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

What a blessing this book is. I've had the audible version of this book for awhile but never really gotten into it. The thing with self improvement is that it needs to be a continuous process. It's like taking a shower or going to the gym. It needs to be maintained.

Lindsay Gibson succinctly describes how we come up with healing fantasies and play role-self (and deny our true self) to cope with the difficulties in our upbringing. I think one of my healing fantasies is to succeed at everything I do, or at least look like I'm succeeding. If I get high grades, if I'm smart, I might get the love and attention that I need. I should know by now that it's not the best strategy. I cannot guarantee love from good grades. No one loves me for my five degrees and good grades. They may respect me and may even be jealous of me but ain't getting no love. Gotta wake up from this fantasy. 

Another healing fantasy is that people will love me if I have an interesting life or have an interesting perspective on things. Like way back when, instead of being authentic, I might be a bit critical about something just to be a bit French about things and be a bit controversial so I sound smart or something. I was just lame. In fact, reality is the other way around. No one likes you when you're overly critical, it doesn't make you interesting, it makes you difficult. On the interesting life part, I think the younger me literally googled 'how to live an epic life' and tried to find a roadmap on how to live an amazing life that other people want. Once again, it's about what other people want, not about authentically what inspires me. I should do stuff that actually interests me, not how it looks on the outside.