Quotes from Susan Forward

Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior.

Denying or repressing strong emotions doesn't eliminate them. Instead, they get displaced or stored up.

In this way she perpetuated the pain she had experienced as a child. Not unexpectedly, her enormous accumulated rage had to find a way out, but since she was afraid to express it directly, her body and her moods expressed it for her: in the form of headaches, a knotted-up stomach, and depression.

The healing process kicks into gear with with the words This is what you did to me. That statement is not gentle or polite; it's absolutely direct. In fact, I know that seeing it might feel like a punch in the stomach. I deliberately removed the distancing veil of objectivity from the words This is what you did by adding 'to me'.

We can only speculate why, but physically abusive parents seem to share certain characteristics. First, they have an appalling lack of impulse control.

Remember, tears are like rivers that start in one place and flow to another—they can help carry you to healing.

You are learning to trust your own perception of reality. You will discover that even when your parents don't agree with you or don't approve of what you're doing, you will be able to tolerate the anxiety because you don't need their validation anymore. You are becoming self-defined.

As you gain more control over your past and present relationship with your parents, you will discover that your other relationships, especially your relationship with yourself, will improve dramatically. You will have the freedom, perhaps for the first time, to enjoy your own life.

many daughters may never have given themselves permission to even 'consider' changing the relationship with their mothers, because they didn't think they had the right to do it.

Women who were unprotected as children don't believe they are worthy of love—on an unconscious level, they believe that if they were, their mothers wouldn't have allowed them to be hurt. "I don't trust that anything good will happen for me," a woman who was an unprotected child tells herself.

Whether adult children of toxic parents were beaten when little or left alone too much, sexually abused or treated like fools, overprotected or overburdened by guilt, they almost all suffer surprisingly similar symptoms: damaged self-esteem, leading to self-destructive behavior. In one way or another, they almost all feel worthless, unlovable, and inadequate.

The "family secret" is a further burden for abused children. By not talking about the abuse, the battered child cuts off any hope of emotional help.

I looked for the sunniest spot I could find, but you know it was the damnedest thing—it sure looked like the sun and it was bright like the sun, but there was absolutely no warmth coming from it. And this wave of sadness came over me—the sun was just like my mother." (Quote from Heather, a patient)

My father never did any of the things that my friends' fathers did with them. We never tossed a football around or even watched games together. He would always say, "I don't have time—maybe later," but he always had time to sit around and get drunk.

Parents who feel good about themselves do not have to control their adult children. But [toxic parents] operate from a deep sense of dissatisfaction with their lives and a fear of abandonment. Their child's independence is like the loss of a limb to them. As the child grows older, it becomes ever more important for the parents to pull the strings that keep the child dependent. As long as toxic parents can make their son or daughter feel like a child, they can maintain control.

Our culture and our religions are almost unanimous in upholding the omnipotence of parental authority.

Adult children of toxic parent have an especially difficult time with their anger because they grew up in families where emotional expression was discouraged. Anger was something only parents had the privilege of displaying. Most children of toxic parents develop a high tolerance of mistreatment. You may have only a vague awareness that anything out of the ordinary happened to you as a child. Chances are, you don't even know how angry you really are.

Many of the time-honored [parenting] techniques that have been passed down from generation to generation are, quite simply, bad advice masquerading as wisdom.

Children need to make mistakes and discover that it's not the end of the world. That's how they gain the confidence to try new things in life. Toxic parents impose unobtainable goals, impossible expectations, and ever-changing rules on their children. They expect their children to respond with a degree of maturity that can come only from life experiences that are inaccessible to a child. Children are not miniature adults, but toxic parents expect them to act as if they were.

We embrace the word no because it allows us to exercise some control over our lives, whereas yes is simply an acquiescence.

Realizing that your mother couldn't love you is one of the most painful discoveries you'll ever make. You deserved to be cherished, but your mother was a disturbed, unhappy woman who took out her frustrations on you. And it wasn't your fault.

Kate summed it up: All my life, it's been going through my mind that I don't deserve to be happy. I think that's why I never got married . . . never had a good relationship . . . never allowed myself any real success. When Kate grew up, the physical abuse ended. But through self-loathing, the emotional abuse continued. Except that now, she had become her own abuser.

It is behavior, not words, that has the greatest impact on a child. When a mother tells her daughter not to allow a man to control her or abuse her and then models the opposite in her own relationship with her husband, the girl will respond only to the behavioral message, not the verbal one.

When a girl is sexually abused, layers of secrecy and shame are added to her self-blame. The incestuous aggressor always projects the guilt for his crime onto the child he is molesting. The girl then learns to see herself as dirty and worthless. Having accepted humiliation, and exploitation as the conditions of survival during childhood, the girl is likely to reenact that same abuser/victim relationship with men in her adult life.