Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents

by Lindsay C Gibson

  Being around an admired person who is emotionally mature will feel different. Instead of making you feel inferior, they will inspire you to pursue your goals. Emotionally mature people show an inclusive, respectful, and coequal attitude toward other people. They elevate you with them, rather than make you feel less than.

  Free Your Self-Concept from the Toxic Distortions of Shame

  Shame has a special role in distorting your self-concept because, as we saw in chapter 2, shame doesn’t seem like an emotion, it feels like who you are. This has serious consequences for your self-concept.

  Shame is such an excruciating experience that it makes people want to disappear, sink through the floor, or die of embarrassment. Remember from chapter 2 that when parents treat you as if you’re bad, your self-­concept can be burdened with what psychologist Jerry Duvinsky (2017) calls a core shame identity.

  But feelings of shame don’t tell a truth about you, and it’s important to clear this up. The only truth about shame is that an EIP probably made you feel awful about yourself at an age when you were psychologically defenseless. As an adult, you can defuse shame feelings by exposing the erroneous self-belief that underlies it, looking at it without running away, and then questioning it. Duvinsky (2017) points out that repeatedly exploring childhood shame feelings and then relabeling them correctly—as highly unpleasant emotions, not the truth of you—shrinks shame back into a manageable emotion, not a declaration of your worth as a human being.

  By questioning shame, you can unmask it as just an emotion foisted on you by others, instead of being your core identity. Instead of absorbing shame into your self-concept, you could treat it as just another emotion. Here’s how to do that.

  Exercise: Take the Sting Out of Shame

  Think of something you have felt ashamed about. As you revisit the moment, keep reminding yourself this is just an emotion you’re feeling, not something bad about you. Duvinsky (2017) recommends writing down how the shame feels, while repeatedly relabeling it as nothing more than a painful emotion. Tell yourself, “This feels awful, but it’s just a feeling. It could never, ever be a statement of who I am. This feeling of shame is just an emotion, like any other emotion.” By facing it this way, shame becomes just another painful feeling you can easily survive.

  Once you face these feelings, twinges of shame will no longer feel so catastrophic. You may even see shame as a helpful warning that someone is trying to make you feel bad so they can feel better about themselves. Seeing shame for what it is not only helps free you from others’ emotional coercions but repairs your self-concept as well.

  Affirm Your Self-Concept as a Loving Person

  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.

  Doubting your capacity for love is one of the most damaging self-distortions that can come out of your relationship with EI parents. Your inability to save them, make them happy, or make them feel loved enough can make you worry you might be emotionally lacking. For example, one woman grew up believing her heart was like a “frozen pea,” while another said she feared dating because men would see there was “not enough” to her. Both these people had emotionally insatiable EI parents who never validated how emotionally generous their hearts really were.

  Just because an EI parent can’t appreciate your efforts at love doesn’t mean you aren’t loving. They often just can’t accept it, or it’s never enough. Don’t tie your worth or goodness to whether an EI parent feels loved by you. Instead, channel more love and appreciation into your relationship with yourself. With an EI parent, you will surely need this extra self-support.

  Realize the Emotional Costs of a Diminished Self-Concept

  Many people have lived with a negative self-concept so long that they can no longer feel how it affects them. Instead of feeling indignation or hurt feelings, these people have conditioned themselves to accept subjugation and disrespect. This dulls the pain of being treated badly, but it’s important to awaken to the high cost of a low self-concept. Once they finally realize how painful it is to feel so diminished by others, they can do something about it. As Tony Robbins (1992) has described, sometimes the best way to motivate yourself to change is by deliberately amplifying how painful the old way is.

  For instance, let’s say you laughed along with family members who made fun of you in an unkind way, just as they did in your childhood. You could just brush it off as a familiar script you’ve played a million times, but what if you stopped and intentionally felt how the derogatory remarks emotionally affected you? What if you realized what it was like to be scared to defend yourself or, worse, to laugh along with your tormentors? If you really let it sink in, you might begin to feel compassion for yourself. Keep amplifying the feelings until you realize how destructive those experiences are to your self-esteem and your trust of others. By feeling your hurt and the compassion it arouses, you begin to see yourself differently.

  Change is easier when you really feel the magnitude of what your old distorted self-concept has cost you. That’s when your pain can be used for good.

  How Does It Feel to Have a Healthy Self-Concept?

  A positive self-concept gets a good start from a parent’s connection and loving support. But there is also an individual spark in each of us that supports resilience and self-recovery no matter what your history (Vaillant 1993). Perhaps it comes from an intimate relationship with yourself, in which you just know you are destined for more. Some of us, even in the absence of nurturing relationships, seem to have mysterious inner resources that allow us to be our own conscious companion, enabling us to learn and grow our way out of adverse circumstances. This source of inner friendship with ourselves can give us self-care, self-comforting, and even self-protective instincts against exploitative people.

  You’ll know you have a healthy self-concept when you have gotten to know yourself and found yourself good. You will cherish your individuality—your interests, your passions, your ideals—plus those new strengths you’re working on. With a healthy self-concept, you are not obsessed with correcting what’s wrong with you. You’re just trying to fulfill your potential and become more genuinely yourself. You have a healthy self-concept when your individuality is precious to you, and you don’t want to be anybody or anything other than who you are. This kind of self-concept is your birthright as a human being.

  Highlights to Remember

  Your self-concept is your knowledge of who you are and what you’re like. Unfortunately, growing up with EI parents, you may have developed a distorted self-concept that encourages feelings of inferiority and subjugation. EI relationships can trap you in distorted self-concepts, such as feelings of being an imposter or one-dimensional drama triangle roles. But you always have the option to reclaim your autonomy and authority, in spite of feeling less than others or encountering blank spots in your self-concept. By trusting your inner self-guidance and finding mentors and role models to channel your development, you can build an enhanced and healthier self-concept.

  Chapter 10: Now You Can Have the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted

  Just Focus on One Interaction at a Time

  You can create healthier relationships with your EI parents by thinking about what you are willing to accept, one interaction at a time. Time spent with your EI parent will be more productive if you keep your mind on the immediate interaction instead of the whole relationship at once. It’s too much pressure to try to have a good relationship with them; just try for one constructive interaction in the moment. The key is to relate to your EI parent more honestly and actively, instead of keeping quiet and allowing them to take over or getting into an argument with them. As long as you maintain a secure self-connection and awareness of EI tactics, you won’t be so vulnerable to EI coercions.

  By
being loyal to yourself and your inner world, you maintain your boundaries, emotional autonomy, and right to your own individuality. As you put your self-connection first, you’ll be capable of a new kind of relationship with your parents—one in which you’re much more self-aware and self-protective. In many ways, this will be the relationship you’ve always wanted because it’s the relationship in which you can finally be yourself around them.

  It hasn’t just been about how they treated you, it’s also about how you’ve overlooked yourself in order to get along with them. It’s as if you unwittingly “signed” a relationship contract with them in childhood without realizing what it would cost you in your adult life. Thankfully, you can now revise that old relationship arrangement to be fairer to you. Your new awareness of their level of emotional maturity will enable you to see what they’re doing, and ask yourself whether you want to change how you respond.

  Even if you are out of contact with your parents or they are no longer living, you can still use your memories to imagine relating to them differently. By mentally redoing previous interactions, you can even change how the past feels to you. One woman told me that reimagining calmer, more autonomous responses to her father had given her the best relationship she had had with him in years—and he had been dead for seven of those.

  Now let’s review the unspoken agreement you may still have with your EIP or EI parents and come up with better terms.

  Do You Want to Keep Your Old EI-Relationship Contract?

  Most relationships build up unspoken agreements over time, but we usually don’t become aware of them until there’s a problem. These “contracts” mostly remain hidden, but by bringing them out in the open, you can see what you’ve been agreeing to. The following exercise can help you become aware of what you may have been going along with and see whether you still want to follow those terms.

  Exercise: Reevaluate the Terms of Your EIP Relationship

  Apply the following statements to a significant EIP in your life and in your journal write “agree” or “disagree” for each one.

  I agree that your needs should come before anyone else’s.

  I agree not to speak my own mind when I’m around you.

  Please say anything you want, and I won’t object.

  Yes, I must be ignorant if I think differently from you.

  Of course you should be upset if anyone says no to you about anything.

  Please educate me about what I should like or dislike.

  Yes, it makes sense for you to decide how much time I should want to spend with you.

  You’re right, I should show you “respect” by disowning my own thoughts in your presence.

  Of course you shouldn’t have to exercise self-control if you don’t feel like it.

  It’s fine if you don’t think before you speak.

  It’s true: you should never have to wait or deal with any unpleasantness.

  I agree: you shouldn’t have to adjust when circumstances change around you.

  It’s okay if you ignore me, snap at me, or don’t act glad to see me: I’ll still want to spend time with you.

  Of course you are entitled to be rude.

  I agree that you shouldn’t have to take direction from anyone.

  Please talk as long as you like about your favorite topics; I’m ready to just listen and never be asked any questions about myself.

  The point of this exercise is to make you aware of how you may have unwittingly allowed your EIP to take over as the most important person in the relationship. By exposing these relationship terms, it’ll help you be more aware of what you are willing to go along with in the future.

  Two Thoughts That Will Rebalance Any Interaction with an EIP

  Unfair EI relationship patterns can be rebalanced with two new thoughts that will vastly improve your interactions with any EIP. When there is conflict or you feel emotionally coerced by an EIP, do the following:

  See yourself as equal in importance to them. (“I am just as important as they are.”)

  Keep a conscious self-connection and accept yourself unconditionally. (“I have good stuff inside me.”)

  Recalling these two facts—you are just as important as they are, and you have good stuff inside you—blocks any EIP’s attempt at coercion or entitlement. When you remember these two things, your interaction with an EIP will feel different. The EIP may continue to do what they do, but if you see yourself as equally important and stay self-connected, you’ll have a completely different relationship experience. When you exercise these foundational attitudes, you can’t be dominated, separated from yourself, or fooled into thinking that your experience is not as important as theirs.

  1. You Are Equal in Importance to Them

  EIPs can’t imagine that anybody’s needs are as important as theirs. Because they feel entitled to a position above you in the relationship hierarchy, they assume you too will accept their primacy. Such confidence can give them an air of authority and even charisma, but their self-assurance originates in egocentricity and emotional immaturity. Fortunately, now you can see through such self-centered assumptions.

  Your self-reconnection begins as soon as you start wondering what exactly makes them a more important person than you. As you ponder this question, you will discover that there isn’t a reason why they’re more important than you; it’s just the feeling you get.

  Once you see yourself as equal in importance—in spite of their behavior to the contrary—you’ll naturally think of more active and assertive responses. You’ll ask for what you prefer in the moment. You’ll respond in ways that gently remind them: “I’m here too, and my needs matter as much as yours.” You’ll explain what would be best for you without shame or apology because there’s nothing shameful about being on an equal footing.

  2. You Keep Your Self-Connection and Accept Yourself Unconditionally

  By honoring the worth of your inner self and inner world, you’ll feel a new security and contentment. When you accept yourself as you are and stay connected with your immediate experience in this moment, you’ll feel stronger inside. When you love yourself as an evolving being, it feels right to protect your energy and interests. No longer will you dissociate from your own feelings in order to make EIPs the center of your attention. It’ll feel unacceptable to put your needs on hold just because they like to come first.

  It’s important to resist the urge to shrink yourself into a tiny space inside yourself when you’re around the EIP. It’s wrong for you to take up as little room as possible just so they can expand. This shriveling of your value is a leftover childhood defense and should come to an end. By protecting your right to your own thoughts and feelings, you stay present. Instead of shrinking and becoming their obliging audience, you can remain “full of yourself.”

  How to Keep Your Self-Connection and Stay Present

  The only way an EIP can take over your emotional and mental life is to get you to disconnect from your inner life. When EIPs spellbind you into passivity, they induce emotional immobility and dissociation from yourself. Now, however, you can use mindfulness to reverse that process.

  Being mindfully conscious of yourself may look like you’re not doing anything—you may even be silent—but it is a huge accomplishment because it keeps you from going along with the EIP’s expectation that you exist to serve their self-esteem and keep them emotionally stable. Mindfulness is so psychologically effective because it gives you a tool for resetting your mindset from passive to intentional.

  If you dedicate yourself to mindful self-awareness while in the EIP’s presence, you will regain your emotional autonomy, mental freedom, and the right to be yourself. It’s hard to overestimate the liberation you give yourself when you intentionally focus on your own feelings and thoughts when in close physical proximity to an EIP.

  You can practice this by looking an EIP i
n the eye while deliberately remaining aware of all your own thoughts and feelings. See what it feels like to be fully present inside even as they expect you to be focusing on them. This intentional self-awareness is an audacious rejection of the old relationship contract because they are no longer the center of your attention. This emotional autonomy and freedom of thought is well worth practicing so you stop automatically giving up your self-possession in their presence.

  Instead of fixating on what the EIP wants, pay attention to your body sensations, your immediate emotional experience, and your thoughts. By paying attention to what you are directly experiencing in this moment, you are no longer putting the EIP first.

  You might want to try Thich Nhat Hanh’s (2011) mindfulness practices, which are extremely practical and easy to use. For instance, you can stay self-connected by focusing on your breath and saying to yourself, “Breathing in, I am here. Breathing out, I am calm.” 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.

  By practicing these new attitudes and approaches, you shift your interactions with your EI parent toward being about two people instead of one. Next we’ll look at more ways to accomplish this.

  How to Steer Your EIP Relationships Toward More Equal and Peaceful Interactions

  No relationship is satisfying unless you can be genuine. In this next section, we are going to look at ways to interact with an EI parent that will raise the chances of real connection with them, yet not leave you feeling that you let yourself down.

  Interrupt Old Patterns Before They Take Over

  To avoid emotional takeovers, pay attention when an EIP puts pressure on you to take responsibility for validating or fixing their feelings. When you experience that tug to make them feel better at your own expense, you can interrupt the takeover by staying aware of what they’re doing. It also helps to narrate their behavior with self-talk like the following: