• Author: Lindsay C. Gibson
  • Full Title: Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
  • Tags: #Inbox #books

Highlights

  • Emotionally immature parents fear genuine emotion and pull back from emotional closeness. They use coping mechanisms that resist reality rather than dealing with it. They don’t welcome self-reflection, so they rarely accept blame or apologize. Their immaturity makes them inconsistent and emotionally unreliable, and they’re blind to their children’s needs once their own agenda comes into play. In this book, you’ll learn that when parents are emotionally immature, their children’s emotional needs will almost always lose out to the parents’ own survival instincts. (Location 136)
  • Knowing about differences in emotional maturity gives you a way of understanding why you can feel so emotionally lonely in spite of other people’s claims of love and kinship. (Location 150)
  • The good news is that by grasping the concept of emotional immaturity, you can develop more realistic expectations of other people, accepting the level of relationship possible with them instead of feeling hurt by their lack of response. (Location 152)
  • Among psychotherapists, it’s long been known that emotionally disengaging from toxic parents is the way to restore peace and self-sufficiency. (Location 154)
  • Chapter 1: How Emotionally Immature Parents Affect Their Adult Children’s Lives (Location 211)
  • Emotional loneliness comes from not having enough emotional intimacy with other people. (Location 212)
  • 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. (Location 216)
  • You might call it a feeling of emptiness or being alone in the world. (Location 220)
  • With a mature parent, the child’s remedy for loneliness is simply to go to the parent for affectionate connection. (Location 224)
  • Emotional intimacy involves knowing that you have someone you can tell anything to, someone to go to with all your feelings, about anything and everything. You feel completely safe opening up to the other person, whether in the form of words, through an exchange of looks, or by just being together quietly in a state of connection. Emotional intimacy is profoundly fulfilling, creating a sense of being seen for who you really are. It can only exist when the other person seeks to know you, not judge you. (Location 232)
  • More importantly, they’re emotionally attuned to their children, noticing their children’s moods and welcoming their feelings with interest. (Location 240)
  • Parents who are emotionally immature, on the other hand, are so self-preoccupied that they don’t notice their children’s inner experiences. (Location 246)
  • Such parents may even become nervous and angry if their children get upset, punishing them instead of comforting them. These reactions shut down children’s instinctive urge to reach out, closing the door to emotional contact. (Location 248)
  • This kind of emotional pain and loneliness is actually a healthy message. The anxiety felt by David and Rhonda was letting them know that they were in dire need of emotional contact. (Location 272)
  • Knowing the cause of your emotional loneliness is the first step toward finding more fulfilling relationships. (Location 275)
  • How Children Cope with Emotional Loneliness (Location 276)
  • Lacking adequate parental support or connection, many emotionally deprived children are eager to leave childhood behind. They perceive that the best solution is to grow up quickly and become self-sufficient. These children become competent beyond their years but lonely at their core. They often jump into adulthood prematurely, getting jobs as soon as they can, becoming sexually active, marrying early, or joining the service. (Location 282)
  • They often settle for emotional loneliness in their relationships because it feels normal to them, like their early home life. (Location 288)
  • people like Sophie, who function so well that other people think they have no problems. In fact, their competence makes it hard for them to take their own pain seriously. “I have it all,” they’re likely to say. “I should be happy. Why do I feel so miserable?” This is the classic confusion of a person whose physical needs were met in childhood while emotional needs remained unfulfilled. (Location 319)
  • People like Sophie often feel guilty for complaining. (Location 322)
  • People who lacked emotional engagement in childhood, men and women alike, often can’t believe that someone would want to have a relationship with them just because of who they are. They believe that if they want closeness, they must play a role that always puts the other person first. (Location 344)
  • 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. (Location 367)
  • Not Trusting Your Instincts Emotionally immature parents don’t know how to validate their child’s feelings and instincts. (Location 382)
  • But if you’ve been trained to discount your feelings, you’ll feel guilty for complaining if everything looks okay on the outside. If you have a place to live, a regular paycheck, enough food, and a partner or friends, conventional wisdom says, “How bad can it be?” (Location 394)
  • For every explanation she stumbled through, they countered with several reasons why she was wrong. (Location 405)
  • Meaghan’s real problem wasn’t that she didn’t know how to express herself; it was that her family didn’t want to hear her. Her husband and parents weren’t trying to understand; they were focused on trying to convince her she was mistaken. (Location 409)
  • Mutual emotional responsiveness is the single most essential ingredient of human relationships. (Location 414)
  • Since childhood, Meaghan had been trained to think that her natural desire to feel special and loved was selfish. (Location 426)
  • Childhood Loneliness Beneath Adult Success (Location 462)
  • Chapter 2: Recognizing the Emotionally Immature Parent (Location 506)
  • In this book, our mission is not to disrespect or betray your parents, but to finally see them objectively. (Location 508)
  • As you’ll see, much of their immature, hurtful behavior is unintentional. By viewing these and other aspects of your parents more dispassionately, you can understand things about yourself and your history that you might not have thought about before. (Location 510)
  • Most signs of emotional immaturity are beyond a person’s conscious control, and most emotionally immature parents have no awareness of how they’ve affected their children. (Location 512)
  • Exercise: Assessing Your Parent’s Emotional Immaturity (Location 528)
  • parent. If you’d like to fill out this assessment for more than one parent or stepparent, use the downloadable version of this exercise available at http://www.newharbinger.com/31700. (Location 533)
  • My parent often overreacted to relatively minor things. (Location 536)
  • My parent tended to be a black-and-white thinker, and unreceptive to new ideas. (Location 558)
  • “Emotional maturity” means a person is capable of thinking objectively and conceptually while sustaining deep emotional connections to others. People who are emotionally mature can function independently while also having deep emotional attachments, smoothly incorporating both into their daily life. They are direct about pursuing what they want, yet do so without exploiting other people. They’ve differentiated from their original family relationships sufficiently to build a life of their own (Bowen 1978). They have a well-developed sense of self (Kohut 1985) and identity (Erikson 1963) and treasure their closest relationships. (Location 572)
  • Emotionally mature people are comfortable and honest about their own feelings and get along well with other people, thanks to their well-developed empathy, impulse control, and emotional intelligence (Goleman 1995). They’re interested in other people’s inner lives and enjoy opening up and sharing with others in an emotionally intimate way. When there’s a problem, they deal with others directly to smooth out differences (Bowen 1978). (Location 577)
  • Emotionally mature people cope with stress in a realistic, forward-looking way, while consciously processing their thoughts and feelings. They can control their emotions when necessary, anticipate the future, adapt to reality, and use empathy and humor to ease difficult situations and strengthen bonds with others (Vaillant 2000). They enjoy being objective and know themselves well enough to admit their weaknesses (Siebert 1996). (Location 580)
  • Personality Traits Associated with Emotional Immaturity (Location 584)
  • They Are Rigid and Single-Minded (Location 588)
  • They Have Low Stress Tolerance (Location 593)
  • They have trouble admitting mistakes and instead discount the facts and blame others. (Location 596)
  • They Do What Feels Best (Location 599)
  • They Are Subjective, Not Objective (Location 609)
  • What is true doesn’t matter nearly as much as what feels true (Bowen 1978). Trying to get a subjectively oriented person to be objective about anything is an exercise in futility. Facts, logic, history—all fall on deaf ears where the emotionally immature are concerned. (Location 611)
  • They Have Little Respect for Differences (Location 614)
  • They’re only comfortable in role-defined relationships where everyone holds the same beliefs. The quieter, nicer ones are the same, but in a quieter, nicer way. (Location 618)
  • They Are Egocentric (Location 620)
  • emotionally immature adults are commanded by anxiety and insecurity, like wounded people who must keep checking their intactness. They live in a perpetual state of insecurity, fearing that they’ll be exposed as bad, inadequate, or unlovable. They keep their defenses high so other people can’t get close enough to threaten their shaky sense of self-worth. (Location 623)
  • They Are Self-Preoccupied and Self-Involved (Location 629)
  • Their self-esteem rises or falls depending on how others react to them. They can’t stand to be criticized, so they minimize their mistakes. Because their self-involvement is all-consuming, other people’s feelings are eclipsed by their needs. For instance, after one woman told her mother how much it hurt to hear criticisms of her father, her mother said, “Well, if I couldn’t tell you, I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to.” (Location 631)
  • They Are Self-Referential, Not Self-Reflective (Location 639)
  • Those who are more socially skilled might listen more politely, but you still won’t hold their interest. They may not overtly change the subject, but they won’t ask follow-up questions or express curiosity about the details of your experience. (Location 645)
  • Because they lack self-reflection, emotionally immature people don’t consider their role in a problem. They don’t assess their behavior or question their motives. If they caused a problem, they dismiss it by saying they didn’t intend to hurt you. After all, you can’t blame them for something they didn’t mean to do, right? In this way, their egocentric focus remains on their intention, not the impact on you. (Location 649)
  • They Like to Be the Center of Attention (Location 653)
  • They Promote Role Reversal (Location 661)
  • In this case, the parent relates to the child as if the child were the parent, expecting attentiveness and comfort from the child. (Location 662)
  • They Have Low Empathy and Are Emotionally Insensitive (Location 686)
  • Being out of touch with their own deeper feelings, they’re strikingly blind to how they make other people feel. (Location 688)
  • Instead, their empathy operates at an instinctual or superficially sentimental level. You may feel sized up, but not felt for. (Location 707)
  • Why There Are So Many Emotionally Immature Parents (Location 712)
  • For many parents, “spare the rod and spoil the child” was considered conventional wisdom. They weren’t concerned about children’s feelings; they saw parenting as being about teaching children how to behave. (Location 725)
  • If you don’t have a basic sense of who you are as a person, you can’t learn how to emotionally engage with other people at a deep level. (Location 756)
  • Not realizing the magnitude of their parents’ developmental limitations, many children of emotionally immature people think there must be a genuine, fully developed person hiding inside the parent, a real self they could connect to if only their parent would let them. This is especially true if the parent was occasionally affectionate or attentive. (Location 789)
  • To avoid dangerous emotional intimacy, they stick to a well-worn life script and resist talking about or processing emotions, including in relationships. (Location 824)
  • Emotionally immature parents can do a good job of taking care of their children’s physical and material needs. In the world of food, shelter, and education, these parents may be able to provide everything that’s needed. In terms of things that are physical, tangible, or activity related, many of these parents make sure their children get every advantage they can afford. But when it comes to emotional matters, they can be oblivious to their children’s needs. (Location 836)
  • Being well cared for in nonemotional areas can create confusion in people who grow up feeling emotionally lonely. They have overwhelming physical evidence that their parents loved and sacrificed for them, but they feel a painful lack of emotional security and closeness with their parents. (Location 847)
  • The ability to feel mixed emotions is a sign of maturity. If people can blend contradictory emotions together, such as happiness with guilt, or anger with love, it shows that they can encompass life’s emotional complexity. (Location 865)
  • If your parents grew up in a family atmosphere that was full of anxiety and judgment, they may have learned to think narrowly and resist complexity. (Location 873)
  • Emotionally immature people who are otherwise intelligent can think conceptually and show insight as long as they don’t feel too threatened in the moment. Their intellectual objectivity is limited to topics that aren’t emotionally arousing to them. This can be puzzling to their children, who experience two very different sides to their parents: sometimes intelligent and insightful, other times narrow-minded and impossible to reason with. (Location 887)
  • For example, one man found his mother’s phone conversations draining and boring because she never talked about anything substantive. Instead, she only asked him mundane questions, like what he was doing at the moment or what the weather was like. He told me, “She just reports the facts and never talks about anything other than ‘Here’s what’s happened lately.’ She doesn’t connect with me in the conversation. I get so frustrated and want to say, ‘Can’t we talk about something meaningful?’ But she can’t.” (Location 893)
  • Chapter 3: How It Feels to Have a Relationship with an Emotionally Immature Parent (Location 913)
  • Our strongest bond is to our primary attachment parent, the one we turn to first if scared, hungry, tired, or ill. (Location 917)
  • Exercise: Assessing Your Childhood Difficulties with an Emotionally Immature Parent (Location 923)
  • http://www.newharbinger.com/31700. (Location 928)
  • I didn’t feel listened to; (Location 930)
  • My parent wasn’t sensitive to my feelings. (Location 932)
  • Open, honest communication with my parent was difficult or impossible. (Location 938)
  • Communication Is Difficult or Impossible (Location 954)
  • They Provoke Anger John Bowlby, a pioneer in studying children’s reactions to separation and loss, observed that babies and children get angry as a normal response to being left by their parents. (Location 980)
  • Anger and even rage are adaptive reactions to feelings of abandonment, giving us energy to protest and change unhealthy emotional situations. (Location 983)
  • For Brenda it was as if her mother had repeatedly walked out on her. (Location 986)
  • Alternatively, some people express their anger in a passive-aggressive way, attempting to defeat their parents and other authority figures with behaviors like forgetting, lying, delaying, or avoiding. (Location 994)
  • they usually act out their emotional needs instead of talking about them. They use a method of communication known as emotional contagion (Hatfield, Rapson, and Le 2007), which gets other people to feel what they’re feeling. (Location 998)
  • 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. (Location 1004)
  • They Don’t Do Emotional Work (Location 1008)
  • Emotionally immature parents don’t try to understand the emotional experiences of other people—including their own children. (Location 1009)
  • However they respond, the message is the same: they can’t be expected to make the effort to understand what’s going on inside other people. (Location 1012)
  • “Emotional labor is the expenditure of time, effort, and energy utilizing brain and muscle to understand and fulfill emotional needs. By emotional needs, I mean the human needs for feeling wanted, appreciated, loved, and cared for. (Location 1014)
  • Emotionally immature people, on the other hand, often take pride in their lack of this skill. They rationalize their impulsive and insensitive responses with excuses like “I’m just saying what I think” or “I can’t change who I am.” (Location 1028)
  • Emotionally immature people want others to show concern about their problems, but they aren’t likely to accept helpful suggestions. They reflexively reject efforts to make them feel cared about. They pull others in, but when people try to help, they push them away. (Location 1040)
  • They dislike having to tell people what they need and instead hold back, waiting to see whether anyone will notice how they’re feeling. (Location 1043)
  • But emotionally immature people resist facing their mistakes. (Location 1052)
  • Their Self-Esteem Rides on Your Compliance (Location 1086)
  • People who are emotionally immature only feel good about themselves when they can get other people to give them what they want and to act like they think they should. (Location 1087)
  • For emotionally immature people, all interactions boil down to the question of whether they’re good people or bad ones, which explains their extreme defensiveness if you try to talk to them about something they did. They often respond to even mild complaints about their behavior with an extreme statement, like “Well, then, I must be the worst mother ever!” or “Obviously I can’t do anything right!” They would rather shut down communication than hear something that could make them feel like bad people. (Location 1095)
  • If there’s anything emotionally immature people are keen on in relationships, it’s role compliance. Roles simplify life and make decisions clear-cut. (Location 1100)
  • When parents feel entitled to do what they want simply because they’re in the role of parent, this is a form of role entitlement. They act as though being a parent exempts them from respecting boundaries or being considerate. (Location 1105)
  • As parents, they try to force their children into acting a certain way by not speaking to them, threatening to reject them, or getting other family members to gang up against them. (Location 1116)
  • Role coercion often involves a heavy dose of shame and guilt, such as telling a child that he or she is a bad person for wanting something the parent disapproves of. (Location 1117)
  • Yet emotionally immature parents have no qualms about doing it because they aren’t comfortable with complexity and prefer life simplified. (Location 1127)
  • In the process of getting to know each other, they discover and even cherish differences between them. Emotional intimacy is invigorating and energizes people toward personal growth as they enjoy the interest and support of another person. (Location 1132)
  • Through this enmeshed relationship, they create a sense of certainty, predictability, and security that relies on the reassuring familiarity of each person playing a comfortable role for the other. If one person tries to step out of the implicit bounds of the relationship, the other often experiences great anxiety that’s only eased by a return to the prescribed role. (Location 1136)
  • Remember, emotionally immature parents relate on the basis of roles, not individuality. If you had an independent, self-reliant personality, your parent wouldn’t have seen you as a needy child for whom he or she could play the role of rescuing parent. Instead, you may have been pegged as the child without needs, the little grown-up. It wasn’t some sort of insufficiency in you that made your parent pay more attention to your sibling; rather, it’s likely that you weren’t dependent enough to trigger your parent’s enmeshment instincts. (Location 1144)
  • Interestingly, self-sufficient children who don’t spur their parents to become enmeshed are often left alone to create a more independent and self-determined life (Location 1148)
  • Emotionally immature parents can act out their need for enmeshment even with people who aren’t close family members. If there’s an enmeshment void, they’ll go outside the immediate family to fill it. They might also become enmeshed with a group, such as a church or other organization. (Location 1171)
  • They have no investment in being consistent, so they say whatever gives them an edge in the moment. They may be capable of strategic thinking in their work or in other pursuits, but when it comes to emotional situations, they go for the immediate advantage. Lying is a perfect example of a momentary win that feels good but is destructive to a relationship in the long run. (Location 1188)
  • Instead, with each new moment they leave their past behind, freeing them from any sense of responsibility for their actions. (Location 1205)
  • Therefore, when someone feels hurt by something they did in the past, they tend to accuse the person of dwelling on the past for no good reason. (Location 1205)
  • They don’t understand why others can’t just forgive, forget, and move on. Because of their limited sense of the continuity of time, they don’t understand that it takes time to heal from a betrayal. (Location 1206)
  • Emotionally immature people have a poor sense of personal history and resist being accountable for their past actions or future consequences. (Location 1216)
  • Real communication is nearly impossible because of their poor empathy and rigid emphasis on roles. (Location 1217)
  • They neglect relationship repair and reciprocity and shirk the emotional work necessary to be sensitive to other people. (Location 1218)
  • Chapter 4: Four Types of Emotionally Immature Parents (Location 1223)
  • There’s basically one way to provide nurturing love, but many ways to frustrate a child’s need for love. (Location 1225)
  • All tend to be self-involved, narcissistic, and emotionally unreliable. All share the common traits of egocentricity, insensitivity, and a limited capacity for genuine emotional intimacy. All use nonadaptive coping mechanisms that distort reality rather than dealing with it (Location 1229)
  • Most tolerate frustration poorly and use emotional tactics or threats rather than verbal communication to get what they want. (Location 1234)
  • How Different Types of Parenting Affect Infant Attachment (Location 1239)
  • Rejecting parents engage in a range of behaviors that make you wonder why they have a family in the first place. (Location 1280)
    • Note: Mom
  • They mostly want to be left alone to do their thing. (Location 1284)
  • The Emotional Parent (Location 1290)
  • The Driven Parent (Location 1319)
  • Most of the time, you wouldn’t notice anything unhealthy about them. (Location 1323)
  • If you look a bit deeper, you can detect the emotional immaturity in these upstanding, responsible people. It shows up in the way they make assumptions about other people, expecting everyone to want and value the same things they do. Their excessive self-focus manifests as a conviction that they know what’s “good” for others. (Location 1325)
  • In addition, their worry about getting enough done runs them like a motor. Goals take precedence over the feelings of others, including their children. (Location 1330)
  • The Passive Parent (Location 1367)
  • They passively acquiesce to dominant personalities and often partner with more intense types who are also immature, which makes sense given that people with similar emotional maturity levels are attracted to one another (Location 1369)
  • Passive parents are as immature and self-involved as the other types, but their easygoing and often playful ways make them much more lovable than the other three types (Location 1374)
  • focus of someone’s affectionate attention. They enjoy the child’s innocent openness and can get on the child’s level in a delightful way. (Location 1377)
  • Children wisely know not to expect or ask for much help from these parents. While passive parents often enjoy their children, have fun with them, and make them feel special, the children sense that their parents aren’t really there for them in any essential way. (Location 1381)
  • The Rejecting Parent (Location 1411)
  • They often use avoidance of eye contact to signal their distaste for emotional intimacy or sometimes employ a blank look or hostile stare designed to make others go away. (Location 1417)
  • Exercise: Determining Your Parent’s Type (Location 1431)
  • bearing in mind that parents of any type can exhibit traits of the other types when very stressed. (Location 1433)
  • Characteristics of emotional immaturity common to all types include self-preoccupation, low empathy, disregard for boundaries, resisting emotional intimacy, poor communication, an absence of self-reflection, refusal to repair relationship problems, emotional reactivity, impulsiveness, and problems sustaining emotional closeness. (Location 1434)
  • Is defensively nonintimate Doesn’t engage in reciprocal communication; just talks about himself or herself (Location 1446)
  • Isn’t self-reflective Has poor relationship repair skills Is reactive, not thoughtful Is either too close or too distant (Location 1448)
  • Likes to pretend he or she doesn’t run the show (Location 1457)
  • Sees himself or herself as a victim (Location 1459)
  • Is goal-obsessed and busy, with machinelike tunnel vision (Location 1474)
  • Likes to run the show (Location 1477)
  • Sees himself or herself as a fixer (Location 1478)
  • Likes someone else to run the show or be the bad guy Sees himself or herself as mellow and good-natured (Location 1496)
  • Has no relationship repair skills (Location 1507)
  • Sees himself or herself as independent from others (Location 1516)
  • All are draining to be around in their own ways, and ultimately all interactions center around them. In addition, all are incapable of true interpersonal reciprocity. (Location 1520)
  • their children tend to fall into just two main categories: internalizers and externalizers. In (Location 1523)
  • Chapter 5: How Different Children React to Emotionally Immature Parenting (Location 1525)
  • Sadly, the true self, which consists of a child’s innate aptitudes and genuine feelings, takes a backseat to what seems necessary to secure a place in the family. (Location 1534)
  • The Origins of Healing Fantasies (Location 1539)
  • the one thing all emotionally deprived children have in common is coming up with a fantasy about how they will eventually get what they need. (Location 1541)
  • As children, we make sense of the world by putting together a story that explains our life to us. (Location 1543)
  • An example of a parent who pressures a child into a role-self would be an insecure mother who reinforces the fears of a clingy, anxious child to give herself a secure role as the center of that child’s life. (Location 1586)
  • Or perhaps both parents turn a blind eye to their own underlying anger and self-centeredness and see these traits in their child instead. (We’re loving parents, but our kid is mean and disrespectful.) (Location 1589)
  • Exercise: Identifying Your Healing Fantasy and Role-Self (Location 1604)
  • At the top of your “Healing Fantasy” page, copy and complete the following sentences. Don’t think about it too much; just write down what immediately comes to you. I wish other people were more . Why is it so hard for people to ? For a change, I would love someone to treat me like . Maybe one of these days I’ll find someone who will . In an ideal world with good people, other people would . (Location 1608)
  • Now we’ll use a similar process to help you discover your role-self. On your “Role-Self” page, copy and complete the following sentences, again writing down the first thing that comes to mind. I try hard to be . The main reason people like me is because I . Other people don’t appreciate how much I . I always have to be the one who . I’ve tried to be the kind of person who . (Location 1618)
  • Internalizers are mentally active and love to learn things. They try to solve problems from the inside out by being self-reflective and trying to learn from their mistakes. They’re sensitive and try to understand cause and effect. Seeing life as an opportunity to develop themselves, they enjoy becoming more competent. They believe they can make things better by trying harder, and they instinctively take responsibility for solving problems on their own. Their main sources of anxiety are feeling guilty when they displease others and the fear of being exposed as imposters. Their biggest relationship downfall is being overly self-sacrificing and then becoming resentful of how much they do for others. (Location 1647)
  • They depend on external soothing, which makes them susceptible to substance abuse, addictive relationships, and many forms of immediate gratification. Their main source of anxiety is that they will be cut off from the external sources their security depends upon. Their biggest relationship problems include being attracted to impulsive people and being overly dependent on others for support and stability. (Location 1660)
  • most emotionally immature parents are externalizers and struggle against reality rather than coping with it. They blame the outside world for their problems, as if reality were at fault. (Location 1672)
  • Left unchecked, an early externalizing coping style results in emotional immaturity. Most emotionally immature parents have an externalizing coping style. Because they’re always looking outside themselves to feel better, externalizers don’t work to develop better self-control. They get overwhelmed by emotion and either deny the seriousness of their problems or blame other people. Externalizers think reality should conform to their wishes, whereas more mature people deal with reality and adapt to it (Location 1693)
  • Milder or quieter externalizers can look like internalizers because they’re so nonconfrontational, but they can be identified by their belief that others should change. That said, milder externalizers may be amenable to growth and self-reflection as they get older. (Location 1707)
  • Many of my clients who are internalizers have lived with out-of-control, externalizing siblings. These clients all had the same situation: a predatory, indulged sibling—whether older or younger—made life miserable for them as children while their parents did nothing to intervene. If the sibling was bored or upset, he or she took it out on the client. (Location 1729)
  • Chapter 6: What It’s Like to Be an Internalizer (Location 1879)
  • Internalizers are extremely sensitive and, far more than most people, notice everything. They react to life as if they were an emotional tuning fork, picking up and resonating with vibrations from other people and the world around them. (Location 1890)
  • And while externalizers are told that their behavior is a problem, internalizers get the message that their very nature is the problem. (Location 1909)
  • Because they’re so attuned to feelings, internalizers are extremely sensitive to the quality of emotional intimacy in their relationships. Their entire personality longs for emotional spontaneity and intimacy, and they can’t be satisfied with less. Therefore, when they’re raised by immature and emotionally phobic parents, they feel painfully lonely. (Location 1914)
  • Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally. (Location 1919)
  • 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. They (Location 1920)
  • When internalizing children have self-involved parents, they often think that being helpful and hiding their needs will win their parents’ love. (Location 1927)
  • Her feelings of isolation didn’t match the official family story of loving togetherness. (Location 1944)
  • self-preoccupied (Location 1947)
  • “My parents are utterly unempathetic. We’re never on the same wavelength. They don’t want to be on my wavelength. It’s safer for them, but for me it’s exhausting.” (Location 1950)
  • Instinctively turning to others for comfort when stressed makes people stronger and more adaptive. (Location 1975)
  • Due to their perceptiveness and strong needs for social engagement, children who are internalizers are usually adept at finding potential sources of emotional connection outside the family. (Location 1981)
  • Spirituality can also provide this emotional nurturance, as internalizers experience and relate to a greater presence that accompanies them no matter what. (Location 1985)
  • Externalizers also have needs for emotional comforting, but they tend to force such needs on other people, taking others emotionally hostage with their reactivity. They often use their behavior to coerce certain responses from other people, but because they achieve these responses through manipulation, the attention they receive is never as satisfying as a free and genuine exchange of emotional intimacy. (Location 1987)
  • 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. (Location 1989)
  • Anger, blame, criticism, and domination are all signs of poorly functioning skills in seeking comfort. Externalizers simply don’t know how to reach out for soothing. (Location 1996)
  • Internalizers Are Apologetic About Needing Help (Location 2010)
  • They often downplay their suffering as being over “silly things” or “stupid stuff.” (Location 2013)
  • They’re convinced that their deepest feelings are a nuisance to other people. (Location 2018)
  • (If you’re interested in exploring whether you may have experienced emotional deprivation in childhood, the 1993 book Reinventing Your Life, by Jeffrey Young and Janet Klosko, offers additional information to help people determine if they were emotionally deprived.) (Location 2051)
  • They may be characterized as “old souls,” with their parents counting on them to do the right thing. They willingly oblige, playing a role that’s overly self-reliant, which often leads to an adult life of overextending themselves for others. (Location 2062)
  • Unfortunately, children who become so independent may not learn how to ask for help later in life when it’s readily available. It often falls to psychotherapists or other counselors to coax these people into accepting their need for help as legitimate. (Location 2102)
  • Internalizers put a lot of emotional work into their family relationships. As a reminder, emotional work involves using empathy, foresight, and self-control to foster relationships and get along well with others. (Location 2117)
  • Many internalizers subconsciously believe that neglecting oneself is a sign of being a good person. (Location 2188)
  • For example, sensitive parents teach their children to notice and identify their fatigue, instead of making them feel anxious and lazy for needing to rest. (Location 2195)
  • It’s hard for internalizers to give up the fight to be loved, but sometimes they eventually realize that they can’t single-handedly change how another person relates to them. They finally feel resentment and begin to withdraw emotionally. When an internalizer ultimately does give up, the other person may be caught off guard, since the internalizer had continued to reach out and try to connect for so long. (Location 2209)
  • Chapter 7: Breaking Down and Awakening (Location 2220)
  • You can think of the true self as an extremely accurate, self-informing neurological feedback system that points each individual toward optimal energy and functioning. (Location 2231)
  • We can use fluctuations in the energy of our true selves as a guidance system to tell us when we’re in alignment with a life path that fits us well (Location 2234)
  • Your true self has the same needs as a flourishing, healthy child: to grow, be known, and express itself. Above all, your true self keeps pushing for your expansion, as if your self-actualization were the most important thing on earth. (Location 2240)
  • What were you like before you started trying to be someone else? Before you learned to judge and criticize yourself, what did you enjoy doing? What made you feel good? If you could be the person you really are (and didn’t have to worry about money), what would your life be like right now? (Location 2257)
  • I recommend looking back to who you were before fourth grade. What were you interested in? Who were your favorite people, and what did you like about them? If you had free time, what did you like to do? How did you like to play? What was your idea of a perfect day? What really raised your energies? Write down your thoughts about this in no particular order, as they come to you, beneath the heading “My True Self.” (Location 2260)
  • When you finish that list, flip the paper over to the half with the heading “My Role-Self.” Contemplate who you’ve had to become in order to feel admired and loved. Are you now involved in things that you aren’t really interested in? What do you make yourself do because you think it means you’re a good person? Are there people you are involved with who deplete your energy and make you feel drained? What are you spending time on that’s boring to you? How would you describe the social role you try to play? How do you hope others see you? Which of your personality traits do you try to cover up? What are you glad nobody knows about you? (Location 2264)
  • People experience a breakdown when the pain of living in role-selves and healing fantasies begins to outweigh any potential benefits. (Location 2273)
  • When you’re going through a breakdown, a good question to ask is what is actually breaking down. We usually think it’s our self. But what’s typically happening is that our struggle to deny our emotional truth is breaking down. Emotional distress is a signal that it’s getting harder to remain emotionally unconscious. It means we’re about to discover our true selves underneath all that story business. (Location 2275)
  • Likewise, Polish psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski (1972) theorized that emotional distress is potentially a sign of growth, not necessarily illness. He saw psychological symptoms as coming from a freshly activated urge to grow and coined the term “positive disintegration” to describe times when people break down inside in order to reorganize into more emotionally complex beings. (Location 2283)
  • Her love of learning made her want to understand herself and other people, but her family saw that kind of psychological interest as a sign of maladjustment. (Location 2299)
  • Rather than seeing that Aileen was using her emotional pain as a tool for growth and self-understanding, they wondered why she was wasting so much time and money rehashing the past. (Location 2302)
  • How much time have you spent wishing this person would act differently toward you? (Location 2338)
  • Do you think you might be playing out a self-effacing role that no longer serves you? Are you ready to see yourself differently and relate to this person as you would to anyone else? (Location 2338)
  • Sometimes giving up a healing fantasy of how we will finally win love means we have to face unwanted feelings about people close to us. Many of us tend to feel guilty and ashamed for feelings we deem to be unacceptable. (Location 2341)
  • Tilde’s depression lifted as soon as she accepted her genuine feelings toward Kajsa. Finally allowing herself to know that she didn’t like her mother, even though she was grateful to her, released her from an impossible bind. She realized that she could still have contact with her mother, but that she didn’t have to pretend to feel the “right” way. (Location 2364)
  • You can do this exercise anytime you’re feeling especially anxious or in a down mood. At those times, ask yourself whether you might be harboring some (Location 2369)
  • hidden feelings. Consider the times when you feel worst and see if they’re related to thinking about a certain person. (In my experience, the two feelings people seem most reluctant to admit are being afraid of someone or not liking someone.) (Location 2370)
  • Then let yourself speak (or whisper) your honest truth out loud. You might try a phrase like “I don’t like it when this person ,” describing their behavior. When you hit upon your true feelings, you’ll feel a release of tension or sense of relief in your body. (Location 2375)
  • Some people think it’s necessary to confront the other person to get a true resolution, but I believe this is often counterproductive and provokes too much anxiety. Disclosing feelings too soon may flood you with unnecessary anxiety—not to mention risking a backlash—when you’re just beginning to get in touch with your true feelings. (Location 2379)
  • Just to be clear, what helps isn’t telling the other person; it’s knowing what you really feel. Simply admitting your true feelings and stating them out loud can make a huge difference in regaining your emotional peace. (Location 2382)
  • Because anger is an expression of individuality, it’s the emotion that emotionally immature parents most often punish their children for having. (Location 2385)
  • It’s often a good sign when overly responsible, anxious, or depressed people begin to be consciously aware of feeling angry. It indicates that their true self is coming to the fore and that they’re beginning to care about themselves. (Location 2387)
  • It’s very empowering to be angry. I don’t want to live a lie anymore. It’s been lonely and disappointing trying to relate to my parents. Being with them is isolating.” (Location 2395)
  • “I tried to see everybody as good. I thought everyone loved one another. I was naive. I thought that if you were nice to people, at the end of the day (Location 2398)
  • things would get fixed. I thought that my parents would actually love me, and that my brother and sister might care about what I’m interested in. But now I’ve learned that I need to do what’s right for me and trust myself. I really do enjoy my own company. I don’t want to waste my time anymore. I hope I’ll find people I can trust. I’m not going to try to make it work with people who are distant or unsupportive. I’ll be cordial and polite, but I’m not moving in close just to be disappointed.” (Location 2399)
  • One of the hardest fantasies to wake up from is the belief that our parents are wiser and know more than we do. (Location 2450)
  • And even as adults, people may strongly resist seeing their parents’ immaturity for what it is. It can feel better to remain naive about their limitations than to look at them objectively. (Location 2451)
  • It’s important for people to consciously appreciate their strengths. Unfortunately, the children of emotionally immature parents usually don’t develop much appreciation for their positive qualities because self-involved parents have little or no ability to reflect their children’s strengths. As a result, these children often feel a little embarrassed to think of themselves in terms of their most positive qualities. They’re accustomed to putting others in the limelight and worry that they’ll get a swelled head if they recognize their own strengths. However, (Location 2463)
  • When I say “working through,” I mean the mental and emotional process of coming to grips with painful realities. Think of it as a process of breaking down something that’s initially too big to swallow: you chew on it until it can become a digestible part of your history. (Location 2487)
  • Chapter 8: How to Avoid Getting Hooked by an Emotionally Immature Parent (Location 2505)
  • A common fantasy among children of emotionally immature parents is that their parents will have a change of heart and finally love them by showing concern. Unfortunately, self-preoccupied parents refuse all invitations to fulfill their part in their child’s healing story. Focused on their own healing fantasy, they expect their children to make up for their childhood hurts. (Location 2526)
  • In adulthood, these children often learn a variety of healthy communication skills and hope that these skills will improve their relationship with their parents. They think they might finally have the techniques necessary to draw their parents into a rewarding interaction. (Location 2531)
  • “Annie,” I said, “you’re doing all the right things in trying to make a connection with your mom. You’re looking for emotional intimacy with her, which makes perfect sense, but I don’t think she can tolerate it. While you think you’re just trying to relate, your mom probably sees it as a major threat to her equilibrium. After all, she’s been living like this for years. Your openness and honesty are more than she can handle. Think of it as though your mom has a snake phobia. You keep plopping a big, fat, writhing snake right in her lap. She can’t stand it, no matter how meaningful it might be to you.” (Location 2559)
  • Her best option was to manage their interactions deliberately, rather than seeking emotional intimacy. (Location 2568)
  • Annie was so intent on winning her mother’s approval that she’d stopped evaluating the relationship. She’d never asked herself whether Betty was the type of person she enjoyed being around. (Location 2574)
  • how to handle an emotionally immature parent, as well as other people, by changing your expectations and replacing reactivity with observation. (Location 2577)
  • Three key approaches will help you free yourself from getting caught up in your parent’s emotional immaturity: detached observation, maturity awareness, and stepping away from your old role-self. (Location 2578)
  • Further, in an enmeshed family, if you have a problem with someone, you talk about that person to other people instead of going to the person directly. (Location 2589)
  • When interacting with emotionally immature people, you’ll feel more centered if you operate from a calm, thinking perspective, rather than emotional reactivity. (Location 2596)
  • Start by settling yourself and getting into an observational, detached frame of mind. There are any number of ways to do this. For example, you can count your breaths slowly, tense and relax your muscle groups in a systematic sequence, or imagine calming imagery. (Location 2597)
  • 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. (Location 2605)
  • In relatedness, there’s communication but no goal of having a satisfying emotional exchange. (Location 2624)
  • 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. (Location 2626)
  • Estimating the probable maturity level of the person you’re dealing with is one of the best ways to take care of yourself in any interaction. Once you peg a person’s maturity level, his or her responses will make more sense and be more predictable. (Location 2632)
  • there are three ways to relate to the person without getting yourself upset: Expressing and then letting go Focusing on the outcome, not the relationship Managing, not engaging (Location 2636)
  • Emotionally immature people don’t have a good strategy for countering another person’s persistence. Their attempts at diversion and avoidance ultimately break down if you keep asking the same question. As (Location 2667)
  • You can respect your parents for everything they’ve given you, but you don’t have to pretend they have no human frailties. As we discussed in chapter 2, satisfying a child’s physical and financial needs is not the same as meeting that child’s emotional needs. For instance, if you needed someone to listen—to provide essential emotional connection—receiving money or a good education might distract you from that need, but it wouldn’t fill it. (Location 2695)
  • Just because they’re complaining doesn’t necessarily mean their goal is to feel better. That’s your interpretation. (Location 2718)
  • Their healing story and role-selves may require a lot of suffering and complaining. (Location 2719)
  • She invited her parents to join her at one of the kids’ soccer games. That was about as long as Annie thought she could stay objective and in control emotionally. Her desired outcome was a visit with no drama, simply reestablishing contact with her parents. (Location 2723)
  • After that conversation, Annie felt more emotionally free. She was no longer obsessed with her mother’s rejection. She’d managed to relate to Betty as a fellow adult, instead of playing out the old role-self of an openhearted little girl who hoped to one day win her disapproving mother’s love. (Location 2741)
  • It’s sad that this important relationship, which I’ve always struggled with, won’t have a good resolution. But the fact that my mother doesn’t respond doesn’t put a judgment on me; it’s just another indication that she can’t handle a close relationship with me. (Location 2744)
  • Your inner child will always hope that your parents will finally change and offer what you’ve always longed for. But your job is to keep your adult outlook and continue relating to them as a separate, independent adult. (Location 2775)
  • At this point, you’re looking for an adult relationship with them, not a re-creation of parent-child dynamics, right? (Location 2776)
  • You’ll have better results if you try to relate to your parent in a neutral way, rather than trying to have a relationship. First, you need to assess your parent’s level of maturity and approach interactions between the two of you from an observational perspective—focusing (Location 2791)
  • focusing on thinking, rather than reacting emotionally. Then you can employ the three steps involved in the maturity awareness approach: expressing yourself and then letting it go; focusing on the outcome rather than the relationship; and managing the interaction rather than engaging emotionally. (Location 2793)
  • Chapter 9: How It Feels to Live Free of Roles and Fantasies (Location 2799)
  • If you were raised by an emotionally immature parent, you spent your early years tiptoeing around the anxieties of an emotionally phobic person. The enmeshed families created by such parents are a stronghold against their fear of individuality. (Location 2807)
  • If you think independently, you might criticize them or decide to leave. They feel much safer seeing family members as predictable fantasy characters rather than real individuals. (Location 2810)
  • For parents who fear both real emotion and abandonment, authenticity in their children presents frightening evidence of the child’s individuality. These parents feel threatened when their children express genuine emotions because it makes interactions unpredictable and seems threatening to family ties. (Location 2812)
  • If you were an internalizing child with an emotionally immature parent, you were taught many self-defeating things about how to get along in life. Here are some of the biggest ones: Give first consideration to what other people want you to do. Don’t speak up for yourself. Don’t ask for help. Don’t want anything for yourself. (Location 2837)
  • If you’d like to learn more about this, the book Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice (Firestone, Firestone, and Catlett 2002) can help you identify where your inner voices came from and how to free yourself from their negative influence. Everyone (Location 2855)
  • Ideally, you’d probably like to have the freedom to be yourself yet protect yourself while continuing to relate to your parent. Still, you might find it necessary at times to protect your emotional health by suspending contact for a while. Although this can stir up tremendous guilt and self-doubt, consider the possibility that you may have good reasons for keeping your distance. For example, your parent may be emotionally hurtful or disrespect your boundaries—an intrusive way of relating that impinges upon your right to your own identity. (Location 2910)
  • Some parents are so unreflective that, despite repeated explanations, they simply don’t accept that their behavior is problematic. (Location 2915)
  • Her idealized fantasy of being a loving mother simply didn’t leave any room for Aisha’s feelings to exist. (Location 2938)
  • Remember, if you’re an internalizer, you’ll be inclined to feel that the answer to any problem is for you to make things better, and that if you try a little harder, the situation—including others’ behavior—will improve. (Location 2945)
  • Paying attention to subtle energy drains from other people can help you realize when you’re giving too much. Even in minor encounters, you can adjust how much you give so you won’t be exhausted by trying to fulfill others’ needs. (Location 2950)
  • I recommend using the maturity awareness mind-set to observe how your parents react when you ask them to respect your boundaries. Notice whether they try to make you feel ashamed and guilty, as if they have a right to do whatever they want, regardless of how it affects you. (Location 2953)
  • “With her in the house, my blood pressure felt like it was sky-high. I used to tell myself to make it work, but the fact is I don’t want to make it work with her. I have the energy, but it’s not what I want to do.” Brad had started seeing things differently: “Being a member of a family doesn’t give anybody free rein to treat people like crap.” (Location 2974)
  • I asked Rebecca what evidence she had that Irene wanted to feel better. Irene didn’t live her life in such a way that she could feel better, and I couldn’t see any signs that she was responding well to anything Rebecca was doing. Feeling better clearly didn’t seem to be Irene’s goal, so the fact that Rebecca had made it her central agenda doomed her to failure. (Location 3012)
  • She finally saw that Irene would never be happy, but that this didn’t have to be a problem for either of them. (Location 3020)
  • It’s important to relinquish the belief that if your parents loved you, they’d understand you. As an independent adult, you can function without their understanding. You may not ever have the kind of relationship you’ve wanted with your parents, but you can make each interaction with them more satisfying for you. You can speak up politely when you feel like it, and be different without offering excuses. (Location 3049)
  • The point of expressing your feelings is to be true to yourself, not to change your parents. And there’s always the likelihood that they can still love you even if they don’t get you at all. (Location 3052)
  • And by giving up your healing fantasy about changing your parents, you let them be who they are. When they’re no longer under pressure to change, they may be able to treat you differently—or not. Your job is to be okay either way. (Location 3080)
  • The most painful interactions with emotionally immature parents occur when their children need something from them. Whether it’s attention, love, or communication, many neglected children continue to seek some kind of positive emotional regard from their parents well into adulthood, even though their parents aren’t the giving type. (Location 3083)
  • Many self-involved parents like it when their child is needy and they can be the center of the child’s longing. (Location 3087)
  • But if it weren’t for family roles and fantasies, your parents might not even be the kind of people you’d seek anything from. (Location 3091)
  • So consider whether your need for them is real, or whether it might be a holdover from unmet childhood needs. Do they really have something you want now? (Location 3092)
  • You can get swept up into believing that you’re desperate for a relationship with someone even when you actually don’t enjoy the interactions the other person has to offer. (Location 3094)
  • Chapter 10: How to Identify Emotionally Mature People (Location 3108)
  • all humans share the primitive instinct that familiarity means safety. (Location 3119)
  • One tenet of schema therapy, developed by Jeffrey Young (Young and Klosko 1993), is that the people we find most charismatic are subconsciously triggering us to fall back into old, negative family patterns. (Location 3125)
  • The sections that follow offer some guidelines that will help you recognize more emotionally mature people. (Location 3131)
  • Being realistic and reliable may sound humdrum, but nothing can take the place of this basic soundness. (Location 3137)
  • They Work with Reality Rather Than Fighting It (Location 3141)
  • They see problems and try to fix them, instead of overreacting with a fixation on how things should be. (Location 3143)
  • They Can Feel and Think at the Same Time (Location 3145)
  • The ability to think even when upset makes an emotionally mature person someone you can reason with. (Location 3146)
  • You can count on them to be basically the same across different situations. They have a strong self, and their inner consistency makes them reliable custodians of your trust. (Location 3151)
  • Emotionally mature people are realistic enough to not be offended easily and can laugh at themselves and their foibles. They aren’t perfectionistic and see themselves and others as fallible human beings, doing the best they can. (Location 3154)
  • In addition, people who take things personally often feel that they’re being evaluated, seeing slights and criticisms where they don’t exist. This kind of defensiveness consumes relationship energy like a black hole. (Location 3158)
  • In contrast, emotionally mature people understand that most of us can put our foot in our mouth at times. If you say you misspoke, they won’t insist on a postmortem to uncover potential unconscious negativity toward them. (Location 3160)
  • You’ll have the feeling they’re looking out for you, rather than being solely focused on their own best interests. (Location 3165)
  • Emotionally mature people are innately courteous because they naturally honor boundaries. They’re looking for connection and closeness, not intrusion. (Location 3169)
  • Emotionally mature people will respect your individuality. They never assume that if you love them, you’ll want the same things they do. (Location 3172)
  • If you were neglected by emotionally immature parents during childhood, you may find yourself willing to put up with unsolicited analysis and unwanted advice from others. This is common among people who are hungry for personal feedback that shows someone is thinking about them. But this kind of “advice” isn’t nourishing attention; rather, it’s motivated by a desire to be in control. (Location 3180)
  • An important trait to keep an eye on is how others respond if you have to change your plans. Can they distinguish between personal rejection and something unexpected coming up? (Location 3209)
  • Are they able to let you know they’re disappointed without holding it against you? (Location 3210)
  • 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. (Location 3215)
  • 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. (Location 3218)
  • People who show anger by withdrawing love are particularly pernicious. The outcome of such behavior is that nothing gets solved and the other person just feels punished. (Location 3236)
  • Whatever the gender, unwillingness to consider someone else’s point of view indicates emotional immaturity and a rocky road ahead. (Location 3252)
  • Emotionally mature people want to be responsible for their own behavior and are willing to apologize when needed. This kind of basic respect and reciprocity mends injured trust and hurt feelings and helps maintain good relationships. (Location 3261)
  • People who are sincere, on the other hand, won’t just apologize; they’ll also make a clear statement about how they intend to do things differently. (Location 3265)
  • Empathy is what makes people feel safe in relationships. Along with self-awareness, it’s the soul of emotional intelligence (Goleman 1995), 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. (Location 3283)
  • Emotionally mature people see you positively and keep a mental library of your best qualities. They often reference your strengths and sometimes seem to know you better than you know yourself. (Location 3299)
  • Too much cynicism and sarcasm are signs of a closed-down person who fears connection and seeks emotional protection by focusing on the negative. (Location 3334)
  • emotionally mature people have an overall positive vibe that’s pleasurable to be around. They aren’t always happy, of course, but for the most part they seem able to generate their own good feelings and enjoy life. (Location 3338)
  • Assessing Others’ Emotional Maturity (Location 3361)
  • They don’t take everything personally. (Location 3371)
  • They respect your boundaries. (Location 3374)
  • They are flexible and compromise well. (Location 3376)
  • They apologize and make amends. (Location 3381)
  • Their empathy makes you feel safe. (Location 3383)
  • They make you feel seen and understood. (Location 3385)
  • They reflect on their actions and try to change. (Location 3387)
  • They’re enjoyable to be around. (Location 3390)
  • remind myself that if I need something, most people will be glad to help if they can. (Location 3406)
  • I won’t give more energy than I really have. (Location 3415)
  • Instead of trying to please, I’ll give other people a true indication of how I feel. (Location 3416)
  • If someone says something I find offensive, I’ll offer an alternative viewpoint. I won’t try to change the other person’s mind; I just won’t let the statement go unremarked upon. (Location 3419)
  • I’ll make a point of keeping in touch with special people I care about and returning their calls or electronic messages. (Location 3423)
  • Even when people aren’t saying the “right” thing, I’ll tune in to whether they’re trying to help me. If their effort makes me feel emotionally nurtured, I’ll express my gratitude. (Location 3427)
  • • I’ll remember that everyone is responsible for their own feelings and for expressing their needs clearly. Beyond common courtesy, it isn’t up to me to guess what others want. (Location 3440)
  • • I won’t expect people to know what I need unless I tell them. Caring about me doesn’t mean they automatically know what I’m feeling. (Location 3445)
  • If people close to me upset me, I’ll use my pain to identify my underlying need. Then I’ll use clear, intimate communication to provide guidance on how they could give it to me. (Location 3447)
  • When my feelings are hurt, I’ll try to understand my reaction first. Did something trigger feelings from my past, or did the person really treat me insensitively? If someone was insensitive, I’ll ask him or her to hear me out. (Location 3449)
  • be thoughtful to other people, and if they aren’t thoughtful in return, I’ll ask them to be more considerate and then let it go. (Location 3452)
  • I’ll ask for something as many times as it takes to get a clear answer. (Location 3453)
  • When you decide to uncover the truth about yourself and your family relationships, you may be surprised by what’s revealed, especially when you see how these patterns have been passed down through the generations. Sometimes you may wonder whether all this knowledge is for the best. It may even seem as though it would be better not to know. (Location 3472)
  • Ultimately, it depends on what you value about life. Is seeking the truth and self-knowledge an important and meaningful pursuit for you? (Location 3475)
  • And it is. People who engage in self-discovery and emotional development get to have a second life—one that was unimaginable as long as they remained caught in old family roles and wishful fantasies. (Location 3488)