Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

by Lindsay C. Gibson

This over-responsibility is a form of codependency (Beattie 1987) whereby you try to feel lovable and valuable by taking on other people’s problems as your own, often without being asked. You end up more consumed with their lives than your own.

When EIPs are trying to get control, they pressure, nag, or argue, probing for your reaction so they have something to push against. Their subtext demand is, “Be subordinate, validate my views, and play the role that lets me win.”

Because EIPs aren’t mature enough to fight fair, confrontations with them are full of dirty tricks and red herrings. They will wear you down and distract you from the outcome you want. If you accept a battle of wills, they might win because their self-centered arguments will exhaust your brain just trying to make sense of their illogical responses.

First you detach from them emotionally and accept their right to feel whatever they feel, just as you hold that right for yourself. You don’t have to judge their feelings, nor do you have to do what they want. You understand that EIPs are upset when things don’t go their way, yet you don’t change your mind just because they’re unhappy.

This can be hard to do when EIPs or EI parents start criticizing or accusing you. But if you stiffen up and become defensive, it is like squaring your chest to invite a blow. Instead, take a page from martial arts, where the ultimate skill is to know when to step aside and let your opponents’ energy carry them forward and off-balance. Figuratively, you turn sideways and watch their emotions flow past you (“I guess you’re pretty upset with me, Mom,” or “I know you think I’m making a mistake, Dad”).

Sometimes conversation is the last thing you want to encourage with an EIP. You may prefer to keep emotional distance because the EIP likes to engage in domination, criticism, shaming, or sarcasm.

Most adult children have been trained to wait until an EI parent is finished with the interaction or else risk being called impolite or disrespectful. EI parents often refuse to let their children have emotional space. (“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”) The child is certainly not allowed to say when they’ve had enough. This is part of the passivity training that children of EIPs get.

The goal of taking a break is to get stronger so that even if you have some contact, you can stay free of their takeovers and dominance.

This is very different from the black-and-white, rigid, and often contradictory personality of the EIP. The inner world of EI personalities is not well enough developed or integrated to produce reliable stability, resilience, or self-awareness.

EI parents see their adult children as still immature inside, as if you were still their child. Seeing you in this outdated way, it’s no wonder they keep telling you how to be instead of finding out what’s really going on inside you. They feel entitled to assert parental authority long after you’ve become an adult.

Although EI parents see thoughtfulness as pointlessly dilatory, once you make your decision, they often shoot holes in it. This is one of those crazy-making incongruities of an EI parent. You should quickly make a decision, but it should be in agreement with them. Taking thoughtful action toward your own goals is evidence of your individuation from them, and that makes them insecure.

When the child’s deep attraction to a desirable thing is mocked, it shakes a child’s emotional self-confidence.

If your feelings or opinions differ from an EIP’s, they are likely to shame, ridicule, or tease you. EIPs are well known for mocking anyone’s inner experience that doesn’t match theirs. Their derision suggests you’re naïve and don’t know what’s right to think.

Remember, EIPs seek emotional control over you so you’ll prop up their self-esteem and emotional stability.

Because many EIPs need to be dominant to feel secure in a relationship, they find your individuality alarming. They rightly sense that once you trust your inner experience, you may slip the collar of their control.

Mia hid her true reactions because her parents often judged her feelings as excessive, weak, or oversensitive. Because of their rejection, Mia began to minimize and hide her feelings from herself too. She gradually lost her emotional freedom, her right to feel whatever she felt.

Unfortunately, if you’ve been made to feel foolish about your feelings, you may have learned to withdraw from people when you’re upset. You may brush off others’ sympathy by saying the equivalent of “I’m fine.” But withdrawing from comforting is very bad for you because you biologically need it. Normal human beings are soothed by touch and emotional connection with other people (Porges 2011). A caring person’s touch, voice tone, and proximity have a physically calming effect on us. Open yourself to this whenever you can. Don’t give the message that you can handle your distress without any help. Appreciate people who show empathy to you, don’t withdraw from them.

Your right to your inner world should be defended because in any relationship, both people have the right to have their inner experiences treated with respect.

Instead of fearing the moods of an EIP, you’ll protect your right to be yourself and to live your own life. You’ll learn how to defend your emotional autonomy and mental freedom, allowing yourself to feel what you feel and think what you think. You’ll stop denying your needs and build new skills to support your growth.

If EI parents invalidated or dismissed your inner experiences as a child, you may consider yourself unworthy of being taken seriously. You may even believe that what goes on inside you isn’t important. I witness this often in psychotherapy sessions. Although clients come to therapy to talk about their problems, they often downplay their concerns with self-dismissive comments like, “I know this is stupid, but…” or “This is such a small thing, I’m embarrassed to admit it.”

Diana Fosha (2000) calls these feelings the core state, and it’s what is recovered if psychotherapy is successful.

The inner self is who you feel yourself to be at the deepest level. It’s your unique individuality, underneath your personality, family role, and social identity.

Pay attention to your internal physical sensations. Figure out the meaning of your feelings. Refuse to judge and criticize yourself. Identify what you need.

Daydream about your life purpose and where you belong.

But rejected feelings don’t go away; they go underground instead. If enough feelings are suppressed, they will ultimately come out in classic symptoms of depression, anxiety, or acting out.

Therefore, it always pays to look for the cause of your feelings. Trust that there’s a reason and think about what happened just before you started feeling that way. When you treat your feelings like they make sense, you show your inner self that it can talk to you and you will listen.

Growing up with EI parents can make you very self-critical because they think that criticism is the only way to turn you into a responsible person. You end up feeling like you never measure up and

Self-criticism is no way to have a relationship with yourself. It sentences you to a life of anxious dependency in which no power is greater than someone else’s opinion of you.

EI parents can disrupt your awareness of healthy social needs as well because they often emotionally isolate their children for their own purposes.

Children learn their value by whether their parents attend to their inner worlds.

By being a good parent to yourself, you reverse multigenerational traumas of low self-esteem and emotional self-neglect.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed, afraid, or distressed, write down and say out loud every worry and feared outcome, no matter how insignificant. Express bluntly and simply what you’re afraid might happen, just like a child would. Especially be on the lookout for the horror of being exposed as inadequate or bad (Duvinsky 2017).

When you’ve recorded all your fears, feel compassion toward that terrified and overwhelmed child self. Then write and talk to yourself as an empathetic parent would. First remind yourself that everybody feels overwhelmed at times and that it’s normal to feel that way. Take your fears completely seriously, and reassure yourself that you are not alone and that you will get the help you need. Giving your inner child such comfort is an excellent way to become more self-accepting.

If you grew up with EI parents, you may have

been made to feel bad if your thoughts didn’t agree with theirs.

Thoughts innocently arise from our instincts for survival, security, and pleasure and are involuntary. They are the personal, raw materials of the mind and, as such, are neither good nor bad. However, EIPs judge your thinking to make sure you stay aligned with their beliefs.

But EI parents teach you to do just that; they act like you’re being rebellious or selfish if you don’t consider them first in every step of your thought process.

For EI parents, everything is about how important, respected, and in control they feel. So what happens if you have your own thoughts and opinions? They see you as disloyal.

The message was that they were decent humans only if they saw things from the parents’ point of view.

Fortunately, Ashley cleared her mind enough to realize (1) she was not her mother’s parent, (2) her mother was not in a position to dictate who met her needs, and (3) though she monitored her mother’s overall care, she could not be at her beck and call while working a full-time job. This clarification of thought was a tremendous relief to her. Ashley also found she felt less resentful and more interested in her mother’s care once she stopped feeling disloyal for even thinking about her own needs.

This overtaken section of your mind has been commandeered to the point where you now worry obsessively about how the EIP in your life will react to what you want to do.

Respectful relationships depend on each person having the freedom of their own thoughts. The most satisfying relationships occur when you both can think your own thoughts and use your whole mind, without judging or correcting each other. In the diagram below, you can see how coequal minds can relate, resulting in sharing, not domination.

Just thinking freely for yourself is a significant sign of growth; you don’t have to speak your mind to the EIP until you feel comfortable doing so. Later, you may communicate more of your thoughts to them in ways that feel natural and fit your personality. But there’s no need to push it. Get your mind back first.

Instead of teaching you to think, EI parents teach you to judge your thoughts. EI parents always turn thinking into a moral issue. They will attack their child’s open, honest thoughts if they feel threatened. By acting wounded, insulted, or appalled, EI parents make it clear that you are only good when your thoughts are nice.

Your freedom of thought is foundational to your psychological health and independence. No matter how “bad” some thoughts may seem, they’re natural and blameless phenomena with a life of their own. The healthy human mind thinks without boundaries, so wise people let their thoughts come and go without taking much ownership of them. Sometimes thinking is a great way to blow off steam; it doesn’t hurt anybody and can’t be controlled anyway. We can choose our actions, but none of us has any choice about what we’ll think next.

The process of mental clearing is very simple: mistrust any thought that gives you a sinking feeling.

Many people think self-critical thoughts are the voice of their conscience, but that’s not true. Legitimate conscience guides you; it doesn’t make sweeping indictments of how good or bad you are.

Harsh self-judgment and self-blame are mockeries of self-guidance, echoing the rigid thinking of EIPs in your childhood. Your conscience’s...

Our true thoughts have a matter-of-fact, clear quality. They do what thoughts are supposed to do: help us solve problems, be creative, protect us, and get our needs met. But inherited thought-patterns are different; they feel tyrannical. Their oppressive guilt tells you their roots started in early emotional coercion. It’s not your natural mind that tells you to be perfect or beats you up for making mistakes. Nor does it tell you it’s wrong to disagree with authorities no matter what. Pressured, self-attacking, or guilty thoughts are the mental legacy left behind after you’ve been emotionally overpowered by EI authority figures.

Whenever you find yourself thinking, I should, or I have to, stop and ask yourself where you learned this rigid rule. Then ask yourself what your actual options are. That is what Ashley did in the earlier story. She realized that her “should” feeling was based on the belief that her mother’s demands were more important than her own fatigue. She had inherited the belief that good children always put their parents first.