How to Deal with Emotionally Immature Parents

In Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Value Yourself and Build Relationships with Parents, American psychologist Lindsey Gibson details the signs of such parents and offers practical strategies for dealing with them.

Before we talk about emotional immaturity, we need to understand who we call an emotionally mature person. Obviously, this is someone who can objectively assess the situation and at the same time maintain emotional contact with others. Such people act independently, maintaining deep connections with others, behaving honestly and openly, and do not manipulate or use people to achieve their goals. They know how to set and defend boundaries, they have a well-developed sense of their own identity, and they value and build close relationships.

Such people have developed emotional intelligence and empathy, cope well with stress, speak openly about problems, trying to find ways to solve them.

Emotionally immature people experience difficulties in one or more of these areas. Here are a few signs that will help you understand if the problem is relevant for your parents. Read the points below and check off the one that describes your situation.

• My parent often overreacts to minor events.
• He rarely shows empathy or is interested in my feelings.
• When it comes to emotional intimacy or showing affection, he becomes uncomfortable and closes down.
• He is often annoyed by individual differences and other points of view.
• As a child, a parent often shared his problems with me, but was not ready to listen to me.
• He often says and does things without thinking about the feelings of others.
• I did not often get parental attention and sympathy, except when I was seriously unwell.
• He is often inconsistent: sometimes he shows wisdom, and sometimes he behaves completely unreasonably.

• If I’m sad, he either says something superficial and useless, or gets angry and makes sarcastic remarks.
• All our conversations basically revolve around the interests of the parent.
• Even polite disagreement can provoke a defensive reaction on his part.
• I hate to tell my parent about my successes, because it seems to me that he does not care.
• He does not base his opinion on facts and logic.
• My parent is not prone to introspection and rarely thought about his role in the current situation.
• He sees everything in black and white and does not perceive the new well.

If you agreed with more than one statement, you most likely had to deal with an emotionally immature person as a child.

The problem of immaturity is quite widespread. Most often, such people are brought up in a family that limits their emotional and intellectual development. Their family history often revolves around alcohol and drug abuse, loss or abuse. In addition, the main thing that was required of the older generation when they themselves were children was to obey the elders and not create problems. Few thought about feelings and emotions.

Lindsey Gibson comes to a disappointing conclusion: unfortunately, we are unlikely to get the love and support we dreamed of from our parents, but we can learn to communicate with them in a more constructive way. The following steps will help with this.

Detached surveillance

Communication with such people most often causes unpleasant emotions. Distant observation will help to avoid this. First you need to calm down and tune in: breathe slowly, counting inhalations and exhalations, tense and relax different muscle groups in turn, imagine images that calm you down.

During communication, it is important to remain calm. Imagine that you are an anthropologist doing research. How would you describe the facial expressions of the people around you? What does their body language say? How does their voice sound — calm or tense? How do they react to your attempts to connect? What do you feel yourself? Do you see the manifestations of emotional immaturity discussed above?

Feeling that you are involved in the situation on an emotional level, try to mentally describe the interlocutor. Choosing words to describe, we activate the rational part of the brain. Mentally labeling emotions will also help you look at the situation more objectively and calm down.

If that doesn’t help, take a break from the conversation.

Maturity awareness approach

By determining the maturity level of the person you are talking to, you can better understand and predict their reactions. If you see that the interlocutor shows signs of emotional immaturity, you can connect with him in one of three ways.

1. Speak up and let go

Tell the interlocutor what you want, as calmly as possible, and do not try to control the result. You cannot force another to sympathize with you or understand you. His reaction may not be what you would like, but it does not matter. It is important that you were able to express your thoughts and feelings and did so calmly and clearly.

2. Focus on the result, not the relationship

Answer yourself honestly what you really want to get from the interlocutor in the process of communication. For him to listen to you? Got you? Do you regret your behavior? Did he apologize to you? «Reimbursed»?

If you want a parent to empathize with you or change their attitude, stop and come up with another goal that is specific and achievable.

For example: “I will tell my mother about my thoughts and feelings, despite the fact that I am nervous”, “I will tell my parents that I will not come for the New Year”, “I will ask my father to speak politely to my children.” Your goal may be a simple expression of feelings, the main thing is to know exactly what you want to achieve when starting communication.

You need to focus on the result, not on the relationship — this will give you more chances to interact with the adult part of this person.

3. Manage, not get involved

Instead of getting emotionally involved with immature people, set a goal to manage the contact, including determining its duration and topics for discussion. Gently walk away from trying to change the subject or trap you emotionally. Be polite, but be prepared to ask the question as many times as necessary to get a clear answer.

Emotionally immature people don’t have a workable strategy to counter the other person’s pushiness.