Emotionally immature parents and EMDR therapy
Did I grow up with emotionally immature parents?
Understanding emotionally immature parents may help you find your parenting voice
The phrase, “emotionally immature parents,” has very recently hit a national nerve, though it is something that clients and therapists have been talking about regularly for many years, though perhaps not in this exact language. I thought it might be helpful to readers to consider what this actually feels like for someone who is recognizing that they themselves are healing from living with emotionally immature parents. The recognized expert on this topic is Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, and she was recently interviewed on the podcast, We Can Do Hard Things, about her work and the concept of emotionally immature parents. If you haven’t yet listened to it, it’s an excellent resource for learning about this concept.
I came across Dr. Gibson’s work several years ago through a podcast called Therapy Chat, hosted by Laura Reagan, LCSW, in which she interviewed Dr. Gibson about the relationship between trauma and emotionally immature parents, a concept that is not necessarily immediately apparent to non-clinicians. While we often think of trauma as “that thing that happened to you,” what I see very often in therapy with moms is how often women uncover new awareness, after becoming parents, of the things that did NOT happen for them when growing up in a home with emotionally immature parents. When we’re looking at needs not met, being unnoticed or unseen in our families of origin, or feeling overly responsible for the emotions (as a child) of the parents OR for entire family, this kind of trauma is better understood as a less “intense” version of complex trauma in which one did not actually suffer severe abuse or neglect but perhaps felt a great void in their feelings or emotions mattering or being of value to the parent. Emotionally immature parents, because of their own stunted or delayed emotional development, may have had trouble maturely communicating about emotions with or emotionally attuning with their child.
When one becomes a mom or parent, these glaring “misses” or deep desires to parent differently or in a way that is more emotionally connected with one’s new, forming parent/child relationship may arise for the new or developing parent as he/she/they attempt to find their own parenting voice or parenting style.
Living with emotionally immature parents or caregivers - exploring common questions
Let’s use the next few paragraphs to explore what come up as common questions from clients to better understand the concept and perhaps your own experience. Let’s stay curious - we’re not looking here to blame others or to relinquish them of responsibility. But when we understand our own childhood experience better, our roadmap to becoming the kind of parent we want to be becomes exponentially more clear.
Can I trust my emotional reaction to this situation?
is my “reaction barometer” accurate or does it feel broken?
One of the hallmarks that I have witnessed for clients who grow up with emotionally immature parents is that they will often deny their own emotional reactions to things, as this was so often directed in reference to parents. They may dismiss their own emotions, decide that they are wrong, or silly, or they may simply not trust their own sense of what is a “normal” emotional reaction to have. For many, because they weren’t provided with a model of how to experience and manage a range of emotions, they might have trouble trusting that their own emotional reaction to a situation is valid or called for, and we’ll often talk about it in therapy as feeling like one’s “feeling barometer” is a bit broken or damaged.
Is this feeling actually mine or someone else’s?
whose “stuff” am i actually carrying in this situation?
Another feature of growing up with an emotionally immature parent may be that you feel overly responsible for the emotions of the people around you because it was “safer” to stay hyper-aware of the tenor of the room, emotionally, rather than to identify your own. Clients sometimes talk about being really good at what I like to call “emotional forecasting” and trying to read a room and the emotions within it to head off potential conflict or difficulty - not stepping on “land mine topics” or avoiding emotions or reactions that the family rules were clear were not to be touched or challenged. As you might imagine, when a child or young person becomes skilled at doing this, rather than the parent (the adult!) working to better manage the emotional landscape of the household, the child can end up in the role of being parentifed or in a role reversal of sorts which, in essence, un-childs the child! Clients will often talk about feeling like little adults in their home and may struggle with knowing how to be playful, how to just unwind and not care, and, in their language, have a deep desire to be able to just “chill the fuck out” without carrying the responsibility of holding the emotions of others. This presents a major struggle with, after becoming a parent, this IS indeed one’s job at all times, even though you’ve already been doing it for most of our life and may just feel totally burnt out by it!
What are the beliefs I’ve taken on about myself related to having emotionally immature parents?
Through the kind of therapy that I provide, EMDR therapy, clients and I work together to identify the negative beliefs or negative cognitions in EMDR therapy associated with not feeling seen, heard, or witnessed by emotionally immature parents might be any of the following:
My needs are not important.
I am a burden.
My feelings do not matter.
I must be perfect, always get it right.
I must be self-reliant and figure it out on my own.
Working through these beliefs - identifying them, naming them, and exploring them is a crucial part of uncovering ways to reparent yourself and in turn, to find your own unique parenting voice. Often, when we become aware of these beliefs that we’ve been carrying related to living with emotionally immature parents, we can feel compelled to want to tell our parents what they did or didn’t get right, or we might even feel that we are owed an apology or acknowledgement of these “misses.” However, when we look to others to validate their own wrongdoing, we relinquish so much power that we have, within ourselves, the opportunity to sit with and to learn from. We may also be inadvertently setting ourselves up for disappointment or further conflict by expecting a parent to own a behavior or pattern about which they were or are completely unaware - remember, you’re the one who has chosen to engage in therapy and the nitty gritty self-work, and they simply may not be interested in changing. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t or won’t!
Why am I filled with a sense of betrayal even reading this?
i feel like I am about to get in trouble for even considering these things about my parents. and i’m an adult.
Sometimes when we allow ourselves to look at the ways that we weren’t offered support or comfort in our childhoods, we can feel that we are concurrently rejecting all of the good things that our parents did for us; and yet, this is not an either/or situation. An unanticipated part of becoming a parent can be that we can feel like the indiscrepancies or flaws of our own parents’ parenting styles are spotlit for us alone to see, whether or not they were emotionally immature parents. Some common reactions that I will hear moms in therapy say are, “but there was always food on the table, and they worked really hard to put it there,” or, “but they paid for the best schools for me and I never wanted for anything.”
And all of these things are true.
When we notice that there were things that our parents missed, emotionally, that does not discount the good and life-sustaining other ways in which they raised us, though sometimes we may feel that we are betraying them by allowing ourselves to draw these connections. Every person, every parent will get some things more right and some things less right - deciding to have children or becoming a parent foists us into a land of vulnerability and risk that, for many, the weight of can feel untenable. Holding self-compassion in our journey to becoming a better parent alongside compassion for our own parents - and their parenting wins and losses - can allow is to stay grounded, clear, and measured in our exploration, rather than leading with blame and scorekeeping.
Does recognizing that I grew up with emotionally immature parents mean that I need to “cut them off?”
how do i start to hold this information and set new boundaries for myself with my parents?
One of my biggest frustrations as a therapist is when mainstream influencer culture, often promoted through social media, offers suggestions such as this one - to cut off or “cancel” the people in our life with whom we’ve had realizations about what does or doesn’t work for us. While in extreme cases, very clear boundaries of no longer being in contact or having limited contact with a parent may be warranted, this is really not a viable “go to solution.” More often than not, kids, no matter how old they are - 3, 23, or 32, hold onto a desire to maintain some kind of relationship with their adult parents, even when they can see that they are emotionally immature parents. This need may be practical - we need childcare and my parents can offer it, or it may be that you’re embracing living with the gray hues of relating to your parents now, parent to parent, adult to adult, and you want to (on your end) navigate this newfound awareness with compassion and integrity. Finding a way to continuously and gently assert and re-assert your own needs and emotions in the relationship is key, and cutting off or canceling these relationships entirely removes that potentially needed opportunity for you in your own growth.
Realizing that you may want to do things differently as a parent than your own parents did and healing from and creating new relationships with emotionally immature parents can feel scary, daunting, or even completely overwhelming. I’m here to help and offer online EMDR therapy for moms in Maryland and online EMDR therapy for moms in Pennsylvania to help you clear the air, your thoughts, and to begin to reparent yourself in the way that YOU may have needed. Reach out.
Resources for learning more about emotionally immature parents
About The Author
Leah Rockwell, LPC, LCPC is an EMDR therapist, a mother and licensed professional counselor in Pennsylvania and Maryland, with a telehealth license in South Carolina. She provides online counseling for women struggling with the demands and burnout of motherhood. She is passionate about helping moms navigate the overwhelm associated with postpartum emotions, divorce, co-parenting, and career or creative dreams that feel beyond their reach. Leah is a respected expert and frequent contributor to wellness media outlets such as Women’s Health, Glamour, Livestrong, Bustle, Pop Sugar, and Entrepreneur to name a few.
