Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy
Therapy for adult children of emotionally immature parents
You were not a difficult child. You were a child in a difficult house. If one of your parents could not meet you emotionally, you learned to meet them instead. You read the room before you spoke. You made yourself easy. You became the one who apologised first, because that was how the fight ended. That training does not stop when you leave home. It follows you into your friendships, your work and your relationships, and it looks like a personality rather than an adaptation. This is therapy for the adult that child became.
Who this is for
- You grew up with a parent who was loving but unpredictable, or present but unreachable
- You learned to manage someone else's moods before you could manage your own
- You apologise first, even when you were the one who was hurt
- You are described as low maintenance, easygoing, the strong one, and it has cost you more than anyone knows
- You recognise narcissistic traits in a parent, and you are tired of explaining it to people who think family is always family
- You keep ending up with partners who feel familiar rather than safe
- You are considering distance from your family, or already live at a distance, and the guilt has not gone anywhere
Common signs and challenges
- Saying yes when your body has already said no
- Over-explaining a boundary until it stops sounding like one
- Feeling anxious when someone is kind to you without wanting something
- Reading tone in a message for twenty minutes before replying
- Finding calm people boring, and intense people magnetic
- Going quiet when you are hurt, then resenting that nobody noticed
- A low, steady sense that something is wrong with you that you have never been able to name
How therapy may help
Therapy doesn't guarantee outcomes, but with consistent, trauma-informed work many clients experience meaningful change in these areas.
- Understanding why the pattern formed, so you stop treating it as a character flaw
- Learning what your nervous system does around certain people, and what it is trying to protect
- Setting a boundary without a three-paragraph justification
- Telling the difference between anxiety and intuition, which you were never taught to separate
- Grieving the parent you needed, which is different from blaming the one you had
- Noticing earlier when a relationship is asking you to shrink
Mia's approach
I work with NARM, the NeuroAffective Relational Model, and with emotion-focused therapy. Both are built for this exact situation: the harm was relational and quiet, it happened over years rather than in one event, and it lives in how you relate now rather than in a single memory. We do not spend our time cataloguing what your parents did. Most people already know. We work with what it taught you, how it still runs, and what becomes possible when it stops running by itself. I am not here to tell you what your parent was. I am here to take seriously what it was like to be their child. Sessions are online, 55 minutes, in English, Danish or Persian.
Session format
- Online sessions
- Secure video sessions worldwide.
- Where
- Fully online, from wherever you are.
- Languages
- English, Danish and Persian.
- Length
- 55 minutes per session, package-based.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I have to decide whether my parent was a narcissist?
- No, and I will not be the one to label them. Diagnosing someone who is not in the room is neither accurate nor useful. What matters is the pattern you lived inside and what it taught you. You are allowed to work on that without reaching a verdict about anyone.
- What does emotionally immature actually mean?
- In practice it describes a parent who could not consistently handle their own feelings, and so could not make room for yours. It can look like anger that arrives from nowhere, warmth that depends on their mood, or a parent who turned your difficulty into a story about themselves. It is a description of capacity, not of character.
- My childhood was not that bad. Is this for me?
- That sentence is one of the most common things I hear, and it is usually protecting someone. Emotional neglect is hard to recognise because it is made of what did not happen. There were no incidents to point to. If you are reading this page and recognising yourself, that is enough reason to talk.
- Do I have to cut my parents off?
- No. Most people do not, and many who do start with less contact rather than none. Therapy is where you work out what you want, not where you are handed a conclusion. Distance is one option among several, and it is yours to choose.
- Will this make me angry at my parents?
- Sometimes anger shows up, often in people who were never allowed any. It is usually a stage rather than a destination. Many clients end up with more clarity and less heat than they started with, holding two things at once: that their parents may have done more than their own parents did, and that it was still not enough for a child.
- How do we start?
- With a Discovery Call. We talk about what you are experiencing and whether working together is right. No commitment, and no requirement to tell the whole story at once.
Related services
Ready to take the first step?
Book a 55-minute Discovery Call. We'll see if we are the right fit and plan the next step together.