Coping with defensive parents: Why your parent can’t apologize.
By Imi Lo
It plays out like this: you voice a simple concern or make a request, and instead of understanding, you are met with a barrage of accusations, guilt trips, or passive-aggressive silent treatment. If you are an adult child of defensive, emotionally immature parents, you may find this scenario all too familiar.
It may seem that anything but complete compliance triggers a defensive response from them—perhaps a dismissive gesture, an angry outburst, or a series of guilt trips laced with phrases like, “After all I’ve done for you.” These reactions may leave you feeling trapped, your voice stifled, and your needs unmet. In this post, we will explore the potential explanations for your parents’ defensiveness, why logic and rationality often fail, and offer suggestions on what you can do to move forward. Ultimately, this journey is not about changing your parents but about reclaiming your peace and creating a life that aligns with what you value.
Why They Get Defensive
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the defensive wall your parent puts up is their way of protecting themselves. Behind it lies unprocessed shame and denial. On some level, they know they haven’t been the best parents to you; they might have been physically or emotionally abusive, neglectful, or acted in ways that prioritized their own needs over yours. Perhaps, deep down, they understand how their immaturity has burdened you and scarred your childhood in ways that feel irreversible. However, this awareness is deeply buried. They push it down because they are not psychologically capable of facing such painful truths.
Defensive reactions often reflect an unconscious self-protective mechanism known as “splitting”—the inability to hold complex and often contradictory truths about oneself. Because they are psychologically underdeveloped, they are trapped in a rigid, black-and-white way of thinking. The inability to embrace nuance is often rooted in unresolved childhood trauma that has left them developmentally arrested. Like children in adult bodies, they cling to the illusion of being either entirely good or entirely bad, unable to tolerate the nuanced complexities of being both flawed and worthy at the same time.
Thus, they desperately hold onto the self-image of being a “good parent.” Any crack in this image may cause a complete psychological collapse—a flood of shame and self-recrimination. Your truth—your perspective—becomes an unbearable threat that could shatter this fragile self-image. This also explains why acknowledging mistakes or offering genuine apologies are impossible tasks for them.
The intensity of their defensiveness is often directly proportional to the depth of their shame. The fiercer the reaction, the more likely it is that your truths—however logical or reasonable—have struck a nerve. They defend because they carry a gut whisper that says you might be right, and it is bringing out a buried truth they desperately try to avoid. Their reaction, therefore, is not merely defensive; it is a desperate act of self-preservation.
While not all defensive parents meet the full criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, many have what psychologists call “narcissistic vulnerability”—a fragile self-structure that depends on constant external validation. This vulnerability means they easily experience “narcissistic injury” when faced with even minor criticism or perceived slights. Their children’s expressions of unmet needs or emotional pain can feel, to them, like personal attacks on their idealized self-image.
The inability to confront their own fallibility extends far beyond specific parenting mistakes. It often reflects deeper insecurities, such as the shame of aging, the fear of becoming irrelevant, the pain of unrealized dreams, and the emptiness of a life that may have been built on denial. These underlying struggles make it even harder for them to take responsibility for their actions.
This complex psychological backdrop explains why logical approaches to communication often fail in these situations. No matter how carefully worded or gently expressed, any feedback that even remotely threatens your parent’s carefully constructed self-image can trigger their deeply ingrained defense mechanisms. Your parent’s responses are often not truly about the content of what was said, but about protecting themselves from overwhelming feelings of shame, inadequacy, and potential fragmentation of self.
Finding Your Path Forward
When it becomes impossible or feels overly abusive, remember that you are not obligated to engage in a painful back-and-forth with your defensive parent. When their reactions feel overwhelming or even absurd, try to see their defensive intensity not as a source of confusion, but as confirmation of what you already know about their level of (im)maturity. Their reactions, however painful, reveal truths they cannot or will not speak—truths about their own unresolved pain, their fragile sense of self, and the limitations of their emotional capacity.
Understanding that their defensiveness stems from vulnerabilities does not mean you must immediately forgive or condone their behavior. It does not mean you have to minimize the impact their actions have had on you. Instead, understanding offers critical distance—a space to breathe—where you can begin to disentangle yourself from their turmoil. From there, you can choose to become a calm observer, witnessing the storm of their defensiveness without being swept up by their story or gaslighting.
When you have made multiple attempts to improve the relationship with no success, it may be time to shift your focus away from changing them and back to yourself. Often, the psychological task of a child of a defensive parent is not to change them, but to grieve. This is a grief that involves no actual death but rather the loss of possibilities and the relationship that will never be: one built on mutual respect, open communication, and genuine emotional intimacy. You may grieve for the fair conversations that will never happen, the connection that will never exist. This grief, while undeniably devastating, can also be liberating. Each tear shed for what cannot be is a step toward acceptance—a release of the yearning for a different reality.
There is no obligation to understand, forgive, or protect your parents from their own shame. Your responsibility is to yourself—to your own healing and well-being. As much as possible, prioritize self-care and learn to re-parent the inner child who learned to suppress emotions, doubt their own reality, and constantly seek external validation. You have the right to create a life filled with healthy, supportive relationships, even if those relationships do not include your parents in the way you once hoped.
Their denial is their burden to bear, and your truth is your path to freedom.
Originally published at Psychology Today
References
Cooper, J. (2019). The absent mother: splitting as a narcissistic attempt to find a solution. In Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy in the Independent Tradition (pp. 73-90). Routledge.
Eddy, B., & Kreger, R. (2011). Splitting: Protecting yourself while divorcing someone with borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. New Harbinger Publications.
Levin, J. D. (1995). Slings and arrows: Narcissistic injury and its treatment. Jason Aronson, Incorporated.
Zamostny, K. P., Slyter, S. L., & Rios, P. (1993). Narcissistic injury and its relationship to early trauma, early resources, and adjustment to college. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 40(4), 501.
Imi Lo, MA, is a consultant and psychotherapist with masters degrees in Mental Health and Buddhist Studies. She is the author of Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity and The Gift of Intensity and runs Eggshell Therapy and Coaching.
