A Review: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
Title of Work: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
Author: Lindsay C. Gibson
Format:
Published: 2015
Started:
Finished: 2022-09-18\
Posted: Goodreads
Rating: 4/5
Perhaps a bit of over-sharing ahead.
When I was younger, searching for answers to the distance and anger I felt within my relationship with my parents, I reached out to the internet. Repeatedly, through years of confusion and questioning, I was pointed toward this book and the work of Dr. Gibson. At the time I dismissed it based on my perception that it was one of those shallow self help books; I judged the book by its cover. I didn’t think she would understand what I experienced as a child, as an adult, or how I felt about it all. After these answerless years of dodging what was right in front of me, I finally caved and listened to this book on audio. It’s hard to articulate how good it feels to be seen through her writing — to know that while what I experienced wasn’t “normal”, many others outside my own family are in the same boat.
She points out typical phrases and behaviors that ring back to childhood and echo through my own engrained coping mechanisms and thought patterns. This is more like a field guide for the identification, classification, and handling of maladjusted adults in the wild, each class with its own taxonomy and observable behaviors. She provides checklists, explanations, patient case studies, and general advice for managing relationships with emotionally immature parents and significant others as an adult. My experience in listening to this book was as much about understanding myself and why I may be the way I am as it was about understanding my parents.
I’m trying to break the cycle, trying not to repeat toxic patterns carried down through generations of emotionally immature parents raising emotionally immature children. It’s painful at times but I genuinely want to do the work to be better for myself and the future family I hope to have one day. This book is a useful companion as I navigate that process.