Many children from troubled families have difficulty relaxing and having fun. Ability to be spontaneous and to play is a need and a characteristic of our Child Within.
However, the nurturing person must be able to nurture and the person in need must be able to let go, to surrender, in order to be nurtured. In my observations of patients, their families, and of other...
To get to the point of recovery, we must survive. Survivors are by necessity co-dependent. We use many coping skills and ego defenses to do this. Children of alcoholics and from other troubled or dysf...
High Tolerance for Inappropriate Behavior, children and adults often do not realize that they have been mistreated. Having no other reference point from which to test reality, they think that how they...
Submitting to others, rather than affirming our own reality, is the heart of active co-dependence—we give up our own inner world in order to be accepted by others.
Our Real Self feels both joy and pain. And it expresses and shares them with appropriate others. However, our false self tends to push us to feel mostly painful feelings and to withhold and not share...
When we are not allowed to remember, to express our feelings and to grieve or mourn our losses or traumas, whether real or threatened, through the free expression of our Child Within, we become ill. T...
Gradually, as more and more of our needs are met, we discover a crucial truth: that we are the most influential, effective and powerful person who can help us get what we need. The more we realize thi...
Many children growing up in troubled or dysfunctional families learn how to be either aggressive or manipulative or to sit back or withdraw. They don’t get what they want or need. They almost never se...
That often seemed the only way to avoid many of our painful feelings, such as anger, fear and hurt. It also gave us the illusion of being in control. But what seemed to work then doesn’t always work w...
The way out is to surrender, and then to become, gradually, a co-creator of life. This is where the spiritual aspect of recovery comes into play as a powerful aid. Attendance at and working 12 Step re...
In our recovery we learn that love is not simply a feeling. Rather it is an energy that is manifested by a commitment and a will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s t...
Tim is learning about his high tolerance of others’ inappropriate behavior and is beginning to get free of this often subtle form of mistreatment.
With the help of parents, other authority figures, and institutions (such as education, organized religion, politics, the media, and even some psychotherapy), most of us learn to stifle or deny our Ch...
The mother or other parent figure(s) must attend the infant and child so that at least its safety, security and touching are met.
The emotional pain hurts so much that we defend against them by the various unhealthy ego defenses described in Chapter 8, thus shutting the feelings out, away from our awareness. Doing so allows us t...
We actually have four additional choices, which we may learn as we grow older: (1) to hold it in until it gets unbearable; (2) unable to let it out, we get physically or emotionally sick, and/or we ma...
What the child sees as reality is denied, and a new model, view or false belief system of reality is assumed as true by each family member. This fantasy often binds the family together in a further dy...
As we do so, our Child Within begins to awaken and eventually to flourish, grow and create. Virginia Satir said, We need to see ourselves as basic miracles and worthy of love.
The self (or object self) and the observing self.
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