How Do You Give Up the Hope That Your Parent Will Change?
This question came from the audience, word for word: "How do I give up the hope that my mom will ever get better?" It's the hope underneath the waiting — the reason people stay in conversations, holidays, and relationships that keep hurting them, because next time might be the time it lands. I have asked versions of it in conversation after conversation. Here is what five of the Academy's guests said, with the moment in each recording where you can hear them say it.
Dr. Lindsay Gibson: give the hope its real name.
Gibson has a term for this hope: the healing fantasy. It's the belief that one day the right conversation will get through — that if you can just explain it well enough, your parent will finally see your point of view, feel what you felt, and respond the way you've always needed.
In her audience Q&A she takes that hope apart at its root. An emotionally immature parent, she says, "just can't see it from another person's point of view." Their mind doesn't work that way — she compares it to a learning disability. Expecting an empathic, apologetic response from that parent is expecting something their mind isn't built to give you. The fantasy isn't foolish because you want too much. It's a fantasy because you're asking for it from someone who can't produce it.
▶ Watch her answer (at 0:41) Full conversation
Jasmin Lee Cori: test the fantasy against the evidence.
Cori uses Gibson's term and turns it into a test. What signals tell you the healing fantasy is really just a fantasy? Look for evidence: can you see your mother doing this kind of work in any other relationship in her life? Does she have the capacity — and do either of you have the resources, the time, the energy, the willingness the work would take?
And she offers the distinction that ended the question for her: "It was a turning point for me when I realized, oh, it's that she couldn't. It's not that she wouldn't. She didn't have the capacity to do certain things." A parent who won't change is an insult you carry. A parent who can't is a fact you can grieve — and, in her case, it changed the relationship itself.
▶ Watch her answer (at 25:51) Full conversation
Dr. Sherrie Campbell: stop waiting for them to heal first.
Campbell's version is the starkest. Her parents, she says, "were abusers before I was born. They remained abusers throughout the raising of me, and they continue to abuse, guilt, manipulate and control today." Children don't cause bad parents — and waiting for the parents to become good ones cost her years.
"I had to stop waiting for them to heal for me to heal. And I had to learn and accept — and this was like swallowing sand — that I couldn't heal if they were in my life." She is eight years into no contact as she says it, describing a life she calls full and beautiful on the other side of that decision. Her answer to the hope isn't a technique. It's a sequence: the waiting ends first, then the healing starts.
▶ Watch her answer (at 34:53) Full conversation
Dr. Deniz Ahmadinia: move the focus from them to what you can predict.
Deniz believes people can change if they're willing to change — and says the willingness is exactly what's missing with emotionally immature and narcissistic people. So the work is a shift: "from how can I get this person to be different, to the acceptance that this person is this way."
She doesn't pretend that shift is clean. "We end up grieving in the process of doing that." But acceptance buys something hope never did: predictability. Once you stop tailoring your life to the idea of finally receiving love from them, you can prepare for how they'll actually respond — and protect yourself inside the interaction instead of recovering from it afterward.
▶ Watch her answer (at 46:28) Full conversation
Kara Lissy: keep the hope. Change its address.
Lissy, who works with adult children of alcoholics, is the only one who refuses the premise. Hope poured into a parent, she says, is "contingent on them changing their behavior" — and that's the problem with it, not the hope itself. "The hope is built in the decisions you're making for yourself. That creates the hope. And you get to keep that hope. That's for you."
Her picture: the parent's recovery is the waves — treatment, relapse, chaos. Your routine, your hobbies, your joy, the things that give your life meaning — that's your surfboard. "You can surf those waves... but you have your solid base that you can stand on, and that's your hope. You don't have to wait and make it contingent on them getting better."
▶ Watch her answer (at 11:54) Full conversation
Where the five of them land
Not one of them tells you to hope harder, or to find the magic words. Gibson gives the hope a name and a diagnosis. Cori gives it an evidence test. Campbell gives it an ending date. Deniz gives it a replacement — acceptance, grief, and predictability. Lissy gives it a new address.
The shared move is relocation: every one of them takes the hope off the parent's future behaviour and puts it somewhere you control.
Not sure whether your parent is emotionally immature? Take the free assessment: https://www.theacademyofselfhelp.com/assessment
Dealing with a parent like this day to day? The Emotionally Immature Parent Survival Guide: https://www.theacademyofselfhelp.com/survival-guide
More canon questions: