Do you have an ‘emotionally immature parent’? How a nine-year-old book found a new, younger audience

The book was first published in 2015, but it has reached a new, younger audience, recently surpassing a million sales – it’s also a top Amazon bestseller in the category of parent-adult child relationships.

In one video skit, one person says to another: “I’m so sorry you grew up with parents who didn’t make time for you, so now as an adult you try to prove your worthiness of love by obsessing over work and achievements.”

We joke about our coping mechanisms, codependent relationships, and avoidant attachment styles.” Labels contain truth but they also give us a sense of security and certainty about what will happen, or why things are the way they are.

“The silent generation, [people born between 1928 to 1945], instilled characteristics in baby boomers that encouraged them to be self-sufficient in providing for themselves and their families, in the potential wake of disaster,” the authors wrote.

“In calling your mother a narcissist when she isn’t, for example, you might be inadvertently dismissing other important aspects of your relationship that don’t clearly map to that definition,” Allie Volpe wrote in an article about therapy speak in Vox.

When I asked Gibson if she ever felt that people were using her categories too generously online, she said that telling someone who relates to psychological terminology that they’re taking it too far would be acting in a similar way to an emotionally immature parent.