Diane Doering

“Knowledge can bring pain in place of ignorance, terror in place of hope. Whatever place your strength has come from, it is still yours. You choose what to do with it.”
― Hannah Kaner, Sunbringer

“I sat there staring up at the moths, each futilely trying to feed by bashing against the glass globe surrounding the misleading light, each wanting but not receiving, a lot like me.”
― Nick Medina, Indian Burial Ground

“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. Emotional contagion is also how babies and little children communicate their needs. They cry and fuss until their caretakers figure out what’s wrong and fix it. Emotional contagion from an upset baby to a concerned adult is galvanizing, motivating a caretaker to do anything necessary to calm the child. 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.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Their personalities are like stunted bonsai trees, trained to grow in unnatural shapes. Because they had to bend to fit their families, they were unable to develop fluidly into the integrated, natural people they might have become.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents