We are not responsible for the emotional state of others. But, alas, too often we become “parents” for the older generation. How to regain emotional boundaries in dealing with them?
Many experts agree that one of the main tasks of parents is to give the child a sense of security. The same solid foundation on which the child’s psyche is built. But if the parents themselves were immature people, instead of stability and security, they “rewarded” the children with a sense of anxiety, fear, vulnerability …
It can take years for a grown child to realize this. Resistance is often involved: no one wants to accept that the parents were toxic, and the family was unhealthy, dysfunctional. No matter how old we are, I want to believe that our parents loved us unconditionally and tried their best.
Perhaps it really was, but this is not always enough. When an adult child realizes everything, it may seem to him that his task is to “save” his parents, no matter how destructive their behavior may be at times. Our empathic part recognizes someone else’s pain and seeks to heal the other, to glue together what was broken.
The truth is that we are not responsible for the emotional state of others – even those closest to us.
When we grow up in a family where adults are unable to regulate their emotions and regularly break down (and “explode”), we develop certain psychological coping mechanisms, for example:
- closely monitoring the mood of parents,
- taking on a parental role (in this case, we become adults in these relationships, no matter how old we are),
- anticipating the needs of the parent,
- disregard for one’s own needs
- overthinking their own words and actions in the hope of preventing a parental “breakdown”,
- a sense of responsibility for the chaotic environment in which we find ourselves, and with it a sense of guilt and self-doubt.
As a rule, these mechanisms become part of us. We ourselves do not notice that we are acting in this way and not otherwise, and we do not understand that this harms us. For example, we may assume that the desire to please everyone is our “innate” trait, not realizing that this was our mechanism for adjusting to life with immature parents.
Worst of all, we carry these patterns into our romantic relationships.
We also project our unhealed trauma onto our parents and begin to believe that we must “cure” them. As Lindsey Gibson puts it in Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, “No child is good enough to win the love of a self-absorbed parent.
However, these children believe that affection must be paid for by putting other people’s needs first and considering them more important than themselves. They are sure that by giving, they will be able to save the relationship. Children who try to earn their parents’ love don’t realize that unconditional love can’t be bought with good behavior.”
People see what they want to see. Most of us are confident that our families were normal, and are grateful to our parents for what they gave us. And scandals, conflicts, disputes, punishments – with whom it does not happen. We’ve been taught to think it’s okay.
In a sense, it is true – our parents, and even more so grandparents, had no place (and no time) to learn what emotional maturity is, no one taught them to understand their own feelings, express them in an environmentally friendly way and set boundaries. It is not their fault that many of them remain emotionally immature.
They were taught to perceive feelings and emotions as a problem, and to regard boundaries as a rejection.
“However, if one of the parents completely “merges” with the child, he grows up without awareness of his own identity, does not understand who he is,” says psychotherapist Shari Stines. – He feels responsible for the emotional state of the parent. In such conditions, a person becomes what the parent wants to see him.
Trying to change another person is a road to nowhere. As a result, you will get frustration and increased anxiety, anger. It takes great awareness and courage to change your beliefs and admit that you have lived your whole life wrong, something that is usually lacking in emotionally immature parents.
No matter how much you “brake” them and try to convince them, this will not help the cause. We have been taught to take our family for granted and not to doubt the actions of our parents and their educational methods. We were taught that “all parents love their children, just each in their own way.”
But the bottom line is that our mental health is inextricably linked to our relationship with our parents. And if we continue to depend on them or try to predict their mood changes, please or merge with them in everything, we cannot grow and develop normally even in adulthood. Therefore, our task is to separate from our parents and leave them to solve their emotional problems.