Lindsay C. Gibson > Quotes

“A positive self-concept gets a good start from a parent’s connection and loving support.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“But he was astounded by how much anger toward his mother we’d unearthed. “I can’t believe how much I hated her,” he said. What Jake didn’t realize is that hate is a normal and involuntary reaction when somebody tries to control you for no good reason. It signals that the person is extinguishing your emotional life force by getting his or her needs met at your expense.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Out of sync with their child’s moment-to-moment experience, they don’t adapt themselves to their child’s needs; instead, they push their child toward what they think he or she should be doing. As a result, the children of driven parents always feel they should be doing more, or be doing something other than whatever they are doing.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Remember, emotionally immature parents relate on the basis of roles,
not individuality. If you had an independent, self-reliant personality, your
parent wouldn’t have seen you as a needy child for whom he or she could
play the role of rescuing parent. Instead, you may have been pegged as the
child without needs, the little grown-up. It wasn’t some sort of insufficiency
in you that made your parent pay more attention to your sibling; rather, it’s
likely that you weren’t dependent enough to trigger your parent’s
enmeshment instincts.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Adult children of EI parents often neglect their own self-protection and self-care because they’ve been told that goodness comes from putting others first. Perhaps you too may need to reconsider the value of your inner experiences in order to protect and take care of yourself. Following are five ways to prioritize yourself in your own life.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“If you were an internalizing child with an emotionally immature parent, you were taught many self-defeating things about how to get along in life. Here are some of the biggest ones: Give first consideration to what other people want you to do. Don’t speak up for yourself. Don’t ask for help. Don’t want anything for yourself.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Given that emotional connection is powerful enough to support people through catastrophic events, think what it can do for ordinary daily coping. Everyone needs a deep sense of connection in order to feel fully secure, and there’s nothing weak about it.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“8. The Right to Equal Importance and Respect I have the right to be considered just as important as you. I have the right to live my life without ridicule from anyone. I have the right to be treated respectfully as an independent adult. I have the right to refuse to feel shame.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Guilt was a manageable emotion,
and a small price to pay for freedom.'
- Adult children of emotionally immature parents.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson

“2. Your Sense of Wholeness and Self-Confidence When you know your own thoughts and are deeply in touch with your inner world, you gain a sense of inner wholeness and completeness that increases your sense of security. Your inner wholeness also gives you dignity and integrity, and anchors you whenever you face stress or discord. It also gives you confidence that your feelings have meaning and that your instinctual guidance can be trusted. 3. Your Capacity for Intimate Relationships with Others Emotional self-awareness allows you to share emotionally intimate relationships with others. The better you know yourself, the more compassionately you will feel toward other people. Real intimacy is a shared understanding of each other’s inner experiences. Otherwise, it’s just two people bouncing their needs and impulses off each other. Self-awareness also helps you select friends and partners who will support you and what you value in life.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Growing up subject to others’ emotional immaturity can be frustrating and emotionally painful. Consequently, you may feel especially grateful when delightful people come along to make you feel like all is right with the world. Around them, it feels natural to be yourself. Your thinking is clear, your heart feels warm, and they draw the very best out of you. You simultaneously become more yourself—and more than yourself.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“Many adult children of EI parents suffer from intense, irrational fears about being judged and punished. These fears of punitive judgment can come from EI parents, older siblings, teachers, or any authority figure. When this childhood fear resurfaces, it feels terrifying, as if there were no hope and your downfall were imminent. When these fears of punishment get triggered, you start thinking things like, This will be the end of me. It’s never going to get better. I’m totally screwed.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“In childhood, when people invalidate or dismiss your inner experiences, your inner world seems unworthy of being taken seriously. If others won’t listen to your deepest feelings, you start tuning out what goes on inside you. You learn to turn away from the rich inner world that could sustain you regardless of outer circumstances.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“Healthy and mature people certainly need help sometimes too. But they go about it differently. When they ask for help, they consider the other person’s circumstances.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“A good relationship with your inner world reveals what’s meaningful to you and directs your life’s purpose. If you don’t form that trusting relationship with your inner world, you will be dependent on whatever your peers, the culture, or authorities tell you to be. In part II of this book, you will learn more specific ways to get to know your inner world and how to engage in this process more deeply.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“If they feel lonely or unimportant, you might find yourself expressing a level of love and loyalty beyond what you actually feel.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“In our next session, she said, “I no longer feel that I’ve done anything wrong. It’s sad that this important relationship, which I’ve always struggled with, won’t have a good resolution. But the fact that my mother doesn’t respond doesn’t put a judgment on me; it’s just another indication that she can’t handle a close relationship with me.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Everyone internalizes their parents’ voices; it’s how we’re socialized. And while some people end up with a supportive, friendly, problem-solving inner commentary, many hear only angry, critical, or contemptuous voices. The unrelenting presence of these negative messages can do more damage than the parent him- or herself. Therefore, you need to interrupt these voices in the act of making you feel bad so that you can separate your self-worth from their critical evaluations. The goal is to recognize the voice as something imported that isn’t part of your true self, so that it no longer feels like a natural part of your own thinking. One way of doing so is to use the maturity awareness approach in chapter 8 to relate to those negative voices inside your head just as you’d use that approach with a parent.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Many EI parents disregarded or repressed their inner experiences to the point where external referencing became their only source of security. Without a genuine sense of self-worth and identity, a person has to wrest that from the outside world and other people.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Beth’s Story Beth’s mother, Rosa, never showed any enthusiasm about spending time with her. When Beth visited, Rosa resisted hugs and immediately found something to criticize about Beth’s appearance. She usually urged Beth to call a relative as soon as Beth walked in the door, as though to redirect her elsewhere. If Beth suggested spending time together, Rosa acted irritated and told Beth she was too dependent on her. When Beth telephoned her mother, anything Beth said was usually cut short as Rosa quickly found an excuse to get off the phone, often giving the phone to Beth’s father.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Before you realize it, your feelings are unimportant, and your mission becomes their stabilization.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Because EI parents relate in a superficial, egocentric way, talking with them is often boring. They stick to conversation topics they feel safe with, which quickly become stagnant and repetitious.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“As you are infiltrated by their unhappiness, you feel like it’s up to you to make everything all right.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“EIPs take this to an extreme. The way it feels to them is the way it is.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Understanding your past and embarking on a new future can be a bittersweet process. Shining a light on what happened to you and how it affected your choices can stir up sadness about what you’ve lost or never had. That’s the way light is. It shines on everything, not just the things we want to see.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Once you give yourself permission to be loyal to your thoughts and feelings, you can respond in ways that change the whole interactional dynamic.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Because they aren’t self-reflective, EI parents have poor filters and say things without thinking. They can leave people stunned by their inappropriate comments. If confronted with their insensitivity, they might say things like, “I was only saying what I thought,” as if speaking all your thoughts out loud were normal behavior.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Being Myself, Whether People Accept Me or Not • When I state my thoughts clearly and politely, without malice, I won’t try to control how people take it. • I won’t give more energy than I really have. • Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel. • I won’t volunteer for something if I think I’ll resent it later. • If someone says something I find offensive, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint. I won’t try to change the other person’s mind; I just won’t let the statement go unremarked upon.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Under the influence of this relationship system, you attune to the EI parent’s emotional needs instead of listening to what your instincts are telling you.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“EI parents lack the calm depth that emotionally nourished people have. They don’t show the security and deep self-acceptance that come from connecting with a sensitive caretaker in childhood. Perhaps it was their own lack of childhood connection that makes them insist on absolute loyalty and sacrifice from their children. They behave as if they are terrified that they don’t really matter.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy