Quotes from Susan Forward

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

My classmates all thought I had such a great family. I thought, "If they only knew." I wish I could tell my parents how they ruined my high school years. I want to scream at them that they hurt me so much I can't love anyone. I can't have a loving relationship with a man. They've paralyzed me emotionally. They still do. But I'm too scared to say anything to them.

Criticism of this sort works in much the same way as water on a rock: the first few drops are not damaging, but the cumulative effect over time makes deep and lasting crevices. Similarly, the misogynist's constant criticism and picking eats away at his partner's self-confidence and sense of self-worth.

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.

What is so distressing about the use of denial as a tactic is that you are left with nothing to deal with. It creates a sense of desperate frustration. There is no way to resolve a problem with someone who denies the existence of certain events and who insists that what you know to be real never happened.

Further proof of your love involves giving up your right to react to what your partner does. If you cry or get upset when he is abusive, his response usually is to get even angrier. He sees your reaction as an attack on him and as further proof of your inadequacies.

When a woman is attacked for showing pain or sadness over her partner's treatment of her, she must repress her normal feelings. But feelings need to be ventilated and expressed. When a direct outlet for expression is cut off, these feelings find other ways to manifest themselves—often unpleasant and harmful ways, such as physical illness, low energy, lack of motivation, and depression.

Positive humor is one of our most valuable tools for strengthening family bonds. But humor that belittles can be extremely damaging within the family. Children take sarcasm and humorous exaggeration at face value. They are not worldly enough to understand that a parent is joking when he says something like, "We're going to have to send you to preschool in China." Instead, the child may have nightmares about being abandoned in some frightening, distant land.

Never has a book been as sorely misused as the Bible to justify beatings.

There is an insatiable, demanding quality to the misogynist's love; no matter how much you give, or give up, it is never enough. He is never convinced that you care about him as much as he cares about you. He will constantly invent new tests of your devotion. It's very much like having a final exam every week for a course you can never pass.

The misogynist use either direct control or indirect control to gain his objective. He may directly state, plead, or demand that you give up a job, a class, or a friendship, or he may begin to attack indirectly those areas that are threatening to him, making it so miserable for you to continue with them that you give them up just to keep the peace. But, no matter what method your partner uses, the result is the same: You have seriously limited your world to suit his needs.

When a child isn't allowed to deal with his frustrations on his own—to cry, for instance, then to handle the situation, and then to go on playing—because his mother is always there to intervene and rescue him from any discomfort, in adulthood he will be unable to handle even the most minor setbacks.

For hundreds of years, parental rights were considered inviolate—in the name of discipline, parents could do just about anything to their children, short of killing them.

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.

When you apologize to your children, you are teaching them to trust their feelings and perceptions. You are saying, "The things I did that you thought were unfair were unfair. You were right to feel that way.

Love doesn't hurt, it feels good. Loving behavior nourishes your emotional well-being. When someone is being loving to you, you feel accepted, cared for, valued, and respected. Genuine love creates feelings of warmth, pleasure, safety, stability, and inner peace.

The misogynist genuinely believes that his rage toward his partner is due to her deficiencies. It is easier for him to attack her than to deal with the real sources of his rage. He feels justified in acting out rage on women. Part of this justification may come from his experiences at home as a child, but a great deal of it comes directly from our culture.

But unspoken family rules are like phantom puppeteers, pulling invisible strings and demanding blind obedience. They are unseen, covert rules that exist below the level of awareness

In an enmeshed family you pay for intermittent feelings of approval and safety with your selfhood.

an enmeshed family can maintain an illusion of love and stability as long as no one attempts to separate and as long as everyone follows the family rules.

Relabeling—a form of denial—takes a problem and hides it behind euphemisms.

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.

People can forgive toxic parents, but they should do it at the conclusion—not at the beginning—of their emotional housecleaning. People need to get angry about what happened to them. They need to grieve over the fact that they never had the parental love they yearned for. They need to stop diminishing or discounting the damage that was done to them. Too often, "forgive and forget" means "pretend it didn't happen.

If you were made to believe that your parents' feelings were your responsibility, you probably still believe that it's within your power to "make" them—and often everyone else—either happy or sad.