If you heard these 8 phrases growing up, you were raised by emotionally immature parents

She was describing her childhood dinner table when her voice changed, becoming smaller, younger somehow. "My father would say 'Stop being so dramatic' whenever I tried to explain how I felt," she told our therapy group. "Now when my partner asks what's wrong, I literally can't form the words. It's like my throat closes up." Around the circle, heads nodded in recognition. We all had our phrases—those repeated refrains from childhood that became the soundtrack to our emotional lives.

The language our parents used wasn't just communication—it was architecture, building the framework through which we'd understand ourselves and our feelings for decades to come. Most parents don't set out to emotionally stunt their children. They're usually repeating patterns from their own childhoods, wielding phrases their parents used, trapped in cycles of emotional immaturity they don't even recognize as problematic.

But here's what research on emotional development makes clear: the way parents respond to their children's emotions becomes the template for how those children will process feelings for the rest of their lives. The phrases that shut down emotional expression don't just silence children in the moment—they teach them that their inner experience is somehow wrong, excessive, or unworthy of space.

1. "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about"

This threat masquerades as discipline but is actually emotional terrorism. It takes a child who's already overwhelmed and adds fear to the mix, creating a toxic cocktail of suppressed emotion and anticipated punishment. The message is clear: your feelings are not just inconvenient—they're punishable offenses.

I watched this play out with my nephew once. He'd fallen and scraped his knee, and through his tears, his father barked this classic line. The boy's crying didn't stop—it transformed, became quieter, more desperate, tinged with the additional trauma of knowing his pain was unwelcome. He learned in that moment what millions of us learned: that expressing hurt makes you vulnerable to more hurt.

Adults who heard this phrase repeatedly often struggle with what therapists call "emotional constipation"—the inability to release feelings in healthy ways. They've learned that expressing emotion invites danger, so they hold everything in until it either explodes inappropriately or manifests as physical symptoms. They become experts at swallowing tears, masters of the stone face, champions of "I'm fine" when they're anything but.

2. "You're too sensitive"

This phrase is emotional gaslighting at its most insidious. It takes a child's natural capacity for feeling and reframes it as a character flaw. The child learns that their emotional responses are incorrect, that the problem isn't what happened to them but how they're responding to it.

"Too sensitive" becomes a label that follows these children into adulthood. They second-guess every emotional response, wondering if they're overreacting, if their feelings are valid, if they have the right to feel hurt, angry, or disappointed. They often become either emotionally shut down (to avoid being "too much") or anxiously apologetic about every feeling they express.

What's particularly cruel about this phrase is that sensitivity—the ability to pick up on emotional nuances, to empathize deeply, to respond to subtle cues—is actually a form of intelligence. Research shows that people who acknowledge and process their emotions adapt better to stress. But children labeled "too sensitive" learn to see their emotional intelligence as a weakness rather than the strength it actually is.

3. "Don't talk back"

Communication is supposed to be bidirectional, but this phrase establishes a dictatorship where the child's voice is considered rebellion. It's not about respect—it's about control. It teaches children that their thoughts, questions, and perspectives are unwelcome intrusions rather than valuable contributions.

Children who hear this repeatedly develop what I call "conversational learned helplessness." As adults, they either avoid conflict entirely (because disagreement feels dangerous) or they explode in arguments (because they never learned how to have productive disagreements). They struggle to advocate for themselves, to set boundaries, to engage in the healthy back-and-forth that relationships require.

The tragedy is that what parents call "talking back" is often a child trying to understand, to clarify, to engage in exactly the kind of dialogue that builds emotional intelligence. By shutting it down, parents miss crucial opportunities to teach negotiation, reasoning, and respectful disagreement.

4. "Because I said so"

This is intellectual and emotional laziness disguised as authority. It teaches children that power is more important than understanding, that might makes right, that reasons don't matter if you're the one in charge. It's the death of curiosity, the end of dialogue, the closing of minds.

Adults who grew up with this phrase often struggle with authority in complex ways. They might blindly follow rules without understanding them, or rebel against all authority because they've learned that authority is arbitrary. They have difficulty with the grey areas of life because they were trained in a black-and-white world where questioning wasn't allowed.

More importantly, they often struggle to explain their own decisions and feelings. Having never been given reasons, they don't know how to articulate them. They make choices based on gut feelings they can't explain, rules they don't understand, patterns they can't break.

5. "Big boys/girls don't cry"

This phrase commits two crimes simultaneously: it shames the child for having feelings, and it corrupts their understanding of maturation. It suggests that growing up means feeling less, that strength means suppression, that adulthood is achieved by denying fundamental aspects of human experience.

The damage this does to emotional development is profound. Boys who hear this often grow into men who can only express anger—the one "acceptable" male emotion. Girls who hear it often become women who apologize for every tear, who see their emotions as weakness, who pride themselves on being "low maintenance" when they're actually just disconnected from their needs.

The truth that emotionally mature parents understand is that crying is not just acceptable—it's necessary. It's how we process grief, release stress, and signal to others that we need support. Adults who were told "big kids don't cry" often find themselves emotionally stuck at the age they were when they stopped allowing themselves to feel.

6. "I'm the parent, you're the child"

While boundaries between parents and children are important, this phrase isn't about healthy boundaries—it's about power. It's used to end conversations, dismiss feelings, and avoid the harder work of actual parenting. It says: your thoughts don't matter because of your position in this hierarchy.

Children who hear this learn that relationships are about power, not connection. They grow into adults who either constantly seek to be in charge (because that's where safety lies) or perpetually defer to others (because they've learned their place is at the bottom). They struggle with equal partnerships because they've never seen one modeled.

What's particularly damaging is that this phrase prevents children from developing their own judgment. They learn to evaluate ideas not based on merit but on who's expressing them. This creates adults who either rebel against all authority or submit to it unquestioningly—neither of which is healthy.

7. "You'll understand when you're older"

Sometimes this is true—some things do require life experience to fully grasp. But more often, this phrase is used to avoid difficult conversations, to dismiss legitimate questions, to escape the hard work of translation that good parenting requires.

Children are capable of understanding far more than we give them credit for, if we take the time to explain things in age-appropriate ways. When we constantly defer their understanding to some mythical future date, we teach them that they're currently inadequate, that their desire to understand is premature, that confusion is their natural state.

Adults who heard this frequently often struggle with feeling perpetually unprepared for life. They're waiting to reach that magical age when things make sense, not realizing it was never about age—it was about explanation. They doubt their own understanding, constantly deferring to others who seem more "grown up," not realizing that understanding comes from engagement, not age.

8. "Don't be dramatic"

This phrase is particularly insidious because it reframes emotional expression as performance. It suggests that feelings are theater, that pain is pretense, that any strong emotion is somehow inauthentic. It's dismissive, diminishing, and deeply damaging to a child's relationship with their own emotional reality.

Children learn to doubt their own experiences. Was I really hurt, or am I being dramatic? Do I actually feel this strongly, or am I performing? This self-doubt follows them into adulthood, where they constantly minimize their own experiences, apologize for having feelings, and struggle to take their own emotional needs seriously.

The word "dramatic" itself becomes a weapon they use against themselves. Every time they feel strongly about something, an inner voice asks: "Aren't you being dramatic?" This internal critic, installed by parents who couldn't handle emotional intensity, continues the work of suppression long after the parents are gone.

Final thoughts

The phrases we heard growing up become the voices in our heads—the internal critics, the self-doubt, the emotional limitations we accept as truth. But here's what I've learned from years of watching people work through these inherited patterns: awareness is the beginning of change.

Recognizing these phrases and their impact isn't about blaming parents who were likely doing their best with their own emotional limitations. It's about understanding why you struggle to express feelings, why conflict feels dangerous, why you doubt your own emotional responses. It's about seeing the connection between what you heard then and how you feel now.

The good news is that the brain remains plastic throughout our lives. The neural pathways carved by these phrases can be rewired. The voices can be challenged. The patterns can be broken. It starts with recognizing that the phrases that shaped you were never about you—they were about your parents' emotional capacity, their own unhealed wounds, their own inherited limitations.

You can choose different phrases for your internal dialogue. You can learn to say to yourself what you needed to hear then: Your feelings matter. Your voice deserves to be heard. Your sensitivity is a strength. Your questions are valid. Your tears are welcome. Your experience is real.

The child who heard those phrases is still in there, waiting for someone to tell them they were never too much or too sensitive or too anything—they were just human, trying to feel their way through a world that demanded they feel less. You can be the adult now who gives that child what they needed then: permission to feel, space to express, and validation that their emotional experience was always, always legitimate.