voy-newyearpg Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson Thinks Compassion for Our Parents Can Be a Trap

We live in a culture permeated by therapyvoy-newyearpg, one in which people are eager to apply psychotherapeutic concepts to themselves and their closest relationships. That includes, naturally, the relationship with our parents. But the desire to understand the hows and whys of our parents’ emotional influence is hardly new. Indeed, a classic poem by Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse,” was buzzing around my mind as I prepared for this interview with the clinical psychologist Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, author of the book “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.” Larkin’s poem begins like this: “They mess you up, your mum and dad./They may not mean to, but they do./They fill you with the faults they had/And add some extra, just for you.” (Poetry aficionados will notice I swapped in a clean word for a foul one. Forgive me, Philip.)

But what do we do with the age-old knowledge that parents can bend us in damaging ways? That’s where Gibson comes in. Her book has become a slow-burning best seller since it was published in 2015 and has earned a devoted following on social media, where videos of people talking about it have been seen by millions. In the book, Gibson argues that a key to understanding harmful parental behaviors is, as her title suggests, the notion of emotional immaturity. Furthermore, that parental immaturity has negative ripple effects for children that last into adulthood. But thankfully, she says, it’s possible to get out from under the weight of those emotionally immature parents. Even if that means, in drastic cases, breaking off the relationship entirely.

So as someone for whom Larkin’s poem rings true, I had much to ask Gibson, as well as a fair degree of skepticism about her work to put to her, all of which she was game to entertain, and all of which can still at times leave me muttering to myself: “Parents. Oy.”

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Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson Thinks Compassion for Our Parents Can Be a TrapThe clinical psychologist explains the demands of “emotionally immature” parents, the impact these have on their children and the freedom of saying no.

“Hi, baby birds.” [soft music] “It’s time.” “’Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.’” “I flippin’ loved this book.” “Lindsay C. Gibson’s book, ‘Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents,’ has been a slow-burning best seller, with over a million copies sold since it was published in 2015. It’s also a viral presence on social media, where it fits in with the larger trend of children reconsidering their relationships with their parents, or even if they want to have a relationship at all.” “So I’m no contact with my family, and the reason that I chose to go no contact with my family is because I’m the scapegoat in a narcissist family system.” “Dr. Gibson and I talked about what emotional immaturity looks like in a parent, how much parents really shape the adults we become, parental estrangement, whether we owe compassion to our problematic parents ... ” “Is compassion good? Yes, it sure is. But I’m after neutrality.” “ ... and a bunch of other very easy topics. When is estrangement the best option for someone?” “Yeah.” “I’m David Marchese, and here’s my interview with psychologist Lindsay Gibson.” ”Hi, Lindsay. How are you?” “Hi, David. It’s a pleasure to be here. And I’m doing great.” “There are so many things I want to talk to you about. Also, maybe I’ll squeeze in a little attempt at getting free therapy from you. But —” “That’s what I’m here for.” [LAUGHING] “Broad definition of emotionally immature parents are parents who refuse to validate their children’s feelings and intuitions. You might might be reactive, lacking in empathy or awareness. Can you give me a couple sort of specific examples of emotionally immature behaviors from parents?” “Sure. The biggest one is the egocentrism. If you just imagine that a person starts and ends all their consideration with what’s best for them or how they see things, that’s egocentrism. And you know — David, I just started watching ‘The Sopranos’ for the first time. I must be — I’m, like, the only person in America that had not watched ‘The Sopranos.’” “You’re in for a treat.” “Yeah, well, I’m on season 5 now. So I am, yeah — But if you listen to the dialogue, they completely nailed it because everything always comes back to the viewpoint of the person who is the emotionally immature character. It’s always all about them. But another one is the lack of empathy. The parent just doesn’t get it. They say, ‘Why are you so upset about this?’ Or ’Stop it,’ or ’This is not a big deal.’ They cannot enter into the reality of their child’s emotional truth, their emotional experience. It just doesn’t make sense to them. Maybe it’s the teenager who wants to talk to their parent about their girlfriend or boyfriend. And then the parent says, ’Oh, tell me about it. That reminds me of your father. Let me tell you what he did yesterday.’ And suddenly, we’re back talking about the emotionally immature person’s issues with no sense of sticking to the subject of the other person.” “Of course, as any parent knows, those sort of characteristics show up even among the best parents sometimes. How do people distinguish between, sort of, normal flawed parental behavior and behavior that’s detrimental enough to sort of rise to the label of emotionally immature? Like, where’s the line? It’s not a clinical diagnosis. So where’s the line?” “Right, right. Where’s the line? OK, if you think of emotional maturity and immaturity as being on a continuum, all of us have a spot that we tend to hang out on that continuum. It doesn’t mean that we stay there no matter what. For instance, if you’re tired or you’re sick or you’re stressed, you know, I can guarantee that you are not going to be as emotionally mature as you could when you’re rested and well and not stressed. I mean, that’s just what happens. We all slide down the scale when we have those kinds of stresses. However, if you’re in one of these other compromised states, you may not be at your finest moment. And you may do some things that look immature. But it’s going to bother you. You’re not going to feel OK about what you did. In fact, you’re going to think about what you did. The emotionally immature person — it’s like: ’That was in the past. That was then. This is now. Why are you wallowing in it? And why are you still upset?’ The more emotionally mature person would totally get why you’re still upset. Because they have empathy and because they’re self-aware emotionally, they know that you don’t get over things just because time passes. So they’re going to come back. And they’re going to do something that indicates that they have felt for the other person’s experience.” “My hunch, and you tell me if I’m wrong, is that, you know, people are generally arriving at the conclusion that their parents were emotionally immature in their adulthood. I think it’s sort of like a hindsight situation. So, if that’s true and the adults are feeling, you know, sort of, a sense of — a lack of fulfillment or unhappiness, how do they know that those feelings are the result of their parents’ behaviors and not the result of any number of other factors that might be causing them to feel the way they do in the current moment?” “Yeah, no, that’s a really — that’s a great question. I can just tell you what tends to happen in therapy is that the person comes in, and they have some immediate issue. Maybe they’re having a problem in their relationship or their work. Maybe they just had a panic attack. And usually, first few sessions, you don’t necessarily hear about the parent. But then, you know, like, four, five, six sessions in, you ask them, you know, before you began feeling so low, what had happened that evening? And then you come to find out that their dad said something that was completely disrespectful or, you know, whatever. And you begin to, you know, make those connections. But what I tended to find out was that when we delved into the feelings, we come to find out that, yeah, they were having very deep reactions to things that their parents did and said, but they had been trained to not see that as legitimate. That had been so invalidated, they thought that they were, you know, being disloyal or petty for even bringing it up. As a therapist, I would be sitting there. And my mind would be going, you know, ’Oh my gosh, that person is so narcissistic that they’re describing,’ or ’She sounds like a borderline personality disorder.’ But I’m not going to say that to my client. So I would have to find ways of elaborately translating that into behavior so that we could talk about it without labeling them in a way that made their parents sound pathological.” “Yeah, but isn’t labeling someone’s parents emotionally immature kind of pathologizing?” “I think you could argue that. There’s no way of getting around that you’re boiling down this person that they love into a set of traits. And it calls them a name. It’s pejorative. But when you say emotionally immature, it’s not from the diagnostic manual. And although, yeah, it is a way of categorizing them. But it has a — to me, anyway, it has a more explanatory kind of tone to it. It doesn’t — If you say, ’Your father is narcissistic,’ I get an immediate caricature of a narcissist. If I say, ’Your father sounds like he may be emotionally immature,’ I don’t know, there’s a little bit of grace in that. But I can tell you, David, that a lot of people have a lot of problem when they first hear that idea about their parent. I’ve had people come in because of the book — that once we get into the therapy part of it, they begin to hedge and balk at calling their parent that because they’re just so accustomed to giving their parent the benefit of the doubt.” “You know, I also am curious about the idea of whether sort of self-identifying as, sort of, the child of an emotionally immature parent might lead to feelings of victimhood. Is there any risk in self-identifying as a child of emotionally immature parents and then sort of feeling disempowered or a lack of agency in your own life and in how you sort of manage your emotions?” “Yeah, I think it’s exactly the opposite. And I think it really increases a person’s sense of agency because what’s really disempowering to them is the idea that I’ve been trying to interact with my parent using all the communication skills I know, using all the tact or the empathy that I know, and, you know, it doesn’t go anywhere, and we end up in a fight. So they feel — The whole basis of a relationship with an emotionally immature person is that you often feel disempowered because they can’t give either you or them the room to have you be understood. And when you realize that the reason that they’re not listening or the reason that they don’t seem to be responding to you is not because you have poor communication skills, it’s because they can’t stand it, they can’t bear to be even mildly criticized, they don’t have the emotional wherewithal to deal with that and when you realize that, it’s like, Oh, this is not about my lack of skill or the fact that I get nervous around my parents. That’s not the deal. And if I understand what’s happening, I can change my behavior or I can change my responses because I understand what they’re doing. Back to ‘The Sopranos,’ I mean, those guys were masters of this. You complained to them about something. And the next thing you know, they’re telling you that you’re, you know, a crybaby victim, and they didn’t do anything to you, and you’re being unfair, et cetera, et cetera.” “How often is it the case that you’ll be with a client and say, ’I don’t think your parents were emotionally immature,’ or ’This doesn’t pass the smell test for me?’” “I can guarantee you I never said the smell-test thing.” “Yeah, it’s not the most elegantly phrased way of putting it.” “No, but it’s good. Yeah, it has really not come up. So, I mean, if I heard emotionally immature behavior being talked about, I think I’m enough of a scientist that I would mention that to them or ask them to tell me in more detail what seemed emotionally immature to them about that because that would make me curious. Like, they’re referring themselves for this. And yet I’m not seeing that. But that’s never happened.” “If somebody goes to their parent and says, ’You know, I think you’re — you were an emotionally immature parent, and the parent disagrees, how would a parent ever disprove that they’re emotionally immature?” “If they would only say, tell me what you mean by that, that could do it right there. It would be the curiosity and the caring about what their child was expressing. But just imagining that that might be that other person’s truth — like, if you had a friend that came to you and said, ’You know, you really hurt me,’ you wouldn’t say, ’Hurt you? What about me?’ You would probably say, ’What do you mean?’ Or ’Tell me what happened.’ You would be curious. And you would want to know because you have enough of a sense of self and enough confidence in your ability to deal with emotional issues that you could afford to ask that person to explain it to you because you’d have a little bit of hope that maybe you could work it out. OK? And emotionally immature people just shut the door on that because they know they don’t handle emotional things very well. And their best defense is just to not get into it at all and to point the finger back at you. So anytime somebody shows some capacity for self-reflection and a willingness to look at their part in things, you know, now you’re out of the realm of emotional immaturity. And you’re back on track to have a more, you know, grown-up and emotionally real kind of relationship. But you got to have that capacity for self-reflection, which most emotionally immature people really don’t have.” “So if somebody has emotionally immature parents, and they’ve tried to address their relationship with their parents in whatever fashion, and then they conclude that the relationship is still ultimately harmful to them, when is estrangement sort of the best option for someone?” “Yeah, that is something that — well, from my standpoint, I start thinking about whether or not it’s good for them to have contact with their parent when they start having physical or emotional problems directly associated with their contact with their parents. Say a woman who had very demanding, very egocentric, emotionally immature parents, and they expected her to, you know, come at the drop of a hat, help them out, do something for them, attend something — I mean, they were as needy as her own children, and also entitled. So she was exhausted because when they pulled her into these interactions or things they wanted her to do for them, there was no exchange of energy, like, she does it, they’re grateful. She feels good about doing a good deed — not at all. It’s, like, she didn’t do it well enough. They need more. And she’s a bad person because she’s trying to set a boundary. And so it’s always exhausting. It’s always frustrating. And you never feel like you’re doing enough. But this woman that I’m thinking about — she was developing stress-related physical symptoms. And it was, like, OK let’s talk about the effect on your health. So then you may bring up to the person, ’Do you want to keep visiting them? Do you want to keep going over there?’ And lots of times, that’s the first time that thought’s ever crossed their mind.” “Right. They didn’t realize it was a possibility?” “No. No, they really didn’t. And so when they begin to get that idea, it begins to expose this whole arrangement that is implicit in the relationship, which is, the parent gets to do whatever the heck they want. And that adult child is supposed to go along with it, or they’re being a bad child. There’s a moral obligation that is not only implied, but explicitly stated — that if I have a need, you should be there because you’re my kid. And I’m trying to get them to feel the cost of it to them, which oftentimes they have completely tuned out because they don’t want to be a bad person.” “The book had a Covid-era boost. But it continues to be popular, particularly on social media. What might the book’s ongoing popularity say about the culture now?” “Big topic.” [laughing] “I think the book’s ongoing popularity has been due to the fact that it said something about the cultural stereotype that we’ve had about parents for eons — that all parents love their children, all parents only want the best for their children, all parents put their children first, children can depend on their parents to be there for them when no one else is. And I think people’s actual experience many times with their parents, but with anybody in their life, is that these stereotypes and these tropes don’t match up with their emotional experience. And when there’s — unfortunately, when there’s a mismatch between a stereotype and what you’re feeling inside, our typical response is to feel like we’re off, that there’s something that we’re missing, that we’re not doing right, because how could I be having this feeling toward my parent when I know that they only want the best for me or know — quote unquote — they really love me? And they end up blaming themselves.” “But, like, I think it’s fair to say that one of the real, sort of, problems with contemporary life is the way we label other people in ways that, you know, are reductive or, you know, don’t really acknowledge human beings’ multidimensionality, whether it’s right or left or, you know, a believer versus a non-believer. Is there any part of you that thinks maybe it’s not a good thing for the two million people or however many people have read your book to be thinking, like, Oh, you’re emotionally immature, and that is what defines you now?” “Absolutely I think it’s a danger. It’s like — that is the problem with the categorizing part of our mind, period. Like if we — once we call something something, we think we know all about it. That’s because it’s using the part of the brain that tends to be convinced that once it gets a name for something, it knows all there is to know about it. And it has no interest whatsoever in going back and adjusting its beliefs. OK? So that’s a real danger with anything. On the other hand, though, if you think about in medicine, sometimes when you reduce and isolate out the operative factors, the most important factors, it gives you a way to not only recognize it, but to control it and to do something about it — to name it, to respond differently to it. So it’s a very valid point, David. But it is a point that is — you could say it about anything where you have an effective categorization that it oversimplifies and it leads to, you know, stereotyped or black-and-white conclusions that are not helpful. I’ve just tried to moderate that by, you know, helping people see more of the big picture about why these people became emotionally immature, what they’re trying to do with that kind of behavior, and then what you can do about it.” “I’m not sure quite how to bring this up. But it’s sort of to do with where compassion for the, sort of, harmful person fits into all of this because — I’ll use a personal example. So, you know, I have a very distant relationship with my biological father. You know, there’s a lot of pain there. You know, I, honestly, have seen him twice in the last 20 years. Maybe we email four times a year or something like that. It’s sort of a distant relationship through my choosing. But I don’t think that that relationship is evidence of any, like, great moral position on my part or particularly ethical, or I don’t think that it really is showing the best side of who I am. I think somebody who’s more developed and more compassionate would probably figure out a way to have a relationship that isn’t so distant. How do we think of the idea of compassion in that, in this kind of example?” “Yeah, for emotionally immature people, your compassion will be weaponized because their egocentrism makes them determined to be the innocent party, for them to be the victim, and for you to put aside your needs in order to meet theirs. That’s the deal. The emotionally immature person will always frame a situation that you are not being sympathetic enough, compassionate enough, seeing it from their point of view, being sensitive enough. So when I’m working with people who have been raised by people like this, I am always very careful about pushing for any kind of compassion, forgiveness, any of those things that say, ’Well, even though you have treated me badly, even though you have invalidated me and made me feel bad about myself, even though you have tried to control me and manipulate my emotions, I’m going to be empathic and feel for you.’ I mean, I don’t think that’s a moral high ground. Now, I know that there was a period in the, sort of, the psychotherapy world where — this was years and years ago — that you were kind of supposed to have compassion for what the narcissism was about, that it was a reaction to, you know, a poor sense of self, tremendous shame. And if you could understand that, you could, you know, sort of, reframe that to yourself so that you didn’t get defensive and so you could manage them better. But my goodness, it’s like, is that really what you want to be spending your energy on? So when somebody expects that we should have compassion for them, I don’t support that with people because I think it’s — I think it’s not good for them to continue to frame it that way. You don’t have to hate and revile the person. I mean, I certainly agree with that. But I’m after neutrality. I’m after, you know, getting along in the best way you can with a difficult person if that’s what you want to do. But, you know, to expect the person then to go into that next step of compassion and forgiveness — I don’t feel in a position to make the judgment that that’s what a person should do.” “Do children owe parents anything in terms of relationship?” “To me, I look at that question differently. I look at it, Do any of us owe anybody else anything?” Yeah, what’s the answer?” “The answer is, Yes, I think we do as human beings. If I’m walking down the street and somebody trips and falls, I’m going to stop and help them get up. There are things that call out altruistic, helpful responses. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live in a world where that wasn’t there. But what has happened is that there has been such a — to get back to those stereotypes again, there’s been such an assumption that because you’re my child, you owe me something in terms of, like, payback or I’m entitled to your attention and I can treat you any way I want because we’re family and you’re my child — that’s where you get up to a point where there should be a boundary. I mean, there is no law that says you have to respond in a certain way. And what I’m about is, Know what it’s going to cost you to respond. Think about yourself, too. And then make your best decision about it. We ultimately do have the right to say no when something is going to harm us.” “I think there’s some fundamental level on which, like, really, this is all about happiness. How should people set expectations for happiness in their lives, because they, you know, they could decide, ’Hey, like, this — my unhappiness has to do with being raised by emotionally immature parents. And I’ll work on that.’ And then six months down the line, they realize, well, there’s still a bunch of things that they’re unhappy about. So how do we understand what our expectations should be for what it means to be happy?” “Yeah, you know, I think, you know, if you ever watch little kids, their default mode is happiness. And that’s because they’re spontaneously going and doing the next interesting thing. They just naturally are following their energies of the moment. So I think that’s what happens with people, too. If we take away some of the things that have been holding them back, if they feel released to say no to the things that kill their energy, if they don’t feel guilted into, you know, acting more compassionate or loving than they really feel, if we take these things off of them, it’s like a cork that, you know, bobs to the top of the water. The emotionally immature person needs other people to emotionally stabilize them, keep them calm, make them happy, and also to buffer their self-esteem, make sure they keep feeling good about themselves. That is a terrible drag on a person. That’s exhausting. When we can get the idea that we’re not in this world to function as a sort of an auxiliary, coping mechanism for people who can’t do it for themselves, and we’re going to let them take care of themselves, with the help that they could get elsewhere, we begin to feel our energy coming back. And that’s what happiness is. Happiness is like free energy. Happiness is, I get to go and do the next thing that I feel like doing, not in a hedonistic, kind of inconsiderate kind of way. But I just get to follow my nose for what my own individual interests are. And that’s what makes us happy, along with some of these emotionally mature skills in relationships that keep things, you know, relatively satisfying between ourselves and the people that we love. That all adds up to happiness.” “After the break, I call Dr. Gibson back and we talk more about compassion, and also how people can know if they’re truly happy.” ”Hi, Lindsay.” “Hey, David. How are you this morning?” “I’m good. I’m good. So I have to admit that I am thinking a lot about when I brought up the idea of compassion, you know, you, in a way that was surprising to me, really sort of cautioned against the idea of compassion, you know, that the emotionally immature person can kind of use compassion as a — almost like a honey trap. And, I know, I say this as someone who is personally fully aware of, kind of, the pitfalls of extending compassion to the hurtful parent. But at the same time, I want to hold on to the idea that the emotionally immature person themselves — they’re probably struggling. And they’re not, sort of, just boogeyman. They, too, deserve grace. So how do we open up the door to the possibility of change and reconciliation and understanding without compassion?” “Oh, no. Yeah. No, I don’t think we should do anything without compassion, at some level. It’s not that we don’t want to have compassion. But what I’m talking about is that, with the people that I worked with in psychotherapy, the adult children of these emotionally immature parents, the problem was really an excess of compassion that they were trained and guilted and shamed into having for these parents. OK? It’s involuntary on the part of the emotionally mature parents, nothing diabolical here. And so when people come to me and they have been conditioned into this sort of compassionate attitude, I take it on myself to have them examine that dynamic. What I’ve seen is that the compassion takes over the instinctual self-preservation. And the person feels too guilty, too ashamed, and too self-doubting to even think about what’s healthy for them.” “And so here’s a question that I think would elicit different answers from, you know, a philosopher or, you know, a scientist or a psychologist. But how much can people really change?” “Well, I don’t think there’s much possibility of change unless you have the self-reflection. And you have the self-reflection because you have a sense of self. And you develop the sense of self because your emotional needs have been met and you have been responded to as a human being early enough that that sense of self gets in there. OK? You know, to go back to ‘The Sopranos,’ that’s what his therapist was, over five years, trying to get him to do.” “I enjoy how much you’ve gone back to ‘The Sopranos.’” “I do, too.” “Can I ask your opinion of Dr. Jennifer Melfi in a little bit?” [laughing] “Well, she got him to start, in a minuscule way, self-reflecting. So that makes change possible. I think there are earth-shattering moments that really shift your paradigm. And I think they really shift, like, permanently shift, your view of something or your way of thinking about yourself or other people. And I think that kind of change can happen in a flash. OK? It’s like something, like a joint, goes back into place. There’s a click. And it’s like, Ah, that’s not what it is — it’s this! And that — everything else starts to reorganize around that new realization. So I think that can happen. What I have found, though, in psychotherapy — the biggest change that people seem to have gotten from therapy is that they have a realization of their own inner experience. They now know how things affect them, what they really feel, what they really think. And they use that now to guide themselves through relationships and through their lives. And usually, the results are very adaptive, very good. They have more energy. The insight is not an intellectual exercise. It is, like, a becoming, an awareness that, Oh, this is who I am.” “When you’re talking about truth that’s really based on relationships between people, is there such a thing as the truth? Even just to use my own example, I have my own — what I think is truthful understanding of my relationship with my biological father and why it was the way it was and how it affected me as an adult. I think he has his own interpretation that’s not the same as mine that is true for him. So what does truth mean in your context?” “Well, there’s no eye in the sky that’s going to one day give us the answer. But I think we can sense the truth for ourselves. Even if it’s a bad thing, even if it’s a sorrowful thought or a painful thought, you still have those experiences of, I’ve touched on the truth of something. And we respond to that. So I think, you know, as far as human beings go, the best we can get is that internal sensing of what our truth is. And of course, the next question is going to be, what if I am a conspiracy theorist or a paranoid personality?” “Or it doesn’t even have to be that extreme. It could just be — the truth could be, what if I’ve come up with something that is most palatable and easiest for me?” “Exactly. Yes. Well, then you’ve got a problem. And what will happen is that reality will spank you.” [laughing] “There is something that starts to happen in the particulars of our lives that tells us that we’re on the right track. If you feel like that great line out of ‘Michael Clayton’ when Michael Clayton is saying to his son, ’You’re not going to be one of these people like your uncle who goes through life saying, Why is this stuff falling on my head all the time?’ OK? It’s because you have become aware of yourself as an agent in your own life. And once you do that, you’re in a much better position to deal with whatever reality is going to bring your way.” “I had asked also about the problem of happiness. And your reply was sort of in terms of childhood and how children’s default mode is happy. They’re sort of wired for happiness, is how you put it. And I was wondering if that actually might be an idealization of childhood and if there might be any pitfalls to that because I have two little kids. And I take them to the playground. And I sit. And they go play. And if I scan the playground, you see anger, you see fear, you see conflict in addition to the happy feelings. And I couldn’t help but wonder if our expectation when we think about childhood is one of, sort of, where happiness is the default — might that lead as adults to feelings of disappointment when we think retrospectively about what childhood is given that, of course, childhood is not all about happiness?” “Right, yeah. I think what I was trying to get at is that, if children’s basic needs are met, they want to go and do or experience things that make them even happier. Now, what you’re seeing on the playground, though, is a bunch of kids who are navigating a world that could care less about their basic happiness, OK? Like we all are.” “Sounds familiar.” “Yeah, sounds familiar. So as they’re, you know, bouncing off of that in their lives, they’re going to have all these emotions. But the happiness search is — I mean, I think it’s why plants reach for the sun. I don’t think it’s a human thing. It’s like a universal thing. Like, things that are alive want to flourish. They go toward whatever it is it’s going to maximize their optimal growth and experience as a living thing. That’s what I believe. So I think that’s what little kids are doing. But being that they’re living in a world in which they have to be watched and controlled and all of that by parents, they’re going to hit all these blocks. And that’s going to make them unhappy. It’s certainly not an ideal existence. I’m glad I’m out of childhood because a lot of it was a drag. But I think that it’s important for us to remember that we do have something inside us. And this is what I would call the core self, which is very based in the body. It’s very based in emotion. And this core self tells us when we are getting what we need or when we’re being treated badly.” “How much do you think our parents are ultimately responsible for who we become as adults?” “53 percent.” “Oh, perfect.” [laughing] “On the nose.” “That’с — I’m assuming you really want me to answer that?” “Of course, yeah.” “Well, I think that — You know, I go back to nature a lot. I go back to plants and animals and trees. And I think that, you know, it’s like, how much does it matter to that plant that has its genetic makeup, that acorn that has the oak tree in it — how much does it matter to that acorn or that seed or that plant or that animal — what does it matter to them how they’re treated in the formative years of their life? I would say it matters a lot. It matters a whole lot. OK, I was actually kidding when I said 53 percent because I really think it’s much higher than that. But what we have to keep in mind — that even if it was 73 percent, that other part — the genetic, the physical, you know, what it is that that child is bringing into the world as a unique creation — that is huge. And parents cannot take full responsibility for how their kids turn out because of that. And that I really — you know, that mix I really am not at all sure of. But I do know that you can mess it up early if you don’t pay attention to what something needs when it’s young.” [soft music]

The clinical psychologist explains the demands of “emotionally immature” parents, the impact these have on their children and the freedom of saying no.

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The broad definition of emotionally immature parents is parents who refuse to validate their children’s feelings and intuitions, who might be reactive and who are lacking in empathy or awareness. But can you give me examples of emotionally immature behaviors? The biggest one is egocentrism. Imagine that a person starts and ends all their consideration with what’s best for them — that’s egocentrism. I just started watching “The Sopranos” for the first time. If you listen to the dialogue, they completely nailed it, because everything always comes back to the viewpoint of the emotionally immature character. It’s always all about them. Another one is the lack of empathy. The parent just doesn’t get it. They say, “Why are you so upset about this?” Or, “This is not a big deal.” They cannot enter into the reality of their child’s emotional truth.

Those characteristics can show up even among the best parents sometimes. So how do people distinguish between normal, flawed parental behavior and behavior that’s detrimental enough to rise to the label of “emotionally immature”? If you think of emotional maturity and immaturity as being on a continuum, all of us have a spot that we tend to hang out on. It doesn’t mean that we stay there. If you’re tired or you’re sick or you’re stressed, you are not going to be as emotionally mature as you could be when you’re rested and well and not stressed. However, if you’re in one of these compromised states, you may do some things that look immature, but it’s going to bother you. You’re going to think about what you did. The emotionally immature person, it’s like: “That was in the past. Why are you wallowing in it?” The more emotionally mature person would get why you’re still upset, and they’re going to do something that indicates that they have felt for the other person’s experience.

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