When the System Feels Like Your Parents

How to Cope With Emotionally Immature People in Workplaces and in Your Past

If you grew up with emotionally immature parents, you probably know the feeling of walking on eggshells. Of scanning the room, managing other people’s moods, and trying to earn safety through performance, helpfulness, or invisibility.

What’s rarely talked about is how that same emotional landscape can show up in adulthood—not just in relationships, but in the very workplaces we depend on to survive.

Many workers—especially those in caregiving, community, and helping professions—find themselves employed in systems that echo the emotional immaturity they were raised in:

• Supervisors who are reactive or defensive

• Cultures where vulnerability is punished or ignored

• Lack of repair or ownership from leadership

• Overfunctioning expected from a few, silence from the rest

It’s more common than we think.
And it’s more than just a “bad fit”—it can re-activate deep, relational patterns.

So, What Does “Emotionally Immature” Actually Mean?

Emotionally immature people—whether parents or leaders—often lack the self-awareness, regulation, and empathyneeded for relational safety. They might:

• Prioritise their needs over others’ feelings

• React with blame or withdrawal

• Avoid accountability or hard conversations

• Expect others to guess what they need

• Struggle with nuance or shared power

And when you're raised by this?
You might carry a deep program that says:

“If I just do everything right, stay small, stay helpful—I’ll be safe.”

Workplaces can accidentally reward this. Until they don’t. And suddenly you're burnt out, blamed, or blindsided—and wondering why it feels so personal.

When Work Triggers Childhood Survival Strategies

Many of us unconsciously reenact roles we played in our family systems:

• The fixer who smooths everything over

• The overachiever trying to prove worth

• The emotional sponge who absorbs others’ stress

• The invisible one who disappears to avoid conflict

These roles helped us survive—but they can harm us now. Especially when we're working in emotionally under-resourced systems.

So What Can You Actually Do?

You don’t need to burn it all down (unless you want to).
But here are long-lasting ways to stay connected to yourself when surrounded by emotional immaturity:

1. See the Pattern Without Shaming Yourself

Name it: “This dynamic feels familiar. It’s not all mine.”
Recognise the echo—without blaming yourself for the reactivation. That’s awareness, not regression.

2. Shrink the Performance, Grow the Boundaries

You’re not responsible for other people’s regulation.
You don’t have to prove your worth to be treated well.
Let your boundaries be less about walls and more about self-honour.

3. Create a Parallel System of Safety

If your workplace doesn’t model emotional maturity, build it somewhere else:

• Supervision, therapy, peer debriefs

• Journaling or creative processing

• A few people you can be real with, who reflect back your truth

Externalise what’s real. Don’t gaslight yourself into silence.

4. Practice Healthy Withdrawal (Not Just Collapse)

You can step back without shutting down.
You can give less without abandoning your values.
Sometimes, protecting your energy is the most relational thing you can do.

5. Ask Bigger Questions

• What parts of me keep choosing these systems?

• What do I believe I have to tolerate in order to belong?

• What might change if I believed I deserved workplaces that grow with me?

These aren’t quick fixes. But they open up a path to something deeper: choice.

You’re Not Broken for Reacting to Broken Systems

Whether at home or at work, emotional immaturity leaves a mark. But it also gives you the chance to become the mature, boundaried, emotionally available presence you may have never had.

You don’t need to be perfect.
You just need to stay in connection with yourself—long enough to hear what you actually need.

And then:
Give yourself the care, clarity, and courage that others didn’t know how to offer.

For more great resources (books/audiobooks) Dr Lindsay Gibson about Emotionally Immature Parents - go here (external site with no affiliates - although there probably should be, Lol!)