Quotes About Vulnerability

Families are as sick as their toxic shame secrets.

Everyone needs a sense of shame, but no one needs to feel ashamed. —Frederick Nietzsche

Just as the shame-based parents cannot accept their own weaknesses, wants, feelings, vulnerability and dependency needs, they cannot accept their children's neediness, feelings, weakness, vulnerability and dependency. Firestone writes that the voice is the result of the "parents' deeply repressed desire to destroy the aliveness and spontaneity of the child whenever he or she intrudes on their defenses.

If the parent were to let the child express those feelings, it would threaten his own defenses. The parent must stop the child's feelings of neediness and pain so that he doesn't have to feel his own feelings of neediness and pain.

Whenever a shame-based person feels his real feelings, he feels ashamed. So, to avoid that pain he numbs out.

Having damaged boundaries is like living in a house without locks on the doors.

Feelings of excitement and curiosity become bound in shame, and the child's courage and enthusiasm are severely limited. Toxic shame takes on the face of apathy or cowardice at this stage. Describing the impact of her father's incest, the poet Mary Oliver writes in her poem "Rage": "And you see how the child grows—timidly, crouching in corners.

High school is the time of puberty. And puberty is a time of intense exposure and vulnerability. Whatever toxic shame a person carries from childhood will be tested in high school. Often teenage groups look for a scapegoat, someone everyone can dump and project their shame onto. This was Arnold's fate. He was viciously shamed by his female peer group. This accounted for his problem with women.

A shame-based person will guard against exposing his inner self to others, but more significantly, he will guard against exposing himself to himself.

Jock put his shoulder to the framework and the whole thing crumbled inward with a crash of glass. Rotten as touch-wood, he said. This place would never stand a siege.

all the little rags of honest impulse and stumbling kindness with which we try to shelter ourselves from the winds of space.

A girl never can predict who might wander into her boudoir during a bubble bath.

Creativity requires a willingness to look stupid.

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities he does not possess.

La humildad no es negar sus fortalezas. La humildad es ser sincero acerca de sus debilidades". —Rick Warren

the strength of the team is impacted by its weakest link.

At least once a year I'd ask Steve to point out anything he thought I was doing that was wrong or weaknesses in my leadership that he believed might have me headed for trouble. After a couple of years of this, Steve once said, 'John, you are the most successful person I work with, yet you are the only one who invites critism. Why?' I don't trust anyone with power that can't be checked, I answered. Especially me.

People who haven't overcome major losses are prone to think they are invincible. They start to believe they are better than they really are and are inclined to misuse their power. Everyone who makes a major contribution to life knows what it is to have failures.

Courage," he said, "is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared.

Care without candor creates dysfunctional relationships. Candor without care creates distant relationships.

A blessed thing it is for any man or woman to have a friend, one human soul whom we can trust utterly, who knows the best and worst of us, and who loves us in spite of all our faults.

I've learned that if you want people to be impressed, you can talk about your successes; but if you want people to identify with you, it's better to talk about your failures.

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess.

Humility is not denying your strengths. Humility is being honest about your weaknesses. All of us are a bundle of both great strengths and great weaknesses and humility is being able to be honest about both.