In the final episode of our book club, we explore the last few chapters of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. The focus shifts from recognizing emotionally immature people to seeking and building relationships that nourish us.

Skepticism may arise, as many of us have experienced emotional immaturity from our parents or caretakers in the past. Our survival system may make it feel like their behavior is still dangerous in the present, but we have the opportunity to work to build a sense of safety within ourselves.

Emotionally mature people are responsive, empathetic, offer safety, and make you feel seen and understood. They embody Self-energy of curiosity, compassion, calm, and connectedness, and can reflect on their actions. Emotionally mature people make relationships feel safer over time and allow us to feel safer in ourselves.

Through therapy, we can explore the patterns in our lives and our relationship with our own emotionally immature parent, and learn to embody emotionally mature qualities within ourselves.

Please feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you’re observing. In September, we will dive into Unlocking the Emotional Brain - I’m so excited! I’m brainstorming ways for us to connect even further - more live meetings? Discord chat? Let me know your thoughts!

(0:00 - 3:27)

Welcome back book club friends to our final podcast episode about adult children of emotionally immature parents. We will have our final live meeting together on August 30th where we get a chance to come together, explore, ask questions, and just have that time of connection to integrate all that we've learned together from this depthful book. So as we come to these last chapters we're just kind of bringing everything together.

It's been a journey of exploration of what immature parents represent, how they show up, and what happens within us when we grow up in that kind of environment. And so chapter 10 introduces us to how we identify emotionally immature people. It can sound really simple and it can sound like well duh I just look for the opposite but I think it's actually a really profound exploration when you've grown up with emotional immaturity as your baseline.

You know we have to remember that what we experience repeatedly becomes very strong neural pathways within our brain and they can become the lenses through which we see the world. But it's all subconscious. Most of it's subconscious.

So we might find ourselves as we've talked about through this book over and over again getting into relationships or friendships or staying in connection with emotionally immature people. And again that's because with these lenses that we have learned to see the world we might say well it's me. I'm the problem.

This other person can't be the problem. I'm just not trying hard enough. I'm not working hard enough to figure out a solution for this person so that they can behave more kindly or be more connected to me or I just keep making mistakes and that's why this person isn't showing up for me.

Or we endlessly analyze it and intellectualize it but never being able to quite come to that moment where we recognize that it may not be about us. It may be about this other person's dynamic and we can choose not to engage in that dynamic little bits at a time. A lot of times in popular culture right now we talk a lot about cutting people off.

You know boundaries and then boundaries are this idea that it means we never talk to the person again or you know we have to set these really hard lines and I'm fully in support of whatever people need to do to take care of themselves but it's important to understand that to go from completely trying to make things okay for other people, family members or whoever it might be, to fully cutting them off can feel incredibly jarring and terrifying to our nervous system. And so I want to emphasize that if you have been told or have this idea that you have to jump to cutting your parents off or whoever the emotionally immature person might be, you can take things slower. You can take things one tiny step at a time and in fact we just know that that's how our brain works.

That's why I named this substack Tiny Sparks because neurons that fire together wire together. So just remembering that one little step at a time is just fine even if you're feeling an intensity of an experience. So as we come back into chapter 10 we are learning how the focus shifts from recognizing emotionally immature people and the way they've impacted us to starting to shift to our agency of seeking and building relationships that nourish us and that feel deeply connecting.

(3:28 - 4:06)

So this chapter talks about something that children of emotionally immature parents often experience, which is this skepticism that a truly connected relationship where you can be yourself, be safe, be seen, have needs and have your own emotions isn't possible. That it really just can't exist out there because your brain is shoving in your face all this data. Times where you have attempted to have needs or be yourself or be seen and it has gone awry either from your parents or other people and it's all stuck up in there and it's not just from the past.

(4:06 - 6:28)

Some of this might still be happening in the present and often it is. If you are still connected with your parents or if you are in other relationships that are emotionally immature that data is still coming into your data model. And when I'm working with people in therapy what I am always exploring with them is we're teasing apart the difference between it happening when we're children and happening when we're adults.

Because when it happens when we're children, as you've learned by now through our time together in exploring this book in a really depthful way, it feels like a threat to our lives. It's not just about a parent who withdraws or a parent who criticizes. It's about the fact that as children we rely on our caregivers to keep us safe and keep us alive.

We are biologically wired to do so. So every moment where we feel having a need, being seen, having an emotion, making a mistake, whatever the experience might be causes some discord for our parents that lands onto us, that actually creates a survival energy in the mind and body. Even if you don't remember that, even if you're not consciously aware of it, that fight, flight, fawn, freeze, those are survival things.

Those are things that should only come out when there's a tiger chasing you or when you come across a bear on the hiking trail or when you really need to protect your survival. Those things shouldn't be happening with our parents, but they do because it feels like, uh-oh, if my parent's not okay, I'm not okay. If I have to choose between my parent and myself, I must choose my parent or caregiver in order to keep me alive.

So the difference that we're teasing apart is we want to take that old emotional learning that having a need and someone getting upset about that is no longer dangerous. So we want to take the learning where it felt dangerous and we want to bring it into the present that even if your parent is still reacting aggressively or immature toward you when you have a need in the present, even if it's just saying, oh no, I'm not going to make it to that dinner, but thanks for the invitation. And then you get laid in with all manner of sarcasm or manipulation or immaturity or criticism that your life is not at stake here in the present.

(6:29 - 10:33)

The emotional immaturity coming from your parent or whomever it is in the present is not dangerous, even though your survival system is going to make it feel like it's the same thing happening because of that predictive patterning, because of that old data model. And so that's why our work in the present is to notice it, observe it, build the part of us who is here in the present who has some sense of safety. And you might think, I don't know if I have a sense of safety.

Well, that's why this is a process. That's why I don't recommend jumping to cutting people off unless you decide to where there's a safety concern, because first you need to build safety within yourself in the present to be able to state and hold those boundaries. And so the work really is so deeply within us of unwinding those old neural pathways, those old learnings.

And that's why the next book we're going to read together is Unlocking the Emotional-Based Brain, which is all about these emotional learnings. And that's why in my guide to change that I created for Substack, I focus on observation within ourself and building safety. Because we have to believe that something different is possible.

And we have to believe that our safety is not at stake in the present if we have a need or if we express ourselves or if we do what feels good for ourselves. So it all comes back to the re-patterning of the neural pathways. So if you feel that skepticism, don't worry, that's normal.

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That's your brain trying to protect you. You feel like everything is emotionally lonely and you can never be connected because those predictive maps are built on the future. And so we're changing our neural pathways and we know that we can, and that's the hope and the power of neuroplasticity.

But know that it takes time. And so if you feel that skepticism coming up that things could be different with your parent, or that you could build an emotionally mature relationship with someone else, just let yourself notice that part of you that feels really scared right now. And that those old neural pathways might be coming up right now.

And see if you can find one thing that lets you feel safe here in the present, even if it's just that your front door is locked. Or maybe as you slow down and you notice it in this moment right now, you can feel this feels impossible. This feels scary.

This feels like it'll never happen. But wait a second, I'm thinking about my friend, my partner, a colleague, a person I do have a relationship with where there's not attacking and withdrawing and game playing. And what's it like to notice that right now? So what do emotionally mature people look like? This chapter really offers this exploration into the characteristics of an emotionally mature person.

And we can slow down and take these in. That emotionally mature people are realistic and reliable. They work with reality rather than fighting against it.

They don't get stuck in how things should be based on their opinions. But they adapt, they problem solve, they connect, and they stay in the present. They can think and feel at the same time.

And they can be upset without losing perspective and lashing out or pulling away. They can be consistent. They're trustworthy.

And they don't take everything personally as an attack. They're respectful and reciprocal. They respect your boundaries, your individuality.

And they give back, not just out of obligation, but because they want the connection to be fair and mutual. They're flexible, they compromise. They don't engage in power struggles.

They're even-tempered. So again, they don't use that anger or withdrawal as an attempt to control you emotionally. And they're curious about you.

They let your perspective matter. They could be influenced by you and not take that as an attack. They can tell the truth and when they've hurt you, they apologize and they make changes.

(10:34 - 16:29)

So not only is there repair, but there's repair backed by action. Oftentimes, emotionally immature parents can know how to try on repair or sort of parody repair. But it's all about manipulation to make themselves feel better, to make themselves feel like the martyr, or to make you feel like a bad person.

That's not the case in emotionally mature relationships. Emotionally mature people are also responsive. They offer empathy.

They offer safety. They make you feel seen and understood. But they give and receive those things with ease.

And they can reflect on their actions and try to change when something isn't working. And laugh and be playful and can be enjoyable to be around. So in IFS terms, if you were with us for the No Bad Parts book, these people relate from the self.

Not 100% of the time, because none of us do. But they really embody that self-energy of curiosity, compassion, calm, and connectedness. And in NARM terms, they're coming from that adult consciousness.

And if they shift into child consciousness, or they shift into these protective parts, which would be normal, because we all do that as humans, they're able to notice it, observe it, take care of themselves, come back into the present, communicate, ask for what they need, and repair. And in return, we can feel the safety to start to offer those things as well, that create new neural pathways that help make relationships feel safer over time. And where we can allow ourselves to feel safer over time.

And again, if you're thinking, I don't know how I can try those things on. I'm too scared to trust that someone could offer me those things. That's okay, because we're taking it one little bit at a time.

But because also, we can try this on in other safe relationships, like in therapy, for example. You know, very often in therapy, I am working with people, not only on what they're sharing about their lives, about what they want to explore, but about what comes up between us. So if we're doing something and a person is like, I just don't know the right answer.

I don't know what you want me to say. Then we have an opportunity to explore between us. What makes it feel like I need a right answer from you? What do you think will happen if you don't give me the answer that I'm looking for? Because we get to explore that this is something different.

I don't actually need a right answer from you. I'm not actually expecting anything from you. I don't need a right answer.

I don't need you to be calm. I don't need you to get better. I don't need you to figure it out.

I am here to offer a curious and connected space with you. And so it's really such a wonderful, depthful exploration, if you have the time and inclination and resources to do this kind of depth work in therapy, because the patterns of your life will come out in therapy as well. And so you get the opportunity, not just to observe what it's like to be an emotionally mature relationship with someone who can hold space for you just as you are, who doesn't need anything from you and isn't trying to manipulate you.

But you also get to observe within yourself, how you have become your own, your own emotionally immature parent. In a sense, we internalize that voice. And then we use it against ourselves.

We call ourselves names, we pressure ourselves, we abandon ourselves, we withdraw from ourselves, we shut down our own needs. We don't need our emotionally immature parent to do that anymore, even though they might still continue to do that. Because now we do it to ourselves.

That's normal and typical. That's a survival behavior. That's what the protective parts are.

That's what the child consciousness is. They're all trying to protect us by doing it to ourselves first, to give us some sense of safety and control. But we want to be able to cultivate within ourselves, this emotionally mature person who can embody those qualities that I listed before, within ourselves, so that we can co-create emotionally mature relationships by being able to ask for help when we need it, to speak honestly without overgiving our energy, to hold our boundaries, to keep in touch with people we care about, to not criticize and pressure ourselves all the time, to not overwork, to rest when we're tired, to not have to intellectualize and analyze everything, and to communicate our needs clearly instead of expecting others to guess.

This is what happens when we can shift into ourself, into the present, when we remap and build these new neural pathways. And so this is such a rich opportunity not to say, oh, you're saying I do it to myself, so I am the messed up one. I always knew it was me.

I always knew it was the problem. If you find yourself reacting in that way, that's normal, of course. That's part of the criticism you learn to place on yourself.

But rather, this is an opportunity to explore what did you learn you had to do to yourself to maintain connection, to keep yourself in line, to be good? What persona did you create? What suit of armor or suits of armor did you put on to try to keep connection with yourself, with your parent, with those around you? And do you still need those things now? Is your life still feeling like it's at stake in the same way that it was? Well, let's come back into building safety together. This process is so rich and so valuable, but it can also stir grief and anger. This awareness and exploration shines a light on what happened, what didn't happen, and how that shaped your choices and where you are today.

(16:30 - 19:13)

And sometimes that can feel overwhelming. And so we take it one little bit at a time so that we can come into the present to see ourselves more clearly and to live as ourself instead of as these protective roles. Self-discovery, the coolest thing in the world, can feel like living twice in one lifetime.

Because for lack of a better term, and I hope you'll forgive the cliche, it's a whole new world. And I could sing a little Aladdin to you there. But just to know that everything opens up in front of us when we create these new neural pathways, when we build new learnings for ourselves, because we get to step out of becoming our own enforcer, our own emotionally immature parent, and we get to step into ourselves where we can start updating our map, moving toward what we want for ourselves, having needs, having wants, being present, living a life that feels truly embodied and connected to what we want.

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If that sounds exciting to you right now, welcome. If that sounds terrifying, welcome as well. That's normal.

It's typical. We're all at different parts of our process. And maybe we touch the excitement for a minute, and then we come into criticizing ourselves.

Maybe we touch the excitement for a minute, and then we go into getting busy, busy, busy with something else. It's an iterative process. It's learning.

It's curiosity. It's an experiment. And, you know, my favorite thing is to talk about experiments because you can't mess an experiment up.

All you can do is try it on, look at the results, and then try it again with a slightly different question. So remember, when we're doing our steps to change, the first thing we're looking at is what's the new destination we're wanting? What do we want to put into our internal GPS? And you might notice that if you think about that right now, you think about something you want to change in someone else. Well, I want my mother to be less critical.

Or I want my dad to be more present in my life. Or I want my sibling to connect with me and want to spend time with me and not always run away when we try to connect. Or maybe it's about your partner.

I want my partner to be more responsive to my needs. Or whatever thing you might be imagining for yourself. If you find that the thing that you're wanting has to do with other people changing or other people's behaviors, well, now we're in a bit of a pickle.

And that makes sense. Because as a child, of course, you would have done anything to try to make sure your caregivers were okay. So that finally, finally, finally, you could be loved and seen and had your needs responded to and feel supported.

(19:13 - 20:40)

But as adults, we want to turn that around and figure out what is it I'm trying to get at by managing this other person's behavior. If my mother were less critical of me, how would I feel differently? How would I behave differently? What would I do if I woke up tomorrow and my mother never criticized me again? What would I do within my life? And that reveals what we actually want for ourselves and what we have agency over. So this is a curiosity that you can always come back to.

We notice where we want to go. We notice the roadblocks that come up, the self-criticism, the shaming, the intellectualizing, the busyness, the perfectionism, which gives us clues to the old destination, the old road. We build safety.

And then little bits at a time, we can move toward what we want. That's my model that I created of the five steps to change that can be used as you're undergoing this process of integrating this book, of thinking of all you've learned and where you want to go from here. You can't go wrong, because if you realize the destination you chose isn't what you want, change the destination.

If you realize the destination you chose is involving someone else's behaviors, change the destination. You can always come back into the present. You can always come back into safety, because all we have is this moment.

(20:40 - 22:57)

We know that our work lies not in theory, right? Not in learning everything there is to learn, though of course I deeply love us learning together. But in taking the theory and integrating it, living, honoring a boundary, choosing reciprocity over self-sacrifice, noticing and savoring the feeling and safety of being understood, of building those new neural pathways together. And so as we get a chance to connect sometime, I would love to answer any questions you have about that process.

You know, this book was less about an intellectual understanding, but more about offering this new lens to observe some of the ways that we may have been treated as children and even as adults, so that we can figure out what we want for ourselves now. A few questions for you to reflect on as we finally close. When you think about the emotionally matured traits that we've described in this chapter, which ones feel familiar in your current relationships? When is a time when you have experienced connection, balance, reciprocity, care? And which ones would feel like new roadways for your system to explore that might have felt unsafe in the past, but you're curious about now? Looking back, what patterns or qualities in other people may have felt magnetic because they were familiar, even if they didn't feel safe or nourishing? And how might you like that to be now? What do you notice within your thoughts, emotions, or body sensations, when you have a moment of connection with another person that feels safe? Or even just in this moment, as you notice a connection to yourself as you're here being curious? And if you could imagine something you're wanting for yourself right now, that you could put into that GPS on your internal roadmap, what would it be? How would you feel? What are you imagining? And what happens as you imagine it right now? Whatever roadblocks come up, can you take a moment and notice them? Try observing them for just a split second of, oh, that's how I learned to keep myself safe.

(22:57 - 24:10)

And that makes sense. So thank you for being a part of this book club. Your connection and engagement is so rich, and I really enjoy this so much.

I'm so excited to dive into unlocking the emotional brain together. I think that work is truly life-changing, and I'm so excited to begin integrating it into my life and my practice. Please feel free to share any feedback with me about what you're curious about, what you're noticing.

I'd love to find a space for us to be able to engage more together, if maybe it's on a Substack chat or a Discord chat, or I've also considered shifting from these podcast episodes to maybe meeting live more frequently. So let me know what you're thinking. This book club is a co-creation between us, and it's constantly unfolding.

And I would love to hear any thoughts you have. You can leave a comment here, you can reply, and it comes straight to me, or I'll look forward to seeing you live on August 30th. And it will be recorded if you're not able to attend live, and then in mid-September, we'll dive into what comes next.

Thank you for being here, and I'm wishing you a gentle day ahead.

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