Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Emotional parents are run by their feelings, swinging between overinvolvement and abrupt withdrawal. They are prone to frightening instability and unpredictability. Overwhelmed by anxiety, they rely on others to stabilize them. They treat small upsets like the end of the world and see other people as either rescuers or abandoners.
• Driven parents are compulsively goal- oriented and super busy.
They can’t stop trying to perfect everything, including other people. Although they rarely pause long enough to have true empathy for their children, they are controlling and interfering when it comes to running their children’s lives.
• Passive parents have a laissez- faire mind- set and avoid dealing with anything upsetting. They’re less obviously harmful than the other types but have their own negative effects. They readily take a backseat to a dominant mate, even allowing abuse and neglect to occur by looking the other way. They cope by minimizing problems and acquiescing.
• Rejecting parents engage in a range of behaviors that make you wonder why they have a family in the first place. Whether their behavior is mild or severe, they don’t enjoy emotional intimacy and clearly don’t want to be bothered by children.

Interestingly, self- sufficient children who don’t spur their parents to become enmeshed are often left alone to create a more independent and self- determined life (Bowen 1978). Therefore, they can achieve a level of self- development exceeding that of their parents.

As a human being, you can trust yourself to know when you’re emotionally satisfied. You know when you’ve been given full measure. You aren’t a bottomless pits of ceaseless demands. You can trust the inner prompts that tell you when something is missing.