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Adult children of emotionally immature parents

2015

  • dysfunctional families
  • adult children of dysfunctional families
  • mental health
  • emotional maturity
  • psychological aspects
  • self-help techniques
  • parenting
  • nyt:advice-how-to-and-miscellaneous=2024-07-28

The story

If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life. In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life. Discover the four types of difficult parents: The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory

What it’s like

Clean, unfussy self-help typography: a short, sober read with no imagery to speak of, its pages built around headings, bolded key phrases and short case vignettes that a reader can dip into one at a time. The voice is steady and warm, like a therapist's office at the end of a working day, reassuring rather than urgent, with a calm stream of "you may recognise" and "this is not your fault" that rewards slow reading. The emotional register runs from tender to bracing as it moves from naming childhood hurts to practical exercises for setting boundaries and building better relationships; nothing here is graphic, and the difficulty is quiet, the ache of recognition rather than shock. Expect short chapters, lots of white space and a sense of gentle, practical forward motion. Best suited to a slow weekend with a notebook, or a late-night read when someone wants to feel understood and find a few usable tools, especially readers who grew up feeling unseen by a parent and want language for it.

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