Quotes About Healing

Like a chemical toxin, the emotional damage inflicted by these parents spreads throughout a child's being, and as the child grows, so does the pain.

No matter how toxic your parents might be, you still have a need to deify them. Even if you understand, on one level, that your father was wrong to beat you, you may still believe he was justified. Intellectual understanding is not enough to convince your emotions that you were not responsible.

Many people are frightened to take a look at the forces that shaped their characters and their backgrounds, believing that the past should be buried and that looking back might mean wallowing in self-pity and old wounds. But self-discovery can open up exciting new choices and options for us. The more we understand what shaped us as individuals, the more tools we have to free ourselves from behaviors that no longer work for us.

The incest victim's need for self-punishment often leads her into self-abusive behaviors like alcoholism, drug abuse, or prostitution.

The only way emotional assaults or physical abuse can make sense to a child is if he or she accepts responsibility for the toxic parent's behavior.

You are accepting painful feelings as a part of your life, perhaps even rationalizing them as being good for you. It's time to stop.

I came to realise that there are two facets to forgiveness: giving up the need for revenge, and absolving the guilty party of responsibility.

A little girl wo was criticized or ignored or abused or stifled by an unloving mother becomes an adult who tells herself she'll never be good enough or lovable enough, never smart or pretty or acceptable enough to deserve success and happiness. Because if you really were worthy of respect and affection, a voice whispers inside, your mother would've given them to you.

It's a mistake to think that if we don't remember or don't acknowledge painful experiences they will just disappear. In fact, great damage is done to us by those phantoms and pieces of memories that swim around in the unconscious, the part of us that never forgets. Unpleasant experiences gain power over us by being denied or hidden, but they can be made to relinquish that power when they are brought out in the open.

When we are thwarted, frustrated, and punished way out of proportion to what we've done, it's inevitable that enormous anger builds inside us.

Love doesn't make you feel terrified or lost or alone. It doesn't punish you for no reason, or berate a little girl for acting like the child she is. You're right, Samantha, what you've been describing isn't love.

Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it's supposed to feel. Their parents did extremely unloving things to them in the name of love. They came to understand love as something chaotic, dramatic, confusing, and often painful—something they had to give up their own dreams and desires for. Obviously, that's not what love is all about.

It is tremendously difficult to regain feelings of trust and safety once they have been trampled by parents.

The more we understand what shaped us as individuals, the more tools we have to free ourselves from behaviors that no longer work for us.

This letter begins the process of "reparenting" yourself. Reparenting means to dig deep within yourself to find a loving, validating parent for the hurting child you still carry inside. This is the parent who, through this letter, comforts, reassures, and protects that part of you that is still vulnerable and frightened.

the child becomes an emotional dumping ground, allowing the parents to relieve themselves of some of their discomfort without having to face the source of their problems.

This is emotional surgery, and as with any surgery, the wounds must be cleaned out before they heal, and it takes time for the pain to go away. But the pain is a sign that the healing process has started.

At the core of every formerly mistreated adult —even high achievers—is a little child who feels powerless and afraid.

Did it ever occur to you to rescue me? Do you have any idea what it felt like being a little kid in that house? Do you have any idea what kind of terror I lived with every day? Why didn't you do anything about it? Why don't you do something about it now?

emotional and mental peace comes as a result of releasing yourself from your toxic parents' control, without necessarily having to forgive them. And that release can come only after you've worked through your intense feelings of outrage and grief and after you've put the responsibility on their shoulders, where it belongs.

You are not responsible for what was done to you as a defenseless child.

You have told the truth about your life to yourself and your parents, and the fear that kept you trapped in your old role with them can no longer control you.

It's extremely frustrating when you've worked hard to get to the point of confrontation, but one or both of your parents are dead.

The hardly noticeable symptoms of cancer pale in comparison to those produced by the surgeons determined to excise it.