The key ideas

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents

Lindsay C. Gibson, 2015

Everything at home was taken care of: food, clothes, school. But there was nobody to share your inner world with. Psychologist Lindsay Gibson explains where loneliness in a parent’s company comes from, the roles children learn to play to earn attention, and how to communicate with parents now without expecting the impossible.

Who it is for

For anyone whose parents were present during childhood but who still felt emotionally alone, and who wants to understand that experience without looking for someone to blame.

You are not betraying your parents by seeing them as they are. An objective view of them cannot hurt them. But it can help you.

What the book is about

There was food at home, clean clothes, activities and school. Everything looked fine from the outside. Yet a strange feeling has stayed with you since childhood: your parents were there, but there was nobody to share what was on your mind with.

Lindsay Gibson, a clinical psychologist with many years of experience, wrote a book about this in 2015.

An important frame of reference. This is the author’s model, developed through her therapeutic practice, rather than a research study. “Emotional immaturity” is neither a diagnosis nor a medical category. The book helps you understand your childhood, but it does not diagnose you or your parents. Nor is it about finding someone to blame.

Idea 1. Loneliness around your parents

One of Gibson’s clients, Brenda, describes her elderly mother this way: she never asks how I feel or how things are going at work. She wants to know what I am doing so she can boast to her friends. Brenda says her mother has never filled her “emotional tank.”

Gibson calls this feeling emotional loneliness. A child’s physical needs are met, but nobody notices the child’s inner world. In the author’s view, this feeling is hard to name because, on the face of it, there is nothing to complain about.

The child may then decide something must be wrong with them if what they have is not enough.

A teenager comes home after an argument with a friend. His mother asks only whether he has eaten and done his homework. He says “Fine” and goes to his room.

Loneliness can arise even when parents are present if nobody takes an interest in the child’s feelings. An adult may therefore spend years not understanding where this emptiness comes from.

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About the author

Lindsay C. Gibson is an American clinical psychologist and psychotherapist with more than thirty years of practice. She has taught doctoral students in clinical psychology. She lives and works in Virginia Beach and has written several other books about emotionally immature parents and people.

All books by this author: Lindsay C. Gibson

Terms from the book

  • Emotional loneliness: The author’s term, not a diagnosis. A feeling of loneliness when someone’s physical needs are met but their inner world goes unnoticed.
  • Healing fantasy: The author’s term for a child’s hope, later carried into adulthood, that being good enough will finally make a loved one change and offer love.
  • Role-self: The author’s term for a role a child learned to play in the family to receive attention or keep the peace. It contrasts with the true self, which holds genuine feelings and wishes.
  • Internalizers: The author’s term, not a scientific diagnostic category. People who tend to look within themselves for the cause of difficulties, take responsibility for others’ feelings and feel guilty.
  • Externalizers: The author’s term, not a scientific diagnostic category. People who tend to look outside themselves for the causes and solutions to difficulties and to act impulsively.
  • Detached observation: A technique from Gibson’s book: during a difficult conversation, mentally describe the other person’s behavior as a researcher would, to become less caught up in old reactions.

All terms

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