Chao Zhao

“Another cognitive sign of emotional immaturity is overintellectualizing and getting obsessed about certain topics. In those areas, emotionally immature people can conceptualize well—indeed, excessively. But they don’t apply that ability to self-reflection or being emotionally sensitive toward others.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“sociopaths may do an excellent job of reading a person’s emotional vulnerabilities, but without the ability to resonate with the other person’s feelings, knowledge of those feelings becomes a tool for predation, not connection.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Emotional immaturity is a real phenomenon that has been studied and written about for a long time. It undermines people’s ability to deal with stress and to be emotionally intimate with others. Emotionally immature people often grew up in a family environment that curtailed their full emotional and intellectual development. As a result, they have an oversimplified approach to life, narrowing situations down to fit their rigid coping skills. Having such a limited sense of self makes them egocentric and undermines their ability to be sensitive to other people’s needs and feelings.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Instead of having a well-integrated sense of who they are, emotionally immature people are more like an amalgam of various borrowed parts, many of which don’t go together well. Because they had to shut down important parts of themselves out of fear of their parents’ reactions, their personalities formed in isolated clumps, like pieces of a puzzle that don’t fit together. This explains their inconsistent reactions, which make them so difficult to understand.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents