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Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem QUOTES

Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem QUOTES

1 " Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial. The denial forces members to keep believing the myths and vital lies in spite of the facts, or to keep expecting that the same behaviors will have different outcomes.
Dad's not an alcoholic because he never drinks in the morning, in spite of the fact that he's drunk every night. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

2 " Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

3 " The shared secret and the shared denial are the most horrible aspects of incest. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

4 " The utter atrocities of Nazism have shown us clearly what the inherent potential of destruction in the parenting rules we have been using for the last 150 years. These rules are non-democratic. They are based on inequality of power and unequal rights. They promote the use and ownership of some people by others and teach the denial and repression of emotional vitality and spontaneity. They glorify obedience, orderliness, logic, rationality, power and male supremacy. They are flagrantly anti-life. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

5 " Chronically dysfunctioning families are also delusional. Delusion is sincere denial. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

6 " In 15 years of working with teenage drug abusers, I’ve never found a single one who was what I’d call only a chemical addict. As powerful as many of the current market drugs are, especially cocaine and crack, I’ve never yet worked with an addict who didn’t have the inner emptiness. I’ve been in my personal recovery for 30 years and I’ve never met a person in recovery from chemical abuse who didn’t have abandonment issues in the sense I have defined them. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

7 " Eating disorders. You don’t know when you feel empty or hungry. You eat to fill up. You eat to feel full. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

8 " Hypervigilant and fear of losing control. You live in a state of readiness for attack. You feel jumpy and are easily startled. You have attacks of sudden fear or panic. You fear losing control. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

9 " L. Lack of coping skills (underlearning). You never learned how to do many things necessary for a fully functional life. Your methods of problem-solving do not work, but you continue to use the same ones over and over. You learned ways of caring for your wounds that, in fact, perpetuated them. You have no real knowledge of what is normal. Your bottom-line tolerance is quite abnormal. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

10 " F. False self—confused identity. Your self-worth depends on your partner’s success or failure. When you’re not in a relationship, you feel an inner void. You feel responsible for making your partner happy. You take care of people to give yourself an identity. You wear masks, calculate, manipulate and play games. You act out rigid family roles and/or sex roles. When your partner has a stomachache, you take the antacid. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

11 " The most dominant need that any child has is to gradually move from the complete environmental support of infancy and childhood to the self-support of maturity. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

12 " Without the energy of anger, we may become apathetic, a doormat and a people-pleaser. Anger is an emotion that is often confused with behaviors like hitting, screaming and cursing. The latter are behaviors based on judgment. They are not emotions. Angry emotions protect and preserve the individual. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

13 " Emotional abuse is a form of psychological battering. Psychological battering includes all forms of abuse because victims cannot be physically or sexually violated without also being psychologically battered. Emotional violence is involved in all abuse and causes the neglect of developmental dependency needs. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

14 " When a person represses over the course of a number of years, intelligence is greatly contaminated and diminished. The frozen patterns become chronic patterns. It is as if the “on” button is stuck and plays all the time. Figure 4.6 shows how little intelligence is left uncontaminated. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

15 " Contaminated intelligence seriously lessens one’s decision-making process, since the will needs perception, intelligence and imagination in order to make decisions. The human will becomes “disabled. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

16 " The first decision adult children who want to grow up need to make is to surrender. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

17 " When I showed myself, I found that I was accepted and loved. I recovered my sense of self-esteem. I started accepting myself. As I accepted myself, I accepted my feelings. As my trust grew, I came out of hiding more and more. I broke the no-talk rule: I shared my secrets, I was willing to be vulnerable, to be scared, awkward or embarrassed over the state of my life. As I felt and expressed those feelings, my three-trillion circuited computer began to function better and better. My group called this “getting your brains out of hock.” It was true: After I expressed my emotions, I had clearer insight. I started trusting my own judgment and perceptions. Consequently, I started making decisions. I chose to live one day at a time. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

18 " The poisonous pedagogy is transmitted multi-generationally as a sacred body of truth. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

19 " You can’t heal what you don’t feel. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem

20 " We have no alternative. We must break the sacred rule and question these rules because unless we talk about them, there is no way out. We must evaluate them in the light of our newfound knowledge of families as systems. "

― John Bradshaw , Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem