Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, is an author and clinical psychologist who has been a psychotherapist for over thirty years, working in both public service and private practice. Her New York Times bestseller, "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents", has sold over a million copies and has been translated into 37 languages. In the past, Dr. Gibson has served as an adjunct assistant professor teaching theory and therapy techniques to doctoral Clinical Psychology students, and has published a textbook on her therapy approach.She specializes in therapy and coaching with adults to develop personal growth, emotional intimacy with others, and confidence in dealing with emotionally immature family members. Dr. Gibson lives and works in Virginia.
553: Emotionally Immature Parents
Dr. Lindsay Gibson
Are you the adult child of an emotionally immature parent? Hunter Clarke-Fields talks with psychologist Dr. Lindsay Gibson about how parents' unresolved pain can lead to emotional immaturity—and the lasting impact it has on their children.
They explore four common types of difficult parents and how these dynamics create emotional loneliness. Lindsay shares insights on setting boundaries, understanding personality types like externalizers and internalizers, and how to break the cycle to raise emotionally healthy kids.
Ep 533- Gibson
Read the Transcript 🡮
*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Dr. Lindsay Gibson (00:00)
The emotionally immature person tends to be very egocentric, very self-referential. Everything is about them. They have a hard time reflecting on themselves and their behavior. So they wouldn't ask themselves, what part did I play in this?
Hunter (00:21)
You're listening to Mindful Mama podcast episode #553. Today we're talking about emotionally immature parents with Dr. Lindsay Gibson.
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course and Teacher Training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal.”
Welcome back to the Mindful Mama podcast and a big welcome to you if you are new. Hello, hello. This is such a juicy episode and you're gonna see here it's really personal to me. I talked to Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, author and clinical psychologist who has been a psychotherapist for over 30 years, working both in public and private practice. We are going to talk about her New York Times bestselling book- you probably already know about it, I may not even have to tell you- “Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents”. This book has sold over a million copies. It's been translated into 37 languages and it has made a huge impact on the world. And we are going to be talking about parenting if you are the adult child of an emotionally immature parent. So how do you be a good parent even if you didn't have a good relationship with your parent?
And how do you raise emotionally healthy children- break the cycle, right? So we're gonna talk about setting boundaries, understanding personality types, all this stuff. And you're gonna hear that I push back a little on some of her characterization of externalizers and internalizers. And Dr. Gibson and had a cool email exchange after we recorded the conversation. So I'm going to share that with you in the outro as an update. I'll share with you what she said after the fact, which is so cool. So let's get to it. I know you're going to really enjoy this episode. Join me at the table as I talk to Dr. Lindsay Gibson.
Lindsay, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Momma Podcast. I'm so glad you're here.
Dr. Linday Gibson:
I'm so glad I'm here too. Thank you for having me.
Hunter:
I think the your book really is gonna strike a chord with a lot of the listeners, really did for me. There's a lot of things I can relate to with one parent in particular, which the listener already knows about, but you talk in adult children of emotionally immature parents, how emotionally immature parents often act from their own pain and fear.
How did you first start to just recognize these patterns in your clients lives?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yeah, well, you know, I was trained in, you know, very conventional psychodynamic psychotherapy. So I also got a good grounding in child development coming up through that route. And I was trained that you not only looked at, you know, what the diagnosis was for a person, what their symptom profile was, but you also looked at how far they had gotten in their emotional development and their psychological development. So when I did a lot of psychological testing in my evaluations, when I would write it up, I might say, you know, this person is emotionally functioning like a four-year-old and they're very impulsive. They're very emotional. they don't have good regulation, you know, that kind of thing. But I would make it real for the reader, for the clinician that was referring to me by painting that picture, that emotional profile of being like this age child or that age child.
So that's always been in my mind. mean, anyone who came to see me, I was always sort of assessing how far did you get? How much did you develop in terms of your strengths? And the people that oddly enough that come for psychotherapy are often very highly developed. They're very, comparatively speaking, emotionally mature. They are able to look at their situation and say, gee, what can I do to improve this?
Hunter (05:51)
Yeah, there's two people in every relationship at least, right? How do I cope with this better, is taking responsibility. That's a very self-reflective and emotionally mature thing to do. So I was having these people coming in for psychotherapy and they're telling me about their relationships and I'm hearing this behavior, maybe it's their parent or their spouse or their boss or whoever, and I'm thinking, why is this person in therapy?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson (06:24)
Why aren't the people who are causing all the problems out there, why aren't they in therapy? You know, of course the answer is that they don't think that they're the ones with the problem. They cause problems for other people, just like children have no awareness of, you know, what they're costing their parents when they're just being themselves. And that's the way emotionally immature people are. So to get back to your question, what would happen is they would come in and talk about their symptoms or their situation for a few sessions and then there comes a time when people kind of relax and they come in and then they start to tell you about their day or they'd start to just tell you about their lives as opposed to reciting their symptoms. And when they would do that, they would start describing their relationship often with a parent, sometimes with a spouse. And that's where I really got that very strong picture of they're dealing with someone who is operating emotionally at the level of a small child. And when I would share that conceptualization to them, like, have you ever thought that, you know, your dad is, kind of like a toddler in the way he, you know, gets mad and flies off the handle and they're like, yeah, we joke about dad's tantrums all the time. or have you ever felt like your mom was kind of like more like a 13 year old and the way she sort of shares with you about her boyfriends and her stuff. And so it was a very useful way of framing the interpersonal problem with them. And that's where I segued into, gee, why not just discuss with the patient or with the client how this emotional immaturity is operating in their family member so that they don't feel like they're the ones who are having the problem and they can understand better how to deal with it. So that's how it came about.
Hunter:
Yeah, I can relate so much. I kind of think, I always jump to the big picture, right? Like, you know, a lot of, think a lot of it, this has hit a chord with many, many, people. And I think there's been a lot of emotional immaturity in life because maybe we weren't, in the past, we weren't as open to even talking about emotions or even accepting that they're there or even this whole idea of emotional maturity was maybe not even a welcome or accepted thing, right? Like you were, you were strong and you were tough, but to be emotional, that, wasn't even a thing. So it kind of makes sense that there are sort of, I think in my father's generation there, I think he's not that unusual in that there are a lot of men, maybe of that generation that are somewhat emotionally immature.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yeah. I mean, it's a relatively recent concept to be popularized, I would say. I think the idea has been around for ages, but it's been in, you know, like textbooks and longitudinal studies, different kinds of research. And they don't emphasize that emotional maturity term. You'll find it occasionally. But I think the thing that hit the mark with my book was I just used that term and stayed with it and explained it and gave people a language for talking about this kind of behavior.
Hunter (10:15)
Yeah, yeah, I can relate enormously. So can you tell, describe to us the four different types of difficult parents? I can clearly see my dad in one of them. But I'd love for you to share what these types are. I love you dad. I just have to clarify, because I'll probably mention my dad in this. I just have to clarify that my father, you know, I wrote about him in “Raising Good Humans”. And I talk about how I got my temper from him. And I, you know, I feel like it gave me in some ways, you know, I had to work through that. And that was where all the work from raising good humans sort of came from. But I have, and so I've talked about him because he is part of my story in his temper, et cetera. But I also need to clarify that he, just for the listener, that he was a, he's a really loving person and was really encouraging, really affectionate father, really encouraging of creativity and things like that. And I know that was unusual. And I just want to occasionally, since especially maybe in this episode, while I'm talking to you about emotional immaturity, which I think he does suffer from, explain that he also has these really loving, wonderful traits as well.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Absolutely. That's one of the things that makes this such a difficult thing to deal with because if you're at all an introspective person or if you like to make sense out of things, emotionally mature people are often very highly inconsistent in terms of how they show up. So if they're not too stressed, not too tired, know, not feeling ill, when they're in peak form, they have access to some of these things that they don't a lot of the time. And that is they have access to empathy. They have access to, you know, love and care when they're not feeling threatened. So we have to understand that it's not that the person has no empathy or are completely unaware of other people or other people's needs. It's just that they're so prone to go into this sort of defensive egocentric position where all they can think about literally is what is going on for them and what is threatening them at the moment or what is going to bolster their self-esteem or increase their emotional stability. always, you know, they don't take that stuff, they can't take that stuff for granted, because it hasn't really developed in a full way in their personality. they've always got one foot on a banana peel.
Hunter:
That's a great way of experiencing it. That's the way we sort of all, yeah, everyone in my family experiences that in some ways. Yeah. But, know, I will mention though that sometimes when people have had a lot of trauma, you can get the emotional outburst kind of thing as a result of, you know, trauma. And the rest of the personality can have developed, you know, empathy and self-reflection, ability to care for other people, that kind of thing. So it's, you know, it's hard to tell sometimes.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson (13:56)
But basically, the emotionally immature person tends to be very egocentric, very self-referential. Everything is about them. They have a hard time reflecting on themselves and their behavior. So they wouldn't ask themselves, what part did I play in this? They're very externalizing. It's what was done to me and how wrong that is. And they tend to deal with reality in a kind of an optional way. Like reality can be denied or dismissed. It can be distorted. They just kind of at times make it up as they go along, especially if there's some emotional issue going on. It's amazing how upside down things can get. When you're dealing with an emotionally immature person over an emotionally laden topic, they just say and think and believe whatever it is that makes them feel better. And it can make you feel crazy when you're trying to deal with it and dangerous to fact check as well.
Hunter (15:20)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
Hunter (17:07)
So those four different types, right? You talk about the emotional parent, the driven parent, the passive parent, and the rejecting parent. So how do these types show up differently in family dynamics?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Well, the characteristics that we just talked about would be, think of that as sort of the foundation of the house. That is what you're going to find in anybody who is technically speaking emotionally immature. They don't have a great sense of self. So the emotional type, these different types are sort of like the different types of houses that you could build on the foundation. They're all going to look different, but foundationally they're gonna have these same elements. They're all gonna have a foundation, they're all gonna have framing, they're all gonna have a roof, you know, those things. But they can look differently. And the emotional parent looks different because these are the parents that everybody in the house is looking out for. They're walking on eggshells, they're being careful, they're hypervigilant about how that person is doing because the emotional parent is very, can be very impulsive, they're very volatile, their emotions are all over the place. That's the fancy type. There is another kind of withdrawn kind of, maybe they give you the silent treatment, maybe they go to bed for a week, but it's still extremely impactful on the mood of the home. everybody is, you know, like, looking like, how did what he said affect her? don't, my God, I can't believe she said that now, mom's gonna, you and they, so you have that kind of constant vigilance that has to go on to keep them feeling stable and feeling good about themselves.
And then the driven parent is the type that I think of as really the prototypical ideal mom or dad in our culture because our culture is so fascinated by achievement and success and materialism and all that. So these parents will be like, this is the dad that is behind his kid all the way on the sports team and looking for the travel team and the best coach and this kind of thing. And the mother is, you she's busy working on her master's degree while she's raising all these kids and being president of the PTA and running the bake sale and they're driven. They just can't stop. All of that is good. I mean, how wonderful in some ways to have parents that are that involved. But at the same time, this is not the parent that's going to be able to sit down on the bed with their arm around their child and say, honey, what's wrong? And then create a space, a quiet, open space for that child to pour their heart out or even just to tell them what's going on because these parents don't have time for it. They want to get it solved. They want to give you an answer. They want to get it fixed- filling their hole or their lack. They're filling their hole with all this achievement because that's what they've been taught to do.
And so it's very, so people can be very confused when they think about this kind of parent in terms of the emotionally immature qualities because it's like this, you know, my parent checked every box for quote unquote, the perfect parent. And they have, there's so many movies that have this type of parent. And it's so, you know, sometimes it's hilarious because they're doing almost a satire on the driven parent. And other times it's just tragic. Yeah. Because you can feel how empty the relationship is with them because, you know, there, it's like that old thing about the, the human doing or the human being. They can't be, they can't be still and they can't be present. Right. And then we have the rejecting parent.
And the rejecting parent is just what it sounds like. This is a parent that really doesn't want to be bothered, that sees other people's needs as obstacles or a nuisance. They get irritated very easily. They make you feel like you're interrupting them if you want to relate to them or tell them about something. They just have a wall up. They want to be left alone to read their paper, do their crossword, whatever, and they can become very snappish if you try to sort of pull them out of their hole and try to relate to them because, yeah, they are not interested in emotional intimacy. They just want to be left alone to do their thing. And then finally, we have the passive parent who is usually everybody's favorite. The passive parent is and can be a wonderful parent. They are usually the favorite. And so this will be the parent that say the child of an emotional type mother will gravitate to that passive father because that's the parent that might come back in their bedroom after mom is blown up and sit with them or say, you know, she didn't mean it or it'll be okay or you're a good kid or, know, they do something to have more of a relationship with the kid. The problem is that they don't have a concept of having a responsibility to protect that child as a parent. They're passive about it.
Like I remember one client would be getting screamed at by her mother. And she would hear her father in another room, you know, doing something. And she had the fantasy that he was there for her because he was around. But she never thought that maybe dad should have come into the kitchen and stopped it. She just felt that he was sympathetic, which is a lot. I mean, that's a lot for a child is being verbally abused- feel like somebody knows what's going on. But a lot of times passive parents are like overgrown siblings. They can be a lot of fun. They can be kind. They just don't really think about that child's experience in a way that would prompt them to be protective, to be a real parent to that child. So lots of times they let stuff slide, they let abuse go on, just because they haven't matured to the point where they would feel like it was their responsibility.
Hunter:
Yeah, yeah. that's so interesting. The passive parent is, that's one that I hadn't thought of. I get my own life. have a very emotional, I have an emotional parent who has, you know, and I can see the patterns, right? The trauma in his youth. And I can have a lot of compassion for that and can see the boundaries that he's put up. And yeah, but I haven't thought about the other side of that like, should we have protected? Wow, I'm like, get struck like, should we have protected little Hunter from the spanking? Although, you know, that was considered normal parenting at the time.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yes, yes it was. There's a combination of course of cultural and personal things with all of these. Yeah, and there was absolutely cultural support for that.
Hunter (25:41)
Yeah. And so you work with adults, people who are having these experiences, these relationships with their parents and starting to realize, my parent is this driven parent or this emotional parent or this rejecting parent. And how do you counsel people to engage or not engage with these kind of parents?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yeah, it depends on what they're trying to do with the engagement. I'll tell you what causes problems. Sure. I'll tell you what they do that causes problems for themselves. And that is that they try typically to get these parents to give them more than they can give them. Because lots of times the children of emotionally immature parents have seen these moments I talked earlier about how if they're getting what they want and things are going their way and they're not stressed, they can give more, they can be more present, they can be more empathic. So when a child of an emotionally immature parent sort of gets the experience of that moment of connection here and there, or maybe it was that fun that they had with the parent, that the parent seemed to know how important that Christmas gift was to them. It's not all bad. So they have that feeling for how they might be able to, with just a little bit of work and good communication, they might be able to reach in there and engage that parent in a meaningful conversation.
Because emotionally immature parents like to keep things at a pretty superficial level where it's not too emotionally arousing because that tends to destabilize them. So they try to get the parent to understand their point of view, maybe to understand some things that the parent did that were very harmful to them. This especially comes up when there's beginning estrangement or even after estrangement has occurred. They might have gone through a process prior to that where they, they don't just set a limit with the parent. They try to get the parent to understand why they're setting the limit and get the parent to accept some responsibility for the problem. It's like that is usually doomed to failure because every time you take an emotionally immature system and that parent and you apply stress to it. And then you demand that they engage in emotional intimacy with you. That's another thing that emotionally immature people do not like and are kind of repelled from. Every time you do that, you're going to get a response that's very defensive and blaming. So the adult child goes to the parent trying to work it out and so get that parent to understand so they can have a good relationship. Because the adult child knows how well this works. Maybe they've been to therapy, maybe they've had couples counseling, maybe they have a good mate that they can work things out with verbally through emotionally intimate discussions. They know this stuff works. So they try to apply it in that relationship and things get worse instead of better.
Hunter (29:34)
Because the emotionally immature parent can't accept responsibility. It's the defensiveness. It's like a small child, like, you're attacking me.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
That's exactly it. It doesn't occur to them, you're trying to connect with me. You're trying to have something real with me, which is how it's intended. You're exactly right, Hunter. They're saying, why are you attacking me? And then they start thinking of all the reasons why they are good people. Like, I gave you this, I did that for you, I was there for you. And they become very defensive. So it's really hard when people are trying to go at the relationship from the standpoint of let's improve this and make it more emotionally intimate. It works much better once they can accept that this has a negative effect when they're trying to relate to their parent in that intimate way. That usually has a negative effect. Once they come to accept that, they may learn that they can back up a little bit. And instead of trying to relate, they manage the relationship. They start setting boundaries about what they will and won't do. They start expressing their own opinion instead of being scared of the parent. And then if the parent gets upset and comes back at them, they hold their own. They continue to express what they believe. And then if it gets too hot, they may draw a boundary and say, doesn't look like this is something that we can really discuss. I'm going to have to go now. Or if we can't talk about this calmly, maybe we ought to just stop talking about this right now.
Hunter (31:28)
Hmm. I've done all of these. All of the above. Yeah. Great. Yeah. I'm sorry. Imagine it's hard to just talk about your work casually because everybody can relate to what you, or not everybody. I'm sure there are some people, but I imagine almost everybody can relate to this experience.
Dr. Lindasy Gibson:
Yeah, and it's so hard to, if you have developed in your emotional maturity to the point that you automatically have empathy for other people, where you're curious about why people do things. You are, like I said, self-reflective. You take responsibility. Once you've made it in terms of your maturation to the point where you have a strong sense of self, and you can imagine that other people have a sense of self and they have emotions too, and they're real too, once you get to that point, it's almost impossible to believe that other people don't get that far. It's just inconceivable that they don't have the same resource or resources inside themselves to process, that's really the underline we're here, to process emotional issues in a relationship. But they don't. And you find that out when you try to pressure them.
Hunter (33:03)
You don't want to give up on people, right? Like you don't want to give up on people. mean, I don't know.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
That's what it feels like. It feels like you're giving up on the relationship if you do it that way. But see, what I'm suggesting is you don't have to give up on the relationship. You can keep trying. And I often say this because I don't know. mean, who am I to discourage someone from trying? Because what if it did work? You know? I mean, I'm not, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't tell, but managing with boundaries- you want to get to the point where you can express yourself and be a person in the relationship with your parent. I like to point out that the emotionally immature person really implicitly believes that they are the most important person in the relationship at the moment. I mean, just take that as your basis and that everything else makes sense from there. Yeah.
If you recognize that that's their position and you say, I'm still going to be myself, I'm going to say what I think, I may not keep talking about it, but I am going to express myself and I'm going to set my boundaries. And then we'll see what is the optimal distance that we have to have to get along well enough. Maybe we don't go over there every weekend. Maybe we go twice a year for holidays. mean. Whatever the solution is. Exactly. Optimal distance. Yep. And time- max of four days visit.
Hunter (34:47)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
It's so interesting and you describe the ways different people react to emotionally immature parents. And I found this really interesting because my father is a big temper. He was traumatized as a kid. I get that from him. And then you describe kind of externalizers and internalizers. And I found myself not relating to either of these in some ways because I guess in some ways I might've been an externalizer because I was a fighter. I was like, whereas my brother would walk on eggshells around the house, always like, I don't know where I got it, but I had a strong sense of self and I fought back and I was like, no, you will not treat me like this. You will not spank me. I mean, I remember one point, like, you know, I remember the point at 13 when or 12 or something when my mom who is usually less, you know, less frustrated. I think I was a challenging kid. She whacked my leg with a wooden spoon and I took the other wooden spoon and I whacked her leg back, you know? So I, but I didn't, I don't, I didn't feel like I blamed them. I don't know. Maybe I did blame them. But yeah, tell us about externalizers versus internalizers and maybe I'll figure out where I fit in here.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
It’s interesting, because we'll talk about it and then maybe you can tell us what you think afterwards. Okay. But I just want to say that I love, love your story and who knows where, kids get this from. I mean, where does that kind of sense of self and that, that self possession come from in a family where it might easily be erased or might easily be subdued. mean, to me, that's fascinating what innate qualities we have as little children. yeah, so see, I compare what you're talking about to people that come to see me for psychotherapy or for coaching. And that has been like scared out of them. They would no more stand up like that or, you know, because they have been taught that if they don't toe the line, they are bad people. They're not lovable, you know, and they take that in and then they kind of work the rest of their adult life around not upsetting other people. And that's where we get, you know, codependent and type C personalities, that kind of thing. anyway, let's go back to the two types because I think it's going to be interesting to see what you think.
So the externalizer is the person who, when they look at life, they look at it in terms of other people, other things are happening to them. Things are coming from the outside. They don't perceive that they are responsible for or causing any of their own difficulties. They see it that these other people are making mistakes and they need to change, but I haven't ever done anything wrong. And that kind of quality makes for oftentimes a difficult life because if you go around always blaming other people for things, you never really get to the reality of cause and effect. You know, like how your own behavior may be contributing to something.
So there's a sense of, you know, why do bad things keep falling out of the sky on my head kind of thing. And there's also, that would be sort of the more depressive sort of orientation to the externalizing. But it can also be that I look for all of my satisfaction, all my self-worth in the outside, what I do, what I succeed at, how much money I make, whatever. And so that becomes, it's an external way of living your life. The internalizer, on the other hand, is somebody who takes stuff in and processes it. That's the biggest characteristic. They cannot help but process stuff. They think about it. They're curious about it. They like to learn. They like to get more information. They want to understand how reality really works. So they're very alert to learning things. The problem is that lots of times they will take responsibility for stuff and have insights that give responsibility back on their shoulders because they've processed it to the point where they've gotten back to themselves.
And that can lead to a lot of anxiety and depression at times because they're blaming themselves. You know, I should have known better. I should have watched out. You know, they get that kind of self-blame going on. And then they tend to be very empathic and charitable toward the other person who may actually be acting out and projecting stuff onto them.
The internalizer can take all that into heart and over identify with their point of view and then sort of say, well, gosh, you know, I do remember that time when I told them what I really thought and, know, maybe I have a place in this too. And then, you know, then they lose sight of, you know, what's really going on in the dynamic. But those are, those are quick sketches of the two. So did you resonate with either one?
Hunter:
I think I'm a mix of the two, Lindsay. I think I was frustrated and angry. definitely saw, you know, but I was definitely processing things. You know, I was like in the bookstore looking for, you know, finding my book on Buddhism at 16 or 17, trying to understand, you know, and I don't know. Who knows what causes and conditions, you know. I think those two things, I was in a bookstore and trying to understand would definitely put you in the internalizer category. It's more like a process of elimination. Like you're not going to find an externalized. I mean, I'm making a sweeping judgment. I'm sure there are Buddhist externalizers- I was an internalizer, I guess, but I didn't blame myself. I think I had this sense of, you know, no, like, I don't know.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yeah, see, that's what's so beautiful about your example because you're describing that whatever it was that was going on didn't get into your soul. It did get into your self-image. And ideally what you want in a situation like this is someone who is an internalizer enough that they can look for insight and be self-realized, but they also are not blaming themselves to the point where they lose that sense of self, or they lose that connection with reality. Because what you're describing is, know this isn't right. I know I shouldn't be treated this way. And I can't see it otherwise. That is a strength of, yeah, I would call that emotional maturity in a child, because it's a sense of self. And they're very connected to it.
Hunter:
You know, I think I had a lot of wonderful, supportive people in my life. And I had some sort of a second family growing up that I spent a lot of time with that they loved my crazy quirkiness, but was not so loved at home. But also my dad did love my creativity as well. And he, you he was a, you know, I was scared of his temper, but he also rubbed my back when I went to bed at night. So there was a mix of things, but I can relate to that idea of that instability and that walking on eggshells and that frustration with, know, man, you should be going to the therapy. Like you would enjoy it. You have so much to talk about. I've had to hold boundaries around the tuck. And you also use this term- “Emotional loneliness”- and I think I can relate to this term, an experience of adult children of emotionally immature parents where that you're carrying this loneliness inside. Can you tell us about what that is?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
It's a particular kind of loneliness. when I was writing the book, it's always, as you know, it's always hard to find the place where to begin. And so I was casting a bad fur. Where's my entry point to this subject? So it's not too didactic, too academic. And I thought, oh, it's the experience of my clients, you know, I mean, what they have described in this almost poetic poignancy, which is that they would feel lonely even when they were in the middle of their family. You know, at times when they're, you know, from the outside, it would look like there's great camaraderie. They're not feeling the connection. And so that particular kind of emotional loneliness is when, yes, you are with other people, yes, you are talking to other people, but you're not feeling a connection, you're not feeling that you're hooked in with them. You can get that in a glance. You can see that in somebody's eyes.
And that makes you conscious of your own emotional self and it makes you conscious of them. And, and when people do that, you get this release of energy between you that just feels wonderful and we're made for it. I mean, somebody, I wish I could remember who it was, but somebody wrote about that saying that, you know, that's why humans took over the world is because they are like mutual energy generator beings, where by interacting, by loving each other, by having fun with each other, their energy goes up and they can do more stuff for longer. And then when they run low on that energy, they reconnect and here we go again. You know? I mean, it's incredible.
Hunter:
Yeah, okay. and yeah, it's good. I mean, I think that probably, dear listener, like you might be able to relate to parts of this or some of this or maybe all of this. And you may have had a parent who wasn't able to meet your emotional needs in some way or things like that. And that can be, you know, and in the book, Dr. Gibson talks about grief and all practices and to connect with your own sense of worth and stability and all these wonderful things. I think it's important that we touch on, mean, what about, we don't want to raise kids. We don't want to be that emotionally immature parent for our kids, right? If we have experienced that from the child point of view, we don't want to necessarily recreate that from the adult. perspective and the parent-child relationship. I guess like, do you have any ideas that we could suggest for people about this healing journey and how to not, not to have the apple fall far from the tree?
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yes. And you know, it's such a, a sad thing when people who have grown up with these kinds of parents sort of implicitly decide that they're never having children because, know, they don't want to put their kids through what they went through, but also because they have been trained to, to like not have confidence in their own good heart, because that's what you need to raise effectively is a good heart, more important than almost anything. So if you have come to worry that maybe you are not a good person because you're, if you've come to worry that your emotionally immature parent has made you feel like a bad person for not doing what they want you to do, you can carry this sense of low self-worth or worried that you're really a selfish person because they've told you that in so many words, that if you're not treating me as being the most important person in the relationship, you're bad because you have a moral obligation to make me feel good. So a person could internalize that lesson and then be very afraid that they wouldn't be a good parent.
To me, that's so sad because if you're reflective enough to ask yourself the question, would I be a good parent? You know, I can almost tell you like, yes, you probably would be a good parent because you can reflect on your own behavior. And that's a lot of times what it takes to be able to not only work with children, but to be able to go in and repair things when things don't go well with kids, which happens all the time, you know, between parents and kids.
Hunter:
Yeah, there's no escaping that.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Yes, it's just no escape bank. To reflect, repair, be aware.
Hunter:
You're pointing to awareness, like self-awareness, absolute. And if you're having those self-worth issues, like awareness of that, healing that, right? I imagine pointing to a healing journey for the parent is only going to benefit the kids.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson (51:45)
Yes, I mean, they are remembering right now a study where they did of kindergartners. And the parents who, and they were looking at the quality of the attachment of these kindergartners, you know, were they securely attached, anxiously attached, disorganized, whatever. And what they found was that they interviewed the parents and the parents who had thought about their childhoods, who said the sort of thing like, I remember what it was like for me growing up and that caused me a lot of pain and I had to do a lot of my own work to, you know, get better about that. Those were the parents that had the securely attached kids and the parents who said, I had a great childhood. Yeah, they, you know, my dad sometimes pulled out the belt on me or my mom sometimes, you know, gave me the cold shoulder, but they were good people. They tried really hard- no reflection, no awareness of their own childhood history. Their children tended to have less secure attachments. So yes, if you're doing your work on your own stuff, you're much in a much better position to have children that are securely attached and able to get along in the world. Right now, I just am finishing up a new book of mine that's going to be coming out next April. So it's a long way off.
But it's how to raise emotionally mature children. And the idea is that, well, you're trying to give them the experience that you wish that you had had as a child, and you're also trying to remember what it is that they need, because they might need limits, they might need guidance. It's not just trying to make up for the love. It's also doing all these things that help that child build up a sense of self and achieve their own kind of maturity. So I came to the idea for that book because people wanted to know how to help their children not have the experiences that they did growing up.
Hunter (53:52)
Well, we'll just have to have you back on to talk about, to dive into this issue more. Lindsay Gibson, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. We talk a lot about generational patterns here. So it's such a, you're such a great fit and I love your book and it's resonated with people all around the world. It's sold more than a million copies and been translated into 39 languages for a reason. So thank you for coming on and thank you for doing the work that you're doing to help all these people.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson:
Thank you so much. It's been a real mission because I feel like I did that day that it came to me, like, why are these people in therapy? It's like, I want people to know what's happened to them and why, and to clear some of that up for them so they're not carrying around this distorted view of themselves based on what they have gotten from the emotionally immature people in their lives. If I could contribute to that, I'm a happy person. And thank you for having me on to kind of do that today.
Hunter (55:15)
My goodness, this was such a powerful episode, wasn't it? I really appreciate her work so much. And like I promised, I'm going to share with you the email exchange that Dr. Gibson and I had after we recorded this. So I wasn't sure if I was an internalizer or an externalizer. And with her permission, I'm gonna share what she wrote in her email. She said, “I had another thought for you from 4:30 this morning when I woke up full of ideas. I think there's a difference between the externalizing defense system style and good reality testing. What I mean is that if you see other people doing something wrong or harmful to you and you assert yourself, that seems to me like someone who is responding appropriately to the facts of the situation. I.e. you really do have something to blame them for. I think that it's a great combination that you described of being reflective and introspective enough to worry, sorry, to wonder about what's going on, yet clear enough to put responsibility where it belongs. I would see the externalizing style as more chronically distorting reality in the service of preserving one's ego by blaming others. I think that's different." She went on to say, “I think in therapy, I'm trying to get people to do what you're describing. Hold on to the inner strengths of the internalizer while building a little more of the self-preserving assertion energy of the externalizer.”
So I guess I'm a little above. I don't know. Where are you on this? If you feel like sharing, I'd love to learn more. It certainly makes me feel less alone. So do let me know, send me a DM. I'm @MindfulMamaMentor. I would love to know, and I'm sure Dr. Gibson would love to know what you think about this episode. And I'm sure you know people who could benefit from hearing this. I feel like it's so helpful and enlightening. So yeah, share this episode with your friends, share it with everybody on social. That would be great. And tell them to, of course, subscribe and support the podcast.
That's a lot, huh? It's intense. You know, it's so hard. So hard to be a human being. It's, I think at every age and stage, it's, It doesn't get easier. Oy! In some ways, different levels, different devils. Isn't that what they say? I don't know. I think, you know, we're so interconnected and our hearts are and, Yeah. It's just challenging. So anyway, hope this helped this episode and I'm wishing you some ease and peace and hugs this week and I will be back to talk to you again next week. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. Namaste.
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