Lexie Carroll’s Reviews > Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents > Status Update

The Maturity Awareness Approach:
It helps to try to relate to the parent or EI person in a neutral way, rather than trying to have a relationship. First assess their level of maturity and approach interactions from an observational perspective.
Then these 3 steps:
1. Express yourself and then let it go
2. Focus on the outcome rather than the relationship
3. Manage the interaction rather than engage emotionally

Relatedness vs. Relationship:
Another tip to help in detached observation is remembering that relatedness is different from relationship. Real relationship involves openness & emotional reciprocity- attempting this with EI people is frustrating & invalidating. In relatedness, there’s communication but no goal of having a satisfying emotional exchange. You stay in contact without expecting validation or attunement.

Detached Observation:
Become observational by deliberately taking a detached stance when interacting with EI person. Use mindfulness, paced breathing & relaxing imagery to calm your emotions. Shift into a rational, descriptive perspective: pretend you are a scientist conducting an anthropological field study. Internally narrate your observations to yourself; if needed, silently repeat: “Detach, detach, detach.”

3 Key Approaches to use with EI parents & people:

1. Detached observation
2. Maturity Awareness
3. Stepping Away from Your Old Role Self

Waking Up from Idealizing Others: one of the hardest fantasies to wake up from is the belief that our parents are wiser and know more than we do. It can be embarrassing and even scary for children to see their parents’ weaknesses. Even as adults, people may strongly resist seeing their parents’ immaturity for what it is; it can feel better to remain naïve about their limitations than to look at them objectively.

Much like Virginia’s story, I too developed a role (perfectionism & “smartness”) to try to win the love of my critical and disdainful father. “Her subconscious healing fantasy was that one day she would finally be ‘correct’ enough to gain his approval. … ‘If people expressed any displeasure with me, especially men, I got frightened and automatically assumed I must be wrong.”
Yup, me too.

True Self:
Your true self has the same needs as a flourishing, healthy child: to grow, be known, and express itself. Your true self keeps pushing for your expansion, and only wants to be genuine with other people and sincere in its own pursuits. It asks for your acceptance of its guidance & legitimate desires. It has no interest in desperate ideas formed in childhood regarding a healing fantasy or role-self.

Many internalizers subconsciously believe that neglecting one’s self is a sign of being a good person. When self-absorbed parents make excessive claims on child’s energy & attention, they teach them that self-sacrifice is the worthiest ideal. Internalizers become secretly convinced that more self sacrifice & emotional work will (eventlly) transform unsatisfying relationships. (More difficulty = the more they try)

4 Types of EI Parents:
1. Emotional- Run by feelings, emotional swings, anxiety, instability & overwhelm.
2. Driven- goal-oriented, busy, perfecting, controlling, interfering.
3. Passive- take a back-seat (maybe to more dominant mate), minimize/ignore problems, allow abuse /neglect, acquiescing, avoidant.
4. Rejecting- low tolerance/uninterested in needs of others, self-involved/isolating, disengaged from fam life.

Self-Reflection (& self-growth) gets limited by an impaired perception of time flow. They seem to forget past events & focus only on the present (resist attempts to discuss & repair past hurts). This is due to lack of self development & poor personality integration, along with tendency toward v. concrete/literal thinking. Emotions & stress put them back in a childlike mentality where moments in time float separately.