Emotionally Immature Parents (Signs, Consequences and How to Heal)
What this post offers is some basic understanding of what commonly results when we grow up with parent(s) whom lacked the ability to fulfill our emotional needs. Just to clarify: this post is certainly not to point blame on the people that raised you.
No, you’re not broken and nothing is “wrong with you” if you grew up in such a home.
Being on the other end of a parent or parents who were emotionally immature puts you, as a child, in situations that are usually “before your time.” Meaning you were exposed to conflicts, reactions and situations that you had to figure out how to make sense of and understand on your own that were beyond your capacity to understand as a child.
It’s difficult to be young and in a position where you’re trying to make sense of your parents actions that are confusing, don’t feel safe or make you doubt your own sense of self. Such feelings are what often come up for kids who grow up with emotionally immature parents.
Signs of An Emotionally Immature Parent: What it looks like
they’re rigid and operate with a strict “wrong” and “right”mentality; where (in their minds) they’re usually always right.
they’re quick to misinterpret communication as a threat or criticism toward them or others, which makes them reactive and defensive.
they can have the contrast of either being extremely controlling or very uninvolved in their childs life.
they throw tantrums or having “big reactions” that feel chaotic and uncomfortable to be on the other end of.
inability to cope with their own emotions in a healthy way.
things tend to only go smoothly when things are going in their favor.
their emotional responses tend to lack empathy or rationality (their reactions tend to be “off putting” to a healthy person)
they tend to “need to be needed”
inability to meet your emotional needs
inability to hear or validate your feelings
tendency to hold grudges (if you “cross them” it’s common for a relationship to be strained without resolve)
highly critical
Consequences of Emotionally Immature Parents on a Child
Dismal of your feelings as a child leaves you playing small, people pleasing, tolerating unhealthy behaviors in your relationships amongst a slew of other things. Here are some key signs that often result with being on the other end of emotionally immature parenting:
growing up feeling unworthy of love
insecure attachment style
tendency to put your needs last due to the conditioning and dynamic of not feeling heard and loved in a healthy.
you started acting “like an adult” developmentally earlier than necessary.
people pleasing behaviors
overachieving / or emotionally shut down
Consequences As Adults
It’s common for individuals that come from emotionally immature parenting to be very capable, rational and level headed adults due to playing the calming role in their home as kids and having to learn to cope with their own emotions from an early age.
If unhealed, these adults will struggle with the same “wounds” that they developed as kids from being on the other end of immature parenting; low self worth, inability to love themselves, skewed self concept, non-reciprocal relationships and insecure attachment styles in their relationships.
How to heal from the impact of an emotionally immature parent
See your situation in a level headed and realistic way by focusing on the facts of the situation:
Your parent(s) were emotionally immature; it was not your fault. How you were received by your parent(s) did not give or provide you with an accurate projection of yourself, which now could be causing issues in your life and relationships as an adult. You can heal and course correct.
When we don’t get this healthy mirroring that validates our sense of self, it impact us not only as children, but in our adult years as well. (there’s healing in acknowledging, accepting and being able to see your past clearly for what is was.)
Generally speaking your healing process involves gaining your sense of worthiness, self love and validation that you were not taught to give to yourself by your primary caregivers. (As kids we’re dependent on our parents in order to learn these key virtues. It’s important to realize that you are not “blaming” your parents, you are simply seeing the situation for what it was in order to understand it, process it and move forward with your healing.
The healing process will help you to reconnect to the truth and work through false stories that you established about yourself to make sense of the lack of emotional support that you were on the other end of growing up. (or still might be)
It’s important to see and acknowledge the confusion in it all: Why would a parent not say “i love you?” Why would mom or dad never praise me for doing well? Why did my feelings go ignored or invalidated?
If you have decided that it’s due to being on the other end of a parent that lacked emotional maturity, then your healing process involves working to accept that the answers to the above questions are just that:
Your parent(s) lacked the emotionally capacity to match your needs. It’s important to realize that it had NOTHING to do with you and any lack on your part.
Since “hurt people hurt people” an emotionally immature parent is usually the product of a parent who also lacked the capacity to fulfill their emotional needs. So the cycle continues unless it’s broken to stop the generational trauma from getting pasted down any further.
Good news: The cycle can end with you.
One more suggestion for healing: inner child healing (Here’s a post on inner child healing that can be helpful to work through deeper and more difficult feelings around this issue. Find that post HERE)
Lastly, I want to acknowledge that I summed up a very painful and big topic in a small little post. My intention is to bring awareness to this topic and to perhaps what is causing any current feelings of low or lack of self worth. There’s so much more to say about this topic and there’s a lot of information out there to help you with your healing. Feel free to reach out if you would like me to point you toward more resources on this topic.
An Invitation For You
If this resonates with you:
Want more reflections like this?
Subscribe to my IAMWELL Newsletter to receive grounded mental-health insights, somatic reflections, and friendly reminders to support a life rooted in slow living, wellbeing, and mind-body connection.
Curious about working together?
You’re welcome to book a brief, free consultation call — we can explore whether we feel aligned in working together. (Reach out HERE.)
Have thoughts or reflections?
Feel free to comment or share — I’d truly love to hear what this brought up for you.
Let’s stay connected. You can find me on Instagram at @IAMKIMEGEL
*Above image by photographer, Amy Lynn Bjornson.
Healthy Romantic Love (What It Looks & Feels Like)
Each connection that we have with another is so unique, which is what makes it special. Listed below are some solid traits of a healthy partnership. Being aware of the aspects that make relationships rich and fulfilling can help you identify what you’re lacking or what you’re grateful for. Either way, knowledge around what’s healthy can help you identify topics and initiate conversations in your partnerships in order to create a higher level of connection. It also can help you identify what you can individually work on in order to improve the quality of your connection.
There is NO perfect. This is a quick post for you to become more mindful or refresh your awareness of what a healthy, loving relationship contains. Whether you’re in a long term partnership, a marriage or looking for love, I’m hoping that this can help you assess where you’re uniquely at in terms of creating the love that you want.
7 Traits of Healthy & Loving Relationships
It feels CONSIDERATE
You feel considered. You feel like your partner considers you when it comes to their choices. They consider how you will be impacted by the decisions that they make. Your partner considers your feelings about the decisions that will impact you. They want you to feel considered and important and they take action to make that clear.
In a nutshell: Your partner considers your feelings. They’re consistently mindful of how their decisions impact you.
2. It’s CONSISTENT
You’re going to be on a bit of a ride with whoever you’re in a long term partnership with because that’s just the nature of a long term relationship. You’re going to go through and see some “stuff’ together; pain, happiness, hardships, fun times, loses, gains, wins, etc. Through all of the twists and turns, a healthy relationship will be consistent and steady. That’s stabilizing. If a hurricane is blowing all around you, a partner that can hold you steady and keep you stabilized as the wind and rain is doing it’s best to blow you over is what we all need in our loving relationships.
At the end of the day, find someone who is consistent. We trust people whose words and actions match up consistently over time.
3. It’s TRUSTING
You trust the judgement of your partner and they trust yours. It’s mutual. You trust that their actions and behaviors consider the basis of what a commitment is based on; love, respect & kindness. Each individual in the relationship has the room and space to tend to things outside the partnership that fill one another up. Each individual has the room to be whole.
A healthy relationship feels calm and open, not restrictive and heavy. The energy that you feel within a connection says a thousand words. Listen to what your body and mind is saying and feeling. Do you need to over explain in order to feel heard? Do you believe that you have the space to do healthy things for yourself without fearing a negative response from your partner?
Ultimately I’m speaking to feeling like someone trusts you. It’s an unsaid energy. I hope this feeling or you in your loving partnership.
4. It’s EMOTIONALLY SAFE
You feel safe to disclose your emotions with your partner. You feel confident that you can bring up your emotions and be heard. Being “heard” doesn’t necessarily mean that your partner will agree, but they will respect your emotions. They won’t make you feel judged or criticized based on how you perceive things. If they do, you can bring it up, communicate about it and work it through.
(Again, nobody is going to be perfect, but within a healthy partnership, you will be able to work through a lot of the kinks.)
When we feel emotionally safe in relationships we don’t feel judged, dismissed or invalidated. On the contrary, we feel understood, loved and validated. We feel like our partner considers what’s in our best interest.
5. It feels LOVING
You feel love and kindness from your partner. They verbalize or show you that they love you. They use their specific Love Language to express their love for you and you can feel it. You don’t question it and if you do for whatever reason, it can be cleared up with communication.
This leads to the next point……
6. You COMMUNICATE Well
Being in a relationship where you feel like your partner gives you space to voice your concerns and spends time and energy attempting to understand your feelings and emotions is priceless. There’s so much involved in good communication.
Feeling like you can bring up concerns or topics with your partner without fearing a negative reaction is so important. Meaning, so much of the time, we end up not saying anything because of the reaction that we don’t want to get from others. This causes conflict and resentment to build. Being in a relationship where you feel like, for the most part, someone is able to give you the platform to self express without shut down, criticism, or judgement lays the foundation for how that partnership is going to evolve over time.
7. It feels BALANCED
Your partner allows you the time and space to nurture other aspects of your life without guilting you. Your partner allows you to spend time and energy in other areas that allow you to be a balanced person; health, friendships, career, interests, etc. You also give the same grace and understanding to your partner. You each have awareness of what it takes for you to be a healthy individual, which allows your partnership to be more rich and fulfilling.
Of course, this list can go on, but these are some staple points to have in mind while you’re either attracting love to you or are in a committed partnership or marriage. It’s always good to go over the basics and do some inventory on where you’re at.
Take this all in with a grain of salt. There’s no “perfect” relationship. We’re all works in progress, shifting and changing with time, which is also true of our relationships.
An Invitation For You
If this resonates with you:
Want more reflections like this?
Subscribe to my IAMWELL Newsletter to receive grounded mental-health insights, somatic reflections, and friendly reminders to support a life rooted in slow living, wellbeing, and mind-body connection.
Curious about working together?
You’re welcome to book a brief, free consultation call — we can explore whether we feel aligned in working together. (Reach out HERE.)
Have thoughts or reflections?
Feel free to comment or share — I’d truly love to hear what this brought up for you.
*Image above is by Renata Amazonas, Photographer.
Emotionally Unavailability: Tendencies of the Unavailable Partner
Getting involved with people who are emotionally unavailable could be a sign, that we’re not available ourselves. Unavailable often attracts unavailable, as like attracts like.
“For the unavailable person, often, “The fantasy of a person is much safer.”
In an attempt to help you gain more awareness around this topic, below find 10 signs that point toward emotional unavailability written by Judith Orloff, a psychiatrist, intuitive healer, and NY Times bestselling author.
10 Signs of Unavailable People
1. They’re married or in a relationship with someone else.
2. They have one foot on the gas pedal, one foot on the brake.
3. They’re emotionally distant, shut down, or can’t deal with conflict.
4. They’re mainly interested in sex, not relating emotionally or spiritually.
5. They’re practicing alcoholics, sex addicts, or substance abusers.
6. They prefer long distant relationships, emails, texting, or don’t introduce you to their friends and family.
7. They’re elusive, sneaky, frequently working or tired, and may disappear for periods.
8. They’re seductive with you but make empty promises — their behavior and words don’t match.
9. They’re narcissistic, only consider themselves, not your needs.
10. They throw you emotional crumbs or enticing hints of their potential to be loving, then withdraw.
When we’re unavailable, a strong magnetic attraction can pull us toward partners who are emotionally distant. Why? Well, because an emotionally distant partner is the perfect pick for someone whose not ready, willing or capable to go to the emotional depths that a healthy, connected relationship requires…… and, drumroll, this is subconsciously exactly what we’re looking for!
Emotional unavailability doesn’t just appear. Chances are, ending up in such a state is due to past hurts and old wounds that have yet to be fully healed. To bring some psychological jargon into this, when we keep attracting unavailable as a clear pattern, we’re still picking partners from a “wounded part of self.” Meaning, the part of us that’s still hurt from past disappointments and experiences is doing the picking.
This keeps the unhealthy cycle going of “I’m hurt. I keep getting hurt. I keep getting disappointed, so I’m going to keep my wall up because that feels more safe.” In a nutshell, this cycle validates our closed off heart space and scratches at our unhealed wounds, putting us in a constant state of self protection.
It reminds me of the phrase “hurt people, hurt people.”
When our “wounded self” is running the show, how healthy can our point of attraction be? The truth is that we’re constantly attracting based on where we’re at.
All in all, we can find ourselves emotionally drained by this dynamic. The constant musical chairs of coping with the consequences of being unavailable (keeping others at a distance, struggling with isolation and loneliness), going toward the unavailable other and ending up disappointed by their ultimate rejection is exhausting. This “push pull” cycle doesn’t allow for a healthy, connective partnership nor a healthy individual for that matter; It’s extremely frustrating.
Let’s talk characteristics of what this all looks like, so you can have a higher level of awareness around what’s going on if you’re starting to identify with aspects of unavailability.
What Partnering with “Unavailable” Can Look Like
Feeling attraction toward and being in partnership with someone whose unavailable can be obvious or not so obvious depending on the unique circumstance. Here’s some situations that might be pointing toward your attraction to unavailable partners:
1. A pattern of dating people who live in different cities, states or even countries.
2. Dating someone whose very consumed in work, hobbies and, generally, their own thing. These individuals tend to be “so busy.”
3. Dating someone who talks a lot about themselves, without asking deeper questions or showing an interest to connect on an intimate level beyond surface level topics.
4. Continual attraction to someone whose not looking for a commitment. (There’s nothing wrong with this. It’s only an issue if you’re looking for a commitment and keep going toward someone whose not.)
4 Behaviors That Keep Us Stuck in a Pattern of Unavailability
Continuing to go Toward Unavailable Partners Due to Picking from an Emotionally Hurt Place
When we’re unaware of our own unavailability, we tend to feel the biggest “fire” for unavailable partners. This is usually due to the lack of commitment that’s possible from such a connection. When we’re unavailable, we can think and feel that we want commitment, however, deep down, we’re terrified of the actual vulnerability and self exposure that true commitment entails. Attraction toward those who are unavailable allows us to keep dreaming and remain in our safe illusion of what “could be” vs. what is (reality). We tend to have the largest fantasies about unavailable individuals as it’s a non threatening partnership to entertain for our “fantasy” won’t be challenged.
Our feelings of longing and desire for the unavailable can pose an inner confusion because we can genuinely “feel” like we want to be in partnership. However, when it comes down to it, if a connection gets too close for comfort we scramble. (This could be very subconscious.)
We can even show up physically, but be energetically shut off, which will be felt by the other. If this state is not worked through, it can deteriorate a connection. Overall, keep your eye out for a pattern of growing feelings for partners whom are not available. Your increased awareness is what can turn this pattern around.
Confusing Extreme Attraction to Real Potential
Let me say it straight: Extreme attraction doesn’t mean real potential. Don’t get me wrong, it can. Although, it’s not black and white, as no relationship is. Sometimes extreme attraction can mean “red flag” (turn away) because the intensity of the attraction is stemming from our inner wounded self. (I know there’s a lot to unpack with that statement, which might be a whole other blog post, but bare with me.)
Bottom line, it takes a hot minute to really get to know another. It takes time to witness how a potential partner handles not only daily stresses, but life stresses, which will only be unveiled with time. Loss, death, hardships, physical aliments, injures, family problems; these things sometimes take years to show up within a partnership. It’s within the small and big things where someone is truly showing you who they are, which can be different from who they’re telling you they are. (Important distinction friends.)
Continuing to Date Someone Who Has Verbalized That They Don’t Want Commitment
Let me preface this by saying, if you don’t want commitment, there’s nothing wrong with spending time with someone whose not looking for it either. Sounds like you’re in the clear if that’s your situation.
I know this sounds really basic, but you might be surprised how often I have clients that find the most creative ways to validate how someone will or might eventually come on board with commitment. There are so many things I have to say about this, but let’s highlight just two main points, shall we?
“When someone shows you (or flat out tells you) who they are, believe them the first time.” -Oprah
A person is showing you who they are in two main ways: With their words and with their actions. This is a nugget of truth that is so incredibly helpful to pay attention to within all your relationships. Whether someone is saying they want to be with you, yet not acting like it or being honest with that they’re not looking for a partnership, believe them. (and “believe them the first time.”) Compliments of Oprah, again.
When we want a specific outcome in a relationship, it’s incredible what we will push to the side and ignore in order to keep a connection going that’s not in alignment with our truth.
Getting beyond a pattern of unavailability will require you to operate based on facts vs. a false reality (stories.) Becoming more real with yourself around what the truth of any partnership is, might be disappointing at first, however, in the long run it will save you much time, effort and further hardship. Stay true to the facts.
Getting Caught in the Potential of Someone
How someone is showing up in real time, is the only truth. Anything that we create about ourselves or anybody beyond this moment is just a story. Story, meaning that what we’re telling ourselves about that other is not a fact, it’s made up. Practicing the art of being where you’re at and taking how people are showing up as the current truth will help you to discern what’s right for you.
“Getting caught up in potential” usually involves getting invested in the story of what we would like to see happen for that other in the future. (This can look very different from reality, as life sometimes has a very different plan for us than which we can see.)
We might think: “He’ll end up eventually committing to me because I know that he has a good heart.” “She’ll end up on a stable career path because that’s what makes the most sense for her.” “I can’t imagine him changing his mind about that.”
People change, people grow and people expand…. and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes people will stay true to what they were doing or how they showed up when they came into your life, and sometimes they won’t. Sometimes who someone was when they first crossed your path will look very different years later and sometimes it won’t. Allowing someone to show you who they are and besides trying to convince yourself of a story about what you would like them to do or BE, practice seeing it straight. Practice seeing life and people for who they are now.
As you see things clearly, you then will be able to make decisions around the reality of the matter for how it stands today, in real time. That’s the best that you can do. Making a choice with the current truth on the table.
If any of these words resonated with you and is pointing to the parts of you that are closed and shut off, that’s okay. Things happen in life that sometimes sting so much that the only thing we know to do is to put our walls up. Your awareness of this blockage can now help you to begin lowering your walls and reopening your heart space, so you can have healthy and fulfilling connections. If you want to open your heart, if you want to become more emotionally available you can. Knowing that you want to is half the battle, my friend.
*A great book for you to explore your attachment style is ATTACHED. Discover your specific attachment style as learning more about how you tick is what will help you shift.
*Above image by photographer & creator of honeyandgarden, Renata Amazonas