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

Your attitude toward your desire to relax says everything about your relationship with yourself. If you don’t measure up to some imagined level of accomplishment, you may start mentally whipping yourself as though you were racing to come in first in some high-productivity stakes.

Your best pace is how long it takes you to do something mindfully and comfortably. As you pay attention to your stress response, you will find a rhythm that makes tasks seem to do themselves.

The next time it speaks, notice what its values are. For instance, if it keeps berating you for making an error, it is espousing the value that people should be mercilessly punished for being fallible. Now ask yourself if that is in accordance with your values. Would you treat another person that way? Is it one of your cherished values that we shou

Children are absorbent learners when it comes to family expectations. They want to please, and they want to belong. Children will go against their own instincts in order to increase their bond with the important people in their lives. In sociology, that is called learning the culture. Learning the family story—how one should think, feel, and act—sh

There is a creation story from the mystical legends of Judaism that says that when the universe was brought into being, it split into two parts: the 1 percent world and the 99 percent world. The 1 percent world is the material, physical world that we know so well. When someone sighs and says, “That’s life,” they are talking about the 1 percent worl

As a child, you are much slower than the big people around you, and your brain doesn’t work as fast. You are told to hurry up, stop dawdling, and hit a pace that is unnatural to your young brain. Your parents might have taught you that taking all the time you need is equivalent to being bad or lazy. You carry this belief into adulthood, disregardin

If you are like most people, you come to believe that you are your limits. It is very scary to leave the familiar because change feels like you would no longer know who you are. The cardboard box that you settled into now becomes your identity, to be held onto at all costs. Self-limitation feels safe.

The drive for perfection can start early in life, when a parent’s frown or emotional coolness lets you know you have erred. Although the parent may or may not be intending this, you get the message that in order to be worthy of love, you should be perfect. To make mistakes and cause disappointment is to run the risk of a parent’s emotional withdraw

have discovered that when I get irritated, I am probably rushing in a way I’m going to regret. Irritation over little things usually means I’m expecting the rest of the world to read my mind and not delay me.