Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents

by Lindsay C Gibson

  Chapter 3: Longing for a Relationship with Your EI Parent

  Why You Keep Trying

  If you have EI parents, you may still long for a closer relationship with them. You may continue to wish they would show more interest in your life. And more than anything, you may still hope that one day they’ll love you back in a way that makes you feel seen. Perhaps you’ve dreamed of finding a way to reach them, if only you could discover the right opening and the right skills. You may have hoped that, as an adult, you could find a way to make them finally be emotionally available.

  Unfortunately, the personality defenses and fears of EI parents make it nearly impossible for them to tolerate closeness for long. In this chapter, we’ll explore why your hopes for a better relationship with EI parents often leave you feeling disappointed and emotionally lonely.

  The Relationship Experiences You Long For

  As an adult child of an EI parent, you probably didn’t get enough childhood emotional connection, intimate communication, or parental approval—all the things that make you feel loved by your parents. However, your EI parents might scoff at the idea that you didn’t feel loved. If you confronted them with not loving you, they would be as puzzled as you are. Of course they love you; you’re their child. They have no idea they would have to treat you certain ways in order for you to feel that.

  Feeling love from an EI parent is like trying to experience the mountains by looking at a photograph. You can see the color and shape of them, but you can’t experience the crispness of the air, the rustling tree sounds, or the sheer sense of space and grandeur that fills the atmosphere. Like a photograph, you can see your parents, but the sensation of their emotional presence is missing. It’s like you’re trying to relate to their reflection in a mirror instead of face to face. You can’t quite put your finger on it, but you know you’re not directly connecting with them.

  Now, let’s further explore what you’ve been missing and longing for from your EI parents.

  You Long to be Known by Them

  We know that children need attention and loving connection, but how exactly does a parent accomplish that? It takes something more than just looking and listening. There has to be active psychological involvement by the parent. A parent can be looking right at a child, and be able to repeat everything the child said, but if the parent isn’t also sensitively imagining the child’s inner state (Fonagy et al. 2004), the child won’t feel a connection. It’s not what the parent says; it’s how the parent shows interest in the child’s unique subjective experience (Stern 2004). When the parent’s inner self attunes to the child’s inner world, the child feels seen, known, and loved.

  Watch young children and parents together, and you’ll see how many times the children look to their parents for eye contact and meaningful interaction (Campbell 1977). This isn’t just attention-seeking; children get emotional refueling from these moments of connection with their parent (Mahler and Pine 1975). Children need their parent’s emotional engagement and affection in order to grow stronger, more secure, and eventually more independent. No wonder a parent’s love feels so crucial.

  Your adult desire for a better relationship with your EI parents partly originates in this inner child that is still looking to be seen and responded to. Unfortunately, trying to connect with an EI parent often comes up against their refusal to engage at a deeper level. The EI parent’s nervous avoidance of deep emotions—their affect phobia (McCullough et al. 2003)—makes them pull back from such intimacy.

  You Want Better Communication

  As an adult, you may have learned good communication skills and how important they are for satisfying relationships. Perhaps you learned to speak up when there’s a problem and try to work things out directly with the other person. You might have tried these new skills with your parents. And you may have found that while it is true that effective communication is crucial for good relationships, it only works when the other person is willing to participate.

  EI parents are uncomfortable with emotional communication. They are not accustomed to dealing with other people’s feelings and don’t know what to say. Instead of empathically listening to their children when they’re upset or soothing them with affection, EI parents instead often try to comfort their children with treats or activities. Emotional communication doesn’t come any easier to them once their child is an adult.

  Maybe you just want to have a heart-to-heart with them or talk about how to improve your relationship. You may think you’re making a heartfelt attempt at closeness, but they may feel they’re being thrown into the deep end of something they can’t swim in.

  Let’s look at your request to talk from your EI parent’s viewpoint for a moment. Maybe when your EI parent was a kid, someone wanting to talk to them meant they were in trouble. Telling them you want to talk might make them worry they’re about to be blamed for something, increasing their defensiveness. For this reason, it’s always best to initiate deeper conversations by first asking for a short amount of their time, say five or ten minutes, and then asking only specific questions or sharing one or two feelings with them at a time. If you keep it short and structured at the beginning, they may be willing to respond later to more open-ended questions.

  Exercise: How Did It Go When You Tried to Communicate?

  Think about a time when you tried to get your parent to listen and talk with you at a deeper level. How did they respond? How did you feel after opening up to them? Write about this memory in your journal. If their reaction wasn’t emotionally satisfying, do you think—given what you’ve read so far—that the problem may have been their difficulty in relating at a deeper level? Write down your conclusions.

  You Long for Their Praise and Approval

  Many adult children of EI parents hope that achievements and success will be the magic keys to more of their parent’s attention. Even when these adult children create successful lives of their own, they still look for their parent’s approval.

  Perfectionism and chasing success are ways that some of us might try to win that all-important parental approval and praise. To this end, we may choose life professions to impress our parents or marry mates who seem right off a parental checklist. But it’s hard to get praise from self-preoccupied EI parents. They just aren’t all that interested in their children’s accomplishments, unless it gives the parent bragging rights.

  Many of my clients have reported being surprised that their parents boasted about them to a friend, yet never told them directly they were proud of them. This can be confusing, but it makes sense because bragging to others allows EI parents to keep emotional distance while still claiming your accomplishment as social currency. This is emotionally safer for them than looking you in the eye and telling you how pleased they are. EI parents would find such direct, emotionally intimate praise intensely uncomfortable.

  EI Behaviors That Prevent Connection

  Here are five common EI behaviors that make it hard to have a close relationship with EI parents.

  1. They Don’t Show Interest

  EI parents often seem to lack interest in their children’s lives. Due to their low empathy and preoccupation with their own concerns, they seldom show interest in anything beyond what immediately matters to them. These parents might light up while talking about their interests, but act disinterested or distracted when their children share something about their lives.

  Brenda’s Story

  Brenda’s father, Ben, was a taciturn New Englander. He raised Brenda after her volatile, punitive mother died when Brenda was fifteen. Although Ben mostly kept to himself, he sometimes comforted Brenda after her mother’s abusive harangues. Brenda therefore saw him as the more caring parent, even though he otherwise showed little interest in her activities.

  Brenda went on to become a well-respected medical researcher. When she was invited to speak about her work at a prestigious international conference, Bre
nda thought her father would finally be excited and impressed by her accomplishments.

  But Ben showed little interest. His tepid responses to Brenda’s success crushed her. He seemed to sidestep every effort she made to gain his approval. Even when Ben did come to one of Brenda’s award ceremonies, he embarrassed her socially with his gruff and dismissive comments about her work. He could not get out of himself long enough to realize this was not the time to express his opinions.

  Ben had very narrow interests, mostly focused on his political beliefs and the state of the economy. Regardless of what Brenda achieved, it seemed unimportant compared to whatever her father was interested in. After each phone call home, Brenda was left with the humiliating feeling that she was begging her father to be proud of her.

  2. They Stay Overly Busy

  Some EI parents keep distance by staying too busy to stop and connect. Children who grow up with overly busy parents know that their parent’s real interests lie elsewhere and that they come in second to the parent’s outside pursuits. Such on-the-go parents can be so activity-obsessed or success-driven that their relationships with their children wither. They don’t see how they’re depriving their child of their presence and attention. Aren’t they giving their all, all the time?

  Overly busy parents misjudge how much time they are taking away from their families. Such parents may go overboard in workaholism, physical activities, getting an advanced degree, nonstop socializing, or constant volunteering. It’s as if these parents can’t imagine that such productive activity could be harmful to anyone. If they see signs of problems, they rationalize that the importance of the activity is worth a little sacrifice on everyone’s part.

  Katie’s Story

  Katie’s mother, Bella, was always in the middle of finishing up some activity, such as cleaning the house, fixing dinner, or returning phone calls. When Katie visited, she could tell her mother was antsy to get back to her tasks, using the excuse that she would have time to relax with Katie later. That time never came. Even when Katie had a chance to sit down and talk with her mom, her mother kept one eye on the TV or began doodling in her word game book. When Katie called her mother on it, her mother said, “I’m listening!” but wouldn’t stop. Her father was the same way, stealing away at the first opportunity to work in his garage. Her parents’ busyness made it impossible for a sustained emotional connection to take root. Their discomfort with intimacy hid behind things that “just have to get done.”

  Anyone can get caught up in too many activities or duties, such as a demanding job or caretaking responsibilities. But if parents are adequately emotionally sensitive, they will take it seriously if their children complain about not having enough time with them. The more emotionally mature parent will empathize with the child’s experience and, if possible, try to create more balance between their activities and their availability to their children.

  Of course, sometimes economic realities make it impossible for struggling parents to be available, no matter how emotionally mature they might be. It is a tough time for the whole family when there isn’t much choice about how much a parent must work. But if the parent listens to the child’s feelings and explains the financial situation, then the child at least knows the separation they experience is for a meaningful reason and not because the parent is more interested in other things.

  3. They Show Envy and Jealousy

  Some EI parents actually envy their child’s success and social attention. Instead of being happy for their child, envious parents are more likely to discount and minimize their child’s abilities and achievements. These parents lack the maturity to vicariously enjoy another person’s good fortune. In their competitive approach to life, a successful offspring threatens to steal their spotlight.

  Jealous parents feel left out when their child gets attention from someone else. These parents see the child as stealing attention that should be theirs. While envy is covetous—they want something you have—jealousy is relationship-based. These parents resent that their child is getting special attention that the parents want all to themselves.

  Shonda’s Story

  Shonda’s mother, Ayana, liked playing the matriarch in her social circle and couldn’t stand it when people paid more attention to Shonda. Even after Shonda was grown, Ayana kept treating Shonda as her child in any social situation. At one family gathering, an uncle came up to greet them. Shonda was a probation officer, and her uncle told her he’d love to hear her opinion of a notorious juvenile crime that had just happened in their neighborhood. Before Shonda could respond, Ayana jumped in with an incredulous tone and said, “Shonda? What would Shonda know about that?” Although Shonda actually knew a lot about that, Ayana couldn’t stand for her to have all the attention.

  George’s Story

  George’s immature father loved to be the center of attention. When George was a kid and had friends over, his father made George the butt of numerous jokes and put-downs. He drew the other boys into siding with him, disrupting the boys’ friendship bond, even though it obviously made George feel bad.

  Under these conditions, children of envious and jealous parents might learn it’s better to hide their talents or stay out of the spotlight so as not to tempt a put-down from a competitive parent. Due to their parents’ envy and jealousy, success can be an ambivalent issue for these adult children.

  4. They Get Agitated and Easily Upset

  Some EI parents don’t keep good emotional connections with anyone because they live in a flurry of crises and unsettled emotion. They can’t rest or let things go and are extremely touchy about the smallest things. They are pathologically sensitive to criticism—often seeing it when it’s not intended—and never feel like anybody cares about them enough. Sometimes these parents get quite paranoid and feel sure that others are against them for no good reason. They can get so agitated that people around them have a full-time job reassuring them and picking up the pieces when the smallest thing goes wrong. A person who is so consumed with their own anxieties and projections has no room for peaceful, loving connections.

  5. They Are Inconsistent and Contradictory

  EI parents have a poorly integrated personality structure that leaves them emotionally fragmented and compartmentalized, resulting in very contradictory, inconsistent behaviors. It’s hard to have a close adult relationship with them because, like children, they are more an amalgam of reactive moods rather than a consistent, integrated personality. As we saw in chapter 1, they don’t seem to have developed the cohesive sense of self that could give them inner stability and security.

  Everyone’s personality has inner parts that are almost like little autonomous subpersonalities within the overall personality (Schwartz 1995). We acknowledge our inner multiplicity (Goulding and Schwartz 2002) when we say things like, “I don’t know what got into me,” “You don’t seem like yourself today,” or “Part of me wants to, but then another part doesn’t.” Various therapists have called these personality aspects the inner child (Bradshaw 1990; Whitfield 1987; Capacchione 1991), internal roles and voices (Berne 1964; Stone and Stone 1989), or the internal family system (Schwartz 1995). Having different aspects to your personality is not a clinical condition, such as “multiple personality” disorder, but is a natural characteristic of human personality.

  For emotionally healthy people, their personality parts function together in a conscious, well-integrated way, like a smoothly functioning committee. However, the EI parent’s personality parts remain isolated and contradictory. Lacking good personality integration, defensive EI personality parts can suddenly take over without warning. The unexpected ­activation of these contradictory personality parts explains the often-­astonishing inconsistencies of EI parents.

  EIPs and EI parents keep themselves emotionally safe by interacting through their wariest and most protective personality parts (Schwartz 1995). Occasionally they will let their guard down—such as whe
n they fall in love—but turmoil and mistrust may soon return because their protective parts won’t allow true emotional intimacy for long. When closeness looms, these protective parts soon find a reason to get suspicious, accuse others, or start fights. This is why EIPs can share tender moments at times, yet be unable to tolerate sustained closeness.

  You Might Fear You’re Emotionally Immature Too

  As you read about parental emotional immaturity, you might wonder whether you’ve been an EI parent to your child at times. That would be understandable because all of us have felt uninterested, overly busy, envious, agitated, or inconsistent at times. The difference is that for emotionally connected people, these are passing states that don’t interfere with their relationship capacity.

  If you are reading this book, you are probably acutely aware of how you may have suffered from a lack of connection with your parents. You probably know what it’s like to not feel important or to have low self-worth due to emotional deprivation or abuse. This self-awareness probably means you’ll think about your effect on your children, and you likely won’t pass down the same kind of emotional pain in your parenting.

  The fact that you would even worry about affecting your children puts you at low risk for emotional immaturity. Concern about being emotionally immature suggests you can self-reflect, feel empathy for others, and have a desire for psychological self-improvement, qualities rarely found in EIPs. We all make mistakes or hurt others at times, but if you are interested in what goes on inside other people and sense their feelings, if you are careful to nurture your relationships and take responsibility for your role in a problem, you are by definition adequately emotionally mature.