Controlling People Quotes

“What blinds people the most to controlling behavior is the belief that the person who consistently defines them truly loves them.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Our ability to choose is our most basic freedom. When we define ourselves we choose. When we give meaning to our experience we also choose. The more aware we are of ourselves and our day-to-day experience, the more we are able to exercise freedom's power — the power of choice. Freedom depends upon clarity. We cannot exercise our freedom if we are confused. And, of course, being defined backwards leaves people confused. Backwards connections arise out of the Controller's confusion, and oppressive and controlling behaviors create confusion. When others define us, our freedom is assaulted because our awareness is assaulted. Awareness and freedom are intrinsically linked. Without freedom awareness fades. Without awareness freedom fades. If our freedom of choice is lost, life itself loses meaning. Despair fills the void of lost meaning.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Some people have not learned to know what their feelings mean. Some have been trained not to feel much. And some have been trained not to know that they have feelings.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Controllers think differing ideas and views are personal opposition to be rejected and destroyed. And, since Controllers identify themselves with their prescriptions, it becomes important to them that others be dissuaded of theirs. Their success is measured in conversions.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“If the spell can't be broken, if you are with a Spellbound person who will not change, your spiritual, if not your physical survival may depend upon your escaping.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“On the other hand, once they are anchored in someone, some Controllers appear to be respectful of most people. Not surprisingly, they may be described as kind, thoughtful, even charming by those with whom they have not established a Control Connection. Indeed they see themselves in this positive light. Some even think of themselves as wonderful because they have built their identity from the outside in, according to their chosen “wonderful” model. Most of us only rarely fall under the influence of the spell, because we are beside ourselves only under rare circumstances — for instance, when jolted from ourselves by traumatic events. Controllers, however, have adopted a “beside-themselves” lifestyle.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“People disconnect from us the moment they begin to define us. They begin to connect with us when they define themselves to us or ask us about ourselves. That's how we get to know them and how they get to know us. It doesn't work the other way around.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“But almost everyone I have spoken to has said that being the object of a Control Connection leaves them feeling disintegrated, as if they were being dismantled within. By”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Now it is clear that breaking the spell not only preserves our freedom, but freedom itself. Becoming a Spellbreaker is a matter of conscience.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“The distress and discord that permeate the lives of millions are clear messages meant to tell us something. Just as a searing physical pain says something is wrong, so, too, does the psychic pain that floats through the world. Whatever form it takes, it is a sign that people have forgotten what is real and what is not, what is pretend and what is not, who they are and who they are not.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“People who act against others truly act in a backwards way, doing the opposite of what they would need to do to realize their goal.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Some progress is progress. I see change.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“In some cultures, if you break a Control Connection, you are shunned, alienated from the society that originally created the taboo, the one you have known, the one from which you seek acceptance. Even their God, they say, will turn against you. But making up what God will do is just another way of establishing a backwards connection. Even keeping a relationship but at a distance may be forbidden in very oppressive families.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Paradoxically, Controllers usually see themselves as self-reliant even while they are dependent upon others to maintain their backwards connections and their fragile identity. They often carry the banner of rugged independence, of needing no one, while launching an ever-accelerating assault upon someone else's individuality. They are most threatened by Witnesses who do not conform to their particular idea of how things should be.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“We have learned that the need for connection is inherent in consciousness because consciousness is universal connection.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“strength flows from spirit full enough to nurture another, alive enough to act toward good, clear enough to understand, faithful enough to wait and see, fearless enough to reveal the truth, free enough to choose to learn, courageous enough to stand alone, connected enough to love the other.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Agreement and appreciation are not about being of one mind but about sharing and community”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“People who are unknowingly under the influence of people who are under the influence of the spell are likely to have one or more of the following illusions: It is reasonable for one human being to define another human being. They are stuck with another person's definition of them. They do not have the right to their own opinions. They can earn love and acceptance by abdicating to another person. They are “successful” if they fulfill another person's vision, even when it does not in any way support their own. They must have permission to act in matters that are their own business.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“You're too sensitive.”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You

“Would a white supremacist group bond together against an African-American group if the African-American group magically transformed into whites?”
― Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal With People Who Try to Control You