Quotes from John Bradshaw

Without our anger we become doormats and people pleasers. In childhood you were most likely severely shamed and punished when you expressed anger.

Playing roles and acting are forms of lying. If a person acts like they really feel and it rocks the boat, they are ostracized. We promote pretense and lying as a cultural way of life. Living this way causes an inner split. It teaches us to hide and cover up our toxic shame. This sends us deeper into isolation and loneliness.

I could not heal my being with my doing. To be who I am is all that matters.

Intimacy requires vulnerability and a lack of defensiveness. Intimacy requires healthy shame.

relationship itself is a form of therapy.

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

But when the feeling of shame is violated by a coercive and perfectionistic religion and culture—especially by shame-based source figures who mediate religion and culture—it becomes an all-embracing identity.

When a child is deprived and neglected, he has a much harder time delaying gratification. Our wounded inner child believes that there is a severe scarcity of love, food, strokes, and enjoyment. Therefore, whenever the opportunity arises to have these things, our inner kid goes overboard.

Healthy shame is the basic metaphysical boundary for human beings. It is the emotional energy that signals us that we are not God—that we will make mistakes, that we need help. Healthy shame gives us permission to be human.

charm and attraction, and it is the core of their innocence. Children live in the now and are oriented to pleasure. They accept life's "queer conundrums

Their "strange Divinity" results from their lacking any sense of right or wrong, good or bad.

I can simply tell you that all of us need to be aware that trauma has a twofold potential: it can be the catalyst for creative change or the cause of self-destruction.

SHAME—THE MASTER EMOTION Shame has been called the master emotion because as it is internalized-all the other emotions are bound by shame. Emotionally shame-bound parents cannot allow their children to have emotions because the child's emotions triggers the parents' emotions. Repressed emotions often feel too big, like they would completely overwhelm us if we expressed them. There is also the fear of the shame that would be triggered if we expressed our emotions.

Where are you, Adam? According to the book of Genesis, Adam went into hiding after the fall. By trying to be more than human, Adam felt less than human. Before the fall, Adam was not ashamed; after the fall he was. Toxic shame is true agony. It is a pain felt from the inside, in the core of our being. It is excruciatingly painful.

With the child already shame-based, the feeling of discouragement takes over the whole personality. As the shame-based child forms her primitive conscience, shame becomes immorality or neurotic guilt. The conforming child believes he can do nothing right

The poisonous pedagogy justifies highly abusive methods for suppressing children's vital spontaneity: physical beatings, lying, duplicity, manipulation, scare tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation and coercion to the point of torture. All of these methods are toxically shaming.

To develop strong ego boundaries, children need parents with strong boundaries. No shame-based parent has these. Toxic shame greatly damages our boundaries. Without strong boundaries for protection, a child cannot thrive. Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the doors.

Darwin knew that the mother of the blush was shame. For Darwin, shame defines our essential humanity. Silvan Tomkins views shame as an innate feeling that limits our experience of interest, curiosity and pleasure.

Anger is often blocked from conscious awareness and converted into more tolerable or family-authorized feelings, such as hurt or guilt. The person feeling anger no longer feels it; he feels the acceptable feeling.

Children need their parents' time and attention. Giving one's time is part of the work of love. It means being there for the child, attending to the child's needs rather than the parent's needs.

Children are natural believers—they know there is something greater than themselves.

There is also enmeshment and boundary confusion between the daughter and mother. The daughter is often carrying the mother's repressed anger and sadness about the father. This feels overwhelming since these are deeply repressed emotions. Therefore, to starve and avoid eating is a protection against feeling these overwhelming emotions.

Unfortunately, accomplishments do not reduce internalized shame. In fact, the more one achieves, the more one has to achieve. Toxic shame is about being; no amount of doing will ever change it.

committed to a life of honesty, love and discipline, we must be willing to commit ourselves to reality.