Hey survivors,
Did you enjoy this week’s reading?
I have to say, it’s taking me a bit longer than I thought because I recently realised how important it is to take notes when I’m listening to an audiobook, it helps me process the information better.
I have this 30-page Google Doc file full of notes from this book, and we’re not even halfway through it yet.
Shall dive into this week’s discussion?
Chapter 4 - 4 types of Emotionally Immature Parents
This was an illuminating chapter where the author describes in detail the four different types of emotionally immature parents:
Emotional parent;
Driven parent;
Passive parent;
Rejecting parent.
It also explains what kind of children these parents would generally raise.
Then it comes with an exercise where you can check the boxes to see which type your parents fall into.
Did your father or mother expect you to be the person to sooth them emotionally, even if you were just a kid?
Or did your father or mother ignore you or were they always angry with you?
Or did your father or mother show you affection but not stand up for or protect you?
In which category did you identify your father or mother or caretaker or family abuser?
In my case?
Well, I have a driven father, it explains why he was pushing me so hard with my studies, most of the time with rage, and when I couldn’t meet his expectations, he’d lose his cool and start to beat me up.
As for my mother? She’s the passive parent, standing by and letting bad things happen to me and my brother, too afraid to protect us from our physical abusive father.
(Notice how I don’t call them mom and dad anymore?)
The book was right, for many years I sympathized with my mother (passive parents get sympathy from children). In fact, every time my father would lose his cool, he’d start by verbally abusing me and my brother, then turn to my mother to do the same thing to her, that’s when I’d step in to protect her.
That was how it’d lead to me being beaten up, by trying to protect my mother - the passive parent.
But as I grew older and became a sort of a mother figure to my four doggies, I gradually lost that sympathy.
Today, I respect her choice and how she wants to live her life.
I feel that she needed it, she needed the kind of disrespect, harmful and rigid behavior and energy from my father to keep her alive and sane, just like the book said.
Chapter 5 - How different children react to emotionally immature parents
The author explained what healing fantasies are and how they lead to the creation of “role self”, instead of being their true self, to survive the childhood ordeal, and carry well into our adulthood.
If also focused on the coping mechanism a child develops in dealing with emotionally immature parents:
Becoming an internaliser or externaliser.
Internalisers believe they can change things, while externalisers think it’s up to others to improve their lives.
Dr. Lindsay also detailed the traits of internalisers and externalisers to help readers identify which category we belonged to. However, she mentioned that most people reading this book are usually internalisers since they look inside themselves for growth.
This chapter helped me identify who I was before I started my healing journey and what I have become since.
I am not ashamed to express my pride in being able to be my authentic self rather than my role self today.
I also learned more about myself and my coping methods over the years, but that’s not all, I am seeing my baby brother, 5 years younger than me, from a new set of eyes since… I believe he is slowly turning from a mild externaliser to an internaliser.
For those of you who don’t know my brother, he is in his mid 30s, used to weigh over 360 pounds and didn’t have a job for years.
Like me, he is also ADHD and suffered from childhood trauma.
I have been worried about him for years, but since last year, I have started seeing changes in him.
He started hitting the gym.
He is actively helping out family and friends with small things.
He hasn’t been blaming me for his life in a while.
But before reading this chapter, I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I thought he’d return to how he was, waiting for good things to happen, stop going to the gym or blaming me for his life.
But maybe… I was wrong because he could be a mild externaliser and is finally doing something to change his life.
Although he doesn’t have a job, the fact that he’s been going steadily to the gym for the past 6 months and has lost over 30 pounds means he is seeing that he needed this to be able to get back into the job market (it’s not easy to find a job in Asia when you weigh over 200 pounds).
I have to say I am very proud of my baby brother and I hope to see him back to work and live the life he always wanted.
What about you?
What did you learn about yourself in these two chapters?
What did you learn about your siblings or your parents?
Share them in the comment, chat, or email me privately; I’d love to hear about them.
Signing off pain-free,
Fátima
PS - If you haven’t started reading the book yet, do it now and join the discussion! It’s still not too late.