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Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Book by Lindsay C. Gibson · 11 quotes · Psychology, Emotional Maturity, Empathy

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Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents Quotes

“No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent. Nevertheless, these children come to believe that the price of making a connection is to put other people first and treat them as more important. They think they can keep relationships by being the giver. Children who try to be good enough to win their parents’ love have no way of knowing that unconditional love cannot be bought with conditional behavior.”

EmotionUnconditional LoveEmotional AbuseNarcissistic AbuseChild DevelopmentGivers
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“Empathy is what makes people feel safe in relationships. Along with self-awareness, it's the soul of emotional intelligence, guiding people toward prosocial behavior and fairness in dealings with others. In contrast, nonempathic people overlook your feelings and don't seem to imagine your experience or be sensitive to it. It's important to be aware of this, because a person who isn't responsive to your feelings won't be emotionally safe when the two of you have any kind of disagreement.”

RelationshipsEmpathyEmotional IntelligenceEmotional Maturity
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“Emotionally immature adults communicate feelings in this same primitive way. As parents, when they’re distressed they upset their children and everyone around them, typically with the result that others are willing to do anything to make them feel better. In this role reversal, the child catches the contagion of the parent’s distress and feels responsible for making the parent feel better. However, if the upset parent isn’t trying to understand his or her own feelings, nothing ever gets resolved. Instead the upsetting feelings just get spread around to others,”

Psychology
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“It’s as though they (emotionally immature people) think they’re off the hook if others don’t spell out their pain or difficulty in words. They believe that they aren’t required to be tuned in to others’ feelings. However, emotionally mature people are almost always sensitive to others, knowing this is simply part of having good relationships.”

Psychology
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“Emotional parents (the emotionally immature type) are the most infantile of the four types. They give the impression that they need to be watched over and handled carefully. It doesn’t take much to upset them, and then everyone in the family scrambles to soothe them. When emotional parents disintegrate, they take their children with them into their personal meltdown. Their children experience their despair, rage, or hatred in all its intensity. It’s no wonder that everyone in the family feels like they’re walking on eggshells. These parents’ emotional instability is the most predictable thing about them.”

Psychology
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“Emotional parents (the emotionally immature type) are the most infantile of the four types. They give the impression that they need to be watched over and handled carefully. It doesn’t take much to upset them, and then everyone in the family scrambles to soothe them. When emotional parents disintegrate, they take their children with them into their personal meltdown. Their children experience their despair, rage, or hatred in all its intensity. It’s no wonder that everyone in the family feels like they’re walking on eggshells. These parents’ emotional instability is the most predictable thing about them. (...) People are nervous around them because their emotions can escalate so quickly, and because it’s so frightening to see someone you know come unglued. Suicide threats are especially terrifying to children, who feel the crushing burden of trying to keep their parent alive but don’t know what to do.”

Psychology
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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“Internalized parental voices probably originate in the left hemisphere of the brain, where language and logic rule. When the left brain is allowed to run the show, it puts perfectionism and efficiency before feeling, and judgment before compassion”

PsychologyCoping MechanismsEmotional Trauma
Book:Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
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