Top 120 Lindsay C. Gibson Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

52. “It’s important to realize that childhood experiences of profound helplessness can feel traumatic, causing people to later react to adult feelings of helplessness with sensations of collapse and a feeling of “There’s nothing I can do, and no one will help me.” As children, sensitive internalizers can be so affected by this feeling that later they’re prone to feeling like victims with no control, at the mercy of powerful people who refuse to give them what they desperately need.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

53. “To them, your inner world is unnecessary, a needless distraction from what they consider important. They expect you to agree with them, so whenever you express a different opinion or say how you feel, they take it as disrespectful. They act as if anything going on inside you has no merit unless they approve.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

54. “Emotionally mature people show an inclusive, respectful, and coequal attitude toward other people. They elevate you with them, rather than make you feel less than.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

55. “7. The Right to Live Life My Own Way I have the right to take action even if you don’t think it’s a good idea. I have the right to spend my energy and time on what I find important. I have the right to trust my inner experiences and take my aspirations seriously. I have the right to take all the time I need and not be rushed.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

56. “2. Be Slippery and Sidestep Being slippery is the art of sidestepping an EIP’s attempt to pressure you into doing what they want. Sidestepping works better than blunt refusals when EIPs get stuck in coercion mode.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

57. “Once you shift into self-disconnection, you can no longer make choices in a situation. Therefore, learning to recognize and prevent dissociation is crucial. The steps in preventing dissociation are to stay in touch with yourself no matter what snap out of it when you start to zone out keep thinking of active ways to deal with the situation.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

58. “There are five crucial gifts that come from your inner world. Your inner stability and resilience Your sense of wholeness and self-confidence Your capacity for intimate relationships with others Your ability to self-protect Your awareness of your life’s purpose.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

59. “Emotionally immature people are annoyed by other people’s differing thoughts and opinions, believing everyone should see things their way. The idea that other people are entitled to their own point of view is beyond them. They may be prone to making social gaffes because they don’t have enough awareness of other people’s individuality to avoid being offensive.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

60. “Emotionally immature parents don’t know how to validate their child’s feelings and instincts. Without this validation, children learn to give in to what others seem sure about. As adults, they may deny their instincts to the point where they acquiesce to relationships they don’t really want. They may then believe it’s up to them to make the relationship work.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

61. “Because emotionally mature people have a integrated sense of self, they usually won’t surprise you with unexpected inconsistencies. 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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

62. “2. The Right Not to be Emotionally Coerced I have the right to not be your rescuer. I have the right to ask you to get help from someone else. I have the right to not fix your problems. I have the right to let you manage your own self-esteem without my input. I have the right to let you handle your own distress. I have the right to refuse to feel guilty.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

63. “5. The Right to Clear Communications I have the right to say anything as long as I do so in a nonviolent, nonharmful way. I have the right to ask to be listened to. I have the right to tell you my feelings are hurt. I have the right to speak up and tell you what I really prefer. I have the right to be told what you want from me without assuming I should know.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

64. “8. The Right to Equal Importance and Respect I have the right to be considered just as important as you. I have the right to live my life without ridicule from anyone. I have the right to be treated respectfully as an independent adult. I have the right to refuse to feel shame.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

65. “In contrast, the most immature EIPs try to alter reality by denying, dismissing, or distorting facts they don’t like. At the lowest level of maladaptive coping mechanisms, a person might lose touch with consensual reality and become psychotic.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

66. “People often wonder whether their parents can ever change. That depends on whether their parents are willing to self-reflect, which is the first step in any change. Unfortunately, if their parents aren’t interested in noticing their impacts on others, they have no impetus to look at themselves; without such self-reflection, there’s no way to change.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

67. “EI parents typically offer superficial solutions, tell you not to worry, or even get irritated with you for being upset. Their heart feels closed, like there’s no place you can go inside them for compassion or comfort.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

68. “9. The Right to Put My Own Health and Well-Being First I have the right to thrive, not just survive. I have the right to take time for myself to do what I enjoy. I have the right to decide how much energy and attention I give to other people. I have the right to take time to think things over. I have the right to take care of myself regardless of what others think. I have the right to take the time and space necessary to nourish my inner world.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

69. “No child can be good enough to evoke love from a highly self-involved parent.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

70. “If there’s anything emotionally immature people are keen on in relationships, it’s role compliance. Roles simplify life and make decisions clear-cut. As parents, emotionally immature people need their children to play a proper role that includes respecting and obeying them. They often use platitudes to support the authority of their role as a parent because, like roles, platitudes oversimplify complex situations and make them easier to deal with.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

71. “To the EI parent, the important things happen in the outside world. They don’t see why children should be encouraged to become aware of their inner worlds. To them, the inner realm of thoughts and feelings seems vaguely subversive and certainly unproductive. They think it’s best if kids stay busy and focused on activities and externals.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

72. “Pay attention to your internal physical sensations. Figure out the meaning of your feelings. Refuse to judge and criticize yourself. Identify what you need. Daydream about your life purpose and where you belong.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

73. “The idea of stepping back and asking yourself whether you really need your parents – or whether they need you to need them – might seem radical. 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. 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?”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

74. “Emotionally immature parents often have the fantasy that their babies will make them feel good about themselves.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

75. “Remember, your goodness as a person isn’t based on how much you give in relationships, and it isn’t selfish to set limits on people who keep on taking. Your job is to take care of yourself, regardless of what others think you should be doing for them.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

76. “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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

77. “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. In contrast, emotionally mature people will usually tell you what’s wrong and ask you to do things differently. They don’t sulk or pout for long periods of time or make you walk on eggshells. Ultimately, they’re willing to take the initiative to bring conflict to a close, rather than giving you the silent treatment.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

78. “It’s the people who don’t listen to their soul and don’t feel that self-connection who end up causing the most suffering for others.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

79. “Your true self wants you to see what’s really going on. It tries to wake you up because it wants you to stop believing that your emotionally immature parents knew what was best for you and that creating a role-self is better than being who you really are. It knows better than to let a fantasy run your life.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

80. “Feeling inferior or unworthy is like a flashing red light letting you know an EIRS or a drama triangle may be sucking you in. If you learn to interpret inferiority sensations as warnings that someone is trying to use you for their own self-esteem needs, you can step back and maintain your autonomy and positive self-concept.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

81. “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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

82. “Emotional loneliness is a vague and private experience, not easy to see or describe. You might call it a feeling of emptiness or being alone in the world. Some people have called this feeling existential loneliness, but there’s nothing existential about it. If you feel it, it came from your family.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

83. “Like small children, EI parents want you to intuit what they feel without their saying anything. They feel hurt and angry when you don’t guess their needs, expecting you to know what they want. If you protest that they didn’t tell you what they wanted, their reaction is, “If you really loved me, you would’ve known.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

84. “They Can Feel and Think at the Same Time The ability to think even when upset makes an emotionally mature person someone you can reason with. Because they can think and feel at the same time, it’s easy to work things out with such people. They don’t lose their ability to see another perspective just because they aren’t getting what they want. They also don’t lose track of emotional factors when addressing a problem.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

85. “As we saw in the previous chapter, EIPs dismiss your inner world as if it were unnecessary and irrelevant. If you believe these dismissals, you will miss the wisdom your inner self offers you in the form of feelings, intuitions, and insights. But you can use the following five ways to establish a more trusting, respectful relationship with your inner self and its guidance.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

86. “The only way an EIP can take over your emotional and mental life is to get you to disconnect from your inner life. When EIPs spellbind you into passivity, they induce emotional immobility and dissociation from yourself. Now, however, you can use mindfulness to reverse that process.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

87. “Knowing your true emotions and thoughts probably felt dangerous if it threatened to distance you from the people you depended on. You learned that your goodness or badness lay not only in your behavior, but in your mind as well. In this way, you may have learned the absurd idea that you can be a bad person for having certain thoughts and feelings, and you may still hold that belief.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

88. “Remember, you can’t expect immature, emotionally phobic people to be different from how they are.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

89. “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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

90. “People who have been wronged by an emotionally immature person may start to think they’re at fault if they continue to feel hurt by what the person did. Emotionally immature people expect you to take them off the hook immediately. If it feels better to blame you for not forgiving them fast enough, that’s what they’ll do.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

91. “They never assume that if you love them, you’ll want the same things they do. Instead, they take your feelings and boundaries into account in any interaction. This may sound like a lot of work, but it isn’t; emotionally mature people automatically tune in to how others are feeling. Real empathy makes consideration of other people second nature.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

92. “We often project issues about our parents onto our partners; then we may become even more angry with them because, at an unconscious level, they remind us of the past, in addition to whatever is happening in the present.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

93. “You develop enough inner complexity to make you resilient and adaptable. You get to know yourself and your emotions; your thoughts are flexible yet organized. You become self-aware.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

94. “Once you give yourself permission to be loyal to your thoughts and feelings, you can respond in ways that change the whole interactional dynamic.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

95. “When you know your own thoughts and are deeply in touch with your inner world, you gain a sense of inner wholeness and completeness that increases your sense of security. Your inner wholeness also gives you dignity and integrity, and anchors you whenever you face stress or discord. It also gives you confidence that your feelings have meaning and that your instinctual guidance can be trusted.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

96. “A good relationship with your inner world reveals what’s meaningful to you and directs your life’s purpose. If you don’t form that trusting relationship with your inner world, you will be dependent on whatever your peers, the culture, or authorities tell you to be. In part II of this book, you will learn more specific ways to get to know your inner world and how to engage in this process more deeply.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

97. “At first, EIPs can “make” you feel things, but as you become more conscious of what they’re doing, their attempts lose power.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

98. “This is very different from the black-and-white, rigid, and often contradictory personality of the EIP. The inner world of EI personalities is not well enough developed or integrated to produce reliable stability, resilience, or self-awareness.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

99. “Nothing hurts their spirit more than being around someone who won’t engage with them emotionally.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson

100. “In our next session, she said, “I no longer feel that I’ve done anything wrong. 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.”

— Lindsay C. Gibson