And Still We Rise
The "And Still We Rise" Podcast (formally known as The Ego Project), is hosted by mental health therapist and group practice owner, Cristine Seidell. It is a space where look deeper into our limiting beliefs or behavioral patterns, seek to understand our authentic self and find new and exciting ways to celebrate the radiance we are meant to bring into the word. Through unscripted and unedited conversations with thought-leaders, therapists, spiritualists, and creatives, And Still We Rise explores how childhood wounding and intentional healing impacts our lives.
And Still We Rise
Emotionally Immature Parents: How They Shape Your Adult Self
We explore how emotionally immature parents shape our sense of self, nervous system, and ability to experience joy and connection, examining the patterns that indicate this upbringing and the path toward healing.
• Parents who operate from a self-focused place with emotional unpredictability, inability to see your world, or who relied on you for their comfort
• Children develop their sense of self through reflection and attunement from adults, with healthy attachments creating safety and self-acceptance
• Emotionally immature parenting creates the belief that your truest self is flawed, invisible, or that love must be earned through perfection
• "Internalizers" adapt by ignoring their needs for others, leading to self-doubt, anxiety, people-pleasing, and difficulty with boundaries in adulthood
• "Externalizers" turn outward for emotional regulation, often blaming others, acting impulsively, and engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors as adults
• Healing is possible for both types, though the journey tends to be more straightforward for internalizers due to their natural capacity for self-reflection
Subscribe, share, and like this video if you know someone who might benefit from this information. Stay tuned for deeper dives into internalizers and externalizers in upcoming episodes.
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Disclaimer: And Still We Rise is meant to provide perspective and meaningful conversations around mental health topics. It is not meant to provide specific therapeutic advise to individuals. If anything in these podcasts resonates, ASWR recommends consulting with your individual therapist or seeking a referral from your primary care physician.
Hello and welcome to and Still we Rise. I'm your host, christine Seidel, and today we are going to talk about emotionally immature parents. You might be wondering what are emotionally immature parents, and do I have them? Well, let me ask you a question. Look no further than your own patterns and tendencies. Do you have a tendency to question your feelings, to shrink your needs for others, have issues with impulsivity or avoidance? Do you need external validation or do you find yourself overly self-sufficient and over-functioning? Well, those are likely patterns that you do have emotionally immature parents, and this is the space to understand how these early dynamics shape your sense of self, your nervous system and even your ability to feel joy and connection. Today, as an adult, as a therapist, I've seen how this shows up in my clients and how reflection coming back to the body and regulating and inner child work help to bring us back to who we truly are. So let's dive deeper into what are emotionally immature parents.
Speaker 1:To begin, eips or emotionally immature parents tend to operate from a very self-focused or emotionally self-serving place All the way back into childhood. These may have been parents who had some emotional unpredictability One moment they're great with you, the next moment they're yelling because you spilled milk. Maybe they had the inability or intolerance to see or consider your world, your feelings or opinions. Maybe they guilt-tripped or blame-shifted, criticized or condition-placing. Maybe they relied on you for their own comfort or regulation. And as a child, your nervous system began to learn very quickly that certain parts of you are not safe to show meaning. There was a sense that your belonging and your value was conditional on you showing up in the way that your caretaker wanted you to. So that meant you had to shift something about your very authentic self in order to get the attention and love that you needed. Now you didn't have to shift this because there was something wrong with you. It was how your mind and your body adapted to make sense and to survive.
Speaker 1:And in childhood, any connection with our caregivers is better than no connection, and that would mean that we would feel safe and we could survive in the best way we knew how to. So you may be saying to yourself so what Was it really that bad? I mean, doesn't everybody have a pretty messed up childhood? And to that I have to say it is actually very important, and here's why we have to understand that children develop their sense of self, their ego, their I am, through the reflection and attunement of adults. The statement I am comes from their caregivers In healthy, secure parent-child attachments.
Speaker 1:A caregiver mirrors your feelings and responds very consistently, which allows a child to internalize true safety and that brings statements such as I am safe to be me, I am okay, just the way I am. So let's say a parent sees a child painting a picture and says a statement such as look at all the beautiful colors you've chosen and blended into a beautiful rainbow. To a child that might be, I am creating, I bring beauty into the world, and it's a very affirming and building a secure sense of self. Versus a parent who may be viewing a painting and, having a very low tolerance for childhood or anything outside of their comfort zone, may respond with you, better not have made a mess. Or I can't even tell what that is. This communicates to the child that their truest self is either one inherently flawed, two invisible, or three. Love had to be earned if it was only good or perfect or compliant, and this fractures a child's sense of self. Instead of you becoming you, you become what others need you to be, and that leaves a very deep grief within us, the grief of not being fully seen or known in this world and unfortunately, we carry this belief system into adulthood and we operate on autopilot from this place, and it typically manifests in two different ways, two different perspectives. One is called the internalizer and the other is called the externalizer. Now, both of these types are hurt through their own experiences in childhood and they have unmet needs, but how they rehearse these and seek these in adulthood are very different and unique in their challenges. So let's look at the internalizer first.
Speaker 1:The internalizer through childhood they had a high capacity for the world around them and a deep sense of introspection. Their ability to look within was very, very high, and these children are drawn by the desire for knowledge and for self-improvement. So when being raised by emotionally immature parents, these children would navigate that discomfort and disconnect by looking into themselves to see how they could change and how they can make the relationship better, could change and how they can make the relationship better. They adapted in childhood by ignoring their own needs in lieu of those of the parents. So the parents' feelings became the needs and so into adulthood these adult children, although typically very high, achieving very self-sufficient, may struggle with self-doubt, anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism and guilt if they disappoint other people. So in adult relationships like the workplace or friendships or intimate relationships, they have a hard time saying no, expressing their own needs or feelings or desires. They have a difficult time holding boundaries and communicating clearly what is truly inauthentic to them, and this makes these adult children predisposed to anxiety-based disorders, self-esteem issues, somatic complaints like upset stomach, constipation, nausea and codependency, just to name a few.
Speaker 1:Now let's look at the externalizer, which is unlike the internalizer in that as children they turned outward to make sense of their experiences, looking for others to satisfy their emotional needs. And most emotional, immature parents are externalizers themselves and likely were raised in emotionally chaotic environments or households or they had emotional neglect where no one was really consistently available for emotional regulation. Therefore, externalizers quickly shift the anxiety of seeking comfort outside of themselves. So as children, they often blamed others or acted impulsively through tantrums way past the age that was appropriate, had difficulty in self-regulating and, unfortunately, as adults they tend to do the same. They release stress as soon as they feel it. They need others to validate them, they participate in risky self-sabotaging behaviors, they have low self-esteem or a sense of grandiosity, and they rarely learn from their own mistakes. And these adult children tend to have challenges with depression, healthy relationships, substance use, high-risk behaviors, legal issues, personality disorders and several others.
Speaker 1:It is often the internalizers that begin the healing process that comes to the place of acknowledging that their experiences in childhood were distorted belief systems and they were brought about because of the lack of attunement and attendance they received as children. The internalizers tend to find a way to correct it and they do often reach to healthier ways and different ways of navigating their concept of self and turn to healthier and more satisfying relationships. However, for the externalizer, the journey tends to be a lot more complicated, as the road to self-reflection can be very, very uncomfortable for externalizers. Externalizers are conditioned to seek escape as quickly as possible or to seek comfort and validation from others. However, for those externalizers that may hit rock bottom, they do seek support and care to heal these little parts and they can bring a vast amount of wisdom to the relationships once they obtain that.
Speaker 1:So if you're looking to understand your childhood parental wounding and or guidance on how to begin healing from emotionally immature parents, I encourage you to look through the additional videos or resources that we have in our playlist and also stay tuned as we dive deeper into internalizers and externalizers, and perhaps you can find yourself, or maybe a partner, in the description of those and help in hope and in healing for that little child part that had emotionally immature parents. So I invite you to continue to listen with us, to join this series, to subscribe, share, like if you feel like you know anyone else who may benefit by listening, and for that I look forward to speaking with you all next time and we appreciate all of your support. See you next time.
