Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

If you grew up with an emotionally immature, unavailable, or selfish parent, you may have lingering feelings of anger, loneliness, betrayal, or abandonment. You may recall your childhood as a time when your emotional needs were not met, when your feelings were dismissed, or when you took on adult levels of responsibility in an effort to compensate for your parent’s behaviour. These wounds can be healed, and you can move forward in your life.

In this breakthrough book, clinical psychologist Lindsay Gibson exposes the destructive nature of parents who are emotionally immature or unavailable. You will see how these parents create a sense of neglect, and discover ways to heal from the pain and confusion caused by your childhood. By freeing yourself from your parents’ emotional immaturity, you can recover your true nature, control how you react to them, and avoid disappointment. Finally, you’ll learn how to create positive, new relationships so you can build a better life.

Just my thoughts

I'm not normally big on reading self-help books, but I do love me some psychology. I am very intent on my own therapy journey and am willing to read great books to help me along the way. After reading Reinventing Your Life, as suggested by Mrs Yellow, I went searching for more and hopefully a reading list. I found quite a few and Adult Children is one of the books which featured heavily in several lists and recommendations.

I won't be going into detail, either about my experiences or what's in the book and how it relates to me, but I highly recommend it if you too are on a journey of recovery from trauma and interesting childhoods. I did have quite a few 'WTF moments' and 'epiphanies' and 'huh, I'll try that' vocal reactions while reading. In the past I wasn't a vocal reader. I'd stick my head in a book and you wouldn't hear from me for hours. Not so with Adult Children. I wanted to talk about everything and I wanted to do it right then and there.

I see this as an excellent reaction. Excellent for the book and for me. Adult Children blew my mind a little bit. It's shown me different perspectives and I appreciate Gibson for it. She doesn't dumb down her language at all, but writes in a very relatable and compassionate way. The content is expressed in a way to help you not only learn about emotional immaturity, but includes techniques to recognise it, and ways to combat it.

Even if you're not in therapy like me, but are interested in psychology and different approaches, I highly recommend Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. It's illuminating. And thank you for reading my first book-related opinion in about five years.

• Author: Lindsay C. Gibson
• Genre: Non-Fiction Psychology Add to Goodreads or StoryGraph

• Find At: Booktopia – Amazon AU – Booko - Dymocks (eBook)