Internalizers: Sensitive People Raised By Emotionally Immature Parents
I’ll make you a deal: read the next three sentences and if none of them resonate with you, you don’t have to read any more.
I’m constantly analyzing whether something I said or did came out wrong.
I think everything is my fault and can barely stand it when someone is mad at me (either in reality or my imagination).
Even when everything seems fine, I feel like an imposter that’s waiting to be exposed.
If these descriptions sound like feelings you’re intimately familiar with, psychologist Lindsay C. Gibson has a name for it: being an internalizer.
Not to be overly dramatic, but understanding what that means could literally change everything.
What Is an Internalizer?
In her groundbreaking book Adult Children Of Emotionally Immature Parents, Dr. Lindsay Gibson describes internalizers as people who turn inward to make sense of the world.
Internalizers are thoughtful, self-aware, and love understanding how things work, especially themselves.
But the same traits that make them introspective also make them anxious. They over-analyze things, they constantly second-guess everything they do and feel, and they suffer from overwhelming guilt and shame when they think they’ve disappointed someone or exposed too much of themselves.
How Internalizers Are Created
Although sensitivity is likely an innate personality trait, being an internalizer is the result of a highly specific type of childhood programming.
When you’re raised by emotionally immature parents, you have no choice but to learn that your own needs never come first. Instead, you learn to constantly be reading the room for danger, you suppress your own feelings to keep the peace, and you often take responsibility for other people’s emotions.
As a result, you end up hiding your authentic self away and focusing on everyone else’s needs instead of your own. You become such an expert at self-neglect that you lose touch with who you actually are.
The Other Side
It might be hard to believe based on that description, but being an internalizer isn’t actually a bad thing. While it’s true that it often comes with anxiety, self-doubt, and self-sacrifice, it fosters some beautiful qualities as well.
If you’re an internalizer you’re likely also:
Deeply self-aware. You know what makes you tick and what you need to work on to improve.
You’re open to growth. You constantly want to understand more, be better, do better.
You’re empathetic and kind. You can feel other people’s pain and truly want the best for them. You are the one doing the small things to help that most people aren’t.
Patterns You Can Predict (and Change)
In a conversation I had with Dr. Gibson, she explained that once you understand your basic traits, you can predict how you’ll react in almost any situation.
“You have a couple of basic laws of how nature works, and from that, you deduce all this other stuff that can’t help but be part of that.” — Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson
Think about it this way:
If you overthink decisions, you probably love learning and getting better.
If you people-please, you’re probably highly empathetic.
If you struggle with imposter syndrome, you’re probably very self-aware.
The negative patterns that go along with these traits are predictable. Which means they’re changeable. When you see the patterns clearly, you can interrupt them. You can choose differently.
Once you learn to manage the anxiety that comes with being an internalizer, the traits that have been keeping you hiding will actually help you create stronger connections and put more of your goodness into the world.
Dr. Gibson recommends a simple practice:
Make a list of your personality tendencies.
Write down things like:
- I replay conversations for days.
- I feel guilty when I say no.
- I worry I’m not as capable as people think.
Then ask: What does this tell me about how I interact with the world?
For example, when you’re obsessing about how someone perceived what you did or said, ask yourself: Where did I learn that I had to be perfect to be accepted? Or: Who taught me that it was dangerous to be myself?
In time, you start to realize: “Oh, I’m doing that shame/guilt/masking thing again. That’s not about what I did, but about how I was raised.”
Reflecting on your patterns in this way allows you to anticipate how you might react in similar situations and begin working on facing them with greater authenticity.
When you can see these patterns for what they really are—leftovers from a childhood where you had to adapt in ways you didn’t get to choose—you stop treating them like flaws and instead use them to connect you to who you really are.
Moment by moment, we have the ability to teach ourselves that we’re not broken, and that we don’t have to feel like imposters in our own lives anymore.
Being a sensitive child in an insensitive home doesn’t have to define us. But it can, if we choose. Toward the good.
- Will Watson
Hi friend, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read my article, it really means a lot to me. If you’re looking for more from me, here are some things you can check out:
Healing From Emotionally Immature Parents - a course I created with Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, author of the New York Times Bestseller Adult Children Of Emotionally Immature Parents
Academy Of Self Help Private Community - Book club (hosted by me) & women’s support group (hosted by therapist Nicole Johnson, author of Reparenting Your Inner Child)
My first book As Far As I Can Tell
I just finished Dr. Lindsay Gibson's book. I anticipate coming back to it frequently as my journey continues. It so clearly articulated what has been spinning in my head for decades... It gave me some clarity, and also brought a lot of grief.
A challenge for over thinkers is looking at that reframing process and deciding it's overly simplistic, particularly when it's about reframing thoughts. Maybe it's different when CPTSD is a factor. So often our actions are automatic, our feelings a surge of fight or flight hormones. Any thoughts come after, mentally telling a story to ourselves about what we're feeling and why. Often it's not accurate, it's just something to justify the feelings flooding us. Addressing something like hypervigilance, linked to the deep part of the brain trained to scan for danger? Just telling yourself there is no danger doesn't do it for a lot of people.