Quotes from John Bradshaw

We humans are finite, "perfectly imperfect." Limitation is our essential nature. Grave problems result from refusing to accept our limits. Healthy shame is an emotion that teaches us about our limits. Like all emotions, shame moves us to get our basic needs met.

When emotional energy blocks the resolution of trauma, the mind itself becomes diminished in its ability to function.

That formula—Bible reading and prayer—will result in the same increase in faith for anyone willing to trust God. How

SHAME-BASED MARRIAGE AND PARENTAL MODELS It is obvious that a major source of toxic shame is the family system and its multigenerational patterns of unresolved secrets. More specifically, these families are created by the shame-based people who find and marry each other. Each expects the other to parent the child within him or her. Each is incomplete and insatiable. The insatiability is rooted in each person's unmet childhood needs.

The spiritual wound can be healed. But it must be done by grieving, and that is painful.

The wounded inner child is filled with unresolved energy resulting from the sadness of childhood trauma. One of the reasons we have sadness is to complete painful events of the past, so that our energy can be available for the present.

The Word of God not only offers hope and forgiveness, but power to live a new life of integrity and faith.

many adults see play as idleness, and idleness as the proverbial "devil's workshop.

Shame tells us of our limits. Shame keeps us in our human boundaries, letting us know we can and will make mistakes and that we need help. Our shame tells us we are not God. Healthy shame is the psychological foundation of humility. It is the source of spirituality.

Emotions are a form of thinking, and blocked emotions bias thinking. As emotions get bound by shame, their energy is frozen, which blocks the full interaction between the mind and the will.

Looking at Yourself Through the Eyes of Your Higher Power

When we are exposed without any way to protect ourselves, we feel the pain of shame. If we are continually overexposed, shame becomes toxic.

These roles not only shame us but they become our refuge of hiding. As we pretend to be real men and women, we can hide the fact that we really don't know who we are. We can mood-alter by playing our role to the hilt. In the mood alteration of being a real man or woman, we can avoid our painful shame.

shame as a healthy human emotion can be transformed into shame as a state of being. As a state of being shame takes over one's whole identity. To have shame as an identity is to believe that one's being is flawed, that one is defective as a human being. Once shame is transformed into an identity, it becomes toxic and dehumanizing.

Once one becomes a false self, one ceases to exist psychologically.

When two-year-olds are thwarted (like every three minutes), they have intense anger and temper tantrums. At this stage the child needs to take possession of things in order to test them by purposeful repetition.

Crushing the toddler's autonomy and purposeful will is the most damaging form of shaming that can be done. When autonomy is crushed, toxic shame is manifested either as total conformity or rebellion against authority. Once willpower, anger and purpose are bound in shame, a child's selfhood and personal power are severely wounded. His drive for separateness and autonomy are bound by shame. This has been called a "purpose shame bind.

One way adult children avoid their legitimate suffering is by staying in their heads. This involves obsessing about things, analyzing, discussing, reading, and spending lots of energy in trying to figure things out. There is a story about a room with two doors. Each door has a sign on it. One says HEAVEN; the other says LECTURE ON HEAVEN.

Shyness can become a serious problem when it is rooted in toxic shame.

Self-acceptance overcomes the self-rupture of toxic shame. Self-acceptance is the way to gain our personal power. When we accept ourselves, we are unified; all our energy is centered and flows outward.

Without the mind, the will is blind and has no content. Without content the will starts willing itself. This state of disablement causes severe problems, some of which are: 1. The will wills what can't be willed. 2. The will tries to control everything. 3. The will experiences itself as omnipotent or, when it has failed, as "wormlike." 4. The will wills for the sake of willing (impulsiveness). 5. The will wills in absolute extremes—all or nothing.

Toxic shame results from the unexpected exposure of vulnerable aspects of a child's self. This exposure takes place before the child has any ego boundaries to protect herself. Early shaming events happen in a context where the child has no ability to choose. The felt experience of shame is being exposed and seen when one is not ready to be seen.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces

All toxic scripts have the injunction "Don't be you." An injunction shames the authentic self and causes self-rupture.