Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson

Chapter 1 Thoughts

I have a litany of examples of emotional immaturity from my parents. They include but are not limited to: dad not wanting to talk about my break-down, neither dad nor mom saying sorry and then acting like everything is fine after a blow up or issue, never being talked to about emotions (bad or good), being constantly told to go away to play unless we needed to do work, the persistent “I’ll give you something to cry about.”

All of these examples amounted to me [feeling unseen and unknown by my parents], then ultimately all other people as well. I vividly remember bawling in my room after nightmares because I felt shame and conflicted feelings about seeking out being near my mother for comfort. I hardly felt safe to bring up negative emotions to either parent also. It left me [feeling empty and alone in my own private, strange experience.]

I’m trying so hard to move through a lot of my trauma from youth that has accumulated and manifested into problems in my adulthood. I love my life and my husband as much as I feel I can at the moment, but sometimes I still feel like it’s hard to connect deeply with him or even myself. Feelings in my body are hard to identify and experience. I want to feel happy but I can feel that there is something wrong or missing. I feel like I used to have some semblance of this but it got lost or buried again with the stresses of life and I fell back into old patterns of trying to mute my feelings, unfortunately that meant the good with the bad. I do feel guilty for not feeling happy. That is part of the motivation for trying to find ways to heal. I know my family, friends, and myself deserve the authentic happy healed version of me. I just need to work on finding her.

I used to think that doing what I was told or needed to would make people love me and create emotional connection. I strived so hard to do well in school for that very reason without fully understanding why. I created an identity around getting good grades and succeeding in scholarly pursuits because that was what was expected of me and it was a survival coping mechanism. Now I don’t know how to find the motivation to strive to do well without that intrinsic fear of needing to achieve or else. That’s part of my journey now too because part of me wants to pursue my master’s degree but how do I do it without the fear of causing anger and disappointment in others or shame in myself?

My parents got a daughter who did well in school and behaved but to my own emotional detriment and I’m angry about it. I also find it hard to show anger. An emotion we were never allowed to show or express to our parents, especially if it was in any way related to them. How fucked up, right? Considering it was regularly spewed at us on a daily basis. I feel my anger in my chest and my jaw. I want to clench my teeth and yell simultaneously. I HATE HOW YOU TREATED ME!!! I hate who I am right now. I feel emotionally immature myself. I feel self-centered and ignorant and broken. But I refuse to stay this way. That is why I’m reading this book. And will be reading all of the other books I bought. I want to grow and heal and find happiness within myself. I can’t be happy with others until I’m happy with myself and I think that’s one of the biggest problems.