The Interview - Dr. Lindsay Gibson on What We Owe Our 'Emotionally Immature' Parents

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

The clinical psychologist explains the foundations of egocentric parental behavior, the impact it has on their children and the freedom of saying “no.”

From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marchese. There's a poem by Philip Larkin called This Be the Verse, and it's been buzzing around in the back of my mind the entire time I've been working on today's interview. The poem starts like this, though literary fans will know I'm swapping in a clean word for a foul one. They mess you up, your mom and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you. That rings true for me and I bet I'm not alone. But what do we do with that knowledge? For help answering that question, a lot of people have turned to the work of clinical

psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson. Her book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, has been a slow-burning bestseller, with over a million copies sold since it was published in 2015. It's also a viral presence on social media, where it fits in with the larger trend of children reconsidering their relationships with their parents, or even if they want to have a relationship with them at all. So I had lots to ask Dr. Gibson, and some skepticism to bring her to. We talked about what emotional immaturity looks like in a parent,

how much parents really shape the adults we become, whether we owe problematic parents compassion, and a bunch of other very easy topics. Parents, hoy! Here's my conversation with Lindsay C. Gibson. MUSIC Hi Lindsay, how are you? Hi David, I'm doing great. There are so many things I want to talk to you about. Also, maybe I'll squeeze in a little attempt to getting free therapy from you. That's what I'm here for.

The broad definition of emotionally immature parents are parents who refuse to validate their children's feelings and intuitions. They might be reactive, lacking in empathy or awareness. Can you maybe give me a couple sort of specific examples of emotionally immature behaviors from parents? Sure. The biggest one is the egocentrism.

If you just imagine that a person starts and ends all their consideration with what's best for them or how they see things, that's egocentrism. And you know, David, I just started watching The Sopranos for the first time. I'm like the only person in America that had not watched this. You're in for a treat. Yeah, well, I'm on season five now, so I'm, yeah. But if you listen to the dialogue, they completely nailed it because everything always comes back to the viewpoint of the person who is the emotionally immature character.

It's always all about them. Another one is the lack of empathy. The parent just doesn't get it. They say, why are you so upset about this? Or stop it. Or this is not a big deal. They cannot enter into the reality of their child's emotional experience, it just doesn't make sense to them. Maybe it's the teenager who wants to talk to their parent about their girlfriend or boyfriend,

and then the parent says, oh, tell me about it. That reminds me of your father. Let me tell you what he did yesterday. And suddenly, you know, we're back talking about the emotionally immature person's issues with no sense of, you know, sticking to the subject of the other person. BOWEN Of course, as any parent knows, those characteristics show up even among the best parents sometimes.

How do people distinguish between normal, flawed parental behavior and behavior that's detrimental enough to sort of rise to the label of emotionally immature? Like where's the line? It's not a clinical diagnosis, so where's the line? Right, right. Where's the line? Okay. right, where's the line? Okay. If you think of emotional maturity and immaturity as being on a continuum, all of us have a spot that we tend to hang out on that continuum. It doesn't mean that we stay there no matter what. For instance, if you're tired or you're sick or you're stressed, I can guarantee that you are not going to be as emotionally mature as you could when you're rested and well and not stressed.

I mean, that's just what happens. We all slide down the scale when we have those kinds of stresses. However, if you're in one of these other compromised states, you may not be at your finest moment and you may do some things that look immature, but it's going to bother you. You're not going to feel okay about what you did. In fact, you're going to think about what you did. The emotionally immature person, it's like, you know, that was in the past. That was then, this is now. Why are you wallowing in it and why are you still upset?

The more emotionally mature person would totally get why you're still upset because they have empathy and because they're self-aware emotionally, they know that you don't get over things just because time passes. So they're going to come back and they're going to do something that indicates that they have felt for the other person's experience. My hunch, and you tell me if I'm wrong, is that people are generally arriving at the conclusion that their parents were emotionally immature in their adulthood.

I think it's sort of like a hindsight situation. If that's true and the adults are feeling, you know, a lack of fulfillment or unhappiness, how do they know that those feelings are the result of their parents' behaviors and not the result of any number of other factors that might be causing them to feel the way they do in the current moment?

Yeah, yeah, now that's a really, that's a great question. I can just tell you what tends to happen in therapy is that the person comes in and they have some immediate issue. Maybe they're having a problem in their relationship or their work. Maybe they just had a panic attack. They have no idea what's going on. And usually, first few sessions, you don't necessarily hear about the parent. But then, you know, like five,

six sessions in, you ask them, you know, before you began feeling so low, what had happened that evening? And then, you know, you come to find out that their dad said something that was completely disrespectful or, you know, whatever, and you or whatever, and you begin to make those connections. What I tended to find out was that when we delved into the feelings, we come to find out that, yeah, they were having very deep reactions to things that their parents did and said, but they had been trained to not see that as legitimate. That had been so invalidated, they thought that they were being disloyal or petty for even bringing it up. As a therapist, I would be sitting there and my mind would be going, oh my gosh, that person is so narcissistic that they're describing,

or she sounds like a borderline personality disorder, but I'm not gonna say that to my client. So I would have to find ways of elaborately translating that into behavior so that we could talk about it without labeling them in a way that made their parents sound pathological. But isn't labeling someone's parents emotionally immature also a kind of pathologizing? I think you could argue that. There's no way of getting around that you're boiling down

this person that they love into a set of traits. And it calls them a name. It's pejorative. But when you say emotionally immature, it's not from the diagnostic manual. And although, yeah, it is a way of categorizing them, but it has a, to me anyway, it has a more explanatory kind of tone to it. If you say your father is narcissistic, I get an immediate caricature of a narcissist. If I say your father sounds like he may be emotionally immature, I don't know. There's a little bit of grace in that, but I can tell you, David, that a lot of people have a lot of problem when they first hear that idea about their parent. I've had people come in because of the book that once we get into the therapy part of

it, they begin to hedge and balk at calling their parent that because they're just so accustomed to giving their parents the benefit of the doubt. I also am curious about the idea of whether self-identifying as the child of an emotionally immature parent might lead to feelings of victimhood. parent might lead to feelings of victimhood. Is there any risk in self-identifying as a child of emotionally immature parents and then feeling disempowered or a lack of agency in your own life and in how you manage your emotions? Yeah, I think it's exactly the opposite. I think it

really increases a person's sense of agency because what's really disempowering to them is the idea that I've been trying to interact with my parent using all the communication skills I know, using all the tact or the empathy that I know, and it doesn't go anywhere and we end up in a fight. So they feel the whole basis of a relationship with an emotionally immature person is that you often feel disempowered because they can't give either you or them the room to have you be understood.

And when you realize that the reason that they're not listening, or the reason that they don't seem to be responding to you, is not because you have poor communication skills, it's because they can't stand it. They can't bear to be even mildly criticized. They don't have the emotional wherewithal to deal with that. And when you realize that, it's like, oh, this is not about my lack of skill or the fact that I get nervous around my parents. That's not the deal. And if I understand what's happening, I can change my behavior or I can change my responses because I understand what they're doing. Back to the Sopranos. I mean, those guys were like masters of this. You complained to them about something

and the next thing you know, they're telling you that you're a crybaby victim and they didn't do anything to you and you're being unfair, et cetera, et cetera. How often is it the case that you'll be with a client and say, I don't think your parents were emotionally immature? Or like, this doesn't pass the smell test for me? I can guarantee you I never said the smell test thing.

It's not the most elegantly phrased way of putting it. No, but it's good. Yeah, it has really not come up. I mean, if I heard emotionally mature behavior being talked about, I think I'm enough of a scientist that I would mention that to them or ask them to tell me in more detail what seemed emotionally immature to them about that because that would make me curious. They're referring themselves for this, and yet I'm not seeing that, but that's never happened. You know, if somebody goes to their parent and says, you know, I think you were an emotionally immature parent

and the parent disagrees, how would a parent ever disprove that they're emotionally immature? If they would only say, tell me what you mean by that, that could do it right there. It would be the curiosity and the caring about what their child was expressing. Like just imagining that that might be

that other person's truth. Like if you had a friend that came to you and said, you know, you really hurt me. You wouldn't say, hurt you? What about me? You would probably say, what do you mean? Or, tell me what happened. You would be curious and you would want to know because you have enough of a sense of self and enough confidence in your ability to deal with emotional issues that you could afford to ask that person to explain it to you, because you'd have a little bit of hope that maybe

you could work it out. And emotionally immature people just shut the door on that because they know they don't handle emotional things very well, and their best defense is just to not get into it at all and to point the finger back at you. So anytime somebody shows some capacity for self-reflection and a willingness to look at their part in things, now you're out of the realm of emotional immaturity and you're back on track to have a more grown up and emotionally real kind of relationship. But you gotta have that capacity for self-reflection

which most emotionally immature people really don't have. So if somebody has emotionally immature parents and they've tried to address their relationship in whatever fashion. And then they conclude that the relationship is still ultimately harmful to them. When is estrangement sort of the best option for someone? Yeah, that is something that...

Well, from my standpoint, I start thinking about whether or not it's good for them to have contact with their parent when they start having physical or emotional problems directly associated with their contact with their parents. Say a woman who had very demanding, very egocentric, emotionally immature parents, and they expected her to come at the drop of a hat, help them out, do something for them, attend something. I mean, they were as needy as her own children and also entitled. So she was exhausted because when they pulled her into these interactions or things they

wanted her to do for them, there was no exchange of energy like she does it, they're grateful, she feels good about doing a good deed. Not at all. It's like she didn't do it well enough. They need more and she's a bad person because she's trying to set a boundary. So it's always exhausting, it's always frustrating, and you never feel like you're

doing enough. This woman that I'm thinking about, she was developing stress-related physical symptoms. It was like, okay, let's talk about the effect on your health. So then you may bring up to the person, do you want to keep visiting them? Do you want to keep going over there? And lots of times, that's the first time that thoughts ever crossed their mind. Right, they didn't realize it was a possibility.

No, they really didn't. And so when they begin to get that idea, it begins to expose this whole arrangement that is implicit in the relationship, which is the parent gets to do whatever the heck they want and that adult child is supposed to go along with it or they're being a bad child. There's a moral obligation that is not only implied but explicitly stated that if I have a need you should be there because you're my kid. I'm trying to get them to feel the cost of it to them, which oftentimes they have completely tuned out because they don't want to be a bad person. CB And the book had a COVID era boost,

but it continues to be popular, particularly on social media. What might the book's ongoing of ongoing popularity say about the culture now? KS Big topic. I think the book's ongoing popularity has been due to the fact that it said something about the cultural stereotype that we've had about parents for eons, that all parents love their children, all parents only want the best for their children, all parents put their children first. Children can depend on their parents to be there for them when no one else is. And I think people's actual experience many times with their parents, but with anybody in their life, is that these stereotypes and these tropes don't match up with their emotional experience. And when there's, unfortunately, when there's a mismatch between a stereotype and what you're feeling inside, our typical

response is to feel like we're off, that there's something that we're missing that we're not doing right, because how could I be having this feeling toward my parent when I know that they only want the best for me? Or I know, quote unquote, they really love me, and they end up blaming themselves. I think it's fair to say that one of the real problems with contemporary life is the way we label other people in ways that are reductive or sort of don't really acknowledge human beings' multi-dimensionality, whether it's right or left or a believer

versus a non-believer. Is there any part of you that thinks like, maybe it's not a good thing for the two million people or whoever many people have read your book to be thinking like, oh, you're emotionally immature, and that is what defines you now. Absolutely, I think it's a danger. It's like, that is the problem

with the categorizing part of our mind, period. Once we call something something, we think we know all about it. That's because it's using the part of the brain that tends to be convinced that once it gets a name for something, it knows all there is to know about it and it has no interest whatsoever in going back and adjusting its beliefs. Okay? So that's a real danger with anything. On the other hand though, if you think about in medicine, sometimes when you reduce and isolate out the operative factors, the most important factors, it gives you a way to not only recognize it, but to control

it and to do something about it, to name it, to respond differently to it. So it's a very valid point, David, but it is a point that is, you could say it about anything where you have an effective categorization that it oversimplifies and it leads to, you know, stereotyped or black and white conclusions that are not helpful. I've just tried to moderate that by helping people see more of the big picture about why these people became emotionally immature, what they're trying to do with that kind of behavior, and then what you can do about it. Mm-hmm. And you know, this, I'm not sure quite how to bring this up, but it's sort of to do with like where compassion for the harmful person fits into all of this.

Because I'll use a personal example. So I have a very distant relationship with my biological father. There's a lot of pain there. I honestly have seen him twice in the last 20 years. Maybe we email four times a year or something like that. It's sort of a distant relationship through my choosing. But I don't think that that relationship is evidence of any like great moral position on my part

or particularly ethical, or I don't think that it really is showing the best side of who I am. I think somebody who's more developed and more compassionate would probably figure out a way to have a relationship that isn't so distant. How do we think of the idea of compassion in that kind of example? Yeah for emotionally immature people Your compassion will be weaponized Because their egocentrism makes them determined to be the innocent party

For them to be the victim and for you to put aside your needs in order to meet theirs. That's the deal. The emotionally immature person will always frame a situation that you are not being sympathetic enough, compassionate enough, seeing it from their point of view, being sensitive enough. So when I'm working with people who've been raised by people like this, I am always very careful about pushing for any kind of compassion, forgiveness, any of those things that say, well, even though you have treated me badly, even though you have invalidated me and made me feel bad about myself, even though you have tried to control me and manipulate my emotions, I'm going to be empathic and feel for you. I don't think that's a moral high ground. Now I know that there was a

period in the psychotherapy world where I think it was mostly dealing with narcissists, this is years and years ago, you were kind of supposed to have compassion for what the narcissism was about, that it was a reaction to poor sense of self, tremendous shame. And if you could understand that, you could sort of reframe that to yourself so that you didn't get defensive and so you could manage them better. But my goodness, it's like, is that really what you want to be spending your energy on. So when somebody expects that we should have compassion for them, I don't support that with people because I think it's not good for them to continue to frame it that

way. You don't have to hate and revile the person. I mean, I certainly agree with that, but I'm after neutrality. I'm after getting along in the best way you can with a difficult person if that's what you want to do. But to expect the person then to go into But to expect the person then to go into that next step of compassion and forgiveness, I don't feel in a position to make the judgment that that's what a person should do. AC Do children owe parents anything in terms of relationship? To me, I look at that question differently. I look at it, do any of us owe anybody else anything? Yeah. What's the answer?

The answer is yes, I think we do as human beings. If I'm walking down the street and somebody trips and falls, I'm going to stop and help them get up. I mean, there are things that call out altruistic, helpful responses. I mean, I wouldn't want to live in a world where that wasn't there. But what has happened is that there has been such a, to get back to those stereotypes again, there's been such an assumption that because you're my child, you owe me something in terms of like payback or I'm entitled to your attention and I can treat you any way I want because we're family and you're my child. That's where you get up to a point where there should be a boundary.

I mean, there is no law that says you have to respond in a certain way. And what I'm about is know what it's going to cost you to respond. Think about yourself too, and then make your best decision about it. We ultimately do have the right to say no when something is going to harm us. I think there's some fundamental level on which, like really this is all about happiness. How should people set expectations for happiness in their lives? Because they could decide,

hey, like this, my unhappiness has to do with being raised by emotionally immature parents and I'll work on that. But then six months down the line, they realize, well, there's still a bunch of things that they're unhappy about. So how do we understand what our expectations should be for what it means to be happy? Yeah, I think if you ever watch little kids,

their default mode is happiness. And that's because they're spontaneously going and doing the next interesting thing. They just naturally are following their energies of the moment. I think that's what happens with people too. If we take away some of the things that have been holding them back, if they feel released to say no to the things that kill their energy, if they don't feel guilted into acting more compassionate or loving than they really feel,

if we take these things off of them, it's like a cork that bobs to the top of the water. The emotionally immature person needs other people to emotionally stabilize them, keep them calm, make them happy, and also to buffer their self-esteem, make sure they keep feeling good about themselves. That is a terrible drag on a person. That's exhausting.

When we can get the idea that we're not in this world to function as a sort of an auxiliary coping mechanism for people who can't do it for themselves, we begin to feel our energy coming back. You know, That's what happiness is. Happiness is like free energy. Happiness is I get to go and do the next thing that I feel like doing, not in a hedonistic and considerate way, but I just get to follow my nose for

what my own individual interests are. That's what makes us happy, along with some of these emotionally mature skills in relationships that keep things, you know, relatively satisfying between ourselves and the people that we love, that all adds up to happiness. ["Dreams of a Better World"]

After the break, I called Dr. Gibson back and we talk more about compassion and also how people can know if they're truly happy. We do have something inside us and this is what I would call the core self, which is very based in the body. It's very based in emotion. And this core self tells us when we are getting what we need or when we're being treated badly. Hi, Lindsay.

Hey, David. How are you this morning? I'm good. I'm good. So I have to admit that I am thinking a lot about when I brought up the idea of compassion. You know, you cautioned against the idea of compassion, you know, that the emotionally immature person can kind of use compassion as like a, almost like a honey trap. And I say this as someone who is personally fully aware of the pitfalls of extending compassion to the hurtful parent. But at the same time, I want to hold on to the idea that, you know, the emotionally immature

person, they're probably struggling and they're not just bogeymen. Like they too deserve grace. So how do we open up the door to the possibility of change and reconciliation and understanding without compassion? Oh, no. Yeah. No, I don't think we should do anything without compassion at some level. It's not that we don't want to have compassion, but what I'm talking about is that with the people that I worked with in psychotherapy, the adult children of these emotionally immature parents, the problem was really an excess of compassion, that they were trained and guilted and shamed into having for these parents. Okay? It's involuntary on the part of the emotionally immature parents, nothing diabolical

here. And so, when people come to me and they have been conditioned into this sort of compassionate attitude, I take it on myself to have them examine that dynamic. What I've seen is that the compassion takes over the instinctual self-preservation and the person feels too guilty, too ashamed, and too self-doubting to even think about what's healthy for them. And so here's a question that I think would elicit different answers from a philosopher

or a scientist or a psychologist, but how much can people really change? Yeah, well, I don't think there's much possibility of change unless you have the self-reflection. Okay? And you have the self-reflection because you have a sense of self. And you develop the sense of self because your emotional needs have been met and you have been responded to as a little human being early enough that that sense of self gets in there. Okay?

You know, to go back to the sopranos, that's what his therapist was over five years trying to get him to do. Enjoy how much you've gone back to the sopranos. Oh, wow. I did too. Can I ask your opinion of Dr. Jennifer Melfi in a little bit? Yeah, well, she got him to start in a minuscule way self-reflecting. So that makes change possible. I think there are earth-shattering moments that really shift your paradigm and I think they really shift, like permanently shift, your view of something or your way of thinking about yourself or other people. And I think that kind of change can happen in a flash. It's like something

like a joint goes back into place. There's a click and it's like, oh, that's not what it is. It's this. And like everything else starts to reorganize around that new realization. So I think that can happen. What I have found though in psychotherapy, the biggest change that people seem to have gotten from therapy is that they have a realization of their own inner experience. They now know how things affect them, what they really feel, what they really think, and they use that now to guide themselves through relationships and through their lives. And usually, the results are very adaptive,

very good. They have more energy. The insight is not an intellectual exercise. It is like a becoming, an awareness that, oh, this is who I am. AC When you're talking about truth that's really based on relationships between people, is there such a thing as the truth? I mean, even just to use my own example, I have my own, what I think is truthful understanding of my relationship with my biological father and why it was the way it was and how it affected me as an adult. I think he has his own interpretation that is true for him. So what does truth mean in your context? Well, there's no eye in the sky that's going to one day give us the answer, but I think we can sense the truth for ourselves. Even if it's a bad thing, even if it's a sorrowful thought or a painful thought, you still have those experiences

of I've touched on the truth of something. And we respond to that. So I think, you know, as far as human beings go, the best we can get is that internal sensing of what our truth is. Now, and of course, the next question is going to be, what if I am a conspiracy theorist or a paranoid personality? Well, it doesn't even have to be that extreme.

It could just be that the truth could be that what if I've come up with something that is most palatable and easiest for me? Exactly. Yes. Well, then you got a problem. And what will happen is that reality will spank you. I mean, there is something that starts to happen in the particulars of our lives

that tells us that we're on the right track. If you feel like that great line out of Michael Clayton, when Michael Clayton is saying to his son, you're not going to be one of these people like your uncle who goes through life saying, why is this stuff falling on my head all the time? It's because you become aware of yourself as an agent in your own life.

Once you do that, you are in a much better position to deal with whatever reality is going to bring your way. I had asked also about the problem of happiness. Your reply was sort of in terms of childhood and how children's default mode is happy. They're sort of wired for happiness. I was wondering if that actually might be a kind of idealization of childhood and if there might be any pitfalls to that because, you know, I have two little kids and I take them to the playground and I sit and they go play and if I scan the playground, you see anger, you see fear, you see conflict in in addition to the happy feelings. And I couldn't help but wonder if, like, our expectation when we think about childhood is one of sort of,

where happiness is the default, might that lead as adults to feelings of disappointment when we think retrospectively about what childhood is, given that, of course, childhood is not all about happiness. Right, yeah. I think what I was trying to get at is that if children's basic needs are met, they want to go and do or experience things

that make them even happier. Now what you're seeing on the playground though, is a bunch of kids who are navigating a world that could care less about their basic happiness. Yeah, sounds familiar. Yeah, it sounds familiar. So as they're bouncing off of that in their lives, they're going to have all these emotions. But the happiness search is, I mean, I think it's why plants reach for the sun.

I mean, I don't think it's a human thing. It's like a universal thing. Like things that are alive want to flourish. They go toward whatever it is that's gonna maximize their optimal growth and experience as a living thing. That's what I believe. So I think that's what little kids are doing. But being that they're living in a world in which they have to

be watched and controlled and all of that by parents, they're going to hit all these blocks and that's going to make them unhappy. Yeah. It's certainly not an ideal existence. I'm glad I'm out of childhood because a lot of it was a drag, you know. But I think that it's important for us to remember that we do have something inside us and this is what I would call the core self, which is very based in the body. It's very based in emotion. And this core self tells us when we are getting what we need or when we're being treated badly. And how much do you think parents are ultimately responsible for who we become as adults?

53%. Oh, perfect. I'm assuming you really want me to answer that. Of course, yeah. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, I go back to nature a lot. I go back to plants and animals and trees. And I think that, you know, it's like, how much does it matter to that plant that has its, you know, genetic makeup, and that acorn that has the oak tree in it?

How much does it matter to that acorn or that seed or that animal? What does it matter to them, how they're treated in the formative years of their life? I would say it matters a lot. It matters a whole lot. Okay, I was actually kidding when I said 53 because I really think it's much higher than that. But we have to keep in mind that even if it was 73%, that other part, the genetic, the physical, what it is that that child is bringing into the world as a unique creation.

That is huge. And parents cannot take full responsibility for how their kids turn out because of that. And that I really, that mix, I really am not at all sure of. But I do know that you can mess it up early if you don't pay attention to what something needs when it's young. That's Dr. Lindsay Gibson. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orm. It was edited by Annabel Bacon, mixing by Sophia Landman.

Original music by Diane Wong and Mary Lozano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew and Seth Kelly is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Nick Pittman, Matty Masiello, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolnick. If you like what you're hearing,

follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. To read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash The Interview, and you can email us anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com. Next week, Lulu talks with political commentator Megan Kelly about her years at Fox and transitioning to YouTube. The only way one succeeds in this medium

is by violating all those rules that we used to have in journalism, where you don't really talk about yourself at all. You don't talk about your opinions, you might have a bias, your only goal is to hide it. It's just a whole new world. I'm David Marchese and this is the interview from the New York Times.