Karen Hart > Quotes

“Affective neglect means that you have not received attention, appreciation, acknowledgement, confirmation, comfort and encouragement and that you did not feel that you were allowed to be there and that you were taken seriously and that you felt heard. A child needs and is entitled to these affective aspects.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Stubbornness is strange to you, and you are prepared to adapt to changing circumstances. You see unexpected developments as a part of life, and you keep your feet firmly on the ground while at the same time bending along with the change.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Pedagogical neglect means that the parents show no interest in school achievements or in the child's interests or activities. Educational abuse means that the child has not been able to make their own education and / or career choice.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Securely bound children feel a consistent, attentive and supportive relationship with their mother, even in times of considerable stress. Uncertainly bound children feel inconsistent, punitive, indifferent feelings from their caregiver and feel threatened in times of stress.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Something that every child needs, in addition to simple food and clothing, is that emotional accessibility, Adult and Safe, where you feel connected to some people to understand the world and in turn understand yourself. If this fails, everything will fall apart. The child's own emotions are declared invalid by the emotionally immature father or by that mother who, only concerned about himself, neglects the feelings and emotional needs of the children.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Children who have experienced emotional neglect in their early childhood often show developmental delays in various areas.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“If such a need remains unconscious, and the parent does nothing to develop and heal himself, he will (unconsciously) continue to try to satisfy his unmet need in all sorts of surrogate ways. He or she seeks that satisfaction by seeking confirmation from persons who, as it were, represent the parents, such as the partner and the children.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“If a child does not have healthy examples, does not learn what is normal or is not allowed to stand up for himself, then it can happen that a child does not learn to build his own identity and healthy life. That can cause many problems later in life.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“False itself All this can (but does not have to!) Lead to the development of a so-called unreal self: the child and later the adult show purely and only what is expected of him by his parents. You can imagine that these children of needy parents themselves become needy parents who constantly need confirmation from their environment.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Do you live with the consequences? Such as: always being in conflict, uncertainty, feeling unsafe, inexplicable gloom and not knowing what you want. But also trouble with relationships, fears, addictions, physical complaints, feeling numb and apathy? Then it is possible that you have (had) to deal with emotional abuse.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“This particular form of relationship is best represented by the mother-child relationship. In our research into this particular relationship, we found out how important it can be for the child's future development. Many scientists and therapists consider the mother-child relationship to be the working model for all subsequent relationships that the child will develop. A stable and healthy love affair with the primary caregiver appears to be associated with a high probability of healthy relationships, while a weak love affair with the mother or primary caregiver appears to be associated with numerous emotional and behavioral problems later in life.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Through emotional abuse, you get split inside, and you lose part of yourself. In the moments of abuse, you get damaged. The victim of emotional abuse becomes trapped in a web of dishonesty, inability and insecurity, in which self-confidence becomes increasingly weaker.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“They are profiles that are characterized by permanent distrust. This disorder begins to become apparent in adolescence when they display behaviours of constant suspicion, thinking that others always have bad intentions toward them. Continuously suspect that they will be misled, betrayed, abandoned ...”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Gratitude is the key to happiness, and you already know that. And so you focus your attention not on the negative but on all the wonderful people you have around you, the fact that you have a house and food, that you experience everything on a daily basis and that you experience life itself. That is not a saint-bean tone, that is dealing consciously and kindly with your existence. And with that of others.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents

“Defence mechanisms These are known defence mechanisms with which a child protects himself against painful experiences. By repressing or distorting the truth, creating an illusion, the child bridges the gap between his deep desire for loving parents who see him for who he is and the reality, namely a father or mother projecting their own needs onto the child. Only in this way can the child survive, but it also builds a wall around itself. By denying the unwanted parts of itself, it loses (a part of) itself.”
― Karen Hart, Emotionally Immature Parents: A Healing Guide to Overcome Childhood Emotional Neglect due to Absent and Self Involved Parents