Quotes from David W. Earle

The more severe the dysfunction you experienced growing up, the more difficult boundaries are for you.

The greater the pain associated with love, the more likely a person is to be attracted to others who will inflict this pain…for isn't this what love is? Hurt people tend to hurt other people.

It is one thing to know about your dysfunctional habits but quite another to change them.

If you are looking for love under rocks or bringing home water moccasins, you might be confusing love and pain.

Sitting on the hot seat of change requires much courage, patience, and persistence.

If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change.

Change will not successfully happen unless the emotional component is solved.

Putting labels on others creates a black hole of disregard where judgment thrives and schisms deepen.

Change is hard, difficult, painful, and often messy

Being real is being true to you.

We ardently desire to take down our masks and say to the world, "This is who I am…and I am okay." This is simple…not easy.

When you journey inwardly exploring yourself, a sense of personal trust begins.

Families living in dysfunction seldom have healthy boundaries. Dysfunctional families have trouble knowing where they stop and others begin.

Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits.

The more dysfunctional, the more some family members seek to control the behavior of others.

Under this aura of perfection he knows how flawed he really is but his intact denial system keeps this awareness suppressed in the far recesses of his mind.

Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living.

Chaos limits the free-flow of love and becomes a roadblock to what family members want most and sadly, it becomes the normal for the family.

When someone obtains peace and serenity, this shines a bright spotlight on others' own unhappiness making their discomfort even more apparent.

If no one has boundaries…how can there be any transgression?

Swirling in a squirrel cage of perpetual motion, the head-committee meets, argues, votes out the guidance available from emotions, and successfully keeps serenity at bay and chaos close at hand.