Book reflections : Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

[daley]

I just finished reading the book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson.
It's a great book, but I personally didn't get that much out of it, because I am relatively old, and have had time to process most of my childhood issues.
Also, my parents are already dead, so there is no one to deal with. A lot of the book is how to manage existing relationships with parents. I don't have to do that anymore.

But even when they were alive, I tried to distance myself from them.

Much of the book is about how growing up with emotionally immature parents, children have fantasies of how they can gain
a positive response from their parents.
However, if you parents are emotionally immature there is a good chance that you will not be able to change their behavior.
If so, you might not be able to have a satisfying relationship with them. You might need to abandon your fantasies.

There is an interesting distinction the book makes between "relationship" and "relatedness".
In "relatedness" there is communication with the parent, but no goal of having an emotional
satisfying exchange.

I guess that is exactly what I have been doing from a very young age. I knew I didn't like my parents
so I tried to minimize communication with them, just for getting things that I needed.
I didn't have any desire for an emotional connection with my parents ( I compensated for that
by having a strong connection with my younger brother ). I didn't have any fantasies about being
loved by parents. I didn't really have a concept of what would that mean.

Anyway, that's why the book didn't apply to me much. It is mostly for adult children
who are still engaging with their parents and still trying to fulfill the fantasy of one day
having a positive connection. I just didn't have that.

The book also goes into how to heal yourself. Finding your true self, beyond the fantasies.
The book is too brief on that, and anyway, it takes a lifetime to recover from old habits of
being which have been their since childhood. Anyway, here too, I didn't think it applied
much to me. My reaction to my parents wasn't building a false self, but depression.

Anyway, continuing with my thoughts about the book.

On the flip side of emotionally immature parents, the book talks about how to find a partner
that is emotionally mature. A typical pattern of children of emotionally immature parents
is to find emotionally immature partners. The book describes what a good partner is
like and what a good relationship is like.

This is interesting because it also makes you observe yourself and consider points
where you might be emotionally immature. And I found quite a few.
A major one for me is being "passive aggressive". So if I am mad, I won't
bring up the topic, I fear confrontation (perhaps again due to my parents).
Anyway, when I had a girlfriend, and we had arguments, I didn't feel listened.
She would interrupt me and misinterpret things I said. She had her
own issues of emotional immaturity ( I guess everybody has some issues ).
I felt that the more I argued with her the more she would find things to misinterpret and
the argument would just go on for ever. Perhaps then I started adapting
a passive aggressive approach, which isn't that great a solution either.

Anyway, as you can see, although I didn't think the book directly applied to me,
it actually did raise a lot of interesting thoughts. So you might want to check it out.

 

[fallingleaves]

I have this book in my pile. I'll try to make an effort to read it, based on this review. Although reading has become very difficult due to my mental state.