Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
Emotionally immature parents are parents who couldn’t hold their own feelings, so they couldn’t hold yours. You may have been fed, housed and even loved, and still grown up feeling alone, managing their moods and believing your needs were too much. The phrase comes from psychologist Lindsay Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
You ring your mum with real news and within a minute it’s about her. You tell your dad you’re struggling and he makes a joke, changes the subject, or gets cross that you’re upset. You hang up and feel about nine years old. Or strangely older than both of them.
When I was five, my teacher punched me in the face for daydreaming while singing “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” When I told my mother, she laughed. I don’t think it was a cruel laugh. It was a nervous laugh, the laugh of a person who has no idea what to do with what they’ve just heard.
I don’t know if she ever said anything to the principal. All I know is that I went back the next day, and the day after that. My mother was working all day and carrying the weight of two parents on one exhausted back. She was doing everything she possibly could. She just couldn’t hold that.
Decades later it’s my father on the phone, mourning all the ways he feels he messed up his life. And I’m the one comforting him. I told him maybe there was one silver lining: the way he collapsed helped make sure I never would. I meant it as a kindness, and it’s true. I also noticed who was holding whom.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. Your feelings were never too much. They just needed someone who could hold them. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the throat, the chest, the belly, and whether something in you softens or holds on tighter. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in you went quiet and sad, that makes sense. If something rushed in to defend them, “they did their best,” that makes sense too. Both can be true. They did their best, and their best left you on your own with your feelings.
Every child makes a trade. A child can’t survive believing that the people responsible for keeping them alive can’t hold them. To look clearly and say my parent can’t keep me safe is to fall straight through the floor of the world. So the child decides: it must be me. I must be too much. I must be not enough.
That’s why you might still go quiet around them or edit what you share. You learned early which feelings they could take. You got good at reading the room because someone had to.
A parent is supposed to give a child three things. When the child asks, are you there for me, the answer is yes. When the child asks, out loud or silently, am I enough for you, the answer is yes. And the third: boundaries that stay the same tomorrow as today. The boundary happens inside the attachment bond.
Emotionally immature parents often couldn’t give those reliably, because nobody gave them to them. My father was not cruel. He was drowning in wounds he could never speak about. That doesn’t erase what you missed. It just means the missing wasn’t about your worth. You make sense.
Signs of emotionally immature parents, from the inside
You don’t need to diagnose anyone. Notice what keeps happening in you.
Your feelings get laughed off, fixed or punished. You bring sadness and get a joke, advice, or anger back. Rarely just company.
Everything circles back to them. Your news becomes their story. Your pain becomes their guilt, which you then have to soothe.
You manage their moods. You walk in and check the weather before you take your coat off.
You feel like the adult. You comfort them, explain things to them, keep the peace, and leave exhausted.
You still edit yourself. At forty you’re still deciding what’s safe to tell them, the way you did at ten.
If anyone in your family is hurting you or threatening you, that’s not a coaching question. Get safe first: call 911 if you’re in danger, or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Family ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So we work with the moment your parent shows up in you, usually right after a call or a visit.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One long breath out. Look around and name three things in the room that belong to your life now. You’re not nine.
What happened
One plain sentence. “I told my mum I’d been made redundant and she talked about her neighbour’s son for ten minutes.”
Where it lands in the body
A hollow in the chest. A lump in the throat. A flat, far away feeling. Rest your attention there, gently. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Which part took over? The little one who wanted to be held. The caretaker who jumped in to make them feel better. The one who wants to never ring again. Each one carries a coin: too much (I shouldn’t need this from them) or not enough (I’m not worth their attention). Thank it. It kept you going for years.
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. What did you need from them back then that this moment touched? Usually it’s simple: someone to sit with you.
Feel it and tell someone
Say the feeling to someone who’s on your side. “I wanted her to be proud of me and she didn’t even notice.” When the old voice says it must be you, let the Friend answer, the part of you that knows you’re good: “You weren’t too much. You were a child. It’s not too late for what you need.”
One creative action
Choose one thing for the next contact. Share the news, skip the feelings. Keep the call to twenty minutes. Tell the real stuff to a friend first, so you don’t arrive at your parent hungry.
How to deal with emotionally immature parents now
Grieve the parent you didn’t get. The hardest part isn’t the boundary. It’s letting yourself feel that they may never be able to give you this. Grief, not a better argument, is what loosens the hook.
Right-size what you bring them. Give them what they can actually hold. Holiday plans, photos of the kids, a funny story. Take the tender things somewhere they’ll be met.
Keep the boundary inside the bond. “I love you, and I’m not going to talk about my marriage with you” is a boundary that keeps the relationship, not one that ends it. Say it the same way every time.
Give yourself the three things. I’m here for you. You’re enough for me. And the ground will be the same tomorrow. Say them to yourself, out loud if you can.
Don’t pass it on. I never got my father to really see me. The remedy, for me, was to let my children see me, so they never inherit that wound. You can be the place where it stops.
If what you’re dealing with feels harsher than immaturity, read narcissistic parents or toxic family.
One thing to do tonight
Write the sentence you most needed to hear from your parent as a child. Maybe “I’m proud of you.” Maybe “You’re not too much.” Read it slowly, out loud, to yourself. Notice where it lands and whether something in you leans toward it or pulls away. That’s where the repair begins.
Would therapy help with this?
If it shows up as dread before calls, people pleasing, and feeling like the grown up in every room, coaching is often the right size of help.
But if there was abuse, if you’re living with flashbacks, panic or long stretches of numbness, or if a parent’s needs are swallowing your life, please talk to a licensed therapist where you live. You deserve a real room for this.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Family ground, that means being able to love your parents as they are without waiting for them to become who you needed.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Family ground, right after the call that left you feeling nine again. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
When I think of that five year old walking back into the classroom, I don’t need my mother to have done it differently anymore. I need him to know it was never his fault.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
What are the signs of emotionally immature parents?
Your feelings got laughed off, fixed or punished, conversations kept circling back to them, you managed their moods, and you often felt like the adult. The clearest sign is how alone you felt with your feelings, even in a home with plenty of love in it.
How do you deal with emotionally immature parents?
Stop waiting for them to give what they don’t have, grieve that, and right-size what you share. Keep steady boundaries inside the relationship, and take your tender feelings to people who can hold them.
Can emotionally immature parents change?
Some soften with age, and some don’t. You can’t make them change, but you can change how much their reactions run your life. That part is yours, and it can start tonight.
The Friend comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
