When You Grow Up With Emotionally Immature Parents

Growing up feeling unsafe, misunderstood or unloved leaves lifelong scars until you take steps to repair these attachment wounds. I let my clients know in the first session that we can't choose our family, but we can choose to give ourselves the things we need to flourish as adults. Therapy can be a safe space to learn the skills to thrive.

Many people quietly carry a loneliness they can’t explain.

It can feel as though you’re always the one holding everything together. Life is full of things you do for others, roles you carry, responsibilities you never seem to put down. On the outside you look capable, even thriving. Yet inside, there’s often a quiet sense of being alone, as though no one truly sees how much you hold, or how heavy it sometimes feels.

That sense of aloneness can be hard to name. It’s not that anything is obviously wrong. It’s more like a background hum of disconnection, a feeling that even in the company of others, no one quite reaches you. You may long for closeness but struggle to trust it, or find it difficult to let yourself rely on anyone.

For many people, this experience has roots in childhood, especially if you grew up with emotionally immature or unpredictable parents.

When Love Feels Unsteady

Emotionally immature parents often love their children deeply, but they struggle to notice and respond to their children’s emotional worlds. They may swing between warmth and withdrawal, or seem preoccupied, critical, or lost in their own worries.

As a child, that unpredictability leaves you without emotional ground to stand on. You can’t rely on being soothed or understood, so you adapt. You learn to watch carefully, anticipate others’ moods, and shape yourself into whatever feels safest. For many children, that means becoming responsible, high-performing, and helpful, because those are the moments when they feel most accepted and secure.

It’s a brilliant strategy for surviving a childhood where love is uncertain, but the cost is that you grow up without a felt sense of being truly seen or emotionally held.

The Hidden Cost of Carrying It All

That early aloneness often leaves behind what we call relational trauma — not just what happened, but the experience of having to face it alone. There was no one to comfort you, to make sense of your feelings, or to reassure you that you were okay. And so your nervous system quietly learned that the safest way to be loved was to need nothing from anyone.

Those old lessons don’t simply disappear with age. They often resurface in adult life as perfectionism, overthinking, relentless self-reliance and an undercurrent of loneliness. On the surface you may seem strong, capable, and dependable, while underneath, it can feel as if you are always on the outside of real connection, watching everyone else belong.

How Internal Family Systems (IFS) Can Help

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a gentle, evidence-based approach that helps untangle these patterns. It understands that we all carry different parts inside us — protective parts that learned to work hard, stay composed, and keep feelings hidden, and younger parts that still carry the loneliness and fear we once had to face alone.

Those protective parts aren’t problems to get rid of. They were brilliant when you were small, keeping you safe when no one else could. But they can become exhausting when they never get to rest.

IFS therapy helps you approach these parts with compassion and curiosity, rather than pushing them away or trying to silence them. As they begin to trust that you are safe now, they can soften, making room for the deeper, steadier part of you that IFS calls the Self — the calm, clear, grounded centre that has always been there underneath the noise.

What Healing Can Feel Like

As the old wounds begin to heal, something changes inside. The constant mental clutter starts to settle. The overthinking loosens. The critical voice that once drove you begins to stand down.

Healing doesn’t take away your drive or ambition. It simply frees them from fear. Instead of being propelled by pressure, you move from clarity. Instead of being fuelled by “not enough,” you are guided by choice and by a quiet inner steadiness.

With that shift comes something many people haven’t felt in years: energy, lightness, and space. Space to rest. Space to connect. Space to feel truly yourself, not just the version of you that had to cope.

You Don’t Have to Keep Carrying It Alone

You don’t have to stop being strong or capable, but you also don’t have to keep building your safety out of self-reliance and exhaustion. Therapy can be the place where all of this starts to make sense, where you can set it down, breathe, and experience what it’s like to be met with warmth, steadiness and care.

If this resonates, you don’t have to keep going alone. Healing is possible. And you deserve to feel free inside.

Simply reach out for a free call back.