Controlling People Quotes

“Abuse grows from attitudes and values, not feelings. The roots are ownership, the trunk is entitlement, and the branches are control.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

“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

“If you alter your behaviour because you are frightened of how your partner will react, you are being abused.”
― Sandra Horley

“Nobody knows what God's plan is for your life, but a whole lot of people will guess for you if you let them.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“make an agreement to exercise mutual control over each other. The unspoken pact between them is, “It’s my job to make you happy, and your job to make me happy. And the best way to get you to work on my life is to act miserable. The more miserable I am, the more you will have to try to make me feel better.” Powerless people use various tactics, such as getting upset, withdrawing, nagging, ridiculing, pouting, crying, or getting angry, to pressure, manipulate, and punish one another into keeping this pact. However, this ongoing power play does nothing to make them happy and mitigate their anxiety in the long term. In fact, their anxiety only escalates by continually affirming that they are not actually powerful. Any sense of love and safety they feel by gaining or surrendering control is tenuous and fleeting. A relational bond built on mutual control simply cannot produce anything remotely like safety, love, or trust. It can only produce more fear, pain, distrust, punishment, and misery. And when taken to an extreme, it produces things like domestic violence.”
― Danny Silk, Keep Your Love On: Connection Communication And Boundaries

“People turned against each other cannot turn against those responsible.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“When people are vulnerable to control, they feel that they are selfish for deciding what to do with their own property. In reality, deciding for ourselves is the only way we can ever have true love, for then we are giving freely.”
― Henry Cloud, Changes That Heal: How to Understand the Past to Ensure a Healthier Future

“A bird cannot love freely when caged.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“Self-centered people often get angry when someone tells them no.

Stan said yes out of fear that he would lose love and that other people would get angry at him. These false motives and others keep us from setting boundaries:”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life

“Many neglected and abused children grow up to be adults who are afraid to take risks of striking out on their own. Many will remain dependent on their abusive parents and unable to separate from them. Others leave their abusive parents only to attach themselves to a partner who is controlling.”
― Beverly Engel, The Nice Girl Syndrome: Stop Being Manipulated and Abused -- And Start Standing Up for Yourself

“The more we're thrown into conflict with each other through engineered distrust, the less able we are to unite against those responsible.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“They like you more when you don't challenge them. They prefer to have an upper hand over you.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“Play with the emotions, play with the heart and the animal will surrender to yo”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“What it had done, however, was to give him a feeling of power and control that had taken him back to how he used to feel every day.”
― Val McDermid, Insidious Intent

“If they cannot control you in the four directions, they will control you inside the four walls”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Control leaves no room for trust.”
― Glennon Doyle, Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living / A Toolkit for Modern Life