Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents Author: Lindsay Gibson. PsyD Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (June 1, 2015) Paperback: 216 pages ISBN-10: 1626251703 ISBN-13: 978-1626251700

This morning I was reading "Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents", and I found myself breathing a sigh of relief when I read several passages, particularly the part on holding onto the dream that things could be different, if we (the children of the BPD) only did some things differently.

Your heartbreak and frustrations are understandable and it really hurts when you continue to be the best person you can be, and nothing changes with your mother. We want to help our mother, yet we have to protect yourself at the same time.  

Has anyone read a good book on the subject of parentification of children?

Parentification --role reversal whereby a child is obliged to act as parent to their own parent.

"a disturbance in the generational boundaries, such that evidence indicates a functional and/or emotional role reversal in which the child sacrifices his or her own needs for attention, comfort, and guidance in order to accommodate and care for the logistical and emotional needs of a parent and/or sibling."

Wicker Man

I read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. My T recommended to me.

I remember the author writing something about how, if you find yourself getting emotional, your distress is a sign that your healing fantasy is activated. Meaning, if you go NC in the hopes that your mom will change and become the person you always wished she would be, then NC may end up hurting you.

But then, neither Santa nor Atreyu have ever let me down 

I read Silently Seduced and found it applicable to my own situation, yet for me it didn't go quite deep enough. It was good and helpful though, and I think it would be helpful to others as well. The book helps to define what emotional incest is.

Like Turkish I think this one recommended above will be a necessary 'soon to read.'

Zachira, I find this to be particularly interesting for one more reason.


This most definitely applies to the relationship I had with my uBPDm, and I didn't live with her for the last 30 plus years. Yet for me right now in my current place, it transfers over very directly to my situation with DH and my marriage, living with him everyday. I recently read a quote by the author Susan Forward in which she said that it can often be said that we marry our parents, but for a daughter, she marries her mother [in the husband she chooses].  Intriguing to see how much what we learned as children becomes so much a part of who we are, who we learned to be, that those principles bridge across the years to keep us connected when perhaps we shouldn't be. It's that whole principle that what we learned in childhood from having a BPD parent and the ways we learned to deal with it are not necessarily helpful in our adult life.

 
Wools

Letting go of the dream that our family members with BPD will change if we become better people is a form of acceptance. I believe that once this happens, we are less likely to be attracted to people who are like our family members with BPD, and are prepared to let go of relationships with people with BPD in our present life. For me, the attractions to men who were like my  family members with BPD, was all about trying to heal my wounds from being raised by a BPD mother and being the family scapegoat.