Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self, and Live with Confidence by Lindsay C. Gibson

Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self, and Live with Confidence Reviews

• 
  Annagrace

  All three books in this series are fantastic, but this one could be titled Life Skills Refresher for Adults of Human Parents, as it supports and clarifies healthy maturation and growth for *anyone*.
  
  Short, right to the point chapters cover everything from healthy emotional boundaries, to what emotionally mature friendships do and don’t look like (and how to develop better ones, if your current friendships are draining or painful), to practical ways to approach stress and life challenges. And how to find a spiritual teacher that isn’t another emotionally immature parent in disguise! (I know!) There’s also a section on understanding children’s and teens’ emotional needs which is applicable to anyone who wants to be a wise and trustworthy adult, not just for parents.
  
  I listened to this series in preparation for the Winter Holidays, as an emotional vitamin infusion, but I will return often, especially to this volume. If, like me, your parents didn’t teach or model healthy relationships, and if merely trying to do the opposite of them doesn’t always feel nourishing or life-giving, these books are a sane and wise friend.
• 
  Charlie

  Overall this book has very little to do with self-care and significantly less to do with emotionally immature parents. The advice given was choppy, inconsistent, and unsourced, going as far as to cite a TV show about dog training in a section about establishing boundaries; comparing people to dogs aside, the show cited was Cesar Milan’s show which features his training style that is based entirely on a study that has been proven inaccurate to the lifestyle of wolves (which was what the study was done on), let alone dogs or people.
  The “bite-sized sections” were wildly organized and only loosely related to what the title implies the book is about. It was hard to follow as the book is chock full of bizarre metaphors and comparisons (girls are horses but they should be mules, what??), unfounded claims as to the abilities or desires of “introverted” or “extroverted” people, and suggestions to “practice” establishing boundaries on people whose conversational styles don’t match your own.
  There’s an entire section on parenting, which would be great if the book were titled “parenting for people who have emotionally immature parents,” if it actually focused on having had EI parents in any way instead of telling parents to allow their children to be immature (do you really need to be told this?). This section claims that people who have children lose their personalities and have no possible way to enjoy themselves, but they’re somehow more fulfilled than those without - a point which I can’t find any sources to back up and can’t find any reason why it would ever be included at all.
  The amount of times the author implies that mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and ADHD are caused by something you do instead of the science-backed truth that mental illnesses such as these are just brain structure and function is shocking from someone who has a degree in psychology. Another bizarre tip featured is that emotions only last 90 seconds (again, what is the source for this?), and if they last longer it’s because you’ve chosen to feel it. This could be understandable if we’re talking about environmentally induced emotions, but is wild when you’re talking about experiences such as grief, life instability, or generally anything bigger than overstimulation or something akin to being cut off in traffic.
  There’s nothing in this book that you can’t get a better version of elsewhere, the editing and organization is a mystery and destroys any good bits I could manage to pull from it, and the claims made in it are baffling and off-topic the majority of the time. I couldn’t possibly recommend this to anyone, and it was truly grating to finish.
  
• 
  PJ

  Series of short snippets and advice. Definitely not the book I'd recommend on this topic of emotionally immature parents... The author's other two books are far more useful, containing more nuanced discussion. This book is simplistic, and even contains incorrect stuff (for example, Cesar Milan's idea of wolf dominance - undermined years ago, by the same guy who first developed it). This book didn't even feel like the same author. More like the publisher tried to create a Chicken Soup for the Soul, but as advice, from the first two books.
• 
  Ebbie

  DNFed at 62%.
  Couldn't get through the whole "Parents, your child is/will be so and so" part and, at that point, I was rolling my eyes so hard every paragraph that I couldn't just powerthrough and get to the rest.
  
  Girlie, stop, you're making a fool of yourself talking about zoomers like you know the inner self of ANY of them, idolizing your problematic faves like the Dalai Lama or Ceasar Millan, talking about alphas like it's a thing or the whole extrovert/introvert child behavior. This is giving pseudo science, or even psychopop bs (yeah, not the good kind). Not to be ageist, but seriously tho, how old are you? And not only that, but are you actually TRYING to understand people just a tiny bit younger than you, like at all? Are you listening to them or just hearing them/talking at them? My therapist is not young, yet when I tell her about the world I live in, with my millenial reality and dipped in my zoomers friends' one as well, she asks questions instead of putting all of us into this paint-by-number canvas build by fuckos who cry over their glory days of yore.
  
  Not saying I didn't get some quotes here and there, some food for thoughts on my own path of mental healing and childhood trauma stuff. But oof. Not enough to salvage the whole thing. I'm going to give the author another chance some day and check out the actual book everyone is talking about, the one before this who hasn't "self-care" in the title (though this here book doesn't have much self-care inside it either). Because yeah no, this one just ain't it.
  
  The whole construction as well, the very short snippets of "wisdom"? Not the best. It's giving messy vibes and that's not what the title advertises, at all. Ngl, I thought I was going to get much more even though I saw some of the reviews, and I should have listened. I should have dnf-ed it after about 40%. The last 22% were close to being dogshit.
  
  I said what I said.
• 
  Myla

  Wonderful book, dumb title. Marketing team fail. True title is: For human being with emotions dealing with other human being with emotions and especially if you have human being for children with emotions.
• 
  Courtney

  At the beginning of the pandemic I stumbled upon
  Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents through my libraries digital collection. Generally, I avoid self-help books. I often find them condescending or impractical. However, the wait list for it was ridiculously long and I was intrigued. Over a year later I finally received it. I finished it in a day.
  
  There was a lot of useful information and tools for self-reflection about identifying what type of Emotionally Immature parent you had and means to identify your coping mechanisms. My only complaint was that there wasn't any real focus on addressing how to recognize if you've adopted emotionally immature behaviours yourself and how to work on maturing in these area's. Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents addresses that.
  
  "To be emotionally healthy you have to be as available to yourself as you would with someone you love."
  
  There are three parts: Protecting & Caring for Yourself, Dealing with People, and Coping with Challenges. Each of those sections are broken down further to address different situations or issues into bite-sized chapter's so it isn't overwhelming. The author discusses how internalized behaviours you've picked up from your emotionally immature parents impact your romantic relationship's but also relationships with your children or co-workers. There's a good balance between self-reflection and focusing on interaction's with others.
  
  I find the advice given is gently delivered and practical. Although, it's easily used to address overcoming a person's past, it can also be applied to your current situation and as a means to shape the future you would like see.
  
  If you don't create and manage your own story, someone else may write it for you."
  
  I recommend this book to anyone whose negative childhood has lingered with them into adulthood or are concerned about repeating their parent's emotionally immature mistakes. The advice is also applicable to anyone that may just want to break themselves of self-defeating habits.
  
  Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a advance readers copy in exchange for a honest review. All quotes come from an uncorrected arc and may change.
• 
  Frrobins

  I really enjoyed Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and picked up this book hoping to find more exercises and insights. And left a bit disappointed. Rather than exercises it was mini-essays on various aspects of self-care. There was a lot of good information and I felt the beginning of the book had some good insights, but towards the end it was stuff you'd find in a lot of other materials. For someone with no self-care skills this would be a good place to start and a less intimidating place than Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, but for people with more awareness or skills I would recommend something else.
• 
  Lesley

  I swear this was written just for me. I felt so comforted and understood by this book.
• 
  Aijan Amanbekova

  I always had a feeling that this book could be shorter. Some chapters were super helpful and some were very obvious to me. I suppose that I might’ve learnt some of the lessons from the book before I read it and it might be the reason I didn’t find some chapters interesting to me.
• 
  Andreea Rusu

  For me, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents was like a prolonged therapy session. A few months ago I was captivated by the first book in this series, called simply Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and knew without a doubt I would pick up anything else this wonderful woman had written.
  
  The concept of self-care is one we tend to have a lot of misconceptions about. It makes us think scented candles, face masks and other things that do have their meaning, but can often be surface-level, if our needs actually are more profound than that. True self-care can sometimes be found in the most uncomfortable, even painful processes of escaping comfort zones that we created due to our childhood traumas.
  
  This book consists of three parts. The first is titled Protecting and Caring for Yourself and is, in my opinion, the strongest one. Our relationship with ourselves must always come before anything else, which is why this is the part the book starts with. The second part, Dealing with People guides you towards a healthier relationships with others. Lastly, the third part, Coping with Challenges talks about stress and explores more beneficial ways to deal with exterior circumstances.
  
  It was a pleasant and quite easy read, with some really strong points, as well as some weaker ones. On reading some specific parts, I would widen my eyes in shock and hurry to highlight them and they actually wound up coming to my mind in my day-to-day life when I could apply them. (What more could you possibly want from a self-help book?) On the other hand, some chapters were based on strange, forced metaphors. I couldn't help but get the feeling that the author would have wanted a shorter and more to-the-point book, but she was told she needed to provide more text.
  
  All in all, I think the key chapters and quotes in this book are memorable enough to make the less interesting parts worthwhile. If something sticks enough to make me think about it after I've read it, and even tell my friends about it, it's probably good.
• 
  Carolina

  2.5 Stars
  
  I first read, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, by Dr. Gibson and liked it enough to see what else she had to say.
  
  My rating is mild for this follow up book because it start off one way, veered off into a different direction, then found it's conclusion in the end settling on an uplifting note. It started off with very practical how-tos and breaking things down for the reader, especially if they have not experienced much talk therapy with a professional or explored many self-care practices that have begun to enter the mainstream culture.
  
  However, at one point I genuinely had to pause and make sure I picked up the right book and hadn't accidentally begun to read a parenting book. The transition was not seemless and felt more like, there was not enough of the how-to-do-self-care bit so they had to fluff up the book with some chapters on parenting... I suppose a fair argument would be to say that many adults become parents, so it's good to cover that. But I would argue, would that not be better included in a book specifically on parenting? Because truly not all of us are or want to be parents, and truth be told our healing from our upbringing plays a significant role in that decision.
  
  Another sticking point I have is that she references the outdated and de-bunked dog training theory of alpha dogs, often known as dominance theory. She is trying to make a point about how some emotionally immature parents use certain tactics to try to gain or maintain dominance. Fine, valid. But when a scientist or researcher is referencing de-bunked theories as truth... one begins to question them more overall.
  
  I most recommend the first book I read by Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
• 
  Rebecca

  Really excellent content. It doesn’t have to be read in order; each chapter is a bite-sized, yet deeply focused on some aspect or other. I found it to be just the right balance. Not overwhelming but certainly not shallow or surface-level content either.
  
  As a regular attender of Adult Child of Alcoholics and/or Dysfunctional Families, I found this book to be an absolutely lovely companion on the road to nurture my inner child and develop my own loving inner parent.
  
  There is also a practical section on how to parent your own kids in an emotionally connected, mature way that I found very helpful.
• 
  Katie

  I liked it and there were some valuable insights, but it was my least favorite of the series.
• 
  Margarete Maneker

  idk why i even finished this bc it was so excruciatingly instagram therapy vibes but i did it
• 
  Midnight Anderson

  I stumbled across this book after Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents.
  
  I don't think this book is meant to help the same audience as her previous book. This book uses a lot of analogies and fewer direct stories to communicate the importance of self-awareness, self-care, and building back the confidence and instincts worn down by emotionally immature parents and their environment. This book doesn't have the same thoughtful activities or quizzes to guide you on your self-care journey and spends a lot more time focusing on parents/parents-to-be than strictly adult children. Your expectations and reason to pick up this book may change how you feel about the content.
  
  This book is helpful if you are new to the topics of self-care and reparenting yourself and prefer analogies or stories to understand topics instead of lecture-style facts or statistics.
  
  One example of how the author uses analogies is in the chapter
  The Café of Love
  
  "We can afford to be selective only when we are emotionally well-fed. when we’re famished after a childhood with an EI parent, any restaurant is a welcome sight. we’re not too picky as long as it has a nice facade and parking near the door. we barely take time to check the menu.
  
  But the real problem is not what’s on the menu. the deeper problem occurs when we’re too impatient to read the menu. we sit down at the table already starving. We latch onto the other person immediately, NEEDING them before we even KNOW them. if we already need someone we don’t really know, the potential for letdown is huge.
  
  This was a great analogy and an example of how this book shines in introducing certain topics to people both new and seasoned to a particular topic.
  
  However, this book's reliance on analogies and stories sometimes felt a bit flat and I noticed some ideas were much stronger than others while some felt like filler. The book came across much more general and less fleshed out than the original book and often focused on parents or parents-to-be and less on the adult children of EI. For example, it touched on boundaries, instincts, emotions, etc but bounced around quickly and never fleshed some of these topics out which is why it's a great starter but maybe not as much if you've done some of this work on your own. Unlike the other book each topic felt like it scratched the top surface but it felt very opinion based and it doesn't feel like a reference book. It's a choose-your-own adventure. This may or may not be for you.
• 
  Megan Vick

  Loved this book! Once you have an understanding of the EI behaviors in adults, this book makes a great companion for ensuring you take care of yourself. Whether you have EI parents, coworkers, neighbors, or friends/family, this book will help you:
  - nurture yourself
  - set, enforce, and communicate boundaries
  - disconnect from what doesn't serve you
  
  You don't have to read this book in order. There are helpful groupings around parenting, relationships, etc., so you are easily able to refresh yourself in the moment.
• 
  Grace G

  This book was very insightful into ideas of self-actualisation & how we express ourselves from the accumulation of experiences we have gone through in our life! This book does spend a good bit of time focused on guidance for parenting. I would definitely recommend to other adults of any age, though, whether they have children or not because it provides insight on how to deal with the people around you.
• 
  Marianne

  Definitely recommend the first book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, over this one. Collection.of short column style advice pieces. Some deeply insightful, but many perplexed or irritated me. Still overall, most are good ground level advice, a decent place to start connecting to self compassion and taking the long view.
• 
  Benoit Lelièvre

  Not as rich in perspective as her original work in that series. This is more or less a list of tactics people with low self-esteem can use in order to create space for themselves in their own lives, which is great. But if you've been in therapy you know most of these already.
• 
  Chelsea Riddle

  While I think this book is better suited for the parent to read rather than the child (would they though?), I still learned a lot about myself and even my siblings. Self-actualization is difficult and forever ongoing and it’s nice to have terms describing very specific behavior and feelings.
• 
  Angel Lemke

  First book finished this month, ironically.
• 
  Amanda Smith

  Had good potential and then focused more on parenting rather than ways to cope
• 
  Kris Al

  More of a guide to help readers to be more self aware when they do recognise they do have emotionally immature parents. Cookie cutter guides to set boundaries but not for someone looking for a deeper understanding.
• 
  Iida

  I found this collection of reflections to be more uneven than the author's previous, to me incredibly valuable, books about the impacts of growing up with Emotionally Immature Parents, and I skipped through many sections. There were several chapters which were very worthwhile, however, importantly elaborating again on how to distance ourselves from our critical inner voices, and cherishing the value in our inner worlds and our experiences.
  
  "You probably have a man-spirited inner voice that is exceptionally judgmental and demanding, and that says that your worth is something yet to be proven, not something inherent in just being alive."
  ...
  "The real payoff of any addiction, whether a substance or a superhuman level of responsibility, is that it anesthesizes you to your deep doubts about your own worth and lovability."
  
  I'm still working to put that unkind, demeaning voice outside of myself for good, to not fill my need for approval through endless achievement, and to stop whipping myself for wanting to be free and enjoy myself. Sometimes it's hard not to let the voice slink back in when I am feeling weak, but slowly I am learning to hold on to the knowledge that I am good and precious just as I am. Just being is enough.
  
  The book also made me wish I had a Mr Rogers on TV when I was a kid. "He taught us that just being here _is_ your meaning. You don't have to prove anything, achieve something, or otherwise wow the people around you in order to be worthy of love."
• 
  Alex

  This book was a bait and switch. The first part of this book related to the title, but the last parts devolved in to incoherent ramblings. Topics include parenting, girls liking horses, Einstein playing soccer. At one point the author describes a mule in painful detail. I didn’t take anything away from this book and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. I’m not usually this harsh, but if you are writing a book about self-care (presumably) then you should deliver. This feels like a money grab and I’m very disappointed.