Book Review: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
Have you ever asked yourself:
Why can’t I have the kind of relationship with my parents that I want? Other people I know seem to be close with their parents, but I can’t fathom how to accomplish that.
Why don’t my parents ever listen to me?
Why is it so hard to set boundaries with my parents or get them to understand my perspective?
If any of these questions resonate with you, then Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindasy, C. Gibson, PsyD is worth a read. Gibson is a clinical psychologist and therapist. She has more than thirty years of experience working in clinical settings including in private practice. She has dedicated her career to understanding the impact of emotional immaturity in parent-child relationships. In addition to Adult Children, she has authored several other books on emotional maturity and relationships, including Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents and Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
Types of emotionally immature parents
Dr. Gibson guides the reader through identifying whether or not a parent might be emotionally immature. She outlines four types of emotionally immature parents: emotional parents, driven parents, passive parents, and rejecting parents.
Emotional parents tend to be run by their own feelings. They are unpredictable, swinging between closeness and distancing. They rely on others to manage their feelings.
Driven parents are always pushing for success. They may be rigid, controlling, and perfectionistic. They are busy and don’t make time for their children’s feelings.
Passive parents are uninvolved and permissive. They avoid addressing issues and often let a more demanding or domineering parent take control. They look the other way when there are problems.
Rejecting parents don’t seem interested in their children at all. They turn away from emotional intimacy and avoid engaging with their kids except to issue commands or lose their temper. They want to be left alone.
Internalizers vs. externalizers and the role-self
Dr. Gibson identifies the two main patterns of response to an emotionally immature parents, internalizers and externalizers. Where externalizers expect others to take responsibility for issues, internalizers tend to take on the blame and burden for issues themselves. Internalizers feel that their parents’ reactions are their responsibility, often because that’s what they’ve been told, and act accordingly to try to prevent blow-ups or withdrawals. This reaction extends to nonfamily members in adulthood. Gibson explains that in order to survive in this unsteady environment, children hide their true selves and develop a role-self to maintain any amount of connection with the emotionally immature parent. It can gradually become harder to get back in touch with the true self over time.
How to heal
In order to heal from this environment, it’s imperative to get back in touch with the true self. It is possible to reconnect with one’s true self hiding underneath the role-self. It may be protective or even necessary to set boundaries and manage interactions with an emotionally immature parent in order to create sufficient safety for the true self to re-emerge.
Adult Children from a parts perspective
As a therapist who specializes in working with adults who have experienced childhood emotional trauma and neglect, I feel that Dr. Gibson’s work is an invaluable resource for adults who want to understand their parents better and want to further their healing. How can we adapt Gibson’s framework to an IFS (Internal Family System) perspective? One of the central tenets of IFS is the multiplicity of the self–that is, we all contain within us different parts that take on different roles and perspectives in our life (for more on this, see my page titled IFS Therapy, linked above).
I believe we can read Gibson’s parental archetypes as parts. You may have had a parent who had a strong driven part, but you may have seen moments in which they were passive, too. There may even have been times when your parent was connected and nice to you. You may identify behaviors from a few or even all categories of parents that Gibson lists. Similarly, I believe that we all have internalizer and externalizer parts. There may be moments when it’s hard to take responsibility for things that are happening, even if most of the time it’s easy to pile blame on yourself.
Conclusion
In ten short chapters, and just under 200 pages, Gibson lends perspective to better understand your childhood and your current relationship with your parents. She also gives you some tools to start to shift your mindset around your relationships, both with your parents and with others in your life. For those looking to heal from childhood emotional trauma and neglect, this book is a powerful resource.
