How Growing Up With Emotionally Immature Parents Shapes Adult Relationships
If you grew up with emotionally immature parents, you may carry an invisible wound that shapes every relationship you have today — even if you don’t realize it. You might give too much and receive little in return. You might crave closeness but push people away when they get too near. You might repeat painful relationship patterns over and over again, wondering why things always end the same way.
The emotional environment we grow up in becomes the blueprint for how we connect as adults. And if your parents were unable to provide emotional attunement, consistency, or safety, that blueprint likely taught you distorted lessons about love, trust, and worthiness.
This isn’t about blaming your parents. It’s about understanding the deeper patterns shaping how you show up in relationships — and learning that it’s possible to rewrite them.
What Emotional Immaturity Looks Like in Parents
Emotionally immature parents are not necessarily bad people. Many loved you in their own way and did the best they could with the tools they had. But emotional immaturity means they lacked the capacity to regulate their own feelings or respond appropriately to yours. Instead of meeting your emotional needs, they might have:
Minimized or dismissed your feelings (“You’re overreacting.”)
Made your emotions about them (“Now you’ve upset me.”)
Withdrawn or shut down when you needed support
Expected you to comfort or care for them emotionally
Alternated unpredictably between closeness and distance
Children need consistent, attuned caregivers to develop a healthy sense of self. When that doesn’t happen, you adapt in ways that once helped you survive — but those same adaptations often become obstacles in adult relationships.
How Emotionally Immature Parents Shape Romantic Relationships
If your early caregivers were emotionally immature, your nervous system learned early on that love and connection were unpredictable. That early wiring shows up in subtle but powerful ways later in life.
You Fear Rejection or Abandonment
Because love felt conditional growing up, you may anxiously cling to relationships, constantly seeking reassurance. Or you might sabotage relationships before someone has the chance to leave you.
You Struggle With Emotional Intimacy
Vulnerability may feel unsafe, so you keep people at a distance. Even when you crave closeness, you might withdraw, shut down, or intellectualize your feelings to stay protected.
You Confuse Chaos With Connection
If inconsistency and emotional highs and lows were normal in childhood, you may equate intensity with love. Stable, healthy relationships might feel “boring” or unfamiliar.
You Overfunction to Earn Love
Many adult children of emotionally immature or narcissistic parents become caretakers in relationships — fixing, rescuing, or taking responsibility for others’ feelings. Deep down, this is an attempt to earn the love that should have been unconditional.
You Have a Hard Time Trusting
Trust is difficult when caregivers were unreliable. Even when someone proves themselves trustworthy, part of you may still wait for the other shoe to drop.
These patterns are not character flaws — they are survival strategies. They were brilliant solutions for a child trying to stay connected to caregivers who couldn’t show up consistently. But as an adult, they often leave you feeling unfulfilled, unseen, or stuck in cycles you desperately want to break.
The Ripple Effects: Friendships, Work, and Parenting
The impact of growing up with emotionally immature parents goes beyond romantic relationships. It shapes how you connect in every area of life.
Friendships
You may find yourself drawn to people who dominate conversations, expect you to carry the emotional load, or disappear when you need support. You might struggle to express your own needs or fear being a “burden” if you do.
Work
If your worth was tied to performance or compliance, you might become a high achiever who overworks to earn approval. Or you might struggle with authority figures, projecting your early caregiver dynamics onto bosses or colleagues.
Parenting
Without intervention, unhealed patterns repeat. You might swing between being overly permissive and overly strict, or feel triggered by your child’s emotions because no one modeled how to respond to them. The good news is that awareness allows you to break generational cycles and parent differently.
Why Awareness Alone Isn’t Enough
Many people who grew up with emotionally immature parents know they had a difficult childhood. They’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, and intellectually understand why they struggle. Yet the patterns persist. That’s because these dynamics are not just cognitive — they are stored in the body and nervous system.
Your body remembers what it was like to tiptoe around a volatile parent. It remembers the loneliness of crying alone in your room. It remembers shutting down because expressing needs only led to disappointment. These responses become automatic, not conscious choices.
That’s why true healing goes deeper than insight. It requires creating new experiences of safety, connection, and emotional attunement — and that’s exactly what trauma-informed therapy offers.
How Therapy Helps Rewire Relationship Patterns
In my trauma therapy practice in Madison, CT, I work with adults who grew up with emotionally immature or narcissistic parents to understand and transform the patterns shaping their relationships. Using approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS), EMDR, and ego state therapy, we gently untangle the protective strategies that once kept you safe.
Building Safety and Emotional Awareness
Before change can happen, your nervous system needs to know it’s safe. We begin by slowing down, building emotional awareness, and creating a space where all parts of you are welcome.
Meeting Your Protective Parts
Through IFS, we explore the parts of you that learned to please, avoid, or disconnect to survive. We bring curiosity and compassion to these parts, helping them release old burdens and trust new ways of relating.
Reprocessing the Past With EMDR
EMDR helps the brain reprocess painful memories and emotional imprints so they no longer drive your present-day reactions. This isn’t about reliving the past — it’s about updating your internal map so you can respond from the present instead of reacting from the past.
Practicing New Patterns
Therapy isn’t just about understanding — it’s about experiencing relationships differently. Over time, you learn how to set boundaries without guilt, express needs without fear, and choose relationships that nourish rather than drain you.
Breaking the Cycle Is Possible
Growing up with emotionally immature parents may shape your relationship patterns, but it doesn’t have to define them. Healing is not about blaming your parents or erasing the past — it’s about reclaiming your right to emotional safety, connection, and authenticity.
With support, you can rewire the patterns that once felt inevitable. You can build relationships rooted in mutual respect, vulnerability, and trust. And you can become the kind of parent, partner, and friend you needed all along.
If this resonates with you, know that support is available. I offer trauma therapy in Madison, CT, as well as virtual sessions across Connecticut. Reach out today
FAQs About Emotionally Immature Parents and Adult Relationships
How do I know if my parents were emotionally immature? Signs include dismissing your feelings, expecting you to care for their emotions, withdrawing when you needed support, or reacting unpredictably to your needs. Even if they were loving in other ways, a lack of emotional attunement can have lasting effects.
Can therapy really change lifelong patterns? Yes. The brain and nervous system are capable of change throughout life. Through approaches like EMDR and IFS, we can reprocess old experiences and create new neural pathways that support healthier ways of relating.
Why do I keep choosing emotionally unavailable partners? We’re often drawn to what’s familiar, even if it’s painful. If emotional distance was your childhood normal, your nervous system may unconsciously seek out similar dynamics. Therapy helps you recognize and shift these patterns.
Will healing change how I relate to my parents now? It can. Some people set clearer boundaries, while others redefine or limit contact. Healing allows you to relate from a place of choice rather than obligation, and that often changes the dynamic — even if your parents never change.
About the Author
Nuriye Rumeli, LPC, is a licensed professional counselor based in Madison, Connecticut, with over 15 years of experience specializing in trauma recovery, EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and narcissistic abuse healing. She offers both virtual and in-person therapy across Connecticut, helping adults heal the wounds of childhood, break free from generational patterns, and build relationships rooted in trust, connection, and authenticity.