Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

When Connection Comes with Conditions

Through no fault of your own, you became the parent before you got the chance to become yourself. As a result you’ve spent a lifetime trying your best to anticipate, manage and keep the peace.

Your childhood taught you that love came with conditions and those conditions have a cost.

Being forced to grow up too soon means:

  • The involuntarily performing of emotional labor

  • A replacing of one’s authentic Self with pathological accommodation

  • Choosing fear over love for a sense of safety



The Movement Towards Integration is a three-part jounrey

The Three R’s:

  • Recognizing (seeing the patterns)

  • Releasing (learning to letting go of what was never yours to own)

  • Rebuilding (nurturing authentic relationships from newly discovered preferences)

1. Recognition of Your Experience, Finally Naming What was Missing

  • They were unstable without intervention

  • My nervous system was shaped by emotional immaturity, unavailability and neglect

  • I’ve ended up in relationships which are patterned off of those relationships, for better or worse.

2. Releasing What was Never Ours to Own or Control

  • The model of secure attachment we never got to experience

  • The separating from parents (individuation) that we never learned was appropriate or safe

  • The gaslighting and emotional coercion tactics used to gain compliance at our cost

  • A parent’s disappointment in their parents, projected onto you

3. Cultivating Relationships Where What You Actually Want is Desired

  • Where your new-found values and authentic preferences thrive

  • An embracing of peace where fear used to reside

  • A confidence in sharing what’s not agreeable

  • A felt distinction between self-care and selfish

  • A safety in separateness based on mutuality

This isn’t about vengeance towards your parents…

It’s about simply claiming the second half of your life.

And that second half begins when you want it to.

WHY THIS can WORK

My approach combines:

  • A deep understanding of generational trauma’s impact and resulting rigid/harsh ego development for self-preservation

  • A trauma-informed, attachment-focused approach, honoring our nervous systems need to rest

  • A non-pathologizing, curiosity-based stance where all actions (no matter how drastic) are affirmed as just trying to help

YOUR NEXT STEP

Schedule your free consultation to explore how therapy can support your journey.

Email is often the best way to reach me. You can also request a consultation directly by following this link below:

Book Your Consulation