Emotionally detached parent
How to Recognize an Emotionally Unavailable Parent I Psych Central
Insensitivity and disinterest are common traits of emotional unavailability. Here’s how to recognize it in a parent and how to cope.
Being able to identify and respond to another person’s emotional needs can help you connect with them.
Feeling connected can encourage relationship building. It can lay a foundation of support and trust for future interactions.
Being emotionally available can help you show that you care about someone for who they are as an individual — that you’re invested and interested in what they’re experiencing.
When you can’t connect to someone emotionally, it can be challenging to connect with them in other ways, even if they’re your parent.
Emotional availability is a marker of relationship quality, according to research from 2017.
It goes beyond basic features that encourage attachment during childhood and includes a parent’s ability to create a positive emotional environment that supports learning, independence, and personal growth.
Emotionally unavailable parents may have been unresponsive in moments when emotions were expected. They may have lacked the ability to offer their emotional reactions in the face of your emotional need.
“Emotional unavailability refers to a person’s inability to be emotionally present for another person,” says Sarah Epstein, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Dallas, Texas.
“This can include a variety of tactics and manifestations, but the common outcome is that the person on the receiving end feels a sense of absence where there should be emotional presence and engagement.”
Example of an emotionally unavailable parent’s behavior
Your dog just ran away, and you’re crying — grieving the loss of a beloved companion.
Your mother sees your distress but offers no words of comfort or physical display of affection. Instead, she leaves you outside and walks back to the house to make dinner as if nothing happened.
The emotional availability assessment
Emotional availability can exist on a spectrum.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dr. Zeynep Biringen developed the emotional availability assessment model to help measure the quality of emotional interactions between parents and their children.
It’s a model still widely used in practice today. Parents are assessed on four scales:
- Sensitivity: behaviors and emotions from the parent that create a positive emotional connection to their child
- Structuring: a parent’s ability to support learning, understanding, and personal growth in their child
- Non-intrusiveness: how successfully a parent can allow their child to be independent
- Non-hostility: the level at which a parent regulates the expression of negative emotions toward their child
The other two aspects of the emotional assessment model focus on the child:
- Child responsiveness: how willing and joyful the child is to interact with the parent
- Child involvement: the rate at which a child wants to involve the parent in what they’re doing
These six dimensions of emotional availability can then be scored to determine how emotionally available, or unavailable, a parent may be.
The emotional availability assessment scores are placed into four scoring categories:
- Emotionally available: The parent is nurturing and tuned into their child with an overall positive, relaxed presence.
- Complicated: The parent can be warm and positive but also inconsistently tuned into their child. They may also show signs of immaturity or a lack of authenticity.
- Detached: The parent exhibits distant, cool, and mechanical behaviors, suggesting that they’re avoiding emotional connection.
- Problematic or disturbed: The parent lacks basic-level care and interaction. There may be signs of hostility and intrusiveness.
Emotional unavailability and mental health
Being emotionally unavailable doesn’t mean that your parent lives with a mental health condition. But mental health conditions can sometimes influence how emotionally available a parent can be.
“Emotional unavailability may be connected to mental conditions,” says Epstein.
“A highly depressed parent, for example, may be physically incapable of emotional engagement.”
Nancy Denq, an associate marriage and family therapist based in Los Angeles, explains that emotional unavailability may be pointing to a mental health condition when signs of a personality disorder are present.
“Behaviors like black-and-white thinking, lack of boundaries, high emotional reactivity, attention-seeking behaviors, and emotional unavailability are sometimes found in borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder,” she notes.
She adds that a mental health condition may also be present when emotional unavailability is a part of escapism or a numbing process, such as in substance use disorders.
“A sign that a parent’s emotional unavailability may be pointing to a mental health condition is when the parent is constantly numbing themselves or mentally ‘checking out’ in order to cope with their children’s emotional needs,” Denq says.
There’s no clear-cut template for how emotionally unavailable parents may act.
But according to Denq and Epstein, common signs can include the following:
- They lack the ability to “mirror” (reflect the same emotional state that a child is experiencing).
- They respond to children’s emotions with impatience or indifference.
- They avoid or prevent discussion of negative emotions.
- They’re dismissive or overwhelmed when the child has an emotional need.
- They’re not interested in the child’s life (interests, friend groups, school work).
- They have difficulty expressing their feelings, even with adults.
- They’re unable or unwilling to provide comfort during emotional distress.
- They’re unwilling to engage in any feelings — positive or negative.
The Biringen emotional availability assessment model includes other signs, such as the following:
- They neglect a child’s basic needs or offer only the most basic level of care.
- They behave hostilely or intrusively toward the child.
- They freely express negative emotions such as frustration, annoyance, or boredom during interactions with the child.
- They act as though the child is incapable of doing age-appropriate tasks.
Growing up with an emotionally unavailable parent can have long lasting effects on your life.
A 2017 study showed that both paternal and maternal emotional availability was linked to positive outcomes in mental health, emotional regulation, relationship success, and social support as children entered adulthood.
Healing from a relationship with an emotionally unavailable parent may take time, but it is possible.
Engaging your inner child
“Healing will mostly likely involve shifting the way you perceive yourself and giving yourself permission to express what you truly feel,” says Denq.
“Activities such as play and art-making can bring attention to the inner child that wasn’t validated for being themselves.”
Learning how to self-soothe
Denq points out that an emotionally unavailable parent likely didn’t teach you how to comfort yourself when challenging emotions arose.
Learning to self-soothe as an adult can help make up for this.
“One important part of healing is learning how to tolerate emotions when they surface,” she says. “Practicing deep breathing techniques and moving your body by going on a brisk walk can regulate the nervous system and help you cope when you feel overwhelmed.”
Finding emotionally available people
Epstein cautions against falling into a pattern of emotional unavailability yourself.
“Seek out people who are emotionally engaged,” she suggests. This can help show you what emotional availability should look like.
You can identify emotionally available people by watching how they interact with others. Who around you has positive traits that you admire?
For example, befriending a woman at work who asks how your day was and offers genuine responses could be a place to start.
You might also find closer emotional relationships with other family members like aunts, uncles, or grandparents, says Epstein.
Identifying your feelings
If you have an emotionally unavailable parent, you may also experience challenges related to personal emotional expression.
Denq recommends taking time to identify your feelings without assigning a value or judgment to them.
“Start by noticing the sensations in your body and see if you can identify the accompanying emotions,” she suggests. “By practicing mindful awareness of your internal experience, you start to give permission for the entirety of your personhood to exist.”
You can further explore your feelings by writing your observations in a journal where you can notice patterns and other helpful insights.
Distancing yourself from your parent
When a parent isn’t ready to acknowledge their emotional unavailability, they may continue to engage in behaviors that make you feel uncared for.
It’s OK to take a step back from relationships — even parental ones — that are negatively impacting your well-being. You can completely distance yourself or set boundaries.
Whichever path you choose, it can allow you the freedom to make unburdened decisions and evolve your independence.
Seeking professional guidance
“Therapy can offer tremendous healing benefits by creating an experience opposite of parental emotional unavailability,” Denq explains.
“In therapy, you have the safety and freedom to process your thoughts, express what you are feeling, and be who you are without fear of disapproval or judgment.”
An emotionally unavailable parent may provide for your physical needs, but that doesn’t mean that they’re able to connect with you emotionally.
Some parents may only show emotional unavailability in small ways while others may be hostile or neglectful of even basic care.
Growing up with an emotionally unavailable parent may impact your future relationships, social connections, and how well you regulate your own emotions.
Self-introspection and getting in touch with your inner child can help you heal, but it’s possible you may need to distance yourself from your parents for a time.
If you feel the impact of an emotionally unavailable parent continues to negatively affect your well-being, speaking with a mental health professional may help.
You can check out Psych Central’s hub on finding mental health care and support.
The Effects of Emotionally Unavailable Parents
Emotion is the language we use to relate to one another. We might communicate directly through both verbal and body language cues. But it’s the emotion that underpins how these exchanges are interpreted. We ultimately engage with each other through the use of our emotional vocabulary.
We do this by helping each other fulfil our emotional needs, but also through empathising with those needs if we’re unable to support them in the moment. This is the nature of making ourselves emotionally available in connection.
However, we only gain these skills through the examples given to us by our parents/guardians. We need constructive role models to provide the reference points to engage with others in true empathy.
And so, being raised by emotionally unavailable parents invariably leads to core wounding that manifests as an inability to be emotionally present with others. It leads not only being unable to discern your own needs, but also creates a lack of capacity in empathising with others.
Symptoms Of Being Raised By Emotionally Unavailable Parents
Being raised by an emotionally unavailable parent or guardian can lead to a life of unstable friendships, strings of failed relationships, emotional neediness, an inability to self-regulate, provide for yourself, and identity confusion. This can also create core wounding around not being able to constructively express your needs. When there’s been neglect of emotional needs in early childhood, it’s known as developmental trauma, which can lead to long-term effects if not properly addressed.
Some of these symptoms include:
- Rigidity
- Low-Stress Tolerance
- Emotional Instability with Aggression
- Poor Boundaries
- Unstable Relationships
- Attention-Seeking
Long-Term Effects of Being Raised By Emotionally Unavailable Parents on Children
When there’s been a deficit of care through key care providers or parents not being emotionally available, it can create dysfunctional patterns of thinking that can seed mental health issues and an inability to relate to others later on in adulthood.
Some of these include, but aren’t limited to:
Dysfunctional Relationships in Adulthood: We model our relationship and communication styles on the examples we grew up with in childhood. It’s what’s most present for us, and becomes our default mode of relating until we choose to undo our programming and create our own philosophy for how to relate. However, it’s important to note that not all children with emotionally unavailable parents experience unstable relationships in adulthood. It’s common, but not an absolute.
Fear of Abandonment in Love: If there’s been a deficit of love and affection during the developmental stages of growth due to emotionally detached parents, it can lead to children becoming emotionally withdrawn in their teenage years. They might struggle to express themselves emotionally and show love to other people because they haven’t had strong enough role models to show them it’s ok to be expressive and open with others, emotionally.
Borderline Personality and Narcissistic Traits: It can be the case – but not always – that those raised by emotionally cold parents are subjected to narcissistic and/or borderline traits. Both of these disorders make connecting with others extremely difficult. The self-centred, arrogant style of the narcissistic can make children feel estranged from their parents, while BPD characteristics can lead to frequent arguments, due the emotional outbursts that can also lead to verbal or physical aggression.
Selfishness: This can manifest in numerous ways. The emotionally void parent might view their own needs as a priority. But it can also be that they might impose rules, borders and boundaries on their child to prevent them from enjoying something they never had when they were growing up. As most emotionally unavailable parents themselves are victims of their own upbringing, they’ll bring their own projections into the relationship with their offspring.
Substance Abuse and Dependency: As the child of an emotionally distant parent enters adulthood, a new set of choices become available. By this point, they’ll be in so much pain and anguish through not having had their emotional needs met, it can lead to the use of recreational and/or prescriptive drugs. This can then start a cycle of addiction-based issues that will often last until the core wound(s) of emotional neglect are addressed.
Lack of Identity and Direction: One of the core issues facing many adults who survived an upbringing from emotionally distant parents is the idea of identity. Since there’s been a lack of any real core values, there’s nothing to anchor into as a moral code or sense of integrity. This results in there being no blueprint for future relationships. And so, those role models must be found elsewhere in a surrogate format to make up for the lack of emotional guidance during the developmental stage of growth.
Loss of Hope, Faith, and Joy: One of the most disheartening things that can happen to a child who’s survived an emotionally distant upbringing is losing all hope.
Because their parents haven’t been able to express themselves emotionally, there’s often been a huge deficit of support. This can be especially hard when you feel the loss of the parent who’s still physically present, but is emotionally repressed to such an extent that it’s hard to connect with them in any meaningful way.
Signs Of Emotionally Unavailable Parents
- They don’t listen to you
- They don’t ask about your life
- They don’t validate/celebrate your achievements
- They aren’t willing to engage in activities with you
- They never give compliments
- They never spend alone/one-on-one time with you
- They focus on their own happiness more than yours
- They don’t/can’t express that they love you
- They can’t show you any affection
There isn’t a singular way in which parents can be unemotionally unavailable. As with all conditions within the landscape of mental health, there are multiple expression that each have their own spectrums of intensity.
Here are some of the core themes.
Emotional Distance
- Parents aren’t able or willing to express empathy or emotional awareness toward their child
- Parents aren’t able or willing to hold space for the emotional vulnerability of their child
- Parents aren’t able or willing to offer their child attention except in the case of illness/emergency
Emotional Instability
- Parents are prone to bouts of overreacting to minor mistakes/inconveniences
- Parents can be temperamental – sometimes being fair and kind, other times being unreasonable
- Parents can be angry or antagonistic towards their children in times of emotional distress
- Parents can be defensive and unwilling to accept different points of view other than their own
- Parents can be unwilling to accept facts that contradict their opinions
- Parents can be unwilling to self-reflect/introspect – or to look at the impact of their actions
- Parents can be very rigid and rooted in black and white thinking – unable to accept new ideas
Self-Centredness
- Parents may use their child as a confidant, but may not be able to fulfil that role for their child
- Parents will often say and do things without thinking about other’s feelings
- Parents may engineer conversations to revolve mostly around their interests
- Parents may ignore or not acknowledge the success of their child leading to invalidation
Types of Emotionally Unavailable/Immature Parents
There isn’t just one type of emotionally unavailable/immature parent.
In truth, it’s hard to fully categorise them into a group of archetypes, as there’s always going to be some cross-over between the different sets of behaviours. But the following model provides a solid grounding for being able to identify what type of emotionally unavailable parent you might have been raised by and trying to heal from now.
The Emotional Parent
This is expression is rooted mostly in feelings of emotional instability that results from a sense of ongoing anxiety and nervousness for those who have to interact with them. Their moods can be heightened even further by being triggered by both those around them and the general challenges of life. This type can be highly impulsive.
The Driven Parent
The driven parent is in a constant state of perpetual motion trying to make everything and everyone conform to their standards. They’re prone to projecting and imprinting their belief system(s) onto others through advice-giving, and believing their way is the only way.
They might appear to be supportive of success, but will try and push their own ideas as a way of trying to live vicariously through their child due to their own upbringing.
The Passive Parent
This parent can be thought of as having an avoidant attachment style. They’ll try to side step confrontation at all costs and having to deal with unpleasant emotions. On the opposite side of the spectrum, they can be present in a playful sense. But when it comes to providing emotional support, they can withdraw and fail to hold space for their children’s issues. Passive parents are also prone to providing love to make themselves feel wanted and to fulfil their own emotional needs.
The Rejecting Parent
The rejecting type is one of the most abrasive of all emotionally immature parents. And their behaviour can cause real harm to their children, resulting in a lot of core wounding. They’re prone to being withdrawn, dismissive, condescending and antagonistic. They’ll openly reject their children’s desire for attention and affection.
This attitude makes them appear to have strong energetic barriers, which can also make them feel both intimidating and aloof. In more extreme cases, this type can also be physically abusive.
How Do You React to Emotionally Immature Parents?
There are two main reactions to emotionally immature parents, depending on the personality of the child. These are internalising and externalising. In simple terms, this means when things go wrong, externalisers will blame others for what’s going on while internalisers will typically blame themselves for what’s going on. However, you may experience mixed responses, as this model of mental processing exists on a spectrum rather than a dualistic model.
Trauma Responses Caused By Emotionally Unavailable Parents
Abusive Relationships: Because someone raised by an emotionally unavailable doesn’t have the reference point for what a healthy relationship looks like, they can fall into patterns of dysfunctional relations where they’re both the abuser and the victim, depending on their upbringing and their capacity to heal from their neglect.
Inability to State Needs: As the core needs of an adult survivor of emotionally unavailable parents have gone unmet for so long as a child – as well as being rejected when asked for – there might be a case of not feeling like their needs are going to be met in adulthood. This often leads to withdrawal, devaluation and not being able to ask others to respect their boundaries.
Neediness: This can be another big block. As the needs of the child have gone unmet for so long, the adult survivor of emotionally detached parents is literally starved of attention and affection. This can lead to overcompensating, as they seek to get their needs met, which have never been met before, making their relationship dynamics very uneven and often unhealthy.
Attachment Disorders: Being raised by emotionally absent/immature parents can also seed attachment disorders such as anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and fearful-avoidant (disorganised attachment).
Codependency: This can be another common pattern, as there’s been no real parental figure to model positive behaviours during the developmental years, there may be a sense of projection onto future friends and partners, which can lead to the further dissolution of boundaries.
People-Pleasing: Many children of emotionally unavailable parents will also resort to people-pleasing as a way of getting their needs met. Because they’ve been so starved of their core needs for so long, they’ll literally do anything to fill the void left by their upbringing.
Promiscuity: Another way people raised by emotionally detached parents find they can get some of their needs met is through sex. This can create compulsive tendencies, which causes them to lean into instant gratification because they never know when their needs are going to be met again. This constant seeking of immediacy can also lead to sex addiction.
Jealousy and Possessiveness: This can develop in both platonic and romantic relationships.
As the child of emotionally unavailable parents finally creates a connection with someone in adulthood and appears to be stable, they can be unwilling to let go of that person for fear of being abandoned.
Self-Esteem Issues: There can also be a sense of worthiness that stems from never receiving adequate attention or affection from emotionally detached and distant parents. If love has never been received during developmental years, that then creates the pattern of being unlovable, which greatly impacts self-esteem.
How Do You Deal With Emotionally Unavailable Parents?
First, an understanding of your situation is required to anchor in you’re actually a victim of circumstance and the treatment/non-treatment you received from your parents is not your fault. It’s important to detach from the conditioning of shame around being unlovable or unwanted. So from there, you view the situation from a more objective point of view without the charge of your own emotions getting in the way of seeing why you were treated – and are still treated – the way you are.
The next step is pattern recognition, which requires knowing your parent’s style of communication and capacity. Once you can anchor in their lack of presence is due to their lack of capacity due to their own trauma, it becomes much easier to navigate the relationship and find a sense of closure. Gaining this understanding of your parent’s situation, while not something you can do in childhood, becomes much easier to accomplish as part of a constructive healing process later on in adulthood. It’s not your fault for not seeing this in childhood.
The key to dealing with and healing from an upbringing from emotionally distant parents is to be present with what’s being shared. And this can mean going through a grieving process, as you realise your parent(s) are never going to have the capacity to guide and mentor you in the way you require. But what’s worse than this is living under the expectation that you can change them. Unfortunately, you can’t – and shouldn’t want to – change other people.
But you can change your perception of them by understanding their story and how it informs their actions. And that’s the essence of the healing process.
"Cold" parents and their adult children
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Parents
Love, warmth and emotional contact with significant adults are vital for a child's healthy development. But not all parents are able to give this to children. There can be many reasons for this: from mental illness and personality disorders to preoccupation with one's work or other affairs. Quite often, these are immature individuals who themselves suffered in the same way in childhood.
There are different types of cold parents: rejecting, emotionally withdrawn, self-centered, narcissistic, career fixated. But in any case, their children are desperately lacking in love, a sense of security and affection, which in the future can lead to serious psychological problems. Here are the most typical ones.
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Relationship difficulties. Relationships that develop in childhood largely determine how we will build relationships with other people in adulthood. Those who have been loved and cared for are more likely to show these qualities themselves in life. And those who experienced abuse or rejection as a child tend to be defensive and overprotective of themselves.
Someone has difficulty establishing long-term relationships and therefore prefers short, unstable relationships. But I want to emphasize: this rule is not absolute, and children of emotionally cold parents will not necessarily have such problems. Some people manage to become much better than their parents were. nine0003
Fear of attachment and love. Adolescents and children raised by emotionally cold parents are more likely to be afraid of becoming attached to someone, receiving and showing love.
If as a child you did not receive love, warmth, care from an adult, most likely your psyche will form protective mechanisms, due to which you will always keep a distance from other people.
It is difficult for such people to believe that they can be happy and feel safe in a relationship. Unfortunately, this also complicates psychotherapeutic work with them. nine0003
Selfishness. The inability to share with others is closely related to lack of emotional attachment and immature behavior. At one time, I had a client, a 10-year-old boy who was very fond of playing computer games on the iPad. His mother, who experienced abuse as a child, told me that she would not allow her son to play.
Many parents do not allow their children to play until they have completed their homework and some chores around the house. But, to my surprise, my client's mother had very different motives. In the end, she admitted that it's all about the iPad - she spent a lot of money on it and wanted the gadget to look like new. That is why the boy was not allowed to touch him. nine0003
As a child, she had almost no personal belongings, which is why now a grown woman defended her "investment" so fiercely.
Behind her selfishness one could see a long-term parent-child conflict. Later, when her son grew up and could already evaluate the behavior of his mother, so much resentment accumulated in his soul that he decided to go live with his father. Relationship with mother was damaged.
Tendency to addiction. When trying to cope with difficult experiences, a person may seek solace in alcohol or drugs in order to "forget" or "drown out the pain." Unfortunately, such “self-help” usually becomes addictive, and everything goes downhill: relationships, work and other important areas of life for a person with addiction lose their value. nine0003
Problems with identity and self-control. One young client said to me in almost every session, "Do you think you would have a normal relationship if all the previous relationships in your life were in one way or another connected with violence and exploitation?" In such cases, I always emphasize how important it is for us to have a solid foundation associated with moral principles and a coherent identity.
If you do not have a clear understanding of who you are, then with a high probability you will be influenced by the crowd and let into your life anyone who shows even a drop of interest in you. Lack of identity can push you into unstable, superficial relationships that don't last. But if you know who you are, what you want, what is good for you, then you will be much more careful in choosing your inner circle. nine0003
Loss of hope, trust and joy. Those who grew up around an emotionally devastated parent live with a deep sense of loss and regret. Such a loss with a living parent is a truly tragic experience.
Look into the eyes, hear a voice and at the same time feel that mother or father is somewhere infinitely far away, understand that you cannot make contact with the person who gave you life… yes, it is tragic. And it leads to the fact that a person loses hope, trust and the ability to rejoice. And this can be followed by depression, suicidal intentions, self-harm, drug use.
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About the author: Tamara Hill is a psychotherapist, certified trauma therapist, and family counselor.
Text: Alina Nikolskaya Photo credit: Getty Images
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“My husband is texting with another woman: regrets marriage and complains that I am a bad mother”
Distracted parent. Addiction. Family disease
Suspended parent
Let's listen to a 34-year-old mother who has communication problems with her 13-year-old son.
"As a child, I felt unloved and only now I realize that I struggled with the feeling of my inadequacy. I did not know what I should be, but I knew that I was somehow not like that. Everywhere I was out of place. In my youth "I tried to suppress these painful experiences for me. But it was they who pushed me to the fact that I rushed from one extreme to another. I either angrily attacked those around me, mostly close people, or limply obeyed my mother, who punished me by the fact that I was not allowed to leave the house, I felt lonely, but at the same time I was comfortable under my mother's wing.0003
In the following years, I put all my aggression into achieving success, into making a career. Behind my professional achievements, I hid my low self-esteem. I completed my thesis, worked in a good team, and followed the unwritten rules of the ethics of an intelligent laboratory. It taught me emotional restraint. In marriage, I felt too busy, too tired, to do my daily chores around the house.
The upbringing of the child was shifted to the mother.
Classically, a detached parent is unavailable to their children. He is either too busy, or very tired, or constantly ill. Personally, he does not deal with the child, this is done by grandmothers, educators, tutors and other people.
Many parents seem to be afraid of emotional attachment to their children and are generally afraid of those relationships where caring for others is required (remember that in the above example, the woman did not care not only for her son, but also for her husband, citing fatigue). However, these parents also do not know how to take care of themselves. nine0003
For detached parents, love is difficult because they were brought up in an atmosphere of dislike or lack of love. Perhaps their parents loved them, but did not know how to express love in such a way that the children did not doubt it. Therefore, the withdrawn parent hides his ambitions, spends a lot of energy on achievements, works to the point of exhaustion and really gets tired, or uses illness - imaginary or real, it does not matter to remove. The main thing that remains unchanged is the emotional distance with the child. His emotional needs are not met, which is fraught with dire consequences for his personality and destiny.
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The child may run to the father to show the drawing. At this time, mother says: "Can't you see that father is tired? Don't pester him." The child reads this situation as a rejection. An extremely painful feeling.
The disengaged parent's behavior expresses the following credo: "You're just not important to me."
Children of detached parents, emotionally unavailable, always busy, begin to treat themselves as insignificant, worthless people. If the parents do not have that valuable thing for the child that they call time, then I am not valuable either, I am empty, I am unimportant, the child may think. "What I think is not that important." And in fact, children do not like themselves. Do I need to remind you that in such cases they can easily take the path of self-destructive behavior, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, workaholism. nine0003
At the bottom of their hearts, children feel abandoned, but they don't even admit it to themselves.
It would be too painful to endure rejection. Their emotional pain is more likely to be transformed into anger or into a sense of their own guilt. In addition to this, children may experience turmoil, confusion and do not know how they should feel.
If the work of parents brings prosperity to the house, then it turns out that the feeling of rejection is inappropriate and wrong. After all, doesn't a child benefit from a successful parenting career? Appeared anger or dissatisfaction with their relationship with their parents easily turn into a sense of guilt. Sometimes it's a mixture of parental pride and shame. Children do not express anger directly, they simply do not dare to rebel against their parents. They may react to their feelings in kindergarten or at school in the form of obnoxious behavior. nine0003
I knew a girl who suddenly started fighting and acting provocatively at school. It turned out that the sister of this girl had recently died. The parents were so absorbed in the grief that befell them that they did not pay attention to their living daughter.
However, she had received little love before, the attention of her parents was riveted to her sick sister. In the future, the unbearable behavior of the girl stopped. She became a typical workaholic with great achievements. Her marriage was, needless to say, troubled, she married an alcoholic. nine0003
Children of chronically ill parents experience the same emotional conflicts - mixed feelings of anger, guilt and shame. At the heart of their sense of self is emotional rejection.
Ignoring the emotional needs of children, and this is the need for touch, for approval, for encouragement, for recognizing the child as a living person, and not something lower than grass, quieter than water - detached parents undermine self-esteem, self-respect of children.
Often parents do not hear their children because they are afraid that suddenly the child will demand more warmth and love from them than they themselves have. Sometimes parents show interest in the life of the child, but keep postponing and postponing the satisfaction of his spiritual needs.
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Many of these parents are full of anger just like their children, because they are equally unhappy and equally deprived of love. Often they tend to repress, repress, or deny these feelings.
The language of detached parents is replete with phrases like the following.
I'm too busy. Maybe later.
I can't promise you that.
Can't you see that I'm busy.
Maybe tomorrow.
I never wanted to put family and children first. nine0003
My daughter is my mistake.
I have to finish my work by tomorrow.
If the reader has found the courage to recognize the characteristic signs of codependence, then I congratulate such a reader. This is a very important step, because the solution to any problem begins with this awareness. Realizing is half the solution to the problem Breaking codependency is, in my experience, a joyful job.
The path to getting rid of codependency can be divided into 3 parts (Becnel B.
C., 1991).
1. Finding peace and tranquility in relation to their own parents, forgiveness of offenses.
2. Calmness in relation to oneself (getting rid of inferiority complexes, perfectionism, feelings of infallibility, superiority over one's child, etc.).
3. Calming down in relation to the child, achieving such a feeling of yourself and the child when you can say: "I'm fine, everything is fine with me. And you are fine, everything is fine with you. I love you the way you are" . nine0003
Awareness of the need for changes in oneself is a purely personal work, although in general, overcoming codependency is more successful in special groups - Al-Anon, in personal growth groups, in psychotherapeutic groups with a codependency specialist.
I have good news for the reader. It has been established that no matter what age the children are, the deliverance of a parent from codependency, even partial, in one hundred percent of families has a tremendous beneficial effect on children and on the family as a whole.
I confirm this with my own experience, when at first I was a client in a group of codependents, and then a specialist in group therapy for codependency. My family and I have benefited greatly from my "treatment". My clients have reported positive changes in themselves and in their children. In the process of overcoming codependency, they strove for the type of responsible parent. nine0003
Regular Parent
Permanent Parent A person who acts predominantly from the position of the Parent often perceives others as unreasonable little children. There are two most striking variants of the permanent Parent. One dominated by the Punishing Parent, the other by the Rewarding
Chapter 1 How to talk to yourself who are afraid? Positions "Child", "Kind parent" and "Strict parent"
Chapter 1 How to talk to yourself who are afraid? Positions "Child", "Kind parent" and "Strict parent" If you have already undertaken to fight fear, then, of course, you are interested not only in psychological attitudes that will clarify the situation, but also in specific ways,
Ego state Parent
Ego state Parent We believe that the Parent is made up of all the beliefs, emotions, and patterns of behavior that a person chooses to build in at the verbal level, the level of his memory, and of the Parent that he or she creates for himself and continues to create
Parent
Parent Parent is a judgmental, tradition-based, regulating ego state.
A parent is like a tape recorder. It is a set of pre-written rules that govern life. When a person is in the Parent ego state, he thinks, feels and behaves
caring parent
caring parent The Caring Parent is just as prejudiced as the Critical Parent, with one exception: instead of viewing a person as dysfunctional, he believes that a person is well-off: smart, kind, reasonable, beautiful, healthy, deserving
What kind of parent are you?
What kind of parent are you? Do this, don't do that. Children often hear these words from their parents. “Put away toys…”, “Don’t push your sister…”, “Eat beans…”, “Say “thank you” to grandpa…”, “Don’t bully your brother…” and so on. It would seem that we just want the children to obey us, but on
Parent
Parent The behavior of the parent part is usually copied from the person's parents or other authority figures.
It is adopted in its entirety, without any changes whatsoever. A person in the parental ego state is a video recording of the behavior of one of their
Parent and Child
parent and child Sexual relations between parents and child are prohibited because they constitute incest even when the child has grown up. The only sexual pleasures permitted by law are extreme perversions or superior procedures,
I am like my own parent
I am like my own parent In recent years, I have been increasingly occupied with the story of how Plato was asked to briefly express the essence of the Dialogues, and he, being on his deathbed, cryptically answered: "Learning to die." This seems to me a logical psychotherapy. nine0003
Submission and a critical parent
Submissiveness and the Critical Parent Why do some people have a pronounced tendency to obey authority, while others do not? Maybe it's a matter of willpower? Or are some people just born weak and others strong? Or maybe we are learning to be strong or
How the Critical Parent 9 functions0145
How does the Critical Parent work? The Critical Parent is a coherent, internalized set of critical and controlling points of view.
