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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.
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 is pretty emotionally charged it's definitely one of those areas of psychology and just growing up an 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, 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 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 our parents are such prominent figures in our lives.
Our survival is 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 and a real come down.
You know perhaps you have always sensed that something was off in your relationship with to your parents 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 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 longterm damage to me and if any of that rings true, this episode is especially for you.
We're gonna be exploring what emotional immaturity looks like, where it comes from psychologically, how it affects us in our 20s, and really importantly, how we can begin to heal, how we can break generational cycles.
I also wanna mention, I think it's important to say this isn't gonna be like a parent bashing episode.
I don't think that the right approach to this topic is blame.
I don't think that's helpful.
What it's really gonna 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 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 emotional immaturity that we're going to discuss, it often flies under the radar because it doesn't always look like overt or obvious trauma.
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.
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 with some 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 Dr Lindsay C.
Gibson. She is a clinical psychologist and if you have ever even dipped your toe into the space before you will probably know of her book, adult children of emotionally immature parents, it was released in 2015.
It is like the bible on this kind of thing.
In this book she basically introduces us to this idea of emotional immaturity as 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 were struggled to validate your emotions, so you've said you're anxious, or you're frustrated, or you're hurting and they said to calm down, or they said that you were over -reacting.
Perhaps they took your requests or your feedback too personally.
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 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 you or understand you when you're sharing your feelings or they dismiss you.
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 their emotions.
It's a very self -centered thing.
They make demands of you.
They ask you to essentially be there, not just emotional witness.
But their psychologist, their counselor, their healer, their doctor, their marriage counselor, all these things that as a child, that's not your role, right?
are the adult. They are the ones who wanted you, they are the ones who 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.
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 for you guys don't have emotional boundaries.
Like they are over sharing, they're over stepping, perhaps they're even complaining about your other parent.
It can get very complex. They also have poor boundaries that kind of goes hand in hand.
They over share, they expect loyalty at all costs, they feel threatened by your independence, which can sometimes mean that you stunt yourself and you hold yourself back to appease them, essentially they are the most important person in the relationship.
The relationship between you two, 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 physically present for me, they were affectionate, they would buy me things, we would do fun things, all my needs 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.
It's a kind of parenting called emotional neglect.
The research really backs up how significant the impact of this can be.
A 2017 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 an increased risk for anxiety, depression, and difficulties with emotional regulation in adulthood.
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 protect ourselves in almost all interactions, which means that we emotionally suppress, we are 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, 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 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 a lot of their clients having something called alexithymia, 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 what are the roots of this emotional immaturity?
Really what it stems from in our parents is unresolved childhood wounds that they themselves are carrying.
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 they grew up in a home where feelings were ignored or invalidated, they're 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 walk into situations and be emotionally mature, especially considering how much of our social learning is just purely observational.
Here's the thing. We don't develop emotional maturity and 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 co -regulation, 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 OK, give us the environment to understand 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 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 70s that shows this beautifully.
It's called the still face experiment by Dr. Edward Tronic, 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 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, perhaps how it was missing for your parents, when there is no co -regulation, 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 nowadays, we, this generation kind of has more of an understanding of why it important to validate your children's emotions.
We understand why things like boundaries are essential.
We understand why suppressing your feelings has led to decades of people ignoring mental health crises and mental health issues.
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, 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 an individual level and dealing with it on a micro level of just interacting with our parents.
You know they are the product 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 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.
Why? It's because survival in those situations is coming first. So imagine you have a parent who has 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.
So, when we are in those moments, 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 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 25, you're 26.
You'd maybe even in your 30s or older dealing with someone who's 50 or 60 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 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 learnt 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 that has been passed down for generations that goes unexamined.
Does it mean it hurts less?
No. Does it 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 the self -awareness to search something like this?
Do you think your parents are engaging in psychological help or looking for self -help content or looking for instruction?
No. 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 that is so 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 gonna take a short break but when we return I want explore what the impact may have been on you so far.
I want to validate that 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 some of this past neglect.
Stay with us all of that and more after this short break.
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The big question that a lot of us have is how does this show up in our lives?
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 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 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 to 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 of this emotional upbringing that you had.
Then and 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 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. It literally is a trauma response.
It's called fawning actually by this trauma expert.
His name is Pete Walker and he found that the typical way that people think of us responding to danger through fight, 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 avoid conflict, making friends with the threat, being the one that people need to rely on emotionally so that you're 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 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 sue the parent your ability to avoid triggering their anger, your ability to anticipate their moods.
Here's the paradox though.
Emotionally immature parents often raise incredibly emotionally aware children.
And that's not because they modelled that maturity but because you had to become that way to survive.
You know, you 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 to a fault.
This creates this very specific emotional condition called hyper resilience or hyper independence.
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 way, very hyper independent.
And I really want to know what the research is behind it.
I couldn't really find 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 are in the second category of people who are hyper independent, what you will 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, rely on yourself, being able to go 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 be the one that people rely on, wanting to be super low maintenance.
And I'm gonna 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, I crave emotional safety and if someone else can't create it for me, I'll create it for myself.
Here is the final thing that a lot of people report experiencing as adults if they grew up in an emotionally immature parental environment.
It's something called emotional loneliness.
This concept is being talked about a lot more on research on attachment trauma recently because it's not just physical isolation that makes people feel lonely.
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, 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 door to other people.
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, whose 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 of people.
it is the absence of being known, and you can totally see how this might hit hard in your 20s.
This is a time when we're really navigating out of 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 inconsistency you experienced with a parent.
You might choose emotionally unavailable partners, you might find that you yourself are emotionally unavailable, you push people away, 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 had these parents who were like, you don't want to be seen.
That's great for us.
Let us be seen. We'll take up all this space.
We'll 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 huh people actually expect me to talk about my feelings people actually want to know things about me it can feel very unnerving.
The psychoanalyst Erik Erickson he actually describes this phase of life it's called intimacy versus isolation and every 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 closeness and for trust were shaped 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.
You know, everyone else is 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 the structure was shaky.
And I need to go and do all this extra work while everyone else is having an easy time.
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 you.
It is often at this 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 from trying to fill in the gaps ourselves.
And we try and find reasons to explain our parents' behavior or to dampen how difficult we found it at times by saying things like, or they did their best, or it wasn't that bad, or I turned out fine.
Or, people have it way, way worse.
And maybe all that is true.
But if you're still working over time to explain away your pain, does that mean that you're really okay?
If you are still struggling in very unseen ways, and 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.
When we say things like, oh, 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 wish we had rather than the one that we actually do, all because we are like, well, if they didn't treat me right, if they couldn't be the parent I needed, was that maybe my fault?
And 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 abusive or absent.
and 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, you deserve that.
And grieving the parent you didn't get, that's huge, that's painful.
Well, 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 parent couldn't be what you needed.
You grieve the independence that was never allowed. You grieve 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 no, 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 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 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 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 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 gonna assert independence here, they may try and fight back, but you are an adult, you have the skills and the capabilities to re -determinate and reestablish this relationship on your own terms, basically, and say, yes, it may have been this for the first 18, 25, 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 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 travelling, finding a work opportunity that is away from hometown or from where they're from sometimes the best things for these kinds of relationships is just space.
Space to allow you to exit their orbit of control.
When you're not in their home playing by their rules you will notice how much lighter you feel.
You will notice how 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 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 That's not an option.
There are still so many things that you can do.
Building community outside of your family unit, 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 were emotionally immature.
A mature person wouldn't have done this.
I don't deserve that.
That's not how a parent should behave. I don't want this kind of relationship.
Language is very, very liberating.
You know, it really does allow you to stop blaming yourself for the things that you received.
It helps you to stop trying to fix the relationship by over functioning 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.
Maybe they will never admit it.
that does not change my reality.
Next, we're gonna 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 parent any less, 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.
Having off -limits 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 mom.
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 and my parents I just we're just going to avoid those.
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 mind 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 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 going to opt out of this.
Yeah, sorry. Like this is not I'm not tolerating it.
I'm walking away. Yes, 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.
You're an adult, 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 tense and less stressed?
Remember, like, you are not responsible for your parents' feelings.
In fact, they are the adult.
They're like the level of responsibility.
They're at the top.
They are the ones who are meant to be creating a soft and warm and a welcoming and emotional environment for you.
So if the tables have turned, the rulebook is now upside down, you can walk out and 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 say it out loud and be like, this is how I see these situations.
This is how I see this happening.
I'm gonna validate the reality that I'm experiencing and I'm gonna walk away.
The hardest thing about boundaries is really just accepting that some people are never gonna understand them.
They're never going to agree, they're never going to like it.
That doesn't make them wrong, it 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 like what are you doing?
I'm your parent. I don't deserve to be treated like this You're so ungrateful.
It's like ha 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 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 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?
Would you have contact with them?
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 that a child should behave. Like it's a two way street.
So the third way we're going to really attempt to detach here is by re -parenting 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 still the most important adult you are still responsible for I would say 99 % 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 doing it for you now.
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 was in the past. 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 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 to be vulnerable.
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.
They were words that were said to us.
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 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?
Emulate 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 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 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 for you, you can now make them.
You can now decide, hey I'm going to emotionally respond this way, hey, I'm going to have a nap 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 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 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 gonna 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 in your own lives in 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.
Stay tuned. My life has been chaotic recently to say the least. And with so many events going on at the moment, my friends' weddings, my book tour, I'm also moving house.
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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 experiences like they are so different that I 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 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 as 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 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 behaviour from your parents.
You are not meant to be in the middle, because you have a very different relationship with them compared to the relationship that they have with each other.
And also you are not a couples counsellor.
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 one else to talk about it to in their personal life in which case they need to go and see a therapist be they feel like because you are so close to the situation you can somehow be impartial also incorrect see sometimes it's just an accident or slip -up or D your opinion is actually becoming the battleground for them because you are the product of both of these two people so they may feel like 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 raised together so they win if they get you to agree with them they win it's very inappropriate it's also very uncomfortable so 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 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 mom slash dad was having these same conversations with me about you would you want that?
probably not 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 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 the child in this situation.
And I find that really like helpful to just be like almost give them a bit of a snap of the fingers, a wake up call like, this isn't appropriate, you know what's inappropriate, we're going to move on.
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 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 10 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 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 You just want to try and slowly introduce the idea to them in a subtle way.
So instead of being like, your parents are so immature, try something like, hey, have you ever noticed like this thing?
How interesting? Or 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?
Oh, is that something that's been going on for a while?
like, oh, explain where that came from, I want to know more 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, you know, they're not always going to be totally awake and 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 wanna be.
If it comes up, that's when you can discuss it.
But this is gonna 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, no, 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.
As we said, or with your children, as I said before, some people end up being very emotionally aware and very hyper independent and they're able to kind of interrupt the pattern of generational emotional immaturity, other people aren't.
And the people who aren't are the ones who don't even recognize it to begin with.
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 he can't recognize it in himself?
Alright, question number three, 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 75 % of the work, which is just acknowledgement.
The next step is just to sometimes really hold yourself accountable to the point of discomfort.
And what I mean 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 are 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?
look at their relationships and realize, actually, this is very, very healthy and them just being open about their feelings has not destroyed their connection.
Ha, 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 it makes me wanna be a better person.
Think about what your parents were doing to in a situation and do the opposite sometimes that is just like the easiest way to not become like them 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 mirror like you need someone sometimes to hold up a mirror to yourself and say hey look where the shadow's falling here have you noticed this 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.
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, of course my parents know so much more about each 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 see if they have any way of approaching it.
I also wanna really recommend a podcast episode that talked about this in such an anecdotal, personal, empathetic, wonderful way.
And it's from This American Life, it's episode 823, 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 -vaxx and he's having real, I don't want to say difficulties, he's basically just not accepting of his child's, I hate to say lifestyle, but his child's identity at all.
And him and the mum are still together.
And the mother is just this wonderful warm kind person.
And obviously the children want to be friends with their mother and they want to be still in 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 me thinking.
Final question, how do I teach my parents basic emotional literacy, regulation and communication?
You can't, I don't think you can, I'm sorry.
I think that if they wanted to do it, there are resources and 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 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, 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 you'll be that successful.
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 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 to learn and they have not done so, it's not your issue.
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 them is actually just further involving you in the stress and the drama and the discomfort of feeling like their parent and 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 just handling this yourself.
If you are 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 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 freaking tough and it's so tough when you're looking at your parents being like be an adult for once, be my fucking parent, that's your job, not my job, be mature and they just can't do it.
So I have a 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 continuously where there is a healthy, emotional framework and emotional relationship waiting for you.
So I hope you 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, listen to questions or just know when episodes go live Make sure to buy my book if you feel called 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, and we will talk very, very soon.
This episode is brought to you by FX.
FX has a new original comedy series coming out called Adults is a comedy that feels incredibly relatable if you find any humor in the struggles of being an adult in 2025.
You know, like remembering your full social security number or remembering to drink water, or perhaps the humor of having your third existential crisis of the month.
The best part is that all episodes will be ready for your next weekend binge.
Watch FX's adults, May 28th on FX.
All episodes streaming on Hulu.
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