How Critical or Emotionally Immature Parents Shape Your Inner Voice—and How to Heal It

Hey there, Terry here. Just a quick announcement that if you like giving voice to depression, you might also like my new podcast recoverable. On it, I will be asking experts that top 10 most searched questions about different addictions and mental health conditions and therapies. Look for recoverable wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the Giving Voice to Depression podcast. Brought to you by recovery.com, the best place to find mental health and addiction treatment for anyone anywhere. Each week we profile a guest who shares openly about their mental health journey. They share because they understand that when people don't talk about their depression or other mental health conditions, those of us who do struggle with them can feel like we're the only ones. That there's something wrong with us and that no one understands. We understand. I'm Terry McGuire, the creator and co-host of this podcast. You have my promise that we'll keep it real here. Depression is real and we're not going to sugarcoat our discussions about it. Hope is also real and you'll get a dose of that here too. I'm Carly McCullough, a licensed social worker and educator and Terry's daughter. We've both experienced depression and also support loved ones struggling with it. We're here to normalize talking about depression and mental health in our communities as well as our families and to share real world tested strategies that have worked for other people who have walked similar paths. Thanks for joining us. Hi mom. Hello Carly. So ideally we learn to be adults from our parents who model and teach us healthy life skills in a nurturing environment. Ideally, but that's not the experience for many of us. So today we're going to talk about a topic that many can relate to even if we don't always talk about it. The long-term effects of growing up with emotionally immature or overly critical parents. We're not talking about those universal. I'm a teenager and my parents just don't get me moments. This episode will explore the deep-seated patterns that follow you into your adulthood, affecting your relationships, your work life, even your own parenting styles. With our guest licensed therapist, Carlyna Brocco, we'll look into what that looks like and more importantly, how you can begin to heal and build a life that's truly your own, even if your parents were unable or unwilling to guide that growth. Here now is Carlyna, giving her voice to depression. On Carlyna's website, she writes, quote, "You've spent so much of your life walking on egg shells, second guessing yourself, and feeling weighed down by expectations that were never yours to begin with. Instead, imagine setting boundaries without that nagging guilt, imagine trusting yourself, and feeling at home in your own skin." Close quote. If you were raised by parents who constantly criticized you or expected you to behave more like an adult than they did, Carlyna understands. She describes herself as a childhood trauma survivor who grew up in a dysfunctional home in Brazil. So tell me a bit about your childhood and the role you now believe your parents played in your depression. It's a pattern, being criticized, no stop, being hit, and just this shame aspect of it, feeling a lot of a lot of shame and feeling like I am the problem. So I was kept going a lot when I was a kid. So I took a lot of the blame for my family. They mirror a lot of their projections, their stuff for me, and that was very herfo to be the outside, feeling like an outsider. Yeah, feeling like I don't belong to the group. While those experiences are in Carlyna's past, their impact is ever present and requires her to take continuous healing steps. There's a lot that happens as a child that we don't know how to process and what to feel. And there's some anger towards the parents too, which when the kid feels like, okay, I cannot be met by my parent. I'm going to direct the anger towards myself. What happens is the inner critic grew in me. And then that makes it really hard to cope with the present. The wounded inner child, the inner critic voice telling me like, you're worthless, you can do anything right. And it's a constant reminder from my adult self, my loving adult self to really hold that child and let her know that that's not true. I feel your feelings, I get it, and showing a new reality to her. It's constant work. So many questions. I'll start with why would a child choose, which might not even be the right verb, to turn their anger or disappointment or inward as opposed to toward their parent. Is that because it's safer? It's very hard for the child to be really, really angry at the parent because they're the primary people that provide for them. They're their survival point. So without the parents, the child feels lonely, the child feels like they're going to die, right? Because they need the parents to survive. So having that parent for them, it's a crucial part of their living experience. And it's like, okay, I cannot imagine myself being so angry that my mom hit me, for example. Right. So there is some anger coming out of that towards her. But at the same time, the kid internalizes it within. Okay, it's my fault that mom hit me. It's on me. I probably, I misbehaved because I'm bad. So there's a core shame around that. The toxic shame within that the kid thinks it's me. I created this problem. I did this. That's why mom is mistreating me. That's why I'm getting hit. So there's some, yes, a lot of that is internalized shame, internalized anger to herself because it's easy to be angry at yourself than blaming the people you love. So I think most of us have heard the phrase dysfunctional families and define it differently, of course, based on our experiences and perspective. But highly critical parents is something I'm familiar with, but hadn't really put in the category of childhood trauma. So talk to me a bit about the experience of having highly critical parents and how it has affected you and clients that you see so that you can, you know, we can better understand what the impact of that is. Yeah, so I would like to say that no parents are perfect. No one is perfect. And I would say that the high critical parents are the ones that are constantly, there's a consistency pattern of criticizing over and over and over. Every day, there's something wrong. Every day, you feel like you can measure enough, you can do enough. You feel like you just cannot measure to their expectations. Right? The appearance is never good. The school grades are never good. The way you behave, the way you talk, everything just feels limited and when you don't get the sense of acceptance, so not feeling accepted that paying of loneliness again comes in because you feel defeated all the time. So you start to believe, yes, that's me on the problem. If I'm being criticized by my parents, most of the time means there's something wrong with me. It's easy for the child to believe in that. So as a result of being consistently criticized as a child, what happens to us inside and what do we carry into adulthood? What are the beliefs? There's a lot of toxic chain in what I mean with that is that core belief that I'm not enough. I'm not enough. I'm helpless. I'm worthless. I can do anything right. I'm not worth existing. So those are, yes, this is all toxic chain that we built inside. I can't help but make the connection between those comments from parents and then in ourselves and depression because depression tells my depression tells me I'm not enough. I am worthless and maybe not worth existing. It's the exact phrasing that I hear when I'm in a depression. If you've stopped to really notice your depression, right? Like I love that you made that connection. It's like those voices telling you that and the feeling, the happiness of it, telling you those things, those nasty things that they're not true, that internalized, because you have no options. As a kid, you had no options but internalized. I think that you're the problem. As an adult now, we have the power to do it differently. And to repair Our entire inner child differently than our parents did. We have that willingness, strength, and power and compassion, attunement, connection. We can develop all that towards ourselves and give that to ourselves now. Tell me what that looks and sounds like. It's like whenever you're having, for example, some sort of depressive episode feeling, worthless feeling like you don't have the right to exist, just feeling heavy. It's just staying with that feeling. I put it, you can even put a head on your heart or your stomach whenever it feels right. And feel that for a moment. Just feel that and imagine your kid. Your kid is feeling those feelings. Your kid is feeling depressed. Your kid is feeling flat, sad. Whenever it is, and attending to that child inside, you can let that child know that you're here. I hear you. I see you. I can feel what you're feeling right now. And I want to let you know that I'm here. I'm here for you. And you're not alone. Because a lot of the times, too, the loneliness that I point out, right? The kid's still feeling a loaning side. So having a consistent parenting for yourself, telling that kid that you're there, at least doing that, like, I am here. You're safe now. Fingers over. You're not alone. Having that consistency, just sitting with the feeling, and it can help you to feel a little more connected, little by little. It does take time. But it's a start to, um, repair yourself, start talking to yourself as if you were a kid. That makes sense. So we've talked about highly critical parents. You also address emotionally immature parents, which just set off all kinds of alarms in me. Talk to me about being raised by emotionally immature parents. Which can be in the category of highly critical parents, right? So that emotional immature parents is that parent that there's so many catarids, but just not being able to have a conversation, not being able to repair a relationship, not being able to take accountability and model that intimacy for the child, not being able to say, hey, I'm sorry. I messed it up. I'd like to repair this with you. I think that is a big thing. And also there's that role reversal where you as the child, you feel like you are the parent. So that is also in the category of it. What's the impact of being raised by an emotionally immature parent? The most important one is the feeling of loneliness, like feeling alone, feeling like you're not connected to the world to yourself that disconnect within. Because if your parents were highly critical and there's that role reversal happening all the time when you're a kid feeling like you have to be the adult in their relationship and they're not repairing their relationship with you and you're receiving all the dysfunction, you start to feel disconnected from yourself too. And year for you, feel more disconnected to other people, the world. So I think that the biggest impact is the disconnection, feeling numb, feeling they don't belong anywhere, feeling worthless, feeling yes, I can do anything right. And loneliness, the depression that comes with it. I would guess that if like we are in a room for people, adults and said like right down the top 10 childhood traumas, emotionally immature parents probably wouldn't make the list and critical parents may or may not when in fact, you know, you can tell us that they are. How do they count as childhood traumas? Because childhood trauma we count as emotional abuse is one and physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, domestic violence at home, parents with addiction. So all that neglect and the basic needs, but also there's the emotional piece of it. Then the emotional wound of being neglected, of not feeling connected to the parent hurt as badly as physical abuse, the loneliness and the shame that comes with it from the parents, right, that can be very, very practical. So how as adults now can we avoid doing to our children the things that emotionally mature and overly critical parents have done to us? The fact that we ask ourselves, how can I do better? How can I be a better parent? This is a really, really good start. Because it starts with assessing yourself. Okay. What can I do to make this better with my kid to repair the relationship and having a conversation with your child too and only taking accountability? I think it's a big thing, taking accountability. Because when you take accountability, you modeling them how to repair relationship and relationships are not perfect, we need repairing them. So getting back to, okay, I want to be a better parent and a better person in general. So having that awareness and doing the work, doing the trauma work, childhood trauma work and one thing to this coming to me is really attaining to the hurt child that you were in the past. Because when you start doing that work and attending to that child, you're creating a model for yourself so you can do that with your kids too. Because you know how you felt, you know how that, how your inner child feels inside, that froze state, that confusion, that sadness and you know how to attend to her and once you know how to attend to her, you can do that with your kids too. So first off, I want to thank Carolina for talking about this really, really tender subject. It is something that is not discussed a lot, that the language around it, a lot of people don't have and that I didn't even have language for until I read Dr. Lindsey Gibson's book titled "Recovering from Emotionally Image Repair Parents." And one of the things that Carolina says right at the beginning of your interview mom is that she took the blame for her family, that her family mirrored a lot of their projections and their stuff onto her and that that was hurtful. And similarly Dr. Gibson, on just page six of her book at the very, very beginning, she writes, quote, "Your parents gave you life and love, but only of this sort they knew." Which is very non-blaming. Very non-blaming. And so I think that that's kind of where I want to start, which is that these discussions around emotionally mature parents, I think if I were a parent and I heard this subject, I would go, "Oh my gosh, what's coming my way? What are you about to, you know, that the singer is going to point or cure the mother on the podcast with your daughter, for instance?" Hypothetically, if there was a mother daughter podcast discussing this hypothetically. So one thing that might surprise parents to hear about conversations about emotionally immature parents is the amount of compassion that is often at the core of it, that it is deep love for their parent, deep compassion for the fact that parents are often doing the very best that they know how to do, and also holding that sometimes someone's best isn't good enough. And all the research we have now shows that no one needs a perfect parent. Perfect parents don't exist as painful as that is to the little kid in each of us that wanted our parents to be perfect, but that we all need good enough parents. Apparently, I mean, that point over and over, yes. Good enough parents is a big deal. I say it often to my, a lot of my friends who are all first time parents, and sometimes the programming that an adult comes into parenthood with is not good enough yet. And so then there's this yet piece, which is that it's skills. There's healing that can happen. There's skills that can be learned, but for folks who choose to not do that work, then that is what lends someone in the category of an emotionally immature parent, someone who is not doing their own work enough, who has not taken the time to learn the skills, to be a good enough emotional parent for their kids. I actually interviewed someone yesterday for a different podcast about trauma, and she said, if your parent is tuned into you 60% of the time that you essentially got a really good one, that is the most that should be expected. 60%, not that much more than half, but it's a hell of a lot more. than none or 10 or 20 or 30 percent. Yeah, and 60 percent feels really different to someone's body than 50. This could go either way. Rather than odds are more to-- Most of the time, this person is there. And so I think that that's a really beautiful way of thinking about it. It's more than 50 percent. Do I trust you? Do you see me? Can you hold me more than 50 percent of the time? And we are speaking here specifically about. The emotional needs of a child. There are so many needs the children have from material to housing to physical need, like all medical needs. There are so many we are specifically talking about. We are. And so if Carolina's story relates to you, there are some tips that are also from Dr. Gibson's book that I want to lift up. And then some that I have noticed are supportive to some of my friends over the years. That's here. This is never what we want to hear. We want to think, "How can they do to fix it? I shouldn't have to do anything to fix it." But what Dr. Gibson recommends to folks with emotionally immature parents, she writes this, "Your heart will feel lighter once you accept that you can't make them happy, fix their lives, or make them proud of you. It's usually beyond them to think about your feelings, and they can't sustain reciprocal emotional intimacies. They won't listen to you for long, and nothing you do may ever be enough. They'll continue to see you in the role as their child, not a full capable adult. They'll exert dominance and demand to be the most important person in the relationship. Their interests will always come first, and even if you are a model adult, they may still be critical, demeaning, or dismissive towards you." "Ugh." "I know." "Yep, I know too." "Yeah." And there's two strategies that she offers that I think are really helpful. "Okay." So the first tip is to see yourself as equal in importance to them. To say to yourself, "I am just as important as they are." And the second is to keep a conscious self-connection and accept yourself unconditionally. To think, "I have good stuff inside me." So when you're navigating these moments with some of the most tender, supple relationships of your entire life, these sort of mantras to hold with you, held with you going into conversations, into dinners, into interactions, and then also to repeat to yourself during them, and perhaps after, as I am just as important as they are, and I have good stuff inside me. And that those are some of those messages that our inner children really need to hear, and that's when we are holding our inner children during those interactions, because we've learned over time that our inner children are not emotionally safe. We're seen by an emotionally immature parent. So thank you, Carly. Thank you, Carolina. And we will be back next week and hope you join us. Take good care. We really hope that this discussion helps give some language or context to your own depression, or ideas for how to support someone else in your life living with it. We invite you to check out the hundreds of episodes in our archive and to explore both the resource hub and treatment options on recovery.com. Depression is too dark a road to walk alone. We'll be back next week.