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November 8 - November 26, 2019
A childhood spent with EI parents can lead to long-lasting feelings of emotional loneliness, as well as ambivalence about relationships in general. Emotional loneliness is the result of feeling unseen and unresponded to, no matter how hard you try to communicate and connect.
EI parents can draw you into reacting to them with unusual emotional intensity. That’s because they offload their unpleasant emotional states by acting in ways that stir up the same emotions in you. They pretend they don’t have such emotions, but actually they project them onto you to be contained and processed so that it seems you’re the one having the feeling. For instance, a passive-aggressive EIP might make you furious while they remain unaware of the extent of their own anger. This unconscious way of getting rid of disturbing emotion by making others feel it is called projective
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Developing a sense of self is also necessary for the self-awareness and self-reflection that allow us to observe ourselves and how our behavior affects other people. Without a sense of self fostered in childhood, people can’t self-reflect and therefore have no way to grow and change psychologically. Instead, they are limited to blaming others and expecting others to change first.
EIPs live in the immediate emotional moment and can be oblivious to the chain of causation over time. Instead of seeing reality as a timeline, EIPs experience events as isolated blips unrelated to each other. This makes it hard for them to anticipate the future or to learn from errors. Ignoring time’s sequential reality lets them say and do the most dumbfounding things because they don’t feel the need to be logically consistent with their past statements or actions. For instance, they may be blithely oblivious to how their recent behavior has made them unwelcome. They can’t see why things
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Lack of time sequence awareness also makes lying seem like a reasonable solution.
setting a limit doesn’t mean you don’t love somebody. It just means you are claiming the right to think of yourself too.
Having EI parents doesn’t mean you will be an emotionally immature parent yourself. In fact, you might be the one in your family tree to finally stop the multigenerational transfer of emotional pain. All you have to do is notice how your child is feeling, listen to them with empathy, and let them know that they are securely held in your heart. Apologize when you’re wrong, take them completely seriously, forego sarcasm and mockery, and treat them with respect. When a child knows you are present, respectful, empathetic, and fair, they won’t feel the emotional loneliness you may have felt.
These healing fantasies should be questioned because they prolong an improbable hope for parental change. Instead, you are more likely to be healed by your own efforts than anything your parents might do. Whatever does improve in your relationship with EI parents will likely be caused by a shift in your outlook, not a change in them.
You can’t change them, and you can’t make them happy. Even if you knock yourself out, the best you will do is briefly lessen their discontent. That’s because even though their emotionally immature relationship system (EIRS) makes it feel like you are responsible for their happiness, their emotional limits don’t allow them to absorb what you try to give them.
Your heart will feel lighter once you accept that you can’t make them happy, fix their lives, or make them proud of you. It’s usually beyond them to think about your feelings, and they can’t sustain reciprocal emotional intimacies.
When faced with a serious problem, they panic. In their mind, the only answer is that someone must save them. They want you to jump in and join them in their black hole of desperation, followed by miraculously making it all better.
The proper response to any of their emergencies is not to jump in, but to step back and assess realities first.
You don’t argue because you don’t accept the premise that your preference is anything to debate.
You can introduce broader topics. Because EIPs think in stereotyped ways, they get stuck in conversational ruts they can’t shift out of, even if they wanted to. The rigidity of their self-absorption limits their topics. They may secretly welcome someone leading them out of the blind canyons of their own preoccupations.
Lacking in empathy and curiosity, what matters to them is how you treat them, not what you feel or think.
EI parents often react as if your normal emotions are too extreme, as if there were something wrong with you for having a heartfelt reaction. They thus teach you to downplay your feelings because they are uncomfortable with these strong emotions. They convince you that many of your emotions are unwarranted or excessive.
Their overall message to her was “Don’t feel.”
Disregarding unwanted behavior is an effective way of decreasing its frequency.
By getting to know yourself and valuing your inner experiences, you get better at understanding and loving others.
Daydreams are everybody’s first step toward finding a more meaningful and rewarding life.
You might be the first in your family to see the difference in life quality that honoring one’s inner experiences can make.
The quest for self-knowledge and positive, self-affirming experiences is not escapism; it is what we need to change for the better.
Caitlyn had learned this distorted self-concept from her depressed and angry mother who was too bitter about life to appreciate Caitlyn’s qualities. Caitlyn was a giving person, but her mother never saw it.
Instead of relating to others as individuals, EIPs lump people into distorted, exaggerated roles. They tend to see every situation as a story populated by victims, aggressors, or rescuers. As they reduce reality to these story lines, EIPs jump to conclusions about who’s bad, who’s innocent, and who should step in to save them. This distorted role-playing is called the drama triangle
Once you stop being fooled by drama triangles, you will be able to relate to people more effectively with less fear or anger. For instance, if an EIP tries to dominate or guilt you, you don’t have to accept being their victim. You can take action on your own behalf instead. You can determine what’s best for you instead of being blown around by other people’s emotional dramas.
EIPs see you as cold and uncaring if you don’t jump into their problems with both feet. If you hesitate to sacrifice yourself for them, they call your basic goodness into question. They can make you think you’re not loving enough.
When you love yourself as an evolving being, it feels right to protect your energy and interests.
Attending to your breathing helps you remember that you are present and have value, even as the EIP tries to make the interaction all about them.
Interrupting emotional takeovers means that you say what you feel, ask for what you want, and set boundaries on what you don’t like. By immediately speaking up about what you need in the moment—however tentatively or awkwardly—you step out of roles that keep your EIP interactions shallow and full of stress.
Relationship leaders model respectful behavior and teach reciprocity in their interactions. They are explicit about how they want to be treated and what feels relationally rewarding for them. Relationship leaders spell out supportive values that inspire people to treat each other well.
Interactions are better managed when you aren’t worrying about the overall quality of your relationship. Handling an interaction is doable, but improving a relationship is too big a goal. By focusing on only one interaction at a time, you will feel much more effective and less discouraged.
You can interact with your parents as if they were acquaintances you had recently met socially—having no expectation that they would meet your deeper emotional needs. You don’t have to love them, and they don’t have to love you. You can just get along.
When the upset person encounters curiosity and sympathy instead of a counterattack, the inevitability of conflict is turned upside down.
Maturely handled anger may be emotional and intense, but it stays on topic and deals directly with the other person about a specific issue.
