Incredibly helpful to get you started on the path of recognising toxic traits from childhood. It’s helped me learn that I can’t change my parents and it’s given me some excellent tools for protecting myself in future. I feel I really understand my parents a lot better and that they themselves are “adult children”.

The book does feel a little outdated at times, despite being written only in 2015. It uses clunky binary pronouns “he or she” throughout rather than simply saying “they”.

The book also promotes its own binary language of internaliser / externaliser and immature / mature without much room for nuance. This can be confusing for adult children of parents who on the surface project emotionally maturity but are deeply manipulative and narcissistic.

The book spends a few sentences here and there explaining how internalisers (people pleasers) can have the traits of externalisers (narcissistic people) but the book occasionally falls into the trap of describing PEOPLE rather than BEHAVIOUR. There is also a strong theme of categorising: internalising = good; externalising = bad. As someone who is more of an internaliser but is an externaliser when under huge stress, it’s difficult not to see myself as some sort of Dr Jeckle / Mr Hyde character whereby I need to purge the bad to be all good.

Overall an extremely helpful book, but I do wonder whether the final chapters that lay out the traits of an emotionally mature person are fully helpful for ADHD and autistic people. The book’s critique of people who interrupt or relate things back to themselves could cause some neurodiverse people to become overly self-critical, when this is in fact part of their brain chemistry and not narcissism.

As is the case with most books, I’d love to see more intersectional approaches woven in. I’m excited to see similar books written to acknowledge neurodiverse, queer, disabled, race-conscious perspectives. An exploration of how biracial children are belittled by their white parent would hugely expand this book, as would the socially-encouraged control of disabled children by narcissistic parents who have saviour fantasies.

Emotional loneliness comes from not having enough emotional intimacy with others. As children grow up feeling lonely, they create an identity of emptiness -- a void that needs to be filled. Emotional loneliness is a private experience, an existential cloud hanging over one's head. These children become emotionally blunt as adults and can only connect with others who are also emotionally blunt -- replaying the toxic family dynamics from childhood in Freudian fashion.
For me, growing up without feeling like there was someone I could reach out to you has left me feeling like every burden had to be carried by myself alone. Our ancestors couldn't survive without tight-knit communities and here we are, in modernity, f**king it all up!
If you suffer from detachment or are emotionally blunt, your mother probably didn't feel emotionally attuned to you as an infant -- emotional attunement is the ability to for a mother to communicate what her baby's needs are and be able to calm them from distress. In some cases, though mothers try relentlessly (raising a baby is incredibly difficult and can be emotionally taxing) attempts to calm down her baby can lead to more crying, screaming, and a frustrated, disappointed mother who feels like a failure. Very few parents want to ruin their child's lives, they empathize with a helpless baby but still miscommunication can lead to a lot of mistreatment and trauma for a baby.
Emotionally immature parents don't notice their child's inner experience. They are emotionally retarded in a sense. Having to keep your own private world separate from the human race, you feel alienated. For me personally, having my own private world led to a double-self: a life of addiction and compulsive overconsumption; like Jekale and Hyde, I would only be able to cooperate with the world before being possessed by a second self I didn't associate with; in these moments of overconsumption, I'd be in a state of reverie, only half-aware of what I was doing.
People who suffered a lonely childhood feel guilty for their sadness. I was physically taken care of -- emotionally immature parents actually tend to show more empathy towards their children when they are ill with a cold or fever -- emotionally, I was starving, left hungry all my life.
These dynamics can be incestuous in cases. My father would make me brush his hair as a kid and give him messages, then he'd massage my butt cheeks, very embarrassing.
Child who don't have others validating their emotions and instincts, they lose trust in themselves. I have no confidence. Some adult children can be wildly successful, forced to adapt to adulthood quicker and drowning themselves in constant work. Unfortunately, I have had a hard time getting things done for years now, so exhausted with replaying past memories.

Looking at your parents objectively, you might come to realize you don't even like them. I hate my parents after reading this book though it doesn't advocate that it is all their fault, it is very good at taking the blame off of them.
Maturity in a parent is about being comfortable and honest with themselves and their feelings. In my household, everyone was playing a role. My parents were strict Jehovah's Witnesses and if I crossed the line with them, I wouldn't be loved. This led to me having to learn to lie at an early age. The cult stole my parents' identities, snatched their souls. My parents were self-preoccupied, egocentric, narcissist. I've become one as well in some ways though that is hard to admit, again, the book doesn't fault the reader for anything, it is comforting though as it really isn't one's fault for how they were raised, it is okay to be bitter and upset before acceptance dawns. Truthfully, emotionally immature parents have most likely experienced greater trauma than we have now. I feel like the new generations have to process the pain of the past; we've evolved in a world where psychological battles take over the physical battles for survival of the past.
Parents like mine never fully develop their identity. They are empty, neurotic people who hype fixate on things in "their" world, not connecting with others; they harbor a fear of feelings.
One thing I am guilty of is intellectualizing obsessively over things. I'm the kind of guy who is also stealing the AUX cord to make my friends listen to music I like instead of actually talking to them and connecting, I seek validation.

Parents like mine want you to mirror their emotions. They see their role as a parent -- sacred. Having my own individuality breaks the sense of control they have over me. They call this enmeshment, the parent fails to see the child as an individual with individual needs, the child serves to heal the parents' emptiness as they failed to self-actualize, they are incomplete. As the child serves to heal them, they quickly gain favorites. My sister was my father's favorite.

There are emotional parents that are bound to fits, driven parents who are compulsively goal-oriented, passive parents who avoid dealing with confrontation, and rejecting parents that can be downright abusive.

One thing I've been experiencing is healing fantasies; I used to imagine teachers saving me from my homelife; I used to imagine myself being adopted, able to escape home, like Daul's Matilda.
I developed a helpless, powerless role-self. I still feel like a child that hasn't been taken care of, find myself reverting to that feeling.
Adult children either grow up as internalizers, oversensitive, or externalizers, who lash out and hurt others. It isn't black-or-white but a spectrum. Balance is a key.

Eventually, one might experience breakdowns as they become an independent self. Discovering a true self and becoming independent.

The solution is to become detached from one's parents. Eventually, you can redevelop a relationship with them as a separate individual and stop the toxic cycle, a healthier relationship.

Time to heal.