Can a trauma intensive help adult children of emotionally immature parents?

Where the term comes from

The phrase "emotionally immature parents" comes from the clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson, whose 2015 book described parents who were unable to meet their children's emotional needs. Gibson describes four broad types: emotional, driven, passive and rejecting. Each leaves a child emotionally alone in a different way.

It is a description of a pattern, not a diagnosis, and not a verdict on a parent's love. Many emotionally immature parents provided well for their children in practical terms. What they could not offer was steady emotional attunement: noticing, naming and responding to what the child felt.

What it can leave behind

Adults who grew up with emotionally immature parents often describe a similar set of difficulties. None of these is unique to this background, and nobody has all of them.

• Self-doubt. Difficulty trusting your own feelings and perceptions, because they were often dismissed.
• People-pleasing. A habit of tuning into everyone else's needs first, learned in a home where the parent's moods set the weather.
• Emotional loneliness. Feeling alone even in close relationships.
• A harsh inner critic. An internal voice that is far less forgiving than you would ever be to someone else.
• Over-responsibility. Feeling responsible for other people's feelings, and guilty when you put your own needs first.
• High achievement with little satisfaction. Doing well on paper while feeling that it is never enough.

Many people with this background do not think of themselves as having trauma. There was no single event. The effect came from a long pattern. That is part of why it can be hard to address. There is no obvious story to tell, so weekly therapy can circle the same themes without reaching what sits underneath.

These effects overlap with some of the features of complex trauma, particularly around sense of self and relationships. The article on trauma intensives for complex and childhood trauma covers that wider picture.

How a trauma intensive approaches it

A trauma intensive does not try to revisit a whole childhood. It works with the patterns that are causing difficulty now, and with what keeps them in place.

Through IFS. In Internal Family Systems, the inner critic, the people-pleaser and the part that never feels good enough are understood as protective parts. Each took on its role to help a child cope in a home without enough emotional attunement. IFS approaches these parts with curiosity, asks what they are afraid would happen if they stopped, and, with their permission, reaches the younger parts they protect. For people who have spent a lifetime being hard on themselves, meeting these parts with understanding instead of criticism is often a large part of the work.

Through Brainspotting. Some of what was learned in childhood is held more in the body than in words: a tightening when someone is displeased, a sinking feeling when you need something. Brainspotting works with that felt sense directly, through an eye position linked to it, which can reach what talking about it has not.

Through time. Concentrated time matters here. Protective parts that have run a person's life for decades rarely relax in fifty minutes. Over consecutive days, there is room for them to trust that the work is safe, and for the younger parts underneath to be reached.

What the work can feel like

The work can bring up grief: for what was missing, and for the effort it took to manage without it. It can also bring anger, relief or unexpected tenderness. Some people feel guilty for focusing on themselves at all. That guilt is usually a protective part speaking, and it becomes part of the work.

It is worth knowing that an intensive puts you at the centre for several days in a row. For someone whose needs always came second, that can feel uncomfortable at first. That discomfort is often useful information.

What the evidence shows

There is no research testing intensives, or any specific therapy, for adult children of emotionally immature parents as a group, because it is a descriptive term, not a diagnosis. The research that exists on IFS and on Brainspotting is at an early stage, and neither has been studied as an intensive. The articles on IFS for trauma and intensive therapy research set out what is known.

Lucy Orton writes about why IFS intensives can suit adult children of emotionally immature parents in Exploring IFS therapy intensives for the adult children of emotionally immature parents.

Common questions

References

1. Gibson, L. C. (2015). Adult children of emotionally immature parents: How to heal from distant, rejecting, or self-involved parents. New Harbinger Publications.
2. IFS Institute. The Internal Family Systems model outline. ifs-institute.com/resources/articles/internal-family-systems-model-outline
3. Brainspotting. What is Brainspotting? brainspotting.com/about-bsp/what-is-brainspotting
4. World Health Organization. ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, 6B41 Complex post traumatic stress disorder. icd.who.int