🌿 Day 2: The Coping Strategies We Learned as Children
In Day One you learned how to identify emotional immaturity in family dynamics. In Day Two of our free 6-day holiday series explore the ways you learned to adapt, perform, or disappear to stay safe.
Psychologist Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson’s Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents offers clarity and tools for recognizing long-standing emotionally immature patterns and beginning to heal them. It’s not about changing others—but learning how to show up differently in family interactions. Clinnica.org
Internalizers, Externalizers, and the Role Self
How Childhood Adaptations Show Up in Adult Family Dynamics
When you return to your family of origin, it can feel as though an invisible script takes over. You may suddenly think, feel, or behave in ways that don’t reflect who you are now. According to Gibson, this isn’t a personal failure—it’s the activation of early survival strategies formed in emotionally immature environments.
Three key concepts help explain this phenomenon: the Internalizer, the Externalizer, and the Role Self.
Children are brilliant adapters. When emotional needs aren’t met consistently, children don’t blame their caregivers—they adapt themselves.
Two common coping styles often develop:
Internalizers
Internalizers cope with emotional immaturity by turning pain inward. They try to manage relationships by managing themselves.
Common traits:
High self-reflection and responsibility
Strong empathy for others
Tendency toward self-blame or guilt
Suppressed anger
Perfectionism or people-pleasing
As children, internalizers often learned:
“If I’m good enough, calm enough, or helpful enough, things will be okay.”
During family gatherings, internalizers may:
Feel responsible for keeping the peace
Minimize their own feelings
Overfunction emotionally
Leave interactions feeling drained, unseen, or resentful
Healing work for internalizers involves:
Reclaiming the right to have needs
Allowing anger without self-judgment
Practicing emotional boundaries
Letting go of responsibility for others’ feelings
Externalizers
Externalizers cope by directing pain outward. They manage emotional discomfort by acting on the environment or other people.
Common traits:
Reactivity or defensiveness
Difficulty tolerating emotional discomfort
Blame-shifting
Control or avoidance
Resistance to self-reflection
As children, externalizers often learned:
“Strong feelings don’t get met—so I have to discharge them or push them away.”
During family interactions, externalizers may:
Escalate conflict quickly
Shut down or withdraw
Dismiss emotional conversations
Feel attacked when emotions arise
Healing work for externalizers involves:
Building emotional awareness
Increasing tolerance for vulnerability
Slowing reactions
Learning to stay present with uncomfortable feelings
As children, externalizers learned:
“Strong emotions aren’t met, so I have to push them away or discharge them.”
Role Safe
Alongside these styles, many people developed a Role Self—the version of themselves that kept the family system functioning:
The Role Self is the version of you that developed to maintain emotional safety and connection in your family system.
When caregivers were emotionally unavailable, inconsistent, or self-absorbed, children often learned—implicitly—that being their full, authentic self wasn’t safe or welcome. Instead, they adapted.
Common role selves include:
The responsible one
The peacemaker
The achiever
The caretaker
The invisible one
These roles weren’t choices—they were strategies. They helped you stay attached, reduce conflict, or gain approval.
As an adult, the challenge isn’t that the Role Self exists—it’s that it can quietly take over during family interactions, especially under stress. You may notice:
Automatically people-pleasing
Over-explaining or defending yourself
Shutting down your needs
Feeling younger, smaller, or less capable
Healing begins when you recognize:
“This is my role self activating—not my adult self choosing.”
These roles were not flaws. They were survival strategies.
Why These Patterns Resurface During the Holidays
Family environments are powerful nervous-system triggers. Old hierarchies, unspoken expectations, and familiar emotional climates can instantly reactivate childhood adaptations—no matter how much personal growth you’ve done.
An internalizer may suddenly feel like the “emotional parent” again. An externalizer may feel controlled or criticized without knowing why. The Role Self steps in because it once kept you safe.
This isn’t regression—it’s memory.
Moving Toward the True Self
Healing doesn’t require eliminating these patterns. It asks for awareness and choice.
Key shifts include:
Noticing when your role self is driving
Pausing before reacting
Choosing boundaries over self-abandonment
Allowing yourself to respond as the adult you are now
The goal isn’t to change your family.
It’s to stay connected to your authentic self in their presence.
A Grounding Reminder
Your coping style was intelligent.
Your role self was protective.
And now—you get to choose differently.
Understanding whether you tend to internalize, externalize, or slip into a familiar role offers compassion, not labels. These insights create space for gentler holidays, clearer boundaries, and a deeper sense of emotional freedom.
Coming up next:
Day 3: The Stuckness of Never Quite Connecting. Why these patterns keep you feeling stuck.
This piece names the quiet grief of trying—again and again—to be understood by emotionally limited people.
We’ll talk about acceptance, letting go of the fantasy, and redirecting emotional needs toward safer places.
