Adult Children of Rich, Emotionally Immature Parents Cohort

Break the cycle of replacing love with money

Oct 2023 - Oct 2024, Sundays 1-3:30pm PST / 4-6:30pm EST

“Growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents is a lonely experience. These parents may look and act perfectly normal, caring for their children’s physical health and providing meals and safety. However, if they don’t make a solid emotional connection with their child, the child will have a gaping hole where true security might have been. The loneliness of feeling unseen by others is as fundamental a pain as physical injury, but it doesn’t show on the outside.” - Lindsay C. Gibson

When you grow up with an emotionally immature parent, it's incredibly difficult to decide how to relate to them as adults. When your parent(s) are rich, the toxic behaviors can take shape around money and your attachment to or dependence on their wealth may complicate your desired relationship. Because we’re taught that money should solve all problems, it’s rare to receive compassion and understanding about why your childhood was so difficult, despite, or even because of the wealth in your family. If your parent(s) used money as a stand-in for core needs like love, care, and connection, healing requires considering not only your relationship to your parent(s), but also your relationship to their wealth. 

In this cohort, led by Iris Brilliant and Rye Young, you will:

• Disentangle your feelings about your emotionally immature parent(s) from your feelings about wealth so you can have greater clarity on how to move towards a healthier relationship with your parent(s) and with money

• Receive compassionate, non-judgmental support to explore and express your most authentic feelings about the parent(s) you inherited

• Develop personal accountability in your life to ensure you do not replicate the harmful behavior of your parent(s)

• Explore ways you might be using money as a coping mechanism for residual feelings of emotional neglect

• Many children of emotionally immature parents are prone to either workaholism and perfectionism, or an inability to figure out how to make money and keep a job. Explore what healing looks like as it relates to your relationship to your career, external achievements and financial autonomy

• Learn the tell-tale signs of emotional immaturity versus emotional maturity, so that you can make wiser choices in your present day relationships

• Clarify a values-aligned way of relating to the wealth of your parent(s)

• Be supported by experienced, empathetic, and trauma-informed facilitators ready to meet you where you’re at and support your healing

• Meet others who understand the very unique experience of growing up with rich, emotionally immature parent(s) and build a network of strong relationships that you can lean on during and beyond this process

Not sure if you have an emotionally immature parent? Here are some examples of different ways growing up with an emotionally immature parent might impact you. Perhaps you:

• Feel you cannot be your authentic self with your parent out of fear that they will reject, criticize or shame you

• Feel that your parent doesn’t know who you really are and doesn’t want to get to know the real you

• Feel that your parent cares more about your external achievements and appearance than your internal experience

• Have a parent who uses money to manipulate your behavior, such as only giving you money if you agree to their demands, or threatening to cut you out of their will if you don’t agree to their demands

• Didn’t receive care and affection from your parent that was attuned to your needs

• Were shamed, guilted or openly resented for growing up with more material privilege than what your parent(s) had when they were younger

• Are exhausted from a lifetime of trying to get emotional needs met from a parent who can’t get it no matter how hard you try

Currently, you might:

• Feel confused about what type of relationship you want with your parent

• Have a loud inner critic that’s judgmental of yourself and/or others 

• Feel ambivalent about future inheritance, such as believing more money will make you feel better, but wishing you could find that relief outside of wealth

• Reject and resent money because of how it harmed you growing up and avoid dealing with money to your own detriment

• Base your sense of self-worth on achievement and be prone to workaholism

• Be unable to figure out how to have a stable career that earns enough money and be dependent on inherited wealth

• Feel emotionally unfulfilled by your present day relationships

• Feel afraid that without access to wealth you will not be able to be happy

• Have difficulty being with strong emotions in yourself and/or others

• Spend money to soothe yourself

This cohort is for anyone who:

• Is age 25+ who was raised wealthy, and presently identifies as wealthy or class privileged

• Resonates with the title of this cohort, even if you don’t fully know what “emotionally immature” means yet. If this program speaks to you, we believe that’s for a reason

• Wants to heal from intergenerational trauma and reconsider your relationship to money in a supportive community of peers 

• Has any type of relationship status, including a no-contact relationship, with parent(s), whether they be alive or deceased

• Has already begun a process of healing from your childhood

Applications are currently closed. Add your name to the waitlist below to be the first to learn when they open again in 2024.

Structure of the program:

• The cohort will take place virtually on Zoom in a mix of large group, small group, and one-on-one sessions meant to provide different spaces for different types of learning and processing

• You will be given assigned readings and reflection worksheets that draw on the work of Lindsay C. Gibson, specifically her books Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Recovering From Emotionally Immature Parents

• Both Part One and Two will have a break to give your mind and body time to process and absorb the learnings (the month of March in Part One, and July & August in Part Two)

• We will maintain an email list for cohort members to give and receive support to each other throughout the program, especially over holidays

We use a tiered pricing structure based on your access to wealth:

• Access to under $150K: $2000 per cycle

• Access to $150K-$500K: $4000 per cycle 

• Access to $500K-$1M: $6,000 per cycle

• $1M-$2M: $8,000 per cycle

• $2M-$3M: $10,000 per cycle

• $3M-$4M: $12,000 per cycle

• $4M+: $14,000 per cycle

  This fee structure allows us to provide discounted spots for people who don’t have access to wealth. If you do not have access to wealth and need a discounted rate to participate, please note that in your application. This cohort requires an immense amount of time and emotional labor to hold with the care that it requires and deserves; please place yourself honestly on this scale to help the finances of this group work well.

Deadline: September 15

Applications accepted on a rolling basis; please note that this group might fill before the final deadline.

This cohort will be co-led by Iris Brilliant and Rye Young.
Meet Rye:

Rye Young, founder and principal of Rye Young Consulting, Pronouns: he/him/his and they/them/theirs 

Rye Young draws on fourteen years of experience in social justice philanthropy to help individual donors and foundations align their values with their practices and invest boldly and strategically in movements. He serves as the Director of the Sprocket Foundation leading their grantmaking on decriminalization and prison abolition. He is the co-director and co-founder of DIGG (Donor Intro to Grounded Giving), a donor organizing and political education program for young people with wealth to start their journey in social justice philanthropy. Rye is a Trustee of the Freeman Foundation and a member of the Board of Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE). He got his start in social justice philanthropy at Third Wave Fund where he had a long career that started as an abortion fund intern in 2008 and ended with him serving as their Executive Director from 2014-2018. He’s particularly passionate about including disability justice, reproductive justice, and gender justice in all things.

Program Cycle One

The program content may change based on the needs and interests of the group; however, the core content and structure is not likely to change significantly.

• Full Group Sessions are Sundays, 1-3:30pm PST/4-6:30pm EST

• Small Groups will be scheduled based on group members’ schedules

October

Introductions: Creating our container and introductions

Family Storytelling

Naming the unnamable: Exploring concepts of emotional immaturity, emotional loneliness, and affluent neglect

November

A new kind of money story: Identifying your parents’ emotionally immature ways of relating to wealth and how that shaped your relationship to money

Individual support on a topic of your choosing

Sun, 11/19
Full Group Session

December

Strategies for relating to emotionally immature parents

Small Groups

Email Support 

January

Conditional love: What was the box you had to put yourself in to be accepted by your parents? What are the costs of that for you? How does that box relate to your relationship to wealth, career and relationships?

Individual support on a topic of your choosing

Sun, 1/21
Full Group Session

February

Goal-setting from outside the box

Sun, 2/11
Full Group Session

Sun, 2/25
Full Group Session

March

Integration and rest
Small groups can self-organize if desired

Program Cycle Two

April

Sun, 4/7
Full Group Session

Sun, 4/21
Full Group Session

Small Groups

May

Sun, 5/5
Full Group Session

1:1 coaching with Iris

Sun, 5/19
Full Group Session

Mother’s Day support

June

Preparing for inheritance session

Sun, 6/2
Full Group Session

Father’s Day Support

Sun, 6/23
Full Group Session

July & August

Integration and Rest

• During the break, you will design your sacred bill of rights as children of emotionally immature parents, and your sacred commitments for breaking the cycle of replacing love with money

• Small groups can self-organize and continue to meet without facilitation if desired

September

Sun, 9/1
Full Group Session

Individual support on a topic of your choosing

Sun, 9/22
Full Group Session

October

Sun, 10/6
Full Group Session

Final Small Groups

Sun, 10/20
Full Group Session