Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries and Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

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You make a small mistake, and it triggers your problem parent. To them, everything is a catastrophe. This type of behavior is another clear sign of emotional immaturity. Part of growing up is learning how to deal with things proportionally. Emotional parents are controlled by their feelings and rely on external factors to guide their behavior. Typically, they’re unpredictable and swing like a pendulum. Do your best to build an emotional support system since you cannot rely on your problem parent. Hopefully, you have another guardian who understands their partner’s shortcomings and can help. Sharing your feelings in a way that is calm and centered helps you gain mastery over your feelings without focusing on the outcome. They may or may not understand, empathize, or agree with you. That shouldn’t be the focus. High emotional reactivity can make children feel unsafe to express emotions. 2. Emotional unavailability

Without it, you could find yourself onboarding their baggage — and you don’t need to carry around their problems. Moreover, it’s important to honor your own emotional experiences.

Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries and Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

As you move on from unhealthy relationships and recover from emotionally immature parents, there are several signs of an emotionally mature person that you want to be aware of. Knowing these signs will help you forge healthier relationships and improve your self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect. 13 Signs of emotionally mature people. Lindsay Gibson: Yes, I think what we call psycho-education is huge, and that's part of the movement that I hope that my books would support because if you don't know about these concepts, then your only conclusion can be either there's something terribly wrong with your parent or there's something terribly wrong with yourself. But when you understand that emotional immaturity is a phenomenon, then you have conceptual power over your experience and you no longer have to automatically react in a kind of a psychologically blind way. Instead, you can see it for what it is and gradually begin to not take it personally anymore that your parent has trouble with emotional intimacy or that parent doesn't control their anger. So the psycho-education is incredibly important for people to begin to look at their parents in a different way, not to malign the parent but to understand the parent's limitations and thereby begin to grieve the loss of the hope that that parent could be the ideal parent that they always wanted, because of course that's a healing fantasy that all children have. Sana Qadar: And again with the clients you've worked with over the years, do you find that they are starting to see that they are repeating the same patterns their parents had with their own kids and that's what worries them?

So when dealing with an emotionally immature parent, say what you must to get it off your chest. However, don’t expect them to respond productively. The bonus is that managing your expectations is a great life skill. Find Emotional Support Elsewhere Sana Qadar: Yes, do you have any thoughts on why it would be so common? What contributes to making so many emotionally immature parents? They make you feel seen, heard, and understood. These are three of the most important traits of a person. When we feel seen, heard, and understood, we feel our partner really gets us. It makes us feel safe. We feel we can go to our partner for many things and they will be emotionally available to and for us.

When you can’t connect through a shared interpersonal experience, you’re unable to recognize how your emotions impact those around you. Mandy: It's worth realising that you are deserving of having boundaries, you are deserving of that, even in situations that are not extreme. In the group we will sometimes joke around that it's not about playing trauma Olympics, it's not like, oh, but this person had more trauma so they are more deserving of boundaries. It's not a competition, nobody is trying to win by having more trauma. You are deserving of being respected as a person. If possible, try to take advantage of therapy opportunities at school. If you’re older, consider seeing a counselor or coach who can help you cultivate healthy self-esteem and a sense of self. Understand Their Condition

Now that you’re an adult and don’t live with them, it’s easier to set boundaries. If you don’t set boundaries, you may be open to the suffering you faced while you were living with them. Is your parent a “my way or the highway” kind of person? Do they grow defensive if someone suggests an alternative way of accomplishing or thinking about something? Some people with the condition may fit squarely into one category. Others may exhibit elements of two or more. 1. Emotional Parents Keeping this compassion in mind, it’s possible to improve your relationship dynamic with emotionally immature parents. Zobolas and Louis recommend: We all have triggers that affect us emotionally so creating a plan about how you will manage the triggers and come before you interact with your parent. Trying to figure it out in the moment, rarely if ever works.

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Sana Qadar: Mandy says she was also constantly walking on eggshells at home, trying to manage or moderate her mother's behaviour. So many of my interactions with EI people and parents leave me feeling resentful, and I struggle to put my finger on what exactly happened, often blaming myself for being weak or angry. The book has given me more clarity, explaining what emotional maturity looks like and how many of us feel around it, versus emotional immaturity and how we might feel. When someone gets really upset when I don't do what they want, it's pretty understandable for me to feel fear and guilt. Who wants to see their boss or parent fall apart? That's painful and scary! Emotionally mature people may be disappointed when I say no, but they can keep their world together. Their stability doesn't depend on me. They respect my existence and needs as separate and equal. Sana Qadar: That's clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson. She is also the author of the books Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I found it interesting to read about emotional immaturity in general (Gibson presents 4 types of emotional immaturity). It allows the reader to connect the upbringing of others with the irrational ways they sometimes behave (e.g. extreme people pleasing in others, or - a connection Gibson suggests herself: why people can get into cults). Obviously, emotional immaturity in parents can be extremely distressing and damaging for their children (and the Dealing with an emotionally immature parent varies depending on their personality type, which we’ll explore more below.

It may be impossible to escape your household if you’re still a minor. So learning a few survival tactics is helpful. Detach From Your Ego Individuals who exhibit these behaviors disregard facts frequently and cling to stories they’ve devised in their minds. They also tend to blame others. 3. Low-Conflict Tolerance Mandy: So in Brazil we have a tradition where we have a large party when somebody is 15 and they are coming in to be a woman et cetera, it's usually a very expensive party. I kept telling her, 'I really don't want to do this,' and she said, 'No, but I missing out on this experience.' And it was funny because it's very clearly a party that is not for the parent, it's for the child. And so she set up this whole party, did it all her own way. You know, that's not completely unhealthy in and of itself, but when you notice that in a pattern of behaviour, it becomes very interesting.I wholeheartedly recommend this book, particularly to those whose childhoods included induced guilt or shame. Chadley Zobolas, a licensed clinical social worker from Denver, Colorado, gives the example of responding to an upset child with “it could be so much worse.” One such book that can help is: “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents”. It is a great book by Lindsay C Gibson.