Lindsay C. Gibson > Quotes

“As children, their need for genuine emotional connection is the central fact of their existence. Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. A blank face kills something in them. They read people closely, looking for signs that they’ve made a connection. This isn’t a social urge, like wanting people to chat with; it’s a powerful hunger to connect heart to heart with a like-minded person who can understand them.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“4. Your Ability to Self-Protect The ability to sense danger in your surroundings or untrustworthiness in other people depends on how well you listen to your gut feelings. To detect threat, you have to be aware of how situations and interactions make you feel. The primal instincts of the inner world are crucial to your safety. 5. Your Awareness of Your Life’s Purpose 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. EIPs’ Attitudes Toward Your Inner World Now let’s look at how EIPs view your inner world. Understanding EI parents’ attitudes toward your inner experiences will help you trust yourself instead of deferring to them. They See You as Still Needing Their Direction EI parents see their adult children as”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“1. Your Inner Stability and Resilience Your inner, psychological world develops in predictable stages, just like your body. We all start out undeveloped, then gradually form integrated, dynamic personality structures. If inner development goes well, your psychological functions weave into a stable cross-connected organization that allows different aspects of yourself—mind and heart—to work together seamlessly. You develop enough inner complexity to make you resilient and adaptable. You get to know yourself and your emotions; your thoughts are flexible yet organized. You become self-aware. This is very different from the black-and-white, rigid, and often contradictory personality of the EIP. The inner world of EI personalities is not well enough developed or integrated to produce reliable stability, resilience, or self-awareness.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents is a lonely experience. These parents may look and act perfectly normal, caring for their child’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.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Anger and even rage are adaptive reactions to feelings of abandonment, giving us energy to protest and change unhealthy emotional situations.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Developing a sense of self is also necessary for the self-awareness and self-reflection that allow us to observe ourselves and how our behavior affects other people. Without a sense of self fostered in childhood, people can’t self-reflect and therefore have no way to grow and change psychologically. Instead, they are limited to blaming others and expecting others to change first.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“Apply the following statements to a significant EIP in your life and in your journal write “agree” or “disagree” for each one. I agree that your needs should come before anyone else’s. I agree not to speak my own mind when I’m around you. Please say anything you want, and I won’t object. Yes, I must be ignorant if I think differently from you. Of course you should be upset if anyone says no to you about anything. Please educate me about what I should like or dislike. Yes, it makes sense for you to decide how much time I should want to spend with you. You’re right, I should show you “respect” by disowning my own thoughts in your presence. Of course you shouldn’t have to exercise self-control if you don’t feel like it. It’s fine if you don’t think before you speak. It’s true: you should never have to wait or deal with any unpleasantness. I agree: you shouldn’t have to adjust when circumstances change around you. It’s okay if you ignore me, snap at me, or don’t act glad to see me: I’ll still want to spend time with you. Of course you are entitled to be rude. I agree that you shouldn’t have to take direction from anyone. Please talk as long as you like about your favorite topics; I’m ready to just listen and never be asked any questions about myself.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy

“DNA is not a life sentence.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson PsyD, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“If you start slipping into your fantasy that you may be able to get the other person to change, you’ll feel weak, vulnerable, apprehensive, and needy. This extremely unpleasant feeling of weakness is a signal that you need to shift out of responding emotionally and move back into observing mode.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“The pleasure you get from task completion is powerful, but it has a short half-life. It does not linger to sustain you over the days to come. Enjoyment of task completion fades surprisingly fast, just like a drug high. That is because there is no heart in it, no warm, glowing feeling of connection to the world and other people. It is a sugar high compared to the sustaining nutrients of relational, experiential living.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“Externalizers also demand attention by blaming or guilt-tripping others. As a result, people may end up feeling that they have to help, whether they want to or not, creating resentment over the long run.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Because emotionally immature parents see their internalizing children as better able to take care of themselves, they allow these independent children to have more of a life outside the family. But even though internalizers can cope more independently, they still long to connect with their parents and capture their interest.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“well-meaning efforts at communication never made things better.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“They Reflect on Their Actions and Try to Change Emotionally mature people are capable of taking a look at themselves and reflecting on their behavior. They may not use psychological terms, but they clearly understand how people affect each other emotionally. They take you seriously if you tell them about a behavior of theirs that makes you uncomfortable. They’re willing to absorb this kind of feedback because they enjoy the increased emotional intimacy that such clear communication brings. This shows interest in and curiosity about other people’s perceptions, along with a desire to learn about and improve themselves.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“In a family with an externalizing sibling, the parents’ attitude is often to silence any complaints of unfairness by the internalizer, telling the child to try to get along or to understand the sibling’s problem. For the parent, nothing is worth getting a kid who externalizes upset. The message to internalizers is that they should put their needs on a back burner and instead focus on what the externalizer needs.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“When you forge a compromise with an emotionally mature person, you won’t feel like you’re giving anything up; instead, both of you will feel satisfied. Because collaborative, mature people don’t have an agenda to win at all costs, you won’t feel like you’re being taken advantage of. Compromise doesn’t mean mutual sacrifice; it means a mutual balancing of desires. In a good compromise, both people feel that they got enough of what they wanted. In contrast, emotionally immature people tend to pressure others into concessions that aren’t in their best interest, often pushing a solution that doesn’t feel fair.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Ideally, you’d probably like to have the freedom to be yourself yet protect yourself while continuing to relate to your parent.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“chapter 6, I describe the internalizer personality in greater detail. This is the personality type most likely to engage in self-reflection and personal growth, and therefore most likely to be drawn to this book. Internalizers are highly perceptive and sensitive, with strong instincts to engage and connect with other people. You’ll see whether this personality type fits you, especially the traits of tending to feel apologetic for needing help, doing most of the emotional work in relationships, and thinking about what other people want first.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“They Like to Be the Center of Attention Like children, emotionally immature people usually end up being the center of attention. In groups, the most emotionally immature person often dominates the group’s time and energy. If other people allow it, all the group’s attention will go to that person, and once this happens, it’s hard to redirect the group’s focus. If anyone else is going to get a chance to be heard, someone will have to force an abrupt transition—something many people aren’t willing to do. You may wonder whether these people are just being extroverted. They aren’t. The difference is that most extroverts easily follow a change of topic. Because extroverts crave interaction, not just an audience, they’re interested and receptive when others participate. Extroverts do like to talk, but not with the purpose of shutting everyone else down.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Parents who need to keep strict control because of their anxieties often teach their children not only how they should do things, but also how they should feel and think.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“you’ve probably decided that at least one of your parents fits that description. Such a parent can probably never fulfill your childhood vision of a loving parent. The only achievable goal is to act from your own true nature, not the role-self that pleases your parent. You can’t win your parent over, but you can save yourself.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Externalizing keeps people from growing psychologically, and is therefore associated with emotional immaturity. Internalizing, on the other hand, promotes psychological development through the use of self-reflection.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“This further disconnects you from your inner world, reinforcing the false belief that security and stimulation can only come from outside yourself. Relationships become frustrating under these conditions because you’re looking to other people for a validation that is already yours.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“It now sets goals without consulting the emotions at all. Whoever gets you to accept an idea—especially when it goes against your deeper feelings—owns your soul. This has been the goal of brainwashers for centuries, and EI parents do it too. Once you’ve been trained to trust your thoughts over your feelings, you can be made to believe that bad situations and exploitative people are necessary in your life and even good for you.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence

“When I suggested to Ben that he could try opening up to Alexa, given how supportive she was, he told me he thought he should be more self-reliant, saying, “I should be able to weather this on my own. Isn’t it up to me to meet my own emotional needs?” What a lonely thought. I told Ben that we all need other people to meet our emotional needs for comfort and closeness. That’s what relationships are all about.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Because they don’t have an ongoing, continuous self as the organizing center of their personality, emotions or stress can put them in a childlike mentality in which moments in time float separately.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Relatedness is different from relationship. In relatedness, there’s communication but no goal of having a satisfying emotional exchange. You stay in contact, handle others as you need to, and have whatever interactions are tolerable without exceeding the limits that work for you. In contrast, engaging in a real relationship means being open and establishing emotional reciprocity. If you try this with emotionally immature people, you’ll feel frustrated and invalidated. As soon as you start looking for emotional understanding from such people, you won’t be as balanced within yourself. It makes more sense to aim for simple relatedness with them, saving your relationship aspirations for people who can give something back.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“When people say, “You can’t have everything,” they’re really saying they don’t have what they need.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“The fact is, having a thought or feeling isn't initially under your control. You don't plan to think or feel things, you just do. Think of it this way: Your thoughts and feelings are an organic part of nature expressing itself through you. Nature isn't going to be dishonest about how you feel, and you don't have a choice about what thoughts nature brings up in you. Accepting the truth of your feelings and thoughts doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a whole person, and mature enough to know your own mind.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Having an affair helps them feel alive and special again and offers the possibility of getting their needs for attention met outside of their primary relationship without rocking the boat. Most of the time, they first try to talk to their partner about their unhappiness, since their instinct is to take responsibility for solving problems. But if their partner doesn’t listen or, worse, rebuffs these overtures, internalizers may go on the lookout for someone to save them—a classic externalizer approach.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents