CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Navigating Emotionally Immature Parents

Episode Date: November 14, 2023

Whitney talks about the impact of emotionally immature parents on their children. She explains that emotionally immature parents often lack empathy, struggle to apologize or admit fault, and are often well-liked in their communities due to their ability to maintain surface-level relationships. They also tend to provide for their children in practical ways, but fail to meet their emotional needs. We also have Calling Home listener questions about this same topic, including coping with 'the silent treatment' and the fear of becoming like them. Awareness of one's own trauma can prevent the repetition of harmful patterns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Calling Home podcast. I am joining you solo today for an episode all about emotionally immature parents, their impact on you, and I want to answer some of the questions that you had about that. First thing, I just want to catch up on a little bit of admin stuff. We did. launch the calling home community over the last two weeks. And I am so excited for all of you that have joined the community. We had our first group last week. And it was so cool to be able to meet with like actual people in the Family Cycle Breakers Club and see how this impacted you. I was talking about it with some people afterwards. And it really just like brought me to tears that this is

something that we've been able to make a reality and that you all are a part of it now. We are keeping the community closed until January because I want to just, like, get the groups moving, work out the kinks, make sure everything is good for you. And then in January, we will be opening it up forever for those of you that would like to join. So if you don't know what calling home is, it is the community for adults individuals that are breaking generational patterns of dysfunction in their family and who want to work on their adult family relationships. And we offer a ton of different types of content as well as community groups. so that you can connect with other family cycle breakers like you. If you're enjoying this podcast,

I think that you will really love the calling home community. And if you're not there yet, I hope to see you in January. All right, let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. So on October 13th, I put up a post that said, being the child of an emotionally immature parent is a lot. Many people don't understand the mental load you're carrying around. Don't talk about that topic, make sure not to do that thing that sets them off. Don't share that part of yourself. Manage how they act at that event. Don't hurt their feelings. Stay in your lane. Respond the right way. It's exhausting. And this is one of the most popular posts that I've had this year. And there were so many comments on this post from people that could relate, I think, like

over 50,000 people liked this post and it was shared tens of thousands of times. And so I wanted to take a moment to dive deeper into this post and to answer some of your questions, because I think that you guys really could relate to this. But first, let's start out with just like, what is an emotionally immature parent? I think for so long in the field of psychology, for people in therapy, there wasn't this language around like a parent who wasn't maybe abusive or extremely neglectful, but they didn't really treat you well. And there was this idea that if your parent wasn't violent or completely neglectful, like you weren't allowed to complain or be upset or maybe have criticisms about them. But psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson wrote a best-selling book

on the subject, and it's called Adult Children of Emotionally Amateur Parents. And I think that it is one of my favorite books in the field. I highly recommend it, especially if this episode resonates for you. And she talks about emotionally immature parents and the core personality traits that these parents have. And what I love that she highlights in her work is that a lot of kids who grow up with emotionally immature parents or adults of those parents now, they grow up with things like nice clothes, plenty of food. They might live in a nice house. They actually typically have a lot of their physical needs met, but inside they always feel a sense of emotional loneliness or maybe a feeling that things aren't quite right.

And what Dr. Gibson really points out is that this deeply impacts your sense of belonging. And it often means that these kids end up being more mature than their parents or having to learn how to be more mature than their parents at a very young age. So if you're wondering if you have an emotionally immature parent, let's talk about some of the key signs that Dr. Lindsay Gibson highlights in her work. One of the biggest traits of emotionally immature parents is that they're never interested in your perspective and they really lack empathy. So if you're in a fight with them. Their point of view is always the correct one. And this doesn't matter. Like, even if you have, I was talking with somebody in one of my groups last week, they were talking

about, like, recording things and having facts and timestamps and proving things. And even this won't work with an emotionally immature parent. When they feel uncomfortable or threatened or ashamed, they cannot take in other people's viewpoints. And they cannot see a world. where they are not right or that you might have a better perspective than that. And this is where we see gaslighting show up a lot, right? Because if you can't see someone else's point of view, you're going to gaslight them into believing your point of view or really making them so confused and like dizzy to the point that they have to just say, okay, you're right because they cannot continue the conversation with you. Another hallmark trait of emotionally immature parents is that

they don't apologize or try to do better. And this comes from that lack of perspective taking. So we just talked about how they cannot see someone else's perspective. And in order to admit false or wrongdoing or apologize, you have to be able to consider someone else's perspective, right? So if you have a parent or parents in your life that cannot apologize or take accountability, they might be emotionally immature. The other trait that's really interesting is that emotionally immature parents are often very well liked in the community, and they may even be close with other people in their life. And this is because they often let negative or emotionally, relationally disruptive traits

show in their relationships with you, but not necessarily with other people. And what Gibson points out is that often emotionally immature parents are actually very socially skilled, they might be popular, and they might be good at keeping up a cool facade in certain situations. But when emotional closeness or emotional vulnerability comes up, that's when they really back up, get defensive, and start feeling those feelings of shame. And this is why relationships with family or with children, particularly often bring up more of that emotional immaturity because they are able to keep other people at a distance. So they might have good friendships, good relationships with coworkers, and they may even use these as a defense in situations with you.

They might say things like, other people don't say this about me. I have a lot of friends. So-and-so thinks I'm X. They think I'm great. If I was so bad, people would, wouldn't want to do X, Y, and Z with me, or I wouldn't have such a big social life. And they use these things to defend their actions and bolster their truth that you are the one that's wrong or you are the one that's doing something problematic and it's not them. And this is because they can be really skilled at having distant or service level relationships and especially good at having relationships where they have the upper hand. And so it's likely that in the relationship with you, their child,

you are causing them to feel some sort of shame, embarrassment, vulnerability that makes it more difficult for them to keep up that cool, controlled exterior. Another thing about emotionally immature parents is that they tend to only show up for you in practical ways. And let's talk about what that looks like. they may be really great at providing for you. They always kept food on the table. They paid for your college. They got you a car. They provide a lot of these material benefits that are really important for success. And I think there are a lot of adult children of emotionally immature parents

that feel very guilty because they were provided for in such a wonderful way throughout their life, that it's almost like, oh, well, I need to just be grateful for what I have. I need to be okay with my parents' lack of emotional availability and maturity because they were able to give me these things. And it's true that that providing is a key component of maybe why some adults are doing well in their life and they can be grateful that their parents provided those things. But we also have to remember that having your physical needs met is really the bare minimum of parenting. And some emotionally immature parents will actually provide in excess in physical ways because they are not able to provide in other ways or even because they want to use that

later to say, look at what I did for you and kind of spin that on their child when they're having an argument. And so it's not that it always comes from this altruistic place. Sometimes it is being used as a defense for the parent. So like, oh, well, they can't say anything about me because I did all of these things for them. And I think if you are an adult child who feels guilty because of all the things that you're emotionally immature parent provided for you, it's important to note that they made the decision to provide those things. Most of the time, kids are not asking. for all of the things that they're getting. They're just being given that by the parent and there's a precedent being set there by the parent. And also that your physical needs aren't the only thing

that your parent needs to help you with and teach you. They also need to be there for your emotional needs. All right. So now that we've looked at some of the traits of emotionally immature parents. Some of you might be thinking like, wow, these are things that I grew up with. This really sounds like my parents and it sounds like something that I lived through. And so what do I do about it now? And this is where I want to jump into answering some of the questions that you sent in. I got so many questions. So I'm going to try to answer as many as possible. But it really seems like this is something that so many people in this community are dealing with. I don't know about you, but this time of year, I feel like I don't have time to do anything between all of

the added extra chaos of the holidays, my toddler running around, trying to close up the year with my business. It can feel like thinking about dinner is the last thing that you want to do, and that is what I love about Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh can help take the stress out of dinner by delivering everything you need to cook up tasty meals right to your door, saving you tons of It gives me the ability to feel like, okay, that's taken care of. I don't have to stress about it. And I can worry about other things that I want to be worrying about or that are more important. And I know that my family is going to be fed, good, delicious, healthy meals. So if you want to take a little bit off your plate this holiday season, go to hellofresh.com slash home free and use code

home free for free breakfast for life. There's one breakfast item per box while subscription is active. That's free breakfast for life at hellofresh.com slash home free with code home free. HelloFresh is America's number one meal kit and I hope you love it as much as I do. Okay, here's the first question. How do you cope when a parent gives you the silent treatment when they are upset? So first I want to call it. clarify what the silent treatment might be. When an emotionally immature parent gives the silent treatment or when anybody who lacks emotional maturity gives the silent treatment, the way this usually goes is that they perceive that you've done something wrong. And in that moment,

they decide that they are going to punish you or isolate you with silence as a way to get you to notice that they are upset and they want you to do something about it. And so a more emotionally mature person might say, hey, when you did this thing, it made me feel sad, angry, whatever, I would appreciate if you didn't do that again. An emotionally immature parent is going to say it's not my job to explain this to them. It's not my job to make my feelings known. They should just know how I feel. And now they should fix it. And they should know how to fix it without me telling them and I am going to be silent until they do what I want them to do. And this is a control tactic. It's a way to assert power over someone. And it can be especially tricky when it's

happening between a parent and their child. And you guys will hear this from me a million times, but I don't care how old the child is in this situation. We could be talking about a 60-year-old adult child and an 85-year-old parent, and the parent still often holds emotional superiority over that adult child, because that dynamic is going to persist probably for life, just by nature of the power differential that already exists in that relationship and the foundation of that relationship that has been built over the course of that adult child's entire life. So when you have a parent that is giving you the silent treatment because you quote unquote did something to them, maybe you did, maybe you didn't, the way that you cope with that is by learning

how to sit in that silent treatment on your own and realize that it is not your problem or your responsibility to emotionally soothe your emotionally immature parent. And they need to learn how to express to you when they are hurt by something or they are upset by something. So what does that look like on a day-to-day basis? If your parent is not speaking to you and they're giving you the silent treatment and you've attempted to reach out to them and you realize they're being non-responsive, this is likely not the first time that this has happened, right? You're probably being reminded of a time when you were five and your mom gave you the silent treatment. So I would recommend trying to find some phrasing that you can repeat to yourself of my parents' emotions are not my responsibility.

If and when they are ready to tell me how they feel, I will listen and I will talk to them. Until then, I cannot read their mind and I cannot figure out why they're upset without them speaking to me. Now, this also might be such a chronic problem for you that you get the silent treatment all the time and you have to decide, you know, am I going to return to this relationship every time after this person gives me the silent treatment? Do I feel like this is a sustainable pattern for us to be in? An emotionally amateur parent that is not willing or able to be self-reflective cannot learn from this and will not be like, you know what, I'm giving her the silent treatment again. So I should probably change that and do something different. So I want you to really focus on

what can I control when it comes to my behavior? What do I feel comfortable doing? And what have I normally done in this situation? Do I normally call my mom and try to get her to tell me what's wrong over and over until she finally caves? And then I end up apologizing for something that she actually did. It's important to deconstruct these patterns that we are normally engaging in because through our participation in these patterns, we are sometimes maintaining that dysfunction in the family without wanting to do that. And so while it's not your fault, you have to think about how can I step out of this role of constantly being the rescuer every time my parent puts themselves in the position of being the victim and gives me

the silent treatment. Because if this person really wanted to fix things with you and really wanted to talk about it in a rational, mature way, they'll do that, right? They won't give you the silent treatment because nothing's going to be fixed by that. They're trying to call your bluff, you know, and get you to be the one to come back and be like, oh, I'm so sorry. I hope you're okay and kind of move back into this caretaking role. And you don't have to do that anymore. All right. Let's find another question. I had this question box up for like, an hour and I swear you guys there's like 500 questions in here. This one makes me so sad and I think a lot of people can relate to this. Can you ever recover from it and lead a quote unquote normal life?

I'm 51 and it seems impossible. I understand why it seems impossible because in a way this wound will kind of always be with you, right? You will always feel this sense of like my parents are not the people that I want or need them to be. And maybe they weren't the people I needed at age 5, 10, 15. Maybe now at 51, I'm still like, oh my gosh, why did you guys never grow up? Why could you never like meet me where I'm at? And it feels like I'm so much older and more mature than you. And I think the going and living in normal life, whatever that means for you, happens through accepting that your parent or parents are not going to become more emotionally mature. They're not going to change if they don't want to and if they don't make a deliberate effort.

And so for some of them, it means a lifetime of this. And you have to accept that there is nothing you can do. There are no words you can say. There are no song and dance that you can come up with that is going to change. that for your parents because you can't do that work for them. You can model it. You can be emotionally mature. You can show them what it looks like. You can refuse to engage in the power struggles and the battles that you get caught up in with these people, but you cannot fix them and you cannot change them. And so in my work and in my own life, what I've seen is that the only way to

move on and to heal and to lead a normal life, your version of that, is to give up on that fantasy and to start living your life. And of course, there's a lot of grief and pain that comes with that. It's not fun. But I think every adult on this planet is grieving the loss of something that they thought would have been different, right? Whether that's their marriage, where they live, their career, their physical health, their parents, we're all grieving something that is different than we thought it would be. And so once you realize like pretty much nobody gets saved from that, I think life gets a little bit easier and you realize like, okay, this is the hand I was dealt in this arena. And I'm going to figure out how to make my life the most

enjoyable and free it can possibly be with having parents like this. And I think for some of you, that might mean seeing them once a year texting them. For some of you, it might mean never speaking to them again, but it is possible, and I hope I can help you achieve that. Okay, next question. How do I have a relationship with a parent who has never been there for me emotionally? So this is so interesting, I think, now in 2023, because if you talk to people from the boomer generation, even Gen X, I think a lot of them might say, my parent was never there for me emotionally. I didn't even know that that was a thing that they were supposed to be doing. A lot of parents in older generations were taught to provide for their children physically,

to provide structure, you know, and to keep their children alive. Depending on your cultural background, like being there for your child emotionally, it certainly wasn't a thing that was expected of fathers, like, at all when you look at the historical, progression of like fatherhood. Now we're seeing among millennial dads and I think in younger generations we'll see even more of this that fathers are expected to have a direct role in raising their children and in their emotional intellectual and physical development, all of that. But this wasn't really an expectation. And so I do find that when people from millennials, Gen Z, things like that, go to their parents and they're like, you didn't support me emotionally, it's confusing.

for some of these older generations because they didn't really realize that that was a part of parenting. And I don't say that to be defensive or like to make excuses at all. I just think it's something worth considering the way that emotions have become such a key part of our discourse today. And looking back, we can kind of say to parents like, you weren't there for me emotionally and that hurt me. And this is where you're going to see a big difference between emotionally immature parents and parents who are able to self-reflect, that there are parents that when you bring this up to them, let's say you have, you know, you're a millennial and you have boomer parents. And you say to them, I feel like you've never been there for me emotionally.

And I didn't feel emotionally supported by you as a child, used to send me to my room to cry when I was upset used to tell me, you know, to suck it up, to be a man, to toughen up, whatever it is. An emotionally mature parent might hear that and say, I get why you feel that way. Like, I didn't think about that when I was parenting you. And now I see that maybe I should have considered that because I remember how I felt when my parents wouldn't listen to me cry or they wouldn't hug me when I was young. And that always made me feel really alone and sad. And you can have this conversation where your parent is able to be self-reflective and say, like, yeah, that was kind of a weird thing that we did. You know, like, in the same way that you could say to your

parent, like, hey, mom, you put me in a crib with bumpers all around and blankets and stuffed animals. and now my pediatrician says not to do that. Your parent might be able to reflect and be like, oh, gosh, that's kind of scary that we did that with you. You could have suffocate it. Like, I can't believe we didn't know that back then. Or some kids didn't used to wear car seats or seatbelts. Like, we can be self-reflective and say, like, wow, we kind of should have known better.

Now I can see, like, how that would have led to a negative outcome. And my generation of parents is going to see this. I think we are going to see. a profound amount of discourse around letting kids have cell phones so young, around social media, around influencers putting their kids online. You know, I talked about that in my episode with Sarah at Mom Uncharted about putting your kids on social media. And so every generation kind of has this reckoning, right? Every generation has this thing that we look back and we're like, oh my God, I can't believe we did that or I can't believe we did that like that. And that's where

that self-reflection comes in on the part of the parent. And I think that's something that a lot of parents today are thinking about is like, if my child comes to me and says, I'm upset with X, Y, and Z, can I be self-reflective and say, huh, knowing what I know now, maybe that wasn't the best thing. And I think emotionally mature, self-reflective adults of all generations can do this, right? They can say, yeah, I see that. I want to repair that with you. I want to make that better. An emotionally immature parent cannot see that. So when you say to them, I didn't feel emotionally supported by you. I felt like you didn't care about my feelings. And I still feel like you don't care about my feelings. An emotionally immature parent's brain hears, I'm a bad parent. You hate me.

You're a bad person. You did a bad job. It's like a shame loop, whether they're aware of this or not. And then they jump into, well, I guess I'm just the worst dad ever. I did so much for you. And you are just an ungrateful brat. You don't appreciate me. What are you talking about? I wasn't there for you emotionally. And you immediately get into a battle over whose memories are correct and justified and who's a good parent, who's a bad kid. And it just isn't worth it. So when I get this question of how can I have a relationship with a parent who is never there for me emotionally, I think there's a lot of adults that have relationships with their parents who were not there for them emotionally, and they don't really realize it. So they have very surface level relationships with them. They help each other

physically. They do things for each other. They talk solely about one topic, like sports or work, whatever it is, but they don't have an emotionally connected or deep relationship with this person. And the reason they may not notice it is because they never have, and it's not an expectation that they had of that person or that relationship. And so they just don't even try to have it. Now, when adult children start to investigate and be like, huh, I never got that from my parent. And maybe that's why I feel this way. That's when they start to think, like, I want to get that from my parent. And some of those parents might be able to give it to you. And some of them won't. And so this is a very long answer to a question of, you can have a relationship with a parent.

that doesn't support you emotionally if you are able to. Can you have a relationship with someone that is only about one thing? Can you have a relationship with them that consists of checking in on them and listening to them and complain about their health and you bring them groceries? Like, whatever it is. A lot of people have relationships with their parents that are unfulfilling in many areas but are fulfilling in some areas or they do the amount of obligation, whatever it is. But you have to decide if you can do that. And I think that that depends on the context of this definition of not being there for me emotionally. Were they emotionally abusive? Did they put you down all the time? Do they yell at you? Do they call you names? Do they demean you? That's different than the parent who can't talk about their feelings and just doesn't want to go there. You know, and so you have to decide what that looks like for you. All right. Let me answer. one more question. Oh, this is such a good one, and this one also makes me sad. I got this. Can you please talk about the fear that we live with that we are going to be like them and hurt

our kids? Okay. I had a therapist years ago that said this to me, and I can't remember who was, may have been my therapist or somebody that I know, that said, if you're worried about it, it probably means you're not going to do it because you're thinking about it, right? So, parents who are emotionally immature, they don't know they're emotionally immature. They're not thinking about it. They're not like, wow, I was really emotionally immature to my kid today. They are so deeply buried in shame and guilt and all these other things, anxiety, that they're not aware of this with the very emotionally immature ones. Now, I think you have some in the middle who just didn't learn a lot of like emotional regulation skills. They don't have the awareness, but they can build

it. They can work on it. And some of them do. I mean, I've seen a lot of parents go from being what would be considered emotionally immature to becoming more mature. You know, they can drift back into it from time to time, but they do get more skills. But if you are the adult child of an emotionally immature parent and you are a parent and you're aware of that and you're like awake to how that impacted you, you understand the effect it had on you, you know that it was negative and you're trying to make your life different. I don't think you have to be concerned about becoming your parent. People who are aware, I think this was, I saw this on Instagram, I need to figure out who said it, but it was something like people who are aware of their trauma

are the ones that don't go on repeating it, right? It's the people who are unaware who don't want to recognize it, who don't want to tap into it or acknowledge it, that go on repeating it. All right. I hope that that was helpful to hear some Q&A's about emotionally immature parents to learn about some of the traits. I'd like to go into this a lot deeper in the future. So please let me know what would be helpful for you, what you'd like to hear more of. Send me a DM at Sit With Wit on Instagram so we can talk about this more. As always, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. We'll be back next week with another interview episode. And please remember to follow, like, subscribe, give the podcast five stars,

leave it a review. That's what really helps keep this podcast going. Thank you all so much. And I look forward to seeing you next week. No.