Growing up with emotionally immature parents can leave deep, lasting scars on your sense of self. Emotionally immature parents usually struggle to understand, validate, and nurture your emotional needs. While your childhood may have been painful, it’s possible to grow from it.
Here’s a guide to help you understand the effects of emotionally immature parenting and take steps toward healing.
Recognize Their Impact
An important first step in healing is becoming aware of how your parents affected you. This can mean admitting uncomfortable truths about their behaviour. You might notice these signs in yourself:
- Low self-esteem: If your emotional needs were dismissed, you might struggle to trust your own feelings or sense of worth.
- Difficulty with boundaries: You may have learned to prioritize others’ needs over your own, making it difficult to set and enforce boundaries.
- Emotional avoidance: Growing up with parents who ignored or invalidated emotions might lead you to suppress your own feelings.
- Patterns in relationships: You might find yourself drawn to emotionally unavailable partners or recreating dysfunctional dynamics.
Validate Your Own Feelings
If your emotions were dismissed as a child, you might believe your feelings are never valid or an important part of your lived experience. Correct that wrong by connecting with your feelings.
- Name your emotions: When you feel upset, take time to identify and label your feelings. This is especially important when you’re upset—this practice gets you more in tune with what’s fueling your reactions.
- Practice self-compassion: Treating yourself with the kindness and understanding you wish you had received compassion as a child.
- Look for supportive relationships: Surround yourself with people who validate your feelings and encourage emotional expression.
Grieve What Was Missing
It’s painful to acknowledge that your parents couldn’t meet your emotional needs. Grieving this loss looks different for everyone, but you can try to:
- Honour your inner child: Recognize the unmet needs and dreams of your younger self. Indulge that part of yourself when it wants or needs something.
- Feel and express your emotions: Give yourself permission to feel feelings, whether they’re positive or negative. Try creative outlets like journaling, making art, or dancing.
- Seek closure: You may not get the apology or recognition you desire from your parents. Instead, focus on finding closure within yourself through self-reflection or therapy.
Rewrite Your Narrative
Adult children of emotionally immature parents typically have internalized shame, guilt, and feelings of inadequacy. Part of healing is rewriting the story you tell yourself about your worth and your past.
- Challenge negative beliefs: Replace unhealthy thoughts (“I’m unlovable,” “I’m a failure”) with positive affirmations (“I am worthy of love and respect,” “I am getting better every day”).
- Celebrate how strong you are: Acknowledge the strength it took to live through a childhood with emotionally immature parents.
- Redefine what success means: Shift your focus from seeking external validation to living authentically for your intrinsic accomplishment and self-worth.
Set Healthy Boundaries
If you grew up catering to your parents’ needs, you might feel uncomfortable asserting your own. But learning how to set boundaries (especially with your parents, if they’re still in your life) is the best way to advocate for yourself and have healthy relationships.
- Start small: Practice saying “no” to small requests that feel overwhelming.
- Communicate clearly: Use “I” statements to express your needs (“I need some space to process my thoughts.”).
- Expect resistance: Emotionally immature parents may react negatively to boundaries. Remember, their discomfort is not your responsibility.
Getting Help
If you grew up with emotionally immature parents, healing from their damage isn’t always possible on your own. Consider seeking therapy.
With a skilled and caring therapist at Onyx, you can explore your childhood experiences, emotions, and process the ways in which your parents weren’t there for you. You’ll also learn how to heal, build your confidence, and learn how to set boundaries assertively.
Schedule a session with us today to make a plan for becoming the person your inner child always needed. We are here to support you.
