Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Lindsay C. Gibson

Jun 2015 · New Harbinger Publications

About this ebook

If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behavior. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.

Discover the four types of difficult parents:

• The emotional parent instills feelings of instability and anxiety
• The driven parent stays busy trying to perfect everything and everyone
• The passive parent avoids dealing with anything upsetting
• The rejecting parent is withdrawn, dismissive, and derogatory

Ratings and reviews

I regret buying this book. The author's approach to dividing children of emotionally immature parents into internalizers and externalizers and addressing behavior of internalizers as the only one that deserves "real attention" is awful. I, as partially an externalizer myself feel again that I am not accepted. I only felt more excluded then I was after reading this. The more I read, the more unlovable and wrong I feel, as if my way of coping is something I should be ashamed of, as if I'm wrong and bad in my core. That's sad. I don't know why she arranged the book this way, and I paid for this.

I hated this book isn't really an honest heading for this read... I simply don't agree with the content in total. When are adult children going to stop blaming their parents for their own failures of financial and emotional short comings...??? The sooner we start being more compassionate to the fact we are all human beings with baggage, the better we'll be truly compassionate instead of spinning the blame game to gain reason!

It's a very good and helpful book, but take into consideration that it mainly deals with neurotypical behaviors and communication styles. Unfortunately it fails to take into account that some behaviors by neurodivergent people could be mistaken for being emotionally immature. For example answering a person's story with an experience of themselves is a way neurodivergent people often relate to others, without trying to be self-centering, its meant to be more of a 'I see you, I've been there, I understand how you're feeling.' Neurodivergent people are already marginalized enough, the stigma of 'emotionally immature' shouldnt be added to that.

About the author

Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist in private practice who specializes in individual psychotherapy with adult children of emotionally immature parents. She is author of Who You Were Meant to Be and writes a monthly column on well-being for Tidewater Women magazine. In the past she has served as an adjunct assistant professor of graduate psychology for the College of William and Mary, as well as for Old Dominion University. Gibson lives and practices in Virginia Beach, Virginia.