Quotes from John Bradshaw

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.

Once an emotion is toxically shame bound, one feels numb. The emotional avoidance is sealed by learning to avoid the avoidance.

our emotions are innate and that "they are only good or evil as the end to which they are used." There is an innate and a learned component to all emotion. "Therefore," Pocaterra writes, "there must be two shames, one natural and free from awareness and the other acquired.

The more dysfunctional the system, the more closed and rigid are the roles it assigns. In families that are chemically, sexually or violently dysfunctional, the needs of the system are overt. The system dispenses its roles for the members to play in order to keep balance. All the rigid roles set up by family dysfunction are forms of abandonment.

IDENTIFICATION When victimization takes place the victim often identifies with the persecutor. By so doing the victim no longer feels the helplessness and the shame of humiliation of the victimization. Persecuting offenders were often previously victims who identified with their offenders. In identifying they no longer have to feel the shame.

Because the exposure of self to self lies at the heart of neurotic shame, escape from the self is necessary. The escape from self is accomplished by creating a false self. The false self is always more or less than human. The false self may be a perfectionist or a slob, a family Hero or a family Scapegoat. As the false self is formed, the authentic self goes into hiding. Years later the layers of defense and pretense are so intense that one loses all conscious awareness of who one really is.

The roles are like scripts given out for a play. They prescribe what feelings you can or cannot have. After playing my Hero role for years, I no longer really knew who I was.

Addiction is the central organizing principle of the family system—maintaining the system as well as the shame. When we address addiction in families, we open the door to the families' shame.

Now, as your adult gives your wounded inner child permission to disobey your parents' beliefs and rules, your inner child must believe that you have enough power to go against your parents. This power is what Eric Berne called potency

In fact, the most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

CONVERSION I spoke of affect and need conversion when I described how Max compensated for his abusive and neglectful abandonment by converting most of his feelings and needs into sexual thoughts, feelings and behaviors. There are other ways that conversion defends us against toxic shame.

It's difficult to let someone get close to you if you feel defective and flawed as a human being. Shame-based couples maintain nonintimacy through poor communication, nonproductive circular fighting, games, manipulation, vying for control, withdrawal, blaming and confluence. Confluence is the agreement never to disagree. Conflulence creates pseudointimacy.

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

Crying when feeling angry is a common female feeling racket.

One of the significant lessons in my life was given me by Abraham Low, the founder of Recovery, Inc. He said that "intellectualizing about our problems is complex but easy, while doing something about them is simple but difficult." Shame-based intellectuals love to analyze.

When Herkamer tells her he hates her, she cries, telling him that maybe someday she won't be home when he wants her. Poor Herkamer is devastated. His abandonment, terror and separation anxiety are triggered. He rushes to his mom, feeling terrible guilt. His awareness of his anger is completely lost. His anger has been converted into guilt.

Success is different at different stages of development—from not wetting your pants in infancy, to being well liked in childhood and adolescence, to getting laid in young adulthood, to making money and having prestige in later adulthood, to getting laid in middle age, to being well liked in old age, to not wetting your pants in senility." What's

When we are shame-based, we can only focus on our own ache.

In order to be healed we must come out of isolation and hiding. This means finding a person, or ideally a group of significant others, whom we are willing to trust. This is tough for shame-based people.

Shame becomes toxic because of premature exposure. We are exposed either unexpectedly or before we are ready to be exposed. We feel helpless and powerless. No wonder then that we fear the scrutinizing eyes of others. However, the only way out of toxic shame is to embrace the shame—we must come out of hiding.

Superachievement and perfectionism are two of the leading cover-ups for toxic shame. As paradoxical as it may seem, the straight-A student and the F student may both be driven by toxic shame.

A racket is a family-authorized feeling used to replace an unacceptable and shameful feeling.

When shame underlies the control and release it seems to intensify both sides of the tension. . . . Shame makes the control dynamic more rigidly demanding and unforgiving and the release more dynamic and self-destructive. The more intensely one controls, the more one requires the balance of release and the more abusingly or self destructively one releases, the more intensely one requires control.

Reframing my life with my wonder child helped me to see that everything in my childhood prepared me for what I'm doing now. The purpose I found in my meditation was that I am here to be myself and to proclaim my human freedom and to help others do the same.