For many relations with parents, a truly sore topic. Sometimes it seems that we will never be able to get rid of criticism, alienation and the feeling that we do not do everything as they want. But having understood the reasons for the problem, you can find its solution.

In the book “Adult children of emotionally immature parents: how to learn how to appreciate themselves and establish relations with parents” American psychologist Lindsay Gibson describes in detail the signs of such parents and offers practical strategies to communicate with them.

Before talking about emotional immaturity, you need to understand who we call an emotionally mature person. Obviously, this is one who can objectively assess the situation and at the same time maintain emotional contact with others. Such people act independently, maintaining deep ties with others, behave honestly and openly, do not manipulate and do not use people to achieve their goals. They know how to establish and protect the boundaries, they have a well -developed sense of their own identity, they value and are able to build close relationships.

Such people have developed emotional intelligence and empathy, do it well with stress, openly talk about problems, trying to find ways to solve them.

Emotionally immature people experience difficulties in one or more listed areas. Here are a few signs that will help to understand whether the problem is relevant for your parents. Read the points below and note for yourself what describes your situation.

  • My parent often reacts too emotionally to minor events.
  • He rarely shows empathy or is interested in my feelings.
  • When it comes to emotional closeness or manifestation of feelings, he becomes uneasy and he “closes”.
  • It is often annoyed by individual differences and other points of view.
  • As a https://camziz.com/indagine-durante-traguardo-punto-di-vista-sesso-di/ child, the parent often shared his problems with me, but was not ready to listen to me.
  • He often speaks and does something without thinking about the feelings of others.
  • I did not often get parental attention and sympathy, except that when I was seriously unwell.
  • It is often inconsistent: sometimes it shows wisdom, and sometimes behaves completely unreasonable.
  • If I am sad, he either says something superficial and useless, or begins to get angry and let go of sarcastic remarks.
  • All our conversations mainly rotate around the interests of the parent.
  • Even a polite disagreement can provoke a protective reaction on his part.
  • It is unpleasant for me to tell the parent about his successes, because it seems to me that he does not care.
  • He does not based his opinion on facts and logic.
  • My parent is not inclined to introspection and rarely thought about his role in the current situation.
  • He sees everything in black and white and does not perceive the new.

If you agreed with more than one statement, most likely in childhood you had to deal with an emotionally immature person.

We are unlikely to be able to get the love from our parents that we have dreamed of, but you can learn how to communicate more constructively

The problem of immaturity is quite widely. Most often, such people are brought up in a family that limits their emotional and intellectual development. In their family history, abuse of alcohol and drugs, loss or cruelty often pop up. In addition, the main thing was required from the older people when they themselves were children is to obey the elders and not to create problems. Few people thought about feelings and emotions.

Lindsay Gibson comes to a disappointing conclusion: unfortunately, we are unlikely to be able to get the love and support from our parents that we dreamed about, but we can learn how to communicate with them more constructively. The following tricks will help this.

Distracted observation

Communication with such people most often causes unpleasant emotions. Detached observation will help to avoid this. First you need to calm down and tune in: breathing slowly, counting breaths and exhalations, in turn to strain and relax different muscle groups, represent images that soothe you.

In the process of communication, it is important to remain calm. Imagine that you are an anthropologist who is studying. How would you describe the expression of people around the people? What the language of their body is talking about? How their voice sounds – calmly or intense? How they react to your attempts to make contact? What do you feel yourself? Do you see manifestations of emotional immaturity, which were discussed above?

Feeling that you are involved in the situation at the emotional level, try to mentally describe the interlocutor. Selecting words for description, we activate the rational part of the brain. The mental designation of emotions will also help to look at the situation more objectively and calm down.