Emotional Dysregulation in Emotionally Immature (EI) People: When Parents Are Terrified of Feelings

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD Related seminars and products

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Lindsay C. Gibson, PsyD, is The New York Times and Amazon #1 best selling author of Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents (New Harbinger, 2015). Her groundbreaking work has sold over 100,000 copies, been translated into 37 languages, and empowered thousands to break free from toxic legacies and reclaim their lives.

With over 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist and psychdiagnostician, Dr. Gibson identified that many clients’ anxiety, obsessions, and depression stemmed from distorted beliefs and emotional coercion imposed by emotionally immature parents. She observed that while these parents might not fall into severe mental health categories, their emotional immaturity had profoundly damaging effects on their children.

Dr. Gibson currently works as a clinical psychologist in private practice. Her follow-up book, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries and Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy (New Harbinger, 2019), offers practical strategies for overcoming these challenges and fostering emotional resilience.  

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Lindsay Gibson maintains a private practice. She is a published author and receives royalties. Dr. Gibson receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Lindsay Gibson has no relevant non-financial relationships.

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Objectives

1. List 5 developmental factors that affect a person’s capacity for emotional self-regulation.
2. Identify how the emotional dysregulation from emotionally immature parents leads to emotional loneliness.

Outline

The Development of Emotional Self-Regulation

• Why all these emotions?
• What healthy emotional self-regulation looks like
• Dyadic beginnings of emotional regulation
• When the parent also is emotionally dysregulated
• Effects of avoiding right hemisphere resonance and engagement – Primal Wound
• Techniques for learning self-regulation (free writing, self-compassion, selftalk, parts work)

How Emotional Dysregulation Leads to Limited Self-Development and Existential Insecurity

• Limitations of research and risks to consider
• How self-development depends on self-regulation
• EIPs’ terror of abandonment, powerlessness, worthlessness, and non-being
• Best approaches to avoid triggering EIP’s loss of control and existential fears

Blocked Communication Connection Prevents Resolution, Repair, and Reunion

• Avoidance of emotional intimacy through superficial communication
• Tangential, disrupted communication: maintains control through destroying meaning
• Egocentric communication to block meaningful, reciprocal exchange
• Plan for defeat and narrow goals to what is controllable and achievable

Deal with Fear and Envy of Emotional Openness and Intimacy

• Hostile toward child’s inner individualistic world (thoughts, feelings, dreams)
• Appeal for connection provokes emotional dysregulation and defensive attack on joy, mutuality, outreach
• Why EIPs seem more available at times
• Use imaginary encounters and role play to practice self-expression
• Focus on what you want to say, not whether or not you’re reaching them

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counsellors
• Therapists
• Physicians
• Other Mental Health Professionals