Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD
I can’t say enough good things about this book. First of all, it’s important to remember that most parents do the best job that they can when raising their children. One thing that I valued about this book, was that it never takes the tone of bashing or blaming parents for all a child’s difficulties. However, it does not shy away from addressing what results from core emotional needs being unmet during childhood. Secondly, I appreciated the author’s empowering approach; aiming to help the reader take responsibility for their own needs and teaching strategies for learning to negotiate relationships with people who lack emotional maturity. I found the book to be extremely helpful in breaking down these into manageable steps: learning to stay observational not emotional, practicing emotional maturity awareness, and stepping out of old roles. Lastly, the book ends with a chapter on how to recognize emotional maturity in others. Often, when children grow up in homes with emotionally immature parents, they continue to seek out other people who have similar or familiar emotional patterns. This can lead to a lifetime of hardship and broken relationships unless they can learn to recognize and pursue healthy and mature people. I believe that learning to identify the characteristics and behavior patterns of mature individuals is beneficial to everyone, regardless of childhood experiences.
For many years now, I have journeyed with women who have found themselves in a pattern of frustrating, chaotic, or imbalanced relationships often as a result of an emotionally unfulfilled childhood. Many of them have found freedom by growing in their own awareness, acceptance and emotional maturity. If this resonates with you, please contact me so that we can talk further about working towards your own healing.health.wholeness.
https://www.newharbinger.com/adult-children-emotionally-immature-parents