Sam Keen points out that Zen masters spend years to reach an enlightenment that every natural child already knows – the total incarnation of sleeping when you’re tired and eating when you’re hungry. What irony that this state of Zen-like bliss is programmatically and systematically destroyed.

— John Bradshaw

John Bradshaw Quotes

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.

— John Bradshaw

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

— John Bradshaw

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.

— John Bradshaw

Healthy shame lets us know that we are limited. It tells us that to be human is to be limited. Actually, humans are essentially limited. Not one of us has, or can ever have, unlimited power.

— John Bradshaw

Montagu argues that the human species was designed to develop “in ways that emphasize rather than minimize the childlike traits.” The human child naturally loves, is nonjudgmental, friendly, spontaneous, curious, open to new learning, etc. We cannot recover our innocence, our childlike qualities, until we have reclaimed and championed our Inner Child.

— John Bradshaw

The disowned part of self is an energy – an emotion or desire or need, that has been shamed every time it emerged. These energy patterns are repressed but not destroyed. They are alive in our unconscious.

— John Bradshaw

Richard Bandler suggested that one of the major blocks to creativity was the feeling of knowing you are right.

— John Bradshaw

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

— John Bradshaw

There is an absolutist quality to rage. Being angry all the time and overreacting to little things may be a sign that there is a deeper rage that needs to be worked on.

— John Bradshaw

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.

— John Bradshaw

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

— John Bradshaw

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.

— John Bradshaw

Jung said it well: “All our neuroses are substitutes for legitimate suffering.

— John Bradshaw

These authors posit that a value is not a value unless it has seven elements. They are: 1. It must be chosen. 2. There must be alternatives. 3. You must know the consequences of your choice. 4. Once chosen you prize and cherish it. 5. You are willing to publicly proclaim it. 6. You act on this value. 7. You act on it consistently and repeatedly.

— John Bradshaw

We need to teach our inner child that problems are normal and that he must accept them.

— 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.

— John Bradshaw

Thus, the Church of Rome gave its official sanction to cruelty toward cats. Anyone coming upon a cat after dark was justified in killing or maiming it, on the grounds that it might be a witch in disguise.

— John Bradshaw

In 15 years of working with teenage drug abusers, I’ve never found a single one who was what I’d call only a chemical addict. As powerful as many of the current market drugs are, especially cocaine and crack, I’ve never yet worked with an addict who didn’t have the inner emptiness. I’ve been in my personal recovery for 30 years and I’ve never met a person in recovery from chemical abuse who didn’t have abandonment issues in the sense I have defined them.

— John Bradshaw

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

— John Bradshaw

When we think we are absolutely right, we stop seeking new information. To be right is to be certain, and to be certain stops us from being curious.

— John Bradshaw
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