a cult self-help book encourages detachment – but is that what we need?
- Written by Jane Turner Goldsmith, PhD Creative Writing, University of Adelaide
Lindsay Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents has become something of a cult classic, with over one million copies sold. Many young people on TikTok claim the examples resonate with them, validating their own experiences.
The book, first published in 2015, proposes a pathway to healing from the damaging effects of growing up with parents who were distant, rejecting or self-involved. Clearly, it has touched a raw nerve with many.
I write as a retired psychologist, looking back on a career of assessment and counselling across the lifespan: children and their parents in early childhood settings, schools, universities and as adults in the workplace. I’m also the parent of adult children. I’d say I’m mature – and certainly imperfect. (Ask my kids!)
Thankfully, I had the benefit of being raised by parents who were not emotionally immature. But for readers who feel less fortunate in their childhood experiences, the book may offer some insights and validation.
Blurred lines
Lindsay C. Gibson is an American psychologist with a doctorate in professional practice. She specialises in psychotherapy with adult children of parents who are, in her terms, emotionally immature.
Her book claims to offer readers a pathway towards healing the emotional scars of growing up with a “distant, rejecting or self-involved” parent. People can learn to recognise the signs of emotional immaturity in their parents and to navigate a relationship that does not meet their needs (and probably never did).
They do this, she says, by freeing themselves of unrealistic expectations and the fantasy of having a functional, nurturing parent – and by adjusting their communication accordingly. Or by disengaging and walking away.
Gibson wrote the book to help people understand the source of their “emotional loneliness”, or who want to craft deeper emotional connections and rewarding intimacy with others (not necessarily with their parent). The book contains a number of case studies from her practice, taking us inside the stories of patients she has treated and their struggles with their parents.
She categorises emotionally immature parents into four types: the Emotional, the Driven, the Passive and the Rejecting. Each type has its own unique shortcomings, respectively: unhelpful emotionality, unrealistic perfectionism, engaging in avoidance tendencies, and being manifestly derogatory and unsupportive.
Gibson suggests characteristics of each of the four categories can overlap. This begs the question: why categorise? (Perhaps because people seem to like categories and the checklists that go with them.)
Is it a real thing?
Therein lies, for me, the difficulty I have with the book (which I share with others): inventing a category such as Emotional Immaturity, capitalising it and giving it an acronym supposes it is a real thing.
Emotional immaturity is not an official disorder – it’s not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, the bible of mental disorders. But since it has caught on, people tend to embrace it (and other syndromes like it) as if they are.
The problem with such labels is they tend to enlarge a “type”, losing the individual nuance of the essential person.
Your parent may be on the milder end of the continuum, but once they’ve been categorised by you (or your therapist) as emotionally immature, there’s a litany of further deficiencies you can now assign to them. And it’s an impressively long list.
Most of us are imperfect
Unfortunately, Gibson’s list of traits blurs the lines between outright neglectful, and merely disappointing, parenting.
There are some traits I’d say that are on the “just annoying” end of the continuum, such as distractedness (perhaps arising from being focused on getting the washing done or dinner cooked?) and poor listening (isn’t this every parent trying to get the kids in the car to school?). But Gibson puts such traits in the same grab bag as psychologically destructive behaviours, such as beating a child or mocking their speech impediment.
The reality is that most human beings are imperfect specimens, just trying to do our best. And development of a relationship and difficulties within it depend on many factors, such as stress caused by pre-existing vulnerabilities like disability, death, separation or poverty.
Beyond these often uncontrollable factors, differences in temperaments or clashes of personality between parent and child can influence relationship strain. (How often have you heard a parent talk about their “easy” child or the “black sheep” in the family?)
The two-sided interaction is not under Gibson’s spotlight to the same degree as the emotionally immature parent side of the equation. She doesn’t encourage reflection on the role of the adult child in communication either. That’s a shame. In my view, it’s just a little too convenient to blame the emotionally immature parent for everything.
‘She’s never filled my emotional tank’
For example, here’s what Brenda, quoted in Gibson’s book, says about her elderly mother Mildred:
My mother is only interested in herself. She never asks me how I’m feeling or how work is going. She only wants to know what I am doing so she can brag to her friends. I don’t think she’s ever really taken in anything I’ve said to her; it just doesn’t register. We’ve never had a real relationship because the attention was always on her. She’s never filled my emotional tank. She doesn’t care if I’m really happy and she’s dismissive of whatever I say.
Well, Mildred certainly sounds like an imperfect human being. But I would like to objectively hear Mildred’s side of the story, not just the summary by Brenda and her therapist.
What if Brenda’s mother is super proud of Brenda and her way of conversing is to ask questions about what she’s doing “so she can brag to her friends”? Maybe Mildred can’t ask for practical assistance from Brenda, because Brenda herself has poor communication skills and isn’t able to assertively negotiate what she can and can’t do for her elderly mother.
Perhaps Brenda doesn’t listen to Mildred very attentively, nor care about Mildred’s “emotional tank”.
Brenda says her elderly mother Mildred is ‘only interested in herself’. But that’s just one perspective.
Itago Muraro/Unsplash
Gibson lightly references major validated, well-researched theories (attachment theory, schema therapy, narrative therapy) that also explain disordered or dysfunctional adult–child relationships – and other approaches that might help understand how we, as adults, might come to terms with a difficult childhood with an “emotionally immature” parent. But she doesn’t explain how she has adapted these theories to her own.
I also quibble with Gibson’s split of internalisers and externalisers. Gibson draws on well-established personality theories for these now commonly understood labels.
At risk of oversimplifying, internalisers are people who tend to ruminate and self-blame: they are the people-pleasing (and parent-pleasing) kind, Gibson argues. Externalisers tend to outsource responsibility, blaming others and outside factors for their problems. This is seen as a generally negative characteristic.
Gibson says emotionally immature parents tend to be externalisers, and their children internalisers. But by asking her readers to focus on the deficiencies of one’s parents, isn’t she encouraging people to do the very thing she criticises – externalising the blame? In this case, to one’s parents.
How to heal, according to the book
By chapter seven, titled “Breaking Down and Awakening”, Gibson turns to the topic of how the reader should heal. The main thrust is acceptance. It is okay to admit you have an emotionally immature parent.
In my professional experience, this naming and acknowledging can be beneficial. We entertain strong social and cultural expectations of the ideals of family harmony and a functional parent–child relationship. For example, that your parents love you unconditionally, that you can trust them, that they will support you through whatever difficulties life throws at you.
Realising your parent falls short of the ideal can be painful – but it can also be liberating.
Annie Spratt/Unsplash
It is okay to acknowledge this may not be the case for you. You might not even like your parent. Realising your parent falls short of the ideal must certainly be painful – but in many ways, as Gibson asserts, it is also liberating.
You don’t have to act as if you are living out a false pretence. Learning to stop expecting what your emotionally immature parents can’t provide is another potentially helpful change of headset. It can help ease the pain of an unfulfilling relationship.
Gibson’s therapy consists of using this new objectivity and self awareness to interact with your emotionally immature parent in a new way. You find your “true self”, rid yourself of your “healing fantasies”, learn to relate and set lower expectations for what you want to achieve with your parent.
In some cases, you walk away.
Gibson’s ‘healing’ falls a little short
I found Gibson’s chapter on identifying emotionally mature people quite helpful. Discussions about emotional immaturity can highlight possible factors in the meltdowns and tantrums any one of us might have from time to time with our own family members: parents, children or loved ones. Anyone guilty?
Other useful techniques might be “detached observation” and “maturity awareness”. Express yourself and let go. Focus on the outcome and manage the interaction, rather than engaging emotionally. Don’t set the bar too high. Relate, but don’t expect a relationship. “Manage don’t engage” – that’s good advice for managing conflict between human beings.
And yet isn’t emotional engagement the very kernel of the problem with your emotionally immature parent?
Try being a detached observer when you are psychologically invested in a relationship! It takes a little more than the mantra “detach, detach, detach” to stay calm when a person you care about (even if irrationally so) is criticising you, making derogatory comments or ignoring you.
So, what would I suggest?
From my perspective, I’d say – rather than engaging in a blame game – it might be more useful to learn a few basics on assertive communication. Good old-fashioned “I statements”, popular in the 1970s, at least give people a framework for expressing their displeasure and working towards a mutually beneficial outcome. For example: “when you said X or when X happened, I felt … (disappointed, hurt, embarrassed, rejected, whatever). Please next time could you …”
How about some practical, concrete tips to de-escalate? Or some techniques to resolve conflict that are based on recognising people’s needs, not their rights? (Is Brenda, as an adult, entitled to her belief that Mildred should fill up her emotional tank?)
But to teach conflict-resolution principles would mean acknowledging there are two parties to the conflict. Gibson does not do this.
Too quick to pathologise?
This brings us to why the book has captured so much attention in the public conversation. Personally, I think we are much quicker now to pathologise our unhappiness, vent about it and assign blame.
When I trained in psychology – as you might guess, a while ago – we had very little training in mental health disorders. (I have done a lot of that training since!) There was no public conversation about them. It seems, compared to past generations, we are living in a moment of exponential escalation in anxiety and depression.
Government statistics show that in the past 12 months, 22% of Australians experienced a mental disorder, and 17% experienced an anxiety disorder. In 2021, the HILDA survey, a household-based panel study, estimated 19% of Australians reported being diagnosed with depression, anxiety or any other serious mental illness at some time in their life, an increase from 11% in 2009.
Whether there really is more anxiety and depression is an ongoing debate. It could seem that way due to increased diagnostic assessment and significantly raised public awareness of mental health disorders.
Reported depression and anxiety nearly doubled among young people over a decade.
Inzmamkhan/Pexels
But these complex questions aside, might there be other causes – apart from dysfunctional communication in our families of origin – for a collective sense of disconnection and loneliness in Western society in the 21st century?
Trendspotter Noreena Hertz’s The Lonely Century analyses troubling statistics about the proportion of people – more than half of the populations in the United States and Europe – who feel lonely. (This was even the case pre-pandemic.) In 2018, the United Kingdom even appointed a minister for loneliness. “Loneliness kills,” Hertz writes.
Hertz claims the loneliness epidemic is even worse for younger people. The factors she identifies go beyond the primary parent–child relationship. They include structural and institutional discrimination, increased density in living conditions, and the decline of community that correlates with a decline in civility (people are “ruder, curter, colder”).
There’s also the changing nature of our work and relationships, “neoliberalism” and the way our governments treat us. She also, like many others, blames the pernicious impact of social media, which steals our time and our “presence” to other people (including our children).
Many researchers argue social media platforms encourage narcissism and self-centredness. Lack of presence and awareness of the needs of others is a major problem for people fixated on their phones. Social media also provides a convenient forum for people to vent about the deficiencies of their parents – and have those feelings endorsed.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation focuses on this pressing question in relation to young people. According to research cited by the Black Dog Institute, one third of Australian teens experience high levels of psychological distress. Haidt asks: how might a “phone-based” childhood rewire the brain to cause an epidemic of mental illness in our young people?
Over-protection by well-meaning parents in the real world and under-protection in the online world has dramatic consequences for mental health.
I observe too many parents of young children who seem distant, self-involved with their social media feeds. I agree that self-involvement and distance can be damaging to the parent–child relationship. But I think – as adult children – we should consider broader factors and reflect on our own temperament, behaviour and experience, too, before jumping to blame our parents and their “emotional immaturity” for our problems.
These days, we are relentless in our quest to understand the source of our malaise. Perhaps it is more comfortable to find a label, even a made-up one, that defines our suffering and locates it in a category? Then we can blame the category, rather than our own action or inaction.
After all, we can’t help our syndromes, can we? Nor can we choose our parents – unlike our partners or friends. The convenience of blaming our biologically-bound-to-us parents (or in the case of adoption, those officially given charge of us) may well be the most logical reason for why Gibson’s book has taken off.
My final beef
My final beef with the book was my discomfort with what seemed a kind of collusion between therapist and client to diagnose emotional immaturity of the parent.
Perhaps it was the tone, as in Brenda’s story. It read like the author was needing to find a scapegoat to justify her client’s suffering – and continued engagement in therapy. But is this healing? Does it help to externalise the source of the problem in this way?
Gibson writes about another client, Annie, who supposedly gained insights through applying the therapy. She realised her issues were her mother’s problem, not hers. She felt better about herself and didn’t catch up again with her mother. Annie doesn’t change her behaviour towards her mother and her mother presumably stays emotionally immature. Problem solved?
In terms of healing a rift, I’m not so sure walking away is a successful outcome. I would say there is a missed opportunity here. In my book, true healing would be if both parties committed to make changes for the better and worked towards a more equal relationship.
Could we not all try to be more “present” to the perspective of the other person in a relationship, learn the skills to resolve conflict, and practise that much-overlooked communication skill, listening?
It’s the harder road.
For some relationships, walking away is the only option – but we can at least keep trying.
Perhaps this is my own idealised, relentless sense of optimism. But I believe we can heal from past hurts by acknowledging differences, learning to accept imperfection in others, and reflecting on our own role in interpersonal communication – keeping it free from blame.
Authors: Jane Turner Goldsmith, PhD Creative Writing, University of Adelaide
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