Pod Insights The Psychology of your 20s 299. The psychology of emotionally immature parents About this episode What happens when the people who were supposed to guide and nurture us were never taught to emotionally grow up themselves? In today’s episode, we dive into the psychology of emotionally immature parents - their behaviours, their blind spots, and the lasting impact they can have on our sense of self and emotional well-being.
We discuss:
How to spot emotional immaturity in parents Where it can come from, and links to attachment theory The impact on your identity, boundaries, and adult relationships Why detaching with kindness can help The guilt, grief, and tension that often comes with this dynamic How to begin healing and reparenting yourself If you’ve ever felt like the parent in your own family, or found yourself stuck in a cycle of seeking validation from someone who just can’t give it - this episode is for you.
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Transcript 11,630 words · 8 speakers
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2:52 Speaker 05 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s,
2:57 Jemma Sbeg? the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
3:11 Jemma Sbeg? 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 20s. 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 and 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,
3:55 Jemma Sbeg? 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 illuminate 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, you know, our parents are such prominent figures
4:39 Jemma Sbeg? 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 a 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 your parents. You know, 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.
5:22 Jemma Sbeg? 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 long-term damage to me. And if any of that rings true, this episode is especially for you. We're going to be exploring what emotional immaturity looks like, where it comes from psychologically, how it affects us in our twenties. And really importantly, how we can begin to heal, how we can break generational cycles. I also want to mention, I think it's important to say, this isn't going to be like a parent bashing
6:04 Jemma Sbeg? 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 going to 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
6:45 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
7:26 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
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9:12 Jemma Sbeg? 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 this 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
9:57 Jemma Sbeg? 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 struggle 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 overreacting. Perhaps they took your requests or your feedback too personally. You know, 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.
10:41 Jemma Sbeg? 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, 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 on to 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.
11:16 Jemma Sbeg? 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? It's not your role to parent them. They 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.
11:54 Jemma Sbeg? 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 oversharing, they're overstepping. 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 overshare. 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.
12:39 Jemma Sbeg? 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 physically present for me. They were affectionate. They would buy me things. We would do fun things. They were, all my needs were taken care of. But emotionally, it was a very different situation.
13:21 Jemma Sbeg? 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. You know, having this unpredictable emotional environment can make us feel like
14:04 Jemma Sbeg? 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 defences, defensiveness and a desire to protect ourselves in almost all interactions, which means that we emotionally suppress, we 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're, 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,
14:49 Jemma Sbeg? 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 alexithemia, 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 where, 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.
15:33 Jemma Sbeg? It often ends up being a real terrifying fact of life.
15:38 Jemma Sbeg? 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 learnt the tools, if it was never properly modelled 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 in 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.
16:23 Jemma Sbeg? 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 okay, 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, you know, 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 seventies that shows this beautifully. It's called the still face experiment by Dr Edward Tronick. 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,
17:08 Jemma Sbeg? 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
17:50 Jemma Sbeg? 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 is important to validate your children's emotions. We understand why things like boundaries are essential. We understand why, you know, suppressing your feelings has led to decades of like 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 learnt from their parents, you know, sit up and shut up, be seen and not heard.
18:35 Jemma Sbeg? 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,
19:16 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
19:31 Jemma Sbeg? 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. 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.
20:14 Jemma Sbeg? 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 past, 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 may be even in your 30s or older, dealing with someone
20:54 Jemma Sbeg? 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' behaviour, 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?
21:40 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
22:22 Jemma Sbeg? 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 going to take a short break, but when we return, I want to 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.
23:06 Jemma Sbeg? Stay with us, all of that and more, after this short break.
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23:43 Speaker 06 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
23:58 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
24:09 Speaker 06 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a Point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
24:40 Jemma Sbeg? 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
25:25 Jemma Sbeg? in adulthood. That's the first thing that you may be noticing, especially as we begin to date 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 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
26:08 Jemma Sbeg? 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
26:52 Jemma Sbeg? 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
27:34 Jemma Sbeg? your ability to soothe a 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 modeled 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 hyperresilience or hyperindependence.
28:18 Jemma Sbeg? 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 wanna know what the research is behind. I couldn't really find many, much of an explanation. Some people say it's um 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're 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.
29:01 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
29:45 Jemma Sbeg? 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 in 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.
30:32 Jemma Sbeg? 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 realise 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, Lyndsey Gibson, whose work we mentioned earlier, she talks about emotional loneliness as a defining wound
31:17 Jemma Sbeg? 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 twenties. This is a time when we're really navigating adult 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 yourself are emotionally unavailable. You push people away. You start unnecessary fights without even knowing why. And the why is that all along, you really don't understand
32:00 Jemma Sbeg? what it means to be seen. And so being seen by someone feels very threatening, because you have 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 the 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 Eric Erickson, he actually describes this phase of life, it's called intimacy versus isolation. And every single one of us does go through it. But people
32:45 Jemma Sbeg? 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 was shaped by someone who didn't understand any of those things. So, yes, everyone's gonna 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
33:30 Jemma Sbeg? 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 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, oh, they did their best, or it wasn't that bad, or I turned out fine, or, oh, people have it way, way worse. And maybe all of that is true, but if you're still working overtime to explain away your
34:14 Jemma Sbeg? pain, does that mean that you're really okay? If you are still struggling in very unsane 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, you know, 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.
34:56 Jemma Sbeg? 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?
35:12 Jemma Sbeg? 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. 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. Grief is not just about death. It's about any kind of loss.
35:53 Jemma Sbeg? And there is a real sense of loss when you do come to terms with the fact that your, you know, 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, I'll feel better and all these wounds will be undone. And you realize eventually like that's just a proxy.
36:38 Jemma Sbeg? 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.
36:53 Jemma Sbeg? 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
37:35 Jemma Sbeg? without necessarily letting them be at the center of your lives as they would probably like to be.
37:42 Jemma Sbeg? Once you get to a certain age, you do have the opportunity to say, hey, that's not your job anymore. I'm going to assert independence here. They may try and fight back, but you are an adult. You have the skills and the capabilities to redetermine and reestablish this relationship on your own terms, basically. And say, yes, it may have been this for the first eighteen, twenty-five, 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.
38:22 Jemma Sbeg? 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 traveling, finding a work opportunity that is away from your 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,
39:06 Jemma Sbeg? 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 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 behaviour yourself. The first step is really just to say it out loud and to just name it. My parents were emotionally immature.
39:52 Jemma Sbeg? 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 going to be setting some boundaries without the guilt involved.
40:34 Jemma Sbeg? 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 mum.
41:18 Jemma Sbeg? 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 gonna avoid those. We're gonna 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 essential 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
42:01 Jemma Sbeg? or going to dismiss you, knowing those triggers for them and being like, I'm actually gonna opt out of this. Yeah, sorry. Like, this is not, I'm not tolerating it. I'm walking away. Yes, you are gonna get frustrated. Yes, you are probably gonna 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, less tense and less stressed?
42:42 Jemma Sbeg? Remember, like, you are not responsible for your parents' feelings. In fact, they are the adult. The, like, the level of responsibility, they're at the top. They are the ones who are meant to be creating a soft and a warm and a welcoming emotional environment for you. So if the tables have turned, the rulebook is now upside down. You can walk out. You can say, I don't wanna be part of this. You are allowed to say, you're behaving very immaturely. They're probably not gonna 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.
43:22 Jemma Sbeg? 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. And it's like, ha, so a normal person, firstly, I wouldn't have even needed to set this boundary. Secondly, they would
44:00 Jemma Sbeg? 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
44:40 Jemma Sbeg? 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 in to 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 gonna really attempt to detach here is by reparenting ourselves. You know, as we get
45:25 Jemma Sbeg? 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 are still the most important adult. You are still responsible for, I would say, ninety-nine percent 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
46:10 Jemma Sbeg? realize like, hey, it's not always gonna be like this. There is an alternative. There is a way that I deserve to be treated and I'm gonna 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.
46:55 Jemma Sbeg? 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 12 or 10 or 15, 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?
47:40 Jemma Sbeg? 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
48:21 Jemma Sbeg? 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 gonna have a nap at 2 P M. Hey, I know that this relationship probably isn't right for me and I'm gonna 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
49:03 Jemma Sbeg? 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, um, 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.
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50:31 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
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51:13 Jemma Sbeg? So you guys all know that each week I go on Instagram at thatpsychologypodcast 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?
51:58 Jemma Sbeg? 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 counselor.
52:43 Jemma Sbeg? 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. Two, in their personal life, in which case they need to go and see a therapist. B, they feel like because you are so close to the situation, you can somehow be impartial or so incorrect. C, sometimes it's just an accidental slip up. Or D, your opinion is actually becoming the battleground for them because you are the product of both of these two people.
53:27 Jemma Sbeg? So they may feel like, huh, 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.
54:11 Jemma Sbeg? 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 mum 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 young 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.
54:57 Jemma Sbeg? And I find that really like helpful to just, just to be like, almost give them a bit of a, a snap of the fingers, a wake up call, like, this isn't appropriate. You know what's inappropriate. We're gonna 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 realise that this is not something that you're gonna 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.
55:42 Jemma Sbeg? I always think about like trying to tell your friend that you hate their partner. Nine out of ten times, they aren't gonna see it the way that you do, and, and they probably aren't gonna listen. And then you're just gonna 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, of stress and tension. It's not your job to fix their parents' relationship. It's also not your job to make them see it and have to fix it either. You just wanna 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?
56:25 Jemma Sbeg? Or how did you feel about that when they just did what they did just now, when they shut you down? Oh, 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 wanna 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.
57:10 Jemma Sbeg? 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 want to be. If it comes up, that's when you can discuss it.
57:27 Jemma Sbeg? But this is going to 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, 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 like with you, you know, as we said, or with your children. Like, as I said before, some people end up being
57:55 Jemma Sbeg? very emotionally aware and very hyper independent and very, um, they're able to kind of interrupt the pattern of emotional 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? All right. Question number three, how to 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.
58:39 Jemma Sbeg? You've basically already done, I would say seventy five percent 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 have 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?
59:20 Jemma Sbeg? Look at their relationships and realize like, I actually, this is very, very healthy. And you know, 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 of 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 would do into 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.
1:00:00 Jemma Sbeg? Cause I don't really know you, but also that you just doing the own, 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 is 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.
1:00:44 Jemma Sbeg? You know, they understand your other parent, not just as a parent, but as a partner as well. And I'm always surprised, like, 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 eight hundred and twenty-three, The Question Trap. And in that podcast episode, they talk to a family.
1:01:32 Jemma Sbeg? Of two kids, mum and dad, one of the kids is openly gay. And the father is becoming increasingly right wing and he's anti vax and he's having real, I don't wanna say difficulties, he's basically just not accepting of his child's, you know, I hate to say lifestyle, but his child's identity, like at all. And him and the mum are still together. And the mother is just this wonderful, warm, kind person. And obviously the children wanna be friends with their mother and what they wanna 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.
1:02:14 Jemma Sbeg? 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. Um, and at the age you are and at the age they are, I'm sure they have encountered issues with their emotional immaturity before.
1:02:57 Jemma Sbeg? 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 behaviours don't get passed along.
1:03:35 Jemma Sbeg? 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
1:04:18 Jemma Sbeg? 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 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
1:05:01 Jemma Sbeg? 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 fricking tough. And it's so tough when you're looking at your parents being like, be an adult for once.
1:05:46 Jemma Sbeg? 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 no, 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.
1:06:29 Jemma Sbeg? Make sure that you are following me on Instagram at @thatpsychologypodcast. So you can be involved in future episodes, listener 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.
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