Dr. Lindsay Gibson

There's a lot of impulsive, emotionally reactive behavior that's based on being essentially very egocentric, and that's part of our world.

And if it's part of your world when that's your parent as you're growing up, that has a huge impact on you and your sense of yourself.

It was like, you just psychologically tortured your child.

So I think what happened was my book sort of put a name on something that not only people had experienced in their families, but I think there was also a sort of a recognition at a cultural level that there's an awful lot of emotional immaturity in our world and it's causing a lot of problems.

Yeah, well, the emotionally immature parent is struggling.

Well, I shouldn't say they're struggling because it's not really a problem for them.

It's just a problem for everybody around them.

But they are experiencing, shall we say, a lot of concern about their own immediate issues.

And this makes them very egocentric.

All roads lead to them and their issues.

So everything gets turned back to them.

And the child's emotional needs and sensitivities tend to be sort of run over by this parent who can't reflect on their own behavior to wonder how they're affecting their child.

That lack of self-reflection makes it very hard for them to change or even to question their own behavior.

They have no recourse but to get all stressed out and blame the child.

A great example would be if the child was trying, let's say this is an adult child now, and the adult child is trying to tell the parent something that the parent maybe did or a way that they treated them when they were little.

And they're actually trying to build a bridge to the parent to have a better relationship.

And the parent says something like, well, I don't know why you're so upset with me.

Is that still bothering you?

Right.

Because they they really have poor empathy.