Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents (Lindsay C. Gibson)

Why I have this book: It was recommended several times on post-Mormon groups, so I finally bought both the audio and Kindle versions so I could go back and forth. Turns out I only listened and never read the ebook edition.

I have a few points to make:

• In her descriptions of how emotionally immature parents behave, I decided I only know one person who is that extreme, and he's not my parent. 
• I think probably 99.99% of humans have some "emotionally immature" traits. We all have areas of emotional maturity and areas where we struggle.
• I definitely saw myself in the "internalizer" label. She said there are two ways that children of emotionally immature parents go — internalizer and externalizer. I pretty much was a perfect match for the former. However, how much of that is the personality that we come with vs our parents vs other life events vs friends, etc? It's probably a culmination of all of those things.
• I'm certain that we all have formative experiences related to our parents, but with the exceptions of true abuse or neglect or other obviously abnormal behavioral and environmental situations, I think too many people get stuck in a parental-blame cycle. Again, I'm not dismissing those who truly suffered emotionally or physically at the hands of their parents. I'm talking about normal human growth/weaknesses/learning/trying that keep parents from getting everything right... or the way the adult child thinks would have been right. 
• Having said that, there's nothing wrong with trying to understand ourselves and see how some of our "issues" might stem from how we relate to our parents. That comes from a place of curiosity and self-reflection instead of a place of victimhood and blame. 
• I kind of see how the people recommending this on the post-Mormon sites tied it to religion, but I guess that was a little bit of a stretch for me.

I thought the first part of the book was kind of slow-going. That might have been because I couldn't relate to the stories she was telling about parents who really are manipulative and narcissistic. I enjoyed the second half better when she talked about the traits of an "internalizer" because I recognized myself and how I've lived in relation to others. I also recognized that there are other people who are a part of our lives (besides our parents) who can influence our personalities and coping mechanisms. And again, who knows how many of those things come from our inborn traits? We all know kids from the same family who turn out very differently from each other, even if they grow up within the same time period in the same home with the same parents.

Anyway, I gave this three stars on Goodreads. I'm glad I read it, but I do wish she would have spent more time on how those who have emotionally immature traits (pretty much everyone) can work on overcoming them. I also wish she would have helped the readers differentiate between truly dysfunctional family life/parenting and the normal imperfections of human life.

I did like that she encourages the adult children to move forward without spending their time stuck in the cycle of blame with their parents. 

Clean. I don't recall any swearing or anything else offensive, but it did take a while for me to get through it, so I may have forgotten.