Healing from Emotionally Immature Parents

A guide for exvangelicals...and anyone

This post is the third in my series on narcissism, emotional immaturity, and evangelicalism. You can check out part one and two below! Scroll past if you’ve already read those and dig into some thoughts about how to recover from an upbringing by emotionally immature or authoritarian parenting, particularly in the evangelical tradition. I hope you find this post helpful, and maybe you can bookmark it or share it if you find it worth coming back to in the future!

Photo by Oleg Illarionov on Unsplash

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First, if you need to catch up on what you missed:

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Many of us raised in the evangelical tradition have very tenuous relationships with parents who remain in the tradition after we leave. It can be hard to know where to start—or where to end!—in navigating relationships. These parents tend to be especially resistant to feedback or accepting differences, because their worldview hinges on them being the only people with the “right” ideology. To truly hear their children with different beliefs would be much to threatening to the parents’ sense of stability, and sometimes even their sense of salvation.

I also want to acknowledge there’s no one right way to navigate this. Some folks can have a pleasant or even close relationship with their evangelical parents (I salute you!). Some folks can only find their own sanity through a no-contact solution. And I’m guessing most of us are somewhere in between. So this post is not going to be prescriptive, but rather describe some things to consider as you try and prioritize your own healing.

Dichotomy One: When with our family of origin, it’s easy to slip back into old patterns (were you a people-pleaser? A rebel black sheep? Does so-and-so bring out your worst side, every time?). // HOWEVER, if we don’t address the root of the problem with that relationship, we often end up repeating the pattern in some other area of our lives.

It’s classic psychodynamic psychology that we repeat the problematic patterns in our lives in unconscious attempts to resolve the underlying conflict. Yeah, sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this means that escaping a situation doesn’t *really* mean you’re healed. Does it help? Heck yeah! But we humans are stubborn creatures who crave the familiar, even when the familiar is toxic.

I see this with the deconstruction movement, as well. People emerge from a narrow-minded fundamentalist tradition and, if they’re not careful, can swing all the way over fundamentalism in the opposite direction. Perhaps they’re an angry atheist who thinks spirituality is absurd. Perhaps they ridicule the groups they were part of, even though 5 minutes ago they shared similar beliefs. This stage is often a temporary but necessary step — a part of individuation and really pushing out of the high-control group — but for the love of self-growth, hopefully we can evolve past that.

Even as a therapist, I don’t believe therapy is the always-necessary answer for self-growth, but I will advocate here that it can help you recognize the kinds of patterns you’ve gotten stuck in due to your past and learn how to change them (or even do direct healing work through trauma-targeted therapy). And many of my clients come in saying that their parents were essentially “fine,” nothing to see here, but I often quickly spot that things were not exactly…fine. There’s room here to both acknowledge that parents *may* have been doing the best they could, but also did some significant damage along the way.

Dichotomy Two: Being raised by narcissistic or emotionally immature adults means we have been steeped in self-forgetting and abandoning ourselves // HOWEVER, to truly heal we need to self-remember and learn to listen to ourselves and our needs.

A narcissistic parent takes up all the oxygen in the room; there’s no real space for the child unless you are part of the parent’s agenda or somehow promoting their self-image. Children like this learn to forget themselves to meet the needs of the parent, in desperate hopes of receiving the love and attention they crave… even though they may never get it.

Emotionally immature parents do not have the emotional bandwidth to see and hold the child as they are. Instead, they need the child to shrink, to become what the parent needs, to soothe the parent or perform to make the parent proud. On the more toxic end, these parents actively degrade and bring down the child, creating even more gaping wounds in the child’s sense of self.

When you have learned to survive by self-forgetting, learning to remember yourself and your needs can feel not only difficult, it can feel downright scary. Who am I to demand anything for myself?, you think. Or, I always prioritize everyone else above myself. I don’t even know what my needs are. Or, If I actually have needs, that will push everyone else away because they can’t handle that, and then I’ll be abandoned anyway. It’s easier to not have needs.

It might feel that way, but the truth is that you are a full human, deserving of love, who has needs, who can show up in full ways for other people: both giving and receiving.

Dichotomy Three: We often deeply crave for our parent/caregiver to recognize the pain they’ve caused and change their ways // HOWEVER, waiting on this to happen will hold up our own healing process: we can only be responsible for ourselves.

I hear this all the time with my counseling clients: “What do you think you’re most looking for?” I ask. “Well, I need [somebody else] to do [something]!” they respond. And I’ll usually gently prod: “That sounds like magical thinking… what do you think might be in your power to change, without depending on someone else to create your peace?”

It’s much easier said than done; trust me, I know. But we can acknowledge the pain that we hold because a parent did us wrong and now lives in utter denial that they ever did anything. That pain is real. But it doesn’t have to keep us stuck.

Might I recommend some EMDR to address traumatic memories that have created stuck, negative beliefs? Or some Internal Family Systems work to help give voice to some of the parts so fiercely trying to protect us from the pain of loss and abandonment, so they might eventually release their burdens and be set free?

I also find that seeking out chosen family, or perhaps leaning into biological family relationships that are healthy, can be a healing balm. We might still ache that someone didn’t love us how we needed them to, but perhaps we still have some wonderful relationships in our lives to be grateful for.

What thoughts come up for you as you reflect on these suggestions? Do you have pain points or triumphs you’d like to share with us? I’ve never known my readers to be anything other than thoughtful and supportive, so please show up for each other this way in the comments! I’m glad you’re here.