Distinguishing self-centred opportunism from premeditated manipulation

Emotionally immature people may seem to be emotional manipulators, but actually they’re just very opportunistic tacticians pressing for whatever feels best at the time. They have no investment in being consistent so they say whatever gives them an edge in the moment. They may be capable of strategic thinking in their work or in other pursuits, but when it comes to emotional situations they go for the immediate advantage. Lying is a perfect example of a momentary win that feels good but is destructive to a relationship in the long run.

Gibson, Lindsay C. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. ch. 4, 33:14 – 34:02

Adult tantrums as means of influencing outcomes

They communicate by emotional contagion. Because emotionally immature people have little awareness of feelings and a limited vocabulary for emotional experiences they usually act out their emotional needs instead of talking about them. They use a method of communication known as emotional contagion, which gets other people to feel what they’re feeling. Emotional contagion is also how babies and little children communicate their needs. They cry and fuss until their caretakers figure out what’s wrong and fix it. Emotional contagion from an upset baby to a concerned adult is galvanizing, motivating a caretaker to do anything necessary to calm the child. Emotionally immature adults communicate feelings in this same primitive way. As parents, when they’re distressed they upset their children and everyone around them, typically with the result that others are willing to do anything to make them feel better. In this role reversal, the child catches the contagion of the parent’s distress and feels responsible for making the parent feel better. However, if the upset parent isn’t trying to understand his or her own feelings, nothing ever gets resolved. Instead, the upsetting feelings just get spread around to others, so that everyone reacts without understanding what is truly the matter.

Gibson, Lindsay C. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Tantor Audio, 2016. ch. 4, 9:19 – 10:41

Emotional immaturity and subjective judgment

They are subjective, not objective. Emotionally immature people assess situations in a subjective way, not objectively. They don’t do much dispassionate analysis. When they interpret situations, how they are feeling is more important than what is actually happening. What is true doesn’t matter nearly as much as what feels true. Trying to get a subjectively-oriented person to be objective about anything is an exercise in futility. Facts, logic, history — all fall on deaf ears where the emotionally immature are concerned.

Gibson, Lindsay C. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. Tantor Audio, 2016. ch. 3, 11:38 – 12:18

Gibson on emotional immaturity

This sounds like me:

In the sections that follow, I’ll briefly describe various characteristics of emotionally immature people.

They are rigid and single-minded. As long as there’s a clear path to follow, emotionally immature people can do very well, sometimes reaching high levels of success and prestige. But when it comes to relationships or emotional decisions, their immaturity becomes evident. They are either rigid or impulsive and try to cope with reality by narrowing it down to something manageable. Once they form an opinion, their minds are closed. There is one right answer, and they can become very defensive and humorless when people have other ideas.

They have low stress tolerance. Emotionally immature people don’t deal with stress well. Their responses are reactive and stereotyped. Instead of assessing the situation and anticipating the future, they use coping mechanisms that deny, distort, or replace reality. They have trouble admitting mistakes, and instead discount the facts and blame others. Regulating emotions is difficult for them, and they often overreact. Once they get upset, it’s hard for them to calm down, and they expect other people to soothe them by doing what they want. They often seek comfort in intoxicants or medication.

They do what feels best. Young children are ruled by feelings, whereas adults consider possible consequences. As we mature, we learn that what feels good isn’t always the best thing to do. Among emotionally immature people, however, the childhood instinct to do what feels good never really changes. They make decisions on the basis of what feels best in the moment and often follow the path of least resistance.

Gibson, Lindsay C. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents. Tantor Audio, 2016. ch. 3, 8:45 – 10:44

Languishing

Even compared to recent low feelings, I am now feeling emotionally and psychologically about as bad as I ever have.

All the way back to kindergarten or before, I either had school or work to occupy and engage me each fall, and to give structure and purpose to the time ahead.

Now I am feeling utterly alone — like the ‘nowhere to go’ feeling that haunted the PhD (from knowing that I was too radical on climate to work for government or mainstream NGOs but not radical enough to work for activist NGOs) has been realized. Somehow, despite spending all the time since 2007 working or studying, I have become drastically less employable than I was when I finished my undergrad in 2005. At the same time as my own prospects feel erorded, the global picture has darkened mercilessly.

I feel like I have been in a crisis at least since I learned that I was going to lose my housing on Markham Street in early 2018. I feel like I have lost my connections with or been pushed out of all the important organizations in my life, and that anywhere I can go now is a reminder of how isolated I am, how much has gone wrong, and how bad the projections for the future are. When I stay home, I can’t help feeling insecure because I don’t have income to cover the rent. When I go to U of T, it feels like a club I am no longer part of. Out and about in the city, I feel surrounded by a society that has been told for thirty years now that our habits will be the ruin of our planet, and which has decided to plow straight ahead regardless. Every car I see driving is a reminder to me of that choice, as is every grocery store groaning with fresh produce and luxury foods, given my knowledge about how we are denying such bounty to our successors, and that people in 100 years may be unwilling to believe that there was ever such easy plenty in the world. Visiting Vancouver was often an over-busy and stressful reminder that I don’t have a refuge there either.

In part because people have pulled back on socializing since COVID, I feel like I don’t have any friends left — nobody who I could drop in on, or meet for a coffee, or even telephone and expect an answer from. Life feels divided into two camps: (a) one of people who are actually doing well, but find it uncomfortable to recognize how badly the rest of us are in crisis and so mostly choose to ignore it to stay comfortable and (b) people too much in crisis themselves to provide any aid or uplift. Indeed, my feeling of lacking the material and psychological resources to provide such aid and uplift to friends and family in difficulty is a major contributor to overall feelings of uselessness, hopelessness, and dread about what is to come.

Today more than at any time I can recall recently, I wish I could just stop thinking. Thinking feels like it’s just a conduit for more pain and fear. When you are a fly on the kitchen counter — as the shadow of the fly-swatter has you framed, and the lethal web is swooshing forward — it is better not to be able to understand what is happening.