Monica came to see me after another massive blowout with her husband. They had been together since they were 15 years old, they are 42 now, they have one kid together.
Monica had fought through college and early adulthood to have this relationship with Rick. She loved him. He was her high school sweetheart and he knew her better than anybody. Maybe better than she even knew herself.
But Rick was also an alcoholic. His partying escalated from being inappropriately drunk, and inappropriately handsy, out at the bars in his early 20s… to excessive drinking and nights out in his 30s…. to being the last one out, on weeknights too, with a child tucked into bed at home, in his 40s.
This particular fight was not the first, maybe not the worst, and not the last. Monica told me that she screamed at him as she smashed bottles and poured the alcohol down the drain. Rick then slammed her against the wall and called her a bitch. He then left – for two days.
Monica and I safety planned, I provided her insight into abusive behaviors that people with addiction can exhibit, and talked to her about reactive abuse too. But I think it through her off, when after weeks (maybe months) of this, I asked to learn more about her upbringing.
“I’m having knock down fights with my husband and you want to know about my mom?”
“Humor me”, I often said to clients who resisted going there.
It turned out Monica’s parents were not alcoholics, but her parents were deeply emotionally immature and very high needs. We began focusing on Monica’s mom during our sessions.
“She used to make me feel responsible for her happiness.” Monica described hearing gory details about her parents relationship, and her dad’s infidelities, that left Monica’s mom distraught and without emotional support. She described her mom emotionally trauma dumping onto her, asking her to pick sides in their marital concerns, and triangulating her into her relationship with her dad. Monica also described being punished when she “knew too much” about her parents’ problems (that one really stuck with me).
Monica told me many stories about her mom throughout our work together. Here are two that stick out to me:
She told me that her Mom asked her to go into her dad’s office one day when she got home from school, “just to snoop around”. Monica realized in horror while telling me this, that at the time, maybe 15, she didn’t think anything was wrong with this request. She thought of it at the time as being “in mom’s camp” – and knew that it would make her mom happy if she complied. Even happier if Monica actually found something juicy during their quest.
She told me another story about getting into a women in STEM program late in High School. She would have gone to DC for the summer to study. She didn’t even ask if she could go. She said it was inherent that her mom needed too much of her time, energy, and resources, for her to be away for an entire summer. Plus going to this program would have meant achieving beyond mom – something that would have complicated their relationship. Monica didn’t know all of this at 17, she just knew she got the letter and instead of feeling excitement, she felt dread. It wasn’t until years later that she started to reflect on why her own success felt so dreadful to her.
Monica told me all of this over weeks & months in therapy. When I suggested that it may be connected to her distress with her husband Rick, she seemed sad. Not incredulous, not angry, not relieved. Just sad.
I think the revelation that Monica’s past had found her present, and was colliding in such an tragic way, was hard to take in. We see our relationships myopically and I think it’s human nature to hope to god that we don’t marry our parents.
“I’m having an issue with my husband” “It’s that we’re not able to communicate” “It’s that he has to get sober” “He has to go to AA”.
I said that all of that was true. He does have to go to AA. “But you need to go to Alanon too.”
Monica had something that can be described in many terms. A narcissistic mother wound, I high needs parent, an emotionally immature parent. Whatever you feel comfortable calling it – there was a deeply-seeded mothering wound there. Monica felt responsible for her mom’s happiness, she felt deeply enmeshed with mom’s well-being, she felt manipulated, sustained the silent treatment, lived with no boundaries, and was praised or discarded based on how much she could give to her mom. She was ultimately taught and internalized that order to receive love from her mom she needed to 1. Give up her boundaries 2. Play into conditional games of love 3. Please and appease 4. Make herself smaller
“Do those things feel familiar in your marriage?”
Monica’s struggle with her husband wasn’t just that he was an alcoholic. It’s that his emotional makeup feels familiar to Monica. In order for her to be loved by him she has to 1. Give up her boundaries 2. Play into conditional games of love 3. Please and appease (enable) and 4. Make herself smaller.
Family member’s of high needs/emotionally immature &/or addicts end up with very similar wounding. Monica is not the first woman I worked with who had an emotionally immature parents. She also wasn’t the first woman I worked with who presented with low self-worth, chronic shame, poor boundaries, people-pleasing tendencies, fear of rejection, loss of identity, and attraction to emotionally unstable partners. I’ve outlined below how this wound showed up for Monica, and how it may show up for others:
Low or fragile self-worth:
These dynamics can prevent the child from developing a stable sense of self, as their emotional needs are frequently overlooked or minimized. Instead of learning to trust their own feelings and worth, they may internalize the belief that love and acceptance must be earned through compliance, perfection, or self-sacrifice, leading to chronic self-doubt and a persistent fear of not being good enough.
Chronic shame or guilt:
Chronic guilt and shame often stem from being raised by an emotionally immature parent who may have used blame, manipulation, or emotional withdrawal to control behavior or express dissatisfaction. In Monica’s case, she was made to feel responsible for her mom’s moods or unmet needs. She then internalized the belief that they she was inherently bad or defective whenever something goes wrong. This constant emotional pressure teaches people to monitor and judge themselves harshly, even in situations where they are not at fault, leading to a deep-seated pattern of self-blame and an enduring sense of unworthiness.
It’s not uncommon to then find a partner who we cannot *rescue* or *save* because it plays into our internalized belief that we are inherently bad and that is why the person will not get better. In Monica’s case, why she can’t make her husband get sober.
Poor boundaries:
Poor boundaries showed up for Monica when her mom created a dynamic where she had to give up her autonomy, her dreams, and her own self in order to cater to mom’s emotions. Monica was taught from a young age that in order to be both lovable and *needed*, she would not be able to say to mom that she didn’t want to hear as much about her parents’ marriage, or that she wanted to spend more time on her studies.
Poor boundaries have even bigger consequences in adult life. Monica felt that in order to keep Rick and be loved, she had to let him drink. She couldn’t really kick him out when he was being violent. And she couldn’t ask him to go to AA.
People-pleasing and “Fawning”:
Please and Appease (formerly known as the Fawn Response) - is a primitive biological response our nervous system has when it senses threat of danger. Similarly to fight, flight, or freeze, Fawning is when our nervous system detects a threat and decides that the safest way through is to appease the person into not hurting us.
Monica learned this first in her relationship with her mom, and likely through other means of modeling as well. She also learned that safety in her relationship means Fawning.
*Interestingly, Monica was also experiencing a Fight Response. Remember earlier when I called it reactive abuse? That is Monica’s nervous system responding in a new way to the threat of danger - she is fighting back instead of laying down.
Fear of rejection:
Another core wounding that occurs with a high needs parent is the deep-seeded fear of rejection. Because acceptance was conditional - based upon the perceived value you were providing, in Monica’s case this was emotional support - we fear that if we don’t provide that we will be rejected. Our brain will convince us that being in support of the other person will serve our biological need to be in community with others.
Fear of rejection can also look like forgiving too easily, doing more than we want to, being an A+ worker/student, being extremely high achieving, being the best wife/husband, etc.
Attraction to emotionally unavailable or controlling partners:
We can look at Monica’s mom as having been controlling. She needed Monica to be a specific version of herself in order for her to get her needs met. This meant triangulating Monica into her marriage, needing Monica to take sides, and needing Monica to give up dreams and goals to make herself feel more entitled to Monica’s time.
We will find partners who allow us to play the same role as in our first attachment relationships - until we heal those attachment wounds.
Loss of identity:
Part of a codependent cycle is the very specific, very insidious decaying of Self. Most people who had emotionally immature parents will struggle in some degree to find their true self.
What this often looks like is defining ourselves and our worth by our status of relationships – daughter, wife, employee, perhaps a mom herself.
It will be difficult for this person to actually know what they like, what they feel, what their beliefs are, what interests them. Think of a reed swaying in the wind with whomever they find themselves attached to at that moment.
My hope in writing about this topic is to highlight how interconnected our relationship experiences are. How familiar attachment patterns build on themselves, and how we will find them over and over again, until we heal them.
Some healing offerings:
Grieving:
I think the most present thing in the room with a client with an emotionally immature parent is grief. Acknowledging the emotional losses of your childhood, as well as grieving the parent dynamic you never had – can be heavy. Having compassion for this grief, and finding others (a therapist, group, or other community) to walk beside you as you grieve and process is one of the most important steps of this healing process.
Re-defining and reparenting:
Healing begins by redefining your sense of self outside the framework of your emotionally immature parent’s limitations. Through reparenting, you learn to meet your own emotional needs with compassion, setting boundaries, validating your feelings, and offering yourself the consistent care and support you may not have received growing up.
Redefining may also mean nervous system regulation and rewiring of specific neural pathways that keep you stuck in behaviors that are old, and no longer serving you.
Reclaiming identity:
Emotionally immature parenting often distorts your sense of who you are. Reclaiming your identity involves rediscovering your values, preferences, and voice, separate from old roles like caretaker, peacekeeper, or overachiever. It means becoming more authentically you, free from the need to please or perform.
Connecting with others:
Forming healthy, reciprocal relationships helps repair the emotional isolation and mistrust that often develop in emotionally immature families. By seeking out safe, affirming connections, you learn that intimacy doesn’t have to mean sacrifice or pain—and that you are worthy of love just as you are.
If this spoke to you, I’m sorry. But I’m also glad you found this article. I focus my therapeutic work on difficult parent relationships, on toxic and traumatic adult relationships, and finding the balance and healing in both. Please reach out to me via alana@therapywithab.com for any questions!
*The names and details in this story have been fabricated and do NOT represent an actual client of mine*