Unless, you’re living under a rock, you probably have been drawn into podcast interviews, books and articles on or by the lovely-sounding psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson. She’s been on the Mel Robbins podcast, Dan Harris featured her work on his podcast “10 Percent Happier” a year ago and Gibson’s book, Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting or Self-Involved Parents has been described as a 1 million “slow burn bestseller” since its 2015 release. Gibson was the subject of a recent “The Interview” conversation by the New York Times and she has appeared on multiple other podcasts, magazines and high falootin’ newspapers and magazines within the last few months. This girl is on a roll. Gibson and her real talk about EIP are the topic du jour, it seems.

So, of course, after listening to Gibson’s conversation with Mel Robbins, I bought two of her books and sailed through them — highly recommended. So what is EIP, you ask? Gibson describes Emotionally Immature Parents (EIPs) in her interview with the NYT’s David Marchese, who asks the question: (David): “The broad definition of emotionally immature parents is parents who refuse to validate their children’s feelings and intuitions, who might be reactive and who are lacking in empathy or awareness. But can you give me examples of emotionally immature behaviors? (Lindsay):The biggest one is egocentrism. Imagine that a person starts and ends all their consideration with what’s best for them — that’s egocentrism. I just started watching “The Sopranos” for the first time. If you listen to the dialogue, they completely nailed it, because everything always comes back to the viewpoint of the emotionally immature character. It’s always all about them. Another one is the lack of empathy. The parent just doesn’t get it. They say, “Why are you so upset about this?” Or, “This is not a big deal.” They cannot enter into the reality of their child’s emotional truth.”

In her book, she includes a checklist to consider whether your mom or dad is an EIP:

In a 2019 article for Welldoing, Gibson describes 10 signs of an EIP and what it’s like growing up with one:

1. You feel emotionally lonely around them

2. Interactions feel one-sided and frustrating

3. You feel coerced and trapped

4. They come first, and you are secondary

5. They won’t be emotionally intimate or vulnerable with you

6. They communicate through emotional contagion

7. They don’t respect your boundaries or individuality

8. You do the emotional work in the relationship

9. You lose your emotional autonomy and mental freedom

10. They can be killjoys and even sadistic

According to Mel Robbins, when she posted about her upcoming interview with Gibson and asked how many people believed they were the adult children of EIPs, nearly 91 percent of her audience responded in the affirmative. 91 percent! So that made me wonder, of course, if I was an EIP to my kids and I asked them point blank. Luckily, Marley laughed at the question and assured me I was not. I hope she is not just being nice.

Curious though, that Mel Robbins’ demographic — which is largely women in their second half — almost all felt they had been raised by EIPs. Is this a fluke? A real thing? Is it generational? Are the parents in this generation doing parenting better? Getting it a little bit righter? Who knows. But it does make you think.

I know some EIPs, and their behavior is very transparent to me. Whether my brain files them away into the narcissist folder, or the one labeled exhausting or others tabbed self-motivated, show-offy, sentence-finishing or me-talking, all are in the A section — A for annoying.

I have been reflecting on my own parents and whether they had any EIP tendencies. Fortunately — or not, depending on how you look at it — my mom died too early for me to have any retrospect on that. But I’m about 99.9 percent sure she wasn’t an EIP. She was very loving and emotionally aware and supportive, I never felt lacking in those areas. So I’ll give Mom a big non-EIP label. Dad may have had a few tendencies, there were flare ups when he acted a little immature on certain topics, but don’t we all have those? Again, survey says — Dad was probably not EIP. And my supporting research is that I have never felt lacking in some of these key emotional areas. Either that, or I’ve buried them down deep and refuse to acknowledge them because I’m keen on preserving my parents’ legacy as perfect, lol. Funny, not funny.

Generally, however, I feel like this has got to be a generational concern. Our parents were raised by parents who were highly cognizant of social structure and making sure things “looked right.” They were not into psycho-babble BS or going to therapy or real-talking about anything because EVERYTHING IS JUST FINE. Then they raised kids with the same questionable priorities, which are now being flagged as EIP. So maybe they just couldn’t help it! Maybe their EIP behavior was simply part of their DNA from Little House on the Prairie days? Does this provide a new opening for change? Maybe now that this EIP stuff out and everyone (EVERYONE) is talking about it, our generation will understand it away, or at least lessen its impact on future generations? Maybe? Hopefully?

My dad always said so many of the women he knew growing up through the 50s and 60s were obsessed with “doing things properly” or so their parents would approve or to be appropriately entertaining. They were aflutter with emotional flimsiness. Stagnated — so fragile and uninteresting, he always remarked. He preferred the folks who could read the room, show an interest in others and share their authentic selves, even when it wasn’t pretty or perfect because THAT is engaging and fun to be around — maybe this was his version of emotional maturity.

If nothing else, maybe we can all use this EIP moment as an opportunity to practice empathy, show an interest in others, ask more questions and listening instead talking about how great we are, show compassion, seek to understand the people we love and put other people’s inputs, happiness, plans and dreams ahead of our own. Let’s turn things around for the next generation and put the EPI-c in our relationships with others.