind spots, and the lasting impact they can have on our sense of self and emotional well-being.

We discuss:

• How to spot emotional immaturity in parents
• Where it can come from, and links to attachment theory
• The impact on your identity, boundaries, and adult relationships
• Why detaching with kindness can help
• The guilt, grief, and tension that often comes with this dynamic
• How to begin healing and reparenting yourself

If you’ve ever felt like the parent in your own family, or found yourself stuck in a cycle of seeking validation from someone who just can’t give it - this episode is for you. 

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we of course break down
the psychology of our twenties today, we are diving into
a topic that it is pretty emotionally charged. It's definitely

(00:45):
one of those areas of psychology and just growing up
in existence that definitely hits close to home for a
lot of people, which is exactly why I think we're
talking about it and what we're unpacking today is the
psychology of emotionally immature parents, what kind of people they are,

(01:05):
what it means, what it looks like, how it impacts us,
and most importantly, how we can really move forward from
a place of grace instead of frustration and needing to
change them and wanting them to be different people. Because,
as we will kind of eliminate through this episode, sometimes
it's really really difficult. This is obviously a very sensitive

(01:29):
subject for many of us. I think we often grow
up thinking our parents can do no wrong. But as
we gain I guess more independence, more knowledge, more self awareness,
cracks can really start to show, and that can be
so unnerving to unpack, especially because you know, our parents
are such prominent figures in our lives, our survival is

(01:53):
so based on them for so long, they are so
important to us. So when we suddenly or slowly become
aware of the ways in which they are flawed and
the ways in which they have perhaps not showed up
for us the way they needed to or should have
been required to, it can be a bit of an
epiphany aha moment, followed by a real kind of crash

(02:15):
and a real come down. You know, perhaps you have
always sense that something was off in your relationship with
your parents. You know, maybe they were loving but only
on their terms, or they were very present physically but
very emotionally unavailable, or they confided in you too much,
they leaned on you too heavily, they made you feel

(02:36):
like you had to be the adult in the relationship,
and at the age you are now, you're kind of realizing, Wait,
other people's parents weren't like that, and maybe this has
done some long term damage to me, and if any
of that rings true, this episode is especially for you.
We're going to be exploring what emotional immaturity looks like,

(02:59):
where it comes from psychologically, how it affects us in
our twenties, and really importantly, how we can begin to heal,
how we can break generational cycles. I also want to
mention I think it's important to say this isn't going
to be like a parent bashing episode. I don't think
that the right approach to this topic is blame. I

(03:22):
don't think that's helpful. What it's really going to be
is just an honest attempt to find clarity and to
understand these kinds of people better and to understand why
they are the way they are, not to give them
permission to continue to be that person and to continue
to affect and impact our lives, but so that we

(03:44):
can really heal. This is about us, and you know
it is going to be different for every person. There's
some parts of this that you might not relate to,
but I definitely hope that you can just feel a
little bit less alone. This kind of emotion immaturity that
we're going to discuss it often flies under the radar
because it doesn't always look like overt or obvious trauma.

(04:08):
I know the word trauma really rings alarm bells, But
these things, these experiences of being emotionally neglected, or emotionally mistreated,
or even just psychologically confused, do shape us very very deeply.
So just understanding it is definitely the first step towards
emotional freedom and opening yourself up to more fulfilling, nurturing relationships.

(04:32):
So that is a lot of words for me to
basically just to say, I hope this episode helps you.
I hope it's informative. We have so much psychology, so
much research, so much just concepts and theories packed into
this episode. So without further ado, let us talk about
the psychology of emotionally immature parents. Let's start this episode

(04:59):
with it's very high level information to kind of cover
our bases. What do we really mean by emotionally immature
parents because it does seem kind of subjective in a way. Well,
the first thing you need to know is that this
phrase was first popularized by doctor Lindsay C.

Speaker 3 (05:18):
Gibson.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
She is a clinical psychologist. And if you have ever
even dipped your toe into this space before, you will
probably know of her book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
It was released in twenty fifteen. It is like the
Bible on this kind of thing. In this book, she
basically introduces us to this idea of emotional immaturity as

(05:42):
a set of traits that includes things like poor empathy, volatility,
self centeredness, and a real ingrained avoidance of emotional responsibility.
So what does this look like? This might look like
parents who struggle to validate your emotions. So you've said

(06:02):
you're anxious, or you're frustrated, or you're hurting, and they
said to calm down, or they said that you were overreacting.
Perhaps they took your requests or your feedback too personally.
You know, you'd say I don't like it when you
do that, and they'd say, well, I guess I'm just
a horrible mother. I guess I'm the worst parent alive.
That's a way of them basically saying what you have

(06:25):
to say doesn't matter. You have to protect my feelings.
Emotionally immature parents are also very uncomfortable with vulnerability. Kind
of goes hand in hand with that last symptom. Often
they may pretend to not hear hear you or understand
you when you're sharing your feelings, or they dismiss you,

(06:46):
they say, can we talk about it later. They would
maybe turn it back onto you or give you the
silent treatment. Any kind of emotional openness or vulnerability is
really swept under the rug. They expect you to manage there,
and it's a very self centered thing. They make demands
of you. They ask you to essentially be there, not

(07:08):
just emotional witness, but they're psychologists, their counselor their healer,
their doctor, their marriage counselor all these things that as
a child, that's not your role, right, It's not your
role to parent them. They are the adult. They are
the ones who wanted you. They are the ones who

(07:29):
chose to have you, and so they need to be,
you know, ready to step into the role of parent
and understand that it's not the same as being friends
with your child. Being a parent and being a friend,
or being a counselor or being a partner. They're different things,
and as the child, you cannot be all of them.

(07:49):
That's something that they typically don't understand. It's very common
when a parent will be like, oh, yes, my daughter
is like my best friend or my son is my
best friend and that's always code, or you guys don't
have emotional boundaries like they are oversharing, their overstepping. Perhaps
they're even complaining about your other parent. You can get
very complex. They also have poor boundaries that kind of

(08:10):
goes hand in hand. They overshare, They expect loyalty at
all costs. They feel threatened by your independence, which can
sometimes mean that you stunt to yourself and you hold
yourself back to appease them. Essentially, they are the most
important person in the relationship, the relationship between you two.

(08:31):
You come second to their feelings, their wants, their needs,
their volatility, their inability to express themselves. This may not
seem overtly abusive or neglectful, and in many situations people
with emotionally immature parents will say, well, they were really

(08:52):
physically present for me. They were affectionate, they would buy
me things, we would do fun things. They were or
my need were taken care of, but emotionally it was
a very different situation. So the kind of parenting that
we are describing is not technically abusive, although I think
that that definition is definitely very flexible. At the moment,

(09:16):
it's a kind of parenting called emotional neglect. The research
really backs up how significant the impact of this can be.
A twenty seventeen study published in the Journal of Child
Psychology and Psychiatry. It found that emotional neglect in childhood,
especially when it's subtle or unspoken, is strongly correlated with

(09:37):
an increased risk for anxiety, depression, and difficulties with emotional
regulation in adulthood. You know, having this unpredictable emotional environment
can make us feel like we're not allowed to express
how we feel out of fear that our parents will
be hurt or they will somehow turn it around on us.
So there is an immediate defensiveness and a desire to

(10:01):
protect ourselves and almost all interactions, which means that we
emotionally suppress, we emotionally numb, we kind of lie to
ourselves about what we're really feeling, and this can really
take its toll on us. Emotions they are essential, they
are really really important things, Like we don't just have
emotions as decoration. They are our way of interacting with

(10:24):
the world. And so if our relationship to them has
been disrupted by a parent who has taught us how
to handle or showed us how to handle emotions in
the wrong way that's going to lead to some long
term consequences. One thing, a lot of therapists or psychologists
who handle individuals who have emotionally mature parents, they report

(10:45):
a lot of their clients having something called alexithemia, which
is a difficulty in identifying and expressing emotions. And this
makes sense. You know, when your emotional world is dismissed
or ignored, you learn to disconnect from it. So where
what are the roots of this emotional immaturity?

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Really?

Speaker 2 (11:05):
What it stems from in our parents is unresolved childhood
wounds that they themselves are caring. It is an age
old saying. Hurt people hurt people. That's not just a saying.
It often ends up being a real, terrifying fact of life.
If someone wasn't taught how to regulate their emotions, if

(11:27):
they grew up in a home where feelings were ignored
or invalidated, they are going to struggle to do that
with themselves and eventually with their own children. And that
makes a lot of sense, right if you never learned
the tools, if it was never properly modeled for them,
for your parents, it's so difficult for them to come

(11:48):
walk into situations and be emotionally mature, especially considering how
much of our social learning is just purely observational.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Here's the thing.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
We don't develop emotional maturity isolation. It's not like we
are born knowing how to regulate our feelings. We as
well as our parents, learn through a process called coregulation.
So when we're children, our parents are meant to help
soothe us, explain what we're feeling, tell us that it's
going to be okay, give us the environment to understand

(12:17):
that emotions are not these big scary things. That's how
we learn how to do it ourselves. When your parent
perhaps didn't have someone, you know, demonstrating that for them, well,
they were kind of at a loss. Who was going
to teach them if not the most important person in
their lives. And there's a very famous experiment from about
the seventies that shows this beautifully. It's called the still

(12:40):
Face experiment by doctor Edward Tronnick. And in the study,
he really wanted to find out how we learn to
regulate emotions, and so he had a mother and a child,
and he would have the mother play normally with her baby,
smile coo, engage, giggle with them, and then the mother
was asked to suddenly go expressionless, to not respond to

(13:02):
her child. Her face went still, and within seconds the
child would get distressed, would start trying to get her attention,
wouldn't know how to regulate what they were feeling. It
was a bit of an ethically murky study, but it
gives you a clear visual of how much children rely
on that emotional feedback from their parents when it's missing.

(13:25):
Perhaps how it was missing for your parents. When there
is no coregulation, that stress can build fast and without
knowing it, we internalize the message of my feelings are dangerous,
my feelings are too much. I don't have the framework
or the environment to manage them, so I should just
completely suppress them. That's where emotional immaturity comes from. And

(13:48):
nowadays this generation kind of has more of an understanding
of why it is important to validate your children's emotions.
We understand why things like boundaries are essential. We understand why,
you know, suppressing your feelings has led to decades of
like people ignoring mental health crises and mental health issues.

(14:09):
We're a generation that's a lot more open to it,
but we're still managing with this previous generation who learned
from their parents, you know, sit up and shut up,
be seen and not heard. Essentially, the way I like
to think about it is we are managing the fallout
of generations of emotional suppression, and we're managing that on

(14:31):
an individual level and dealing with it on a micro
level of just interacting with our parents.

Speaker 3 (14:37):
You know, they are the product.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
Of a whole long line of inadequate emotional training and availability.
There's another explanation for our parents' emotional immaturity, and it's
something called developmental arrest. That sounds very dramatic, but it's
actually really common. It's when someone's emotional growth kind of pauses,

(15:02):
usually because of trauma, stress, or neglect in their own childhood.
So when we go through trauma, especially during childhood or adolescence,
it can actually physically interrupt our brain's natural development. The
parts of our brain that are supposed to grow and
support emotional regulation and connection and empathy. That development gets sidelined.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Why.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
It's because survival in those situations is coming first. So
imagine you have a parent who is experienced war, or
who has seen a family member be incredibly abusive, or
who encountered a really traumatic loss or circumstances or poverty
when they were younger. When we are in those moments,

(15:51):
our body goes, Okay, all we need to focus on
is getting through this, is getting through this moment, and
when it's over, and when it's done, we can continue
with some of the other things. We can continue with
that neural pruning and that synaptic pruning, and we can
continue with the evolving of our brain matter and these structures.

(16:13):
But until the threat is passed, we just have to
be focused on survival. That is developmental arrest. Your parent
may quite literally be frozen at the time that a
particular trauma took place in their lives. They never exited
that survival zone. And so you're twenty five, you're twenty six,

(16:36):
you may be even in your thirties or older, dealing
with someone who's fifty or sixty, who actually might be
psychologically and emotionally have the emotional age that's significantly younger
than you. Hence why although they have the age, you
have the maturity that allows you to almost or forces

(16:56):
you almost to have to parent them. Now, I give
these explanations not as an excuse for our parents' behavior,
but more as an explanation. I don't think they want
to hurt you. They just never learn how to do
it the right way themselves. In other words, it's not
always about malicious intent. It's often about an emotional unavailability

(17:19):
that has been passed down for generations that goes unexamined.
Doesn't mean it hurts less. No, doesn't mean that now
you are being and will be forced to continue the cycle. Also, No,
you are currently listening to this episode. Do you think
your parents would ever have this self awareness to search

(17:40):
something like this? Do you think your parents are engaging
in psychological help or looking for self help content or
looking for instruction.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
No.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
And it's that conscious deliberateness of being like I'm going
to interrupt past learnings and I'm going to interrupt a
pattern of generational trauma to divert this path and change
the outcomes for myself.

Speaker 3 (18:06):
That is so.

Speaker 2 (18:07):
Powerful, And that means that you are not going to
turn out like them. You are doing the work that
should have been done decades and decades ago to reverse
very deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and patterns of emotionally
relating to others that are not going to be passed
on from here on out. So we are going to

(18:28):
take a short break, but when we return, I want
to explore what the impact may have been on you
so far. I want to validate that is totally normal,
and also how you can heal, how you can set boundaries,
how can you accept that you can't change them, but
also encourage yourself to change within you and to undo

(18:49):
some of this past neglect. Stay with us all of
that and more after this short break. The big question
that a lot of us have is how does this
show up.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
In our lives?

Speaker 2 (19:04):
First and foremost, one of the biggest ways that emotionally
immature parenting shows up for us in adulthood is through
our attachment style. Now, if you are someone who has
ever found themselves spiraling after someone didn't text you back,
or you feel the urge to emotionally shut down the
moment someone gets too close, you are not alone. These

(19:27):
responses don't just come out of nowhere. There's been so
much research that has shown that emotional validation that is
missing during childhood is strongly linked to developing an anxious
or avoidant attachment style in adulthood. That's the first thing
that you may be noticing especially as we begin to

(19:49):
date and we begin to want to have serious relationships
or serious, long lasting friendships, you find that your way
of relating to other people has a whole other dimension
it compared to your friends or other people that you know,
and you can't quite figure out why. You can't remember
consciously wanting to be this way. Often it's the remnants

(20:11):
of this emotional upbringing that you had. Then there's this
other experience that is somewhat common, and it's feeling as
if it's your job to hold everything together, to be
the emotionally mature one, to be the one that people
come to, and feeling like there is so much guilt

(20:31):
to be in control of your emotions and to be
mature for your age, mature for your age. I absolutely
despise this term. Anytime someone says they're very mature for
their age, I always think, well, that's a trauma response.
It is literally is a trauma response. It's called fawning

(20:53):
actually by this trauma expert, his name is Pete Walker,
and he found that the typical way that think of
us responding to danger through flight and freeze isn't the
entire picture. There's also this fourth f called fawning, where
you essentially put everyone's needs first because it feels safer
that way, and it really involves constantly appeasing others to

(21:16):
avoid conflict, making friends, with the threat being the one
that people need to rely on emotionally, so that you
were never the one on the outside. In childhood, this
may have looked like staying quiet to avoid upsetting your
parents or mediating arguments. In adulthood, it looks like people pleasing,

(21:38):
avoiding confrontation, putting everyone else's needs before your own, making
excuses for people giving them a million second chances, even
when it's costing you. Because when you were growing up,
the emotional temperature of your household depended on your ability
to soothe the parent, your ability to avoid triggering their anger,

(21:58):
your ability to anticipate the moods. Here's the paradox, though,
emotionally immature parents often raise incredibly emotionally aware children, and
that's not because they modeled that maturity, but because you
had to become that way to survive. You know, you

(22:20):
had to grow up too fast, You had to learn
to self regulate, You had to predict other people's reactions
to become independent, almost.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
To a fault.

Speaker 2 (22:29):
This creates this very specific emotional condition called hyper resilience
or hyperindependence. And it's very interesting because some people with
emotionally immature parents, if they're not aware of it, just
end up becoming emotionally immature themselves. Other people end up
becoming this kind of a very hyperindependent and I really

(22:50):
want to know what the research is behind it. I
couldn't really find many much of an explanation. Some people
say it's the existence of other support networks outside of
the family. Some people say it has a lot to
do with birth order. But if you're in the second
category of people who are hyper independent, what you will

(23:10):
find is that your ability to only rely on yourself
feels like an asset to you. It is like an
emotional safety net. Your independence feels like your greatest comfort,
and in many ways it is an asset. Being able
to challenge yourself, relying on yourself, being able to go

(23:31):
out and ask what you want is a great thing.
But the flip side of being independent is that you
might find it hard to ask for help when you
really need it. You may find it hard to lean
on people because you've internalized the belief that depending on
someone else isn't safe. You may hold yourself to impossibly
high standards, always needing to be productive, always needing to

(23:52):
be the one that people rely on, wanting to be
super low maintenance. And I'm going to hold your hand
when I say this, like it might be that you
are trying to earn love through your actions. The inner
voice that says you're only lovable if you're useful and
not too much of a burden that often comes from
these early dynamics. It's also that second part of saying, well,

(24:14):
I crave emotional safety, and if someone else can't create
it for me, I'll create it for myself.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Here is the.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Final thing that a lot of people report experiencing as
adults that they grew up in an emotionally immature parental environment.
It's something called emotional loneliness. This concept is being talked
about a lot more in research on attachment trauma recently,
because it's not just physical isolation that makes people feel lonely.

(24:43):
You could have so many friends and be constantly surrounded
by people but feel deeply emotionally unseen. And the tricky
part is that this kind of loneliness doesn't look how
we would typically expect it to look. Sometimes it looks
like being fine, being the one who is surrounded by people,

(25:03):
being the fixer, having the amazing friendship group. But at
the end of the day, you kind of come home
and you have this deep craving to be cared for
as well, but also an inability to open the.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Door to other people.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
You might not even realize until someone really sees you
for the first time how emotionally lonely you have been,
and it can be very seriously uncomfortable or foreign. So
that psychologist Lindsay Gibson, who's work we mentioned earlier, she
talks about emotional loneliness as a defining wound for adult
children of emotionally immature parents. It is not the absence

(25:40):
of people, it is the absence of being known. And
you can totally see how this might hit.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Hard in your twenties.

Speaker 2 (25:47):
This is a time when we're really navigating adult relationships,
often for the first time, without our families right beside us,
and so the old dynamics start to play out again.
Romantic relationships may end up mirroring the consistency you experienced
with a parent. You might choose emotionally unavailable partners. You
might find that you yourself are emotionally unavailable, You push people away,

(26:10):
you start unnecessary fights, and without even knowing why, and
the why is that all along you really don't understand
what it means to be seen, and so being seen
by someone feels very threatening because you have these parents
who were like you don't want to be seen. That's
great for us. Let us be seen will take up

(26:32):
all the space, will take up all the oxygen in
the room. You can just sit in the corner and
not make a fuss and not make a sound while
we throw insults at you, or we throw problems at you,
or we are making you walk on eggshells. And so
when you become an adult and you're like, ha, people
actually expect me to talk about my feelings. People actually
want to know things about me, it can feel very unnerving.

(26:54):
The psychoanalyst Eric Ericson he actually describes this phase of life.
It's called intimate versus isolation, and every single one of
us does go through it. But people who had emotionally
immature parents or early relationships will find that it's so
much more difficult because their blueprint for love and for

(27:14):
closeness and for trust was shaved by someone who didn't
understand any of those things. So, yes, everyone's going to
struggle with this, and relationships are hard, but it's like
you're stepping into intimacy and you feel ready for it,
and then you realize that you are trying to build
a house on uneven foundations.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
You know, everyone else is.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Putting up their house and it's a flawless production line,
and you're like, wait, I didn't know that the wood
was rotten and I didn't know that this structure was shaky,
and I need to go and do all this extra
work while everyone else is.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Having an easy time.

Speaker 2 (27:50):
And it can feel really fricking frustrating, honestly, because you
crave closeness, but you simultaneously fear it or reject it
before it has a chance to reject. It is often
at the stage that we kind of start to realize, like, hey,
perhaps my early environment wasn't what it should have been,
and the issue really becomes it and the pain comes

(28:11):
from trying to fill in the gaps ourselves, and we
try and find reasons to explain our parents' behavior or
to damp and how difficult we found it at times
by saying things like oh, they did their best, or
it wasn't that bad, or it turned out fine, or
oh people have it way way worse, and maybe all
of that is true. But if you're still working over

(28:31):
time to explain away your pain, does that mean that
you are really okay? If you are still struggling in
very unseen ways, in ways that other people are not struggling,
I think it's really time to start to acknowledge, like, hey,
maybe I'm not all right. Maybe being this hyper independent,
hyper resilient, emotionally closed off person isn't protecting me anymore.

(28:56):
When we say things like oh, you know, they just
did their best, it wasn't that bad. Whatever it is,
this is really just us trying to make our experiences
make sense and to give ourselves an explanation for why.
You know, as humans, we want certainty, we want answers,
and so we engage in this kind of fantasy thinking.
We cling to the idea of the parent that we

(29:17):
wish we had rather than the one that we actually
do all because we're like, well, if they didn't treat
me right, if they couldn't be the parent I needed,
was that maybe my fault? I think this really also
closely links to this idea of the good enough childhood, right,
you know, it wasn't all that bad. They weren't necessarily

(29:38):
abusive or absent. We went on holidays every few years.
But emotional neglect can be deeply wounding. Even if your
basic needs were met. You have to remember children don't
just need food and water. They need validation, they need safety,
they need love, they need empathy. You needed that, serve that,

(30:01):
and grieving the parent you didn't get that's huge, that's painful.
Grief is not just about death, it's about any kind
of loss, and there is a real sense of loss
when you do come to terms with the fact that
your you know, your parent couldn't be what you needed.
You grieve the independence that was never allowed. You grieve

(30:24):
the attention that you wanted so badly, You grieve the consistency.
And then it's compounded by the fact that you can't
there's not a do over. You can't redo your childhood.
And sometimes you realize, well, I can't change these people.
I keep thinking that if I could just make them
see what they did and why that was wrong and

(30:47):
why they need to change, I'll feel better and all
these wounds will be undone. And you realize eventually, like
that's just a proxy them changing Now. Yes it would
be great, but it wouldn't solve what happened before. And
perhaps I'm too fixated on getting this relationship to work
how I want it to that I don't realize that

(31:08):
maybe this relationship isn't actually that productive at all. I
always say this to my friends. Just because someone did
their best doesn't mean you didn't deserve better. The standard
for which you deserve to be treated is not determined
by someone else's ability to meet the standard. And this
really brings us to our next big question. How do

(31:31):
we detach? How do we find some kind of peace
for ourselves? Knowing A we can't undo the past. B.
These are people we may never be able to change.
We may never have the relationship with them that we wanted.
So what we're really focusing on is detachment is loving

(31:52):
your parents from a distance without necessarily letting them be
at the center of your lives as they would probably
like to be. Once you get to a certain age,
you do have the opportunity to say, hey, that's not
your job anymore. I'm going to assert independence here. They
may try and fight back, but you are an adult.
You have the skills and the capabilities to redetermine it

(32:16):
and re establish this relationship on your own terms basically,
and say, yes, it may have been this for the
first eighteen twenty five, whatever, how many years, that doesn't
mean that I can't now divert this relationship into something else.
So in order to detach, firstly from the chaos of
this relationship, and in order to take yourself out of

(32:38):
the emotional environment they have created. Firstly, if you have
the means, find a way to put some physical space
between you and your parents, either by moving out of home,
going traveling, finding a work opportunity that is away from
your hometown or from where they're from. Sometimes the best
things for these kinds of relationships is just space. Space

(33:00):
to allow you to exit.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
Their orbit of control.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
When you're not in their home playing by their rules,
you will notice how much lighter you feel.

Speaker 3 (33:08):
You will notice how.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Much tension naturally dissipates, and also how your environment really
does shape your mood and it shapes your ability to
cope not just with them, but with everyday life. So,
if you want to detach, and if you want to
find a way to heal the consequences of this for yourself,
I would highly recommend slowly making a plan to exit,
exit the environment, exit your family home, stop living under

(33:32):
their roof. Have your plan in order before telling them.
That way, you can kind of reduce the influence of
any emotional manipulation. You need to be ready to be like,
I'm moving out, I'm out of here, and this is
how we're going to continue communicating from here on out.
If that's an option, there are still so many things
that you can do. Building community outside of your family unit,

(33:54):
who you can trust and who you can complain to
and who will validate how shit this is sometimes is
also invaluable. And if you're struggling to come to terms
with their behavior yourself, the first step is really just
to say it out loud and to just name it.
My parents who are emotionally mature. A mature person wouldn't
have done this. I don't deserve that. That's not how

(34:15):
a parent should behave I don't want this kind of relationship.
Language is very, very liberating, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
It really does.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
Allow you to stop blaming yourself for the things that
you received. It helps you to stop trying to fix
the relationship by overfunctioning or shrinking yourself down and it's
actually not about pointing fingers. It's really about clarity. It's
about saying, this is what happened, this is how it
shaped me. Maybe I'll never get an explanation as to why.

(34:44):
Maybe they will never admit it. That does not change
my reality. Next, we're going to be setting some boundaries
without the guilt involved boundaries, And I need to say
this loud and clear. Are not dominating, are not forceful.
They are a sign and a form of self respect.
They do not mean you love your parents any less.

(35:05):
They mean you love yourself enough to protect your emotional wellbeing.
So what kind of boundaries are really essential in these relationships?
Things like limiting phone calls, changing the subject when conversations
turn toxic, saying if you want to continue to talk
to me like this, I won't be coming home for
the holidays. I won't be coming around to your house

(35:25):
having off limit subject matter that you tell them is
off limits. I don't want to talk about politics, I
don't want to talk about whatever my sister is doing.
I don't want to talk about your relationship with mum.
That is essential. I really want you to sit down
and say, Okay, what are the things that always end
up triggering terrible conversations and arguments or moments between me

(35:47):
and my parents.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
I just we're just going to avoid those.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
We're going to avoid them because you've probably tried enough
times to make them listen or to make yourself heard
that you know they're not changing their mine. It's now
about your peace. Some other things that are central boundaries
or things that you can put in place is staying
brief in your conversations with them, not sharing personal stories

(36:11):
or details with them, knowing the signs that they are
going to explode or going to start manipulating you or
going to dismiss you. Knowing those triggers for them, and
being like, I'm actually gonna opt out of this. Yeah, sorry,
Like this is not I'm not tolerating it. I'm walking away. Yes,

(36:31):
you are going to get frustrated. Yes, you are probably
going to get mad. That's actually not my fucking deal.
That's not my problem, that's not my business.

Speaker 3 (36:39):
You're an adult.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
You choose how to emotionally regulate yourself, but you cannot
co regulate with someone who is angry and someone who
doesn't know what they're doing. What do you need at
this point to do better for yourself. What do you
need at this point to feel better and less less
tense and less dressed. Remember, like, you are not responsible

(37:02):
for your parents' feelings. In fact, they are the adult
the level of responsibility.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
They're at the top.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
They are the ones who are meant to be creating
a soft and a warm and a welcoming emotional environment
for you. So if the tables have turned, the rule
book is now upside down, you can walk out. You
can say I don't want to be part of this.
You are allowed to say you're behaving very immaturely. They're
probably not going to acknowledge it, but you're allowed to

(37:31):
say it out loud and be like, this is how
I see these situations, this is how I see this happening.
I'm going to validate the reality that I'm experiencing, and
I'm going to walk away. The hardest thing about boundaries
is really just accepting that some people are never going
to understand them. They're never going to agree, they're never
going to like it. That doesn't make them wrong. It

(37:52):
actually means they were probably necessary and that they are
probably working. The easiest way to tell if a boundary
is working, the easiest way to tell that one was needed.
Is when you put up the boundary and someone is
like a rabid dog bounding against it, being.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
Like, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 (38:09):
I'm your parent, I don't deserve to be treated like this.
You're so ungrateful, and it's like, huh so a normal person. Firstly,
I wouldn't have even needed to set this boundary. Secondly,
they would have respected it if I did. The fact
that they are so disturbed by the emotional consequences of
their actions and your response to them proves that they're

(38:31):
not normal and proves that you had the right reaction
and you made the right decision. This is something I
always say to people to help them understand this better.
If you had a boss who treated you the way
that your parents did, would you have quit by now?
If you had a partner who treated you the way
your parents do, you probably would have broken up with

(38:54):
them at this point. If you had a friend who
gave you the silent treatment, who didn't listen to your
emotional requests, who ignored you unless they needed something, who
dismissed you, who wouldn't let you share your feelings, would
you be friends with them?

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Would you have contact with them?

Speaker 2 (39:13):
No? So why do we make so many excuses for
our parents when they should know better. When you know,
I always think this, like they decided to have you
and deciding to have a child, like they were opting
into a responsibility that they are obviously struggling to fulfill.
But they expect you to fulfill all the traditional ways

(39:34):
that a child should behave Like it's a two way straight.
So the third way we're going to really attempt to
attach here is by reparenting ourselves. You know, as we
get older, we become the most important adult in our lives.
Even if you have a partner, even if you have
a really amazing friend, you are still the most important adult.

(39:54):
You are still responsible for I would say ninety nine
percent of your decisions, and so you also have the
capacity to take charge and to do what's best for
yourself now, the way that a parent should have done
for you when you were younger, the way that they
should even be.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Doing it for you now.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
The part of you, the childlike innocent part of you
who was injured by their behavior, still exists and they
still deserve love, even if it.

Speaker 3 (40:22):
Was in the past.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Reparenting helps us heal that relationship with this past version
of us, and it helps us realize, like, hey, it's
not always going to be like this. There is an alternative.
There is a way that I deserve to be treated,
and I'm going to firstly begin by emulating it myself.
Now this might sound kind of intimidating at first, but

(40:44):
reparenting really just means giving your adult self the grace
and the security that your childhood self deserved. So encouraging
yourself when doubt creeps in, even when it feels unnatural,
holding yourself when you feel shame, allowing yourself to be playful,
allowing yourself to be cringe, allowing yourself.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
To be vulnerable.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
It could also be as simple as changing like your
self talk so often. I just feel like we talk
to ourselves so badly. We say like I'm so stupid,
I'm a terrible person, I'm an idiot. A lot of
those words we didn't learn those ourselves.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
They were words that were said to us.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
And so replacing them and saying I made a mistake
and that's okay. I'm someone who was growing, I'm someone
who was learning. That's essential because it's reprogramming our internal
dialogue and the voice of our inner critic. So that
it is more gentle and understanding. You know, if you
could go back to when you were let's say five

(41:48):
or twelve, or ten or fifteen, how would you wish
your parents had responded to your emotional requests? How do
you wish they had treated you? How do you wish
they had loved you that? Imagine it, deliver it back
to yourself. Reparenting is also about noticing what you need
right now over what others may need from you. If

(42:10):
you have emotionally immature parents, you are most likely used
to being very focused on their needs, and that often
ends up translating into other relationships as well. That's not
your job. Your job right now is to say, what
do I need in this situation? What do I need
at this point in my life? What do I need

(42:31):
during my day? What do I need in a relationship?
And going out, going after it and delivering it to yourself.
The decisions that your parents never made.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
For you, you can now make them.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
You can now decide, Hey, I'm going to emotionally respond
this way. Hey, I'm going to have an app at
two pm. Hey, I know that this relationship probably isn't
right for me, and I'm going to walk away because
I have agency. And that's something that I think the
children of emotionally immature parents often struggle with, is this
sense that like, actually, you are the boss, and you

(43:06):
are in charge, and it's your life and it's your body,
and it's your emotions and your feelings and your reality.
You can do what you want with that. You can
make all of your choices from here on out, and
no matter how much of a fuss they kick up,
whatever it is that they want to say, it doesn't
change anything. They don't control you. You are allowed to

(43:28):
rewire what love feels like and say I actually deserve
more or I don't deserve this. Okay, I'm getting very
you can say I'm getting very passionate. So we're going
to take a short break, but when we return, we're
gonna talk through some of our listener questions. You guys
had so many questions for me about emotionally immature parents,

(43:49):
in your own lives and your partner's lives in so
many different ways. There were so many questions and dilemmas
that came up, so I'm excited to answer some of them.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
So you guys all know that each week I go
on Instagram at that psychology podcast if you want to follow,
and I tell you, guys, what I'm going to be
talking about on this week's episode, and I ask if
you have any specific questions you want answered. For some
episodes like this one, the topic is so broad and
our experience is like they are so different that I

(44:25):
might not fully cover what you want to know, Like
I could do a six hour episode on this and
still not touch on your unique, specific circumstance, And so
the listener questions are kind of the opportunity for me
to touch on some of the more finer points. Let's
start with question number one. What do you do when

(44:46):
your parents put you in the middle of their fights?
This was by far the most common question, especially for
people whose parents are getting divorced. Is they become adults
or who have seen this happen for years and years
and years and are suddenly realizing, like, Hey, I'm the
kid here, this actually shouldn't be my problem. This is

(45:08):
a classic example of parentification. You have been put in
the position of mediator, emotional regulator, diplomat. You are parenting
your parents when your role is meant to be as
their child. Let me say this, this is not okay
behavior from your parents. You are not meant to be
in the middle because you have a very different relationship

(45:28):
with them compared to the relationship that they have with
each other.

Speaker 3 (45:32):
And also you.

Speaker 2 (45:33):
Are not a couple's counselor you are not their best friend.
You are not the person they can rant to. You
are their child. There are different relationships, and we have
different relationships with different people for a reason. Sometimes though,
the reason this happens is because A they have no

(45:53):
one else to talk about it too in their personal life,
in which case they need to go and see a therapist. B.
They feel like because you are so close to the situation,
you can somehow be impartial also incorrect. See sometimes it's
just an accidental slip up or d. Your opinion is
actually becoming the battleground for them because.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
You are the product of both of these two people.

Speaker 2 (46:18):
So they may feel like, h if I can win
you over, if you agree with me, well then this
other person has to listen. You are the best weapon
they could have in their arsenal, the opinion of the
child that the person and them both raise together. So
they win. If they get you to agree with them,
they win. It's very inappropriate. It's also very uncomfortable. So

(46:42):
I'm going to give you a sentence that you can
use in these situations. That sounds really hard, But I'm
not impartial here, and I really wish I could be,
but it's just never going to happen. I really love
mum slash dad whoever it is insert here, and I'm
sure you value how much they love me and want
me to stay close to both of you, So I

(47:03):
can't be the person you vent to about that. I'm sorry,
short and simple, And if they argue, play to their empathy.
Ask them, how would you feel if you found out
that mum slash dad was having these same conversations with
me about you?

Speaker 3 (47:21):
Would you want that? Probably not?

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Or play dumb when they say, oh, you know, he
just always does this, or she's just like this and
this and this, be like, oh, I'm you know, I'm
just a kid, really like what would I know? Or
you know, I'm really young. Still, I don't really have
much experience to know what you should do. I don't
really understand this reinforce subliminally like hey, hello, reminder, I'm

(47:47):
the child in this situation, and I find that really
like helpful to just just to be like almost give
them a bit of a snap of the fingers, a
wave cup call like this isn't appropriate.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
You know what's inappropriate. We're going to move on.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Hopefully that kind of helps. Second question, I'm dating someone
with immature parents but they can't see it. How can
I firstly cope with it but also help him to
see that they have a problem. This is a tough one,
I think. Firstly, you've got to realize that this is
not something that you're going to be able to fix.
This is not a relationship that you can take charge of.

(48:24):
This has most likely existed way before you came along.
You have to approach this really delicately. I always think about,
like trying to tell your friend that you hate their partner.
Nine out of ten times, they aren't going to see
it the way that you do, and they probably aren't
going to listen, and then you're just going to become

(48:45):
the enemy. So please just remember, as much as you
want them to be happy and at peace and you
want their life to be free of stress and tension,
it's not your job to fix their parents' relationship. It's
also not your job to can them see it and
have to fix it either. You just want to try
and slowly introduce the idea to them in a subtle way.

(49:06):
So instead of being like, your parents are so immature,
try something like, hey, have you ever noticed like this thing?

Speaker 3 (49:15):
How interesting?

Speaker 2 (49:16):
Oh, how did you feel about that when they just
did what they did just now when they shut you down?
Have you ever noticed that you kind of have to
parent your parents emotionally?

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (49:27):
Is that something that's been going on for a while, Like, Oh,
explain where that came from.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
I want to know more.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
About what it was like in your childhood. Like these
are very non judgmental openings that let them discover patterns
on their own. And I really want you to remember,
like your role is to listen. Your role is to
really just facilitate them figuring it out for themselves, and
just to be open to that not always being linear.

(49:54):
You know, they're not always going to be totally awaken,
open eyed to the fact that their parents have some
serious issues, like from the moment that you start introducing
the idea, and it might take them some time and
there might be excuses, but remember you don't have to
be around his family if you don't want to be.
If it comes up that's when you can discuss it.

(50:18):
But this is going to sound controversial, Like if this
is someone you consider one day marrying, you're marrying their
family as well. So if it does get to the
point where you have said something because it involves you
and they're like, nope, it's not like that. They're denying it,
they're not seeing it, really think about how that's going
to end up in their relationship with you, you know,

(50:41):
as we said, or with your children, Like as I
said before, some people.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
End up being.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
Very emotionally aware and very hyper independent and very they're
able to kind of interrupt the pattern of emotional generational
emotional immaturity. Other people aren't. And the people who aren't
are the ones who don't even.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Recognize it to begin with.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
So not to make this a very serious conversation, but
at some point you may have to wonder or ask yourself,
if he can't recognize this in them, what if one
day that's us and.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
He can't recognize it in himself? All right? Question number three?

Speaker 2 (51:18):
How do not become like them? This is another really
big question. I think firstly, you're listening to this episode.
The fact that you're listening to this that you're curious, reflective, open,
that matters. You've basically already done I would say seventy
five percent.

Speaker 3 (51:34):
Of the work, which is just acknowledgment.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
The next step is just to sometimes really hold yourself
accountable to the point of discomfort.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
And what I mean.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
By that is you do genuinely have to be like, Hey,
the behavior that I'm exhibiting is not on and it
is reflective or it is reminiscent of how my parents
have perhaps related to me. I don't want to be
that person. The ball stops here. Try and focus on
some more positive examples. Who are people in your life
who emulate emotional maturity. Who are people who communicate openly,

(52:11):
look at their relationships and realize, like I, actually this
is very very healthy, and you know them just being
open about their feelings has not destroyed their connection. Ah,
that might be a possibility for me. I found that
I have a couple friends who are just so emotionally mature,
and I'm constantly just like so impressed by their ability
to handle their emotions and the emotions of others, and

(52:34):
it makes me want to be a better person. Think
about what your parents would do in a situation, and
do the opposite. Sometimes that is just like the easiest way.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
To not become like them.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
And therapy, Like, there is so much that a therapist
could help you see that I could never help you
see because I don't really know you. But also that
you just doing your own work and just trying to
solve it yourself. There's no me Like you need someone
sometimes to hold up a mirror to yourself and say, hey,
look where the shadows falling here? Have you noticed this

(53:06):
about yourself? It's super essential therapy for this kind of thing.
Top notch Okay, our fourth question, and I'll be honest,
Me and my partner spent like an hour talking about
this question last night. What do you do when you
want one parent in your life but not the other?
I will say I thought about it for a while.

(53:27):
The only specific advice I could come up with is
to talk to the parent you do want in your
life about it. See what they think. You know, they
understand your other parent, not just as a parent, but
as a partner as well, And I'm always surprised, like,
of course my parents know so much more about each

(53:48):
other than I do because they have this whole different relationship.
So invite the parent you want in your life, into
your thinking, and just see how they respond and if
they have any way of approaching it. I also want
to really recommend a podcast episode that talked about this
in such an anecdotal, personal, empathetic, wonderful way, and it's

(54:11):
from This American Life. It's episode eight hundred and twenty three,
The Question Trap. And in that podcast episode, they talk
to a family of two kids, mom and dad. One
of the kids is openly gay, and the father is
becoming increasingly right wing and he's anti vax and he's

(54:34):
having real I don't want to say difficulties. He's basically
just not accepting of his child's you know, I hate
to say lifestyle, but his child's identity, like at all.
And him and the mom are still together, and the
mother is just this wonderful, warm, kind person, and obviously

(54:55):
the children want to be friends with their mother, and
what they want to be still each other's lives, but
not with the father. And the way they handle it
is so complex and nuanced and interesting. And so although
I don't have specific detailed advice on this, listen to
that podcast episode. I think it will just make you
feel a lot less alone. And yeah, It really got

(55:16):
me thinking final question, how do I teach my parents'
basic emotional literacy regulation and communication.

Speaker 3 (55:25):
You can't. I don't think you can. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
I think that if they wanted to do it, there.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Are resources, and.

Speaker 2 (55:39):
At the age you are and at the age they are,
I'm sure they have encountered issues with their emotional immaturity
before and it really hasn't called them to change. What
I'm saying is not that they can't change, but that
it's not your job to convince them or to teach them.
What I'm saying is that they have every reason to

(56:02):
want to change already, if you've already brought it up
with them, if you've already talked about it with them,
trying to therefore teach them like they should already be
open to that, and if they're not, I don't think
it's your job, and I don't think.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
You'll be that successful.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
What we're really aiming for here is that their behaviors
don't get passed along, that you are okay, that you
feel safe in your other relationships, and that you have
proper boundaries with them, so that their poor emotional regulation
doesn't translate into your emotional tension and distress. And I'm

(56:42):
sure people will disagree with me on this, and maybe
one day I'll also disagree with myself and I will
change my mind, and I will let you know if
I do. But from everything that I was reading and
all the research, I just think that if someone doesn't
want to change, they will not change. If someone doesn't
want to learn, if someone has been given multiple opportunities

(57:04):
to learn and they have not done so, it's not your.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Issue.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
And I just think it's yet another way that they
are parentifying you. Remember, they were meant to teach you
these things. That was your role as a child, and
so the fact that you feel like you need to
teach them is just further evidence of their parentification of you.
And I think engaging in this kind of thinking of
like I'm going to change them and I can help

(57:32):
them is actually just further involving you in the stress
and the drama and the discomfort of feeling like their
parents are not the other way around. I am totally
open to feedback on that, So if someone has had
an experience in doing this, please let me know your
tips or your tips for any of these issues for

(57:54):
just handling this yourself. If you're someone who has gone
through this, who is going through this as we all
end up, you know, I feel like there is no
end point to going through this. What have you done
to help yourself? What have you done to manage this?
What have you done to put up boundaries? I want
to know leave some suggestions in the comments for others
who are dealing with this, also as a reminder that

(58:17):
you are not alone. Emotional immaturity from previous generations. It's
now on a decline, but we're still dealing with the
remnants of a very suppressed, stagnant, closed off society. And
it's really frickin' tough. And it's so tough when you're
looking at your parents being like, be an adult for once,

(58:38):
Be my fucking parent. That's your job, not my job.
Be mature, and they just can't do it.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
So I have a.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
Lot of love for you. You deserve to be seen, valued,
cared for. You deserve to have them help you regulate
rather than the other way around. But I promise you
there are relationships out there where you won't have to
do this continuous, where there is a healthy emotional framework
and emotional relationship waiting for you. So I hope you

(59:08):
find it and know you're not alone in this. If
you enjoyed this episode, send it to someone who you
think may also benefit from it. Share it online, Share
it on Instagram. I love seeing where you guys are listening.
Make sure that you are following me on Instagram at
that Psychology podcast so you can be involved in future episodes,
listener questions, or just know when episodes go live. Make

(59:31):
sure to buy my book if you feel cool to
do so called Person in Progress. It's been out for
exactly a month, and I'm still in shock by that fact.
But the response has just been so beautiful and I
can't get into it because I'll get emotional. But thank you,
thank you, thank you, and until next time, stay safe,
be kind, make sure you're following along, be gentle with yourself,

(59:53):
and we will talk very very soon,