Top 76 Quotes About Dysfunctional Families
#1. People who come from dysfunctional families are not destined for a dysfunctional life.
Bo Bennett
#2. I explain to my patients that abused children often find it hard to disentangle themselves from their dysfunctional families, whereas children grow away from good, loving parents with far less conflict. After all, isn't that the task of a good parent, to enable the child to leave home?
Irvin D. Yalom
#3. Controlling others is the cornerstone of dysfunctional families.
David W. Earle
#4. Weddings are never about the bride and groom, weddings are public platforms for dysfunctional families.
Lisa Kleypas
#5. What is most important to understand about dysfunctional families is that in keeping the family "secrets," we are harming ourselves and diminishing our ability to be honest and open-hearted with ourselves and others we care about
Katherine Mayfield
#6. Since children from dysfunctional families are so good at judging others, they also judge themselves finding themselves unacceptable when compared to others, always assuming they are second best, not enough. This is a painful realization so often they hide behind righteous arrogance.
David W. Earle
#7. In functional families the roles are chosen and are flexible. The members have the choice of giving up the roles. In dysfunctional families the roles are rigid.
John Bradshaw
#8. Many of the habits of dysfunctional families use are not from the lack of love but are the result of fear. Knowing the love-limiting habits and behaviors of dysfunctional families is a wonderful beginning to lower the fear, allowing us to be real, allowing us all to learn how to love better.
David W. Earle
#9. In my family, as in all dysfunctional families, instead of parents who act as strong and nurturing role models for their children, you get these needy people who use their children. I was the kid who tried to take on the marriage.
John Bradshaw
#10. An overwhelming majority of us come from dysfunctional families in which we were taught we were not okay, where we were shamed, verbally and/or physically abused, and emotionally neglected even as (we) were taught to believe that we were loved.
Bell Hooks
#11. Yeah, sometimes it gets a little sappy for me, but I'm tired of hearing about dysfunctional families in sitcoms. That's been done to death, and that's probably what everybody expected from me. But that's not what I wanted to do.
Mike Judge
#12. Many of us live in dysfunctional families, and so even if it's in a fairy tale, or perhaps because it's in a fairy tale, we have a chance to look at that side of our reflected lives differently.
Kenneth Branagh
#13. When it comes to dysfunctional families," he said,"I'll put mine up against anyone's, anytime
Jayne Castle
#14. I love books about dysfunctional families.
Sara Shepard
#15. Well, while I didn't have the more extreme experiences of some of my characters, I didn't exactly come from the most normal of households. Or rather, it was normal, in that dysfunctional families appear to be the norm.
Charles De Lint
#16. We all come from dysfunctional families and these days I guess that's pretty normal.
Carnie Wilson
#17. People talk about dysfunctional families; I've never seen any other kind.
Sue Grafton
#18. Families living in dysfunction seldom have healthy boundaries. Dysfunctional families have trouble knowing where they stop and others begin.
David W. Earle
#19. Dysfunctional families have sired a number of pretty good actors.
Gene Hackman
#20. The entrance into the family of an outside professional with legal authority is always a crisis-ridden event, but it may be the best insurance that the incest will not continue.
Janis Tyler Johnson
#21. Consuelo: Away from them, I realised that they formed a circle, or rather a net in which they were enmeshed together. I was the only one out of it. Being near them only made me feel more alone.
Oscar Lewis
#22. He knows I've seen something in him. Something I recognize, only because it exists in me too.
Siobhan Davis
#23. Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously.
Carrie Fisher
#25. The strange part about a person's lack of trust is that it often comes from not trusting themselves.
David W. Earle
#26. We don't have hardly anything"
"We gotta make do with what the land gives us
Ania Ahlborn
#27. With improved coping skills forged through my midlife crisis, I now listen first and do not control, and I allow these now adult children to come to their own conclusions about what they want for their lives.
David W. Earle
#28. Consider letting go of the barriers between yourself and others, let go of the definition our culture has inflicted upon us and allow the best part of ourselves to connect with the wondrous parts of others. Allow yourself to connect in a deeper and more profound way.
David W. Earle
#29. Children have empty erasable white boards upon which big people write indelibly imprinted messages into their tender subconscious minds.
David W. Earle
#30. Oh save your nagging for your husband, I'm going out. I have things to do before I go to New York.
Evelyn Smith
#31. A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.
Keri Hulme
#32. Humor has always been the redemptive angel in the Conroys's sad history. With this family, I shall never grow hungry from lack of material.
Pat Conroy
#34. It seems like all the sitcoms on now, the families are kind of dysfunctional.
Kevin Nealon
#35. When I learned about the gray existing between the black and white of absolute terms, I began to experience more peace. The more I expanded my gray areas (more than 50 shades), the more peace I experienced in my life.
David W. Earle
#36. Our parents were our first gods. If parents are loving, nurturing, and kind, this becomes the child's definition of the creator. If parents were controlling, angry, and manipulative, then this becomes their definition.
David W. Earle
#37. Shame is a powerful feeling. There is a tremendous difference between making a mistake and believing you are a mistake...If I don't see myself as being a mistake then it is I who must take responsibility and I am not ready to accept that.
David W. Earle
#38. See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#40. You were tossed away like a pair of beautiful, brand new shoes that did not quite fit.
Donna K. Childree
#41. We covered this around Year Three, Bill: that you're the Master of Space and Time and I'm a spastic Pomeranian.
Tracy Letts
#42. Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom.
Judith Lewis Herman
#43. 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.
David W. Earle
#44. It is hundreds of tiny threads of memories, which sew people together through the years. Despite, their mental separation they stay woven into that tapestry out of habit, emotion, obsession or fear.
Shannon L. Alder
#45. 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.
David W. Earle
#46. Sitting on the hot seat of change requires much courage, patience, and persistence.
David W. Earle
#47. You think you have a handle on God, the Universe, and the Great White Light until you go home for Thanksgiving. In an hour, you realize how far you've got to go and who is the real turkey.
Shirley Maclaine
#48. Mature adults gravitate toward new values and understandings, not just rehashing and blind acceptance of past patterns and previous learning. This is an ongoing process and maturity demands lifelong learners.
David W. Earle
#49. This imbalance causes resentments within the over-responsible and dependency with the irresponsible person and this dynamic becomes the destructive life-pattern not conducive to happy families.
David W. Earle
#50. There are two things you can run and not hide from- God and a dysfunctional family".
~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
#51. Though all the daughters eventually succeeded in escaping from their families, they felt, even at this time of the interview (while in their 20s and 30s) that they would never be safe with their fathers, and that they would have to defend themselves as long as their fathers lived.
Judith Lewis Herman
#52. A woman in Charlotte approached me and said that she's tired of the dysfunction in my novels. I told her I was sorry, but that is how the world has presented itself to me throughout my life.
Pat Conroy
#53. If you should choose to look at those files, you will have to live with the consequences of your choices while, at the same time, being mindful that these choices will not only effect you, but will also infect, sorry, I intended to say effect, our entire family.
Donna K. Childree
#54. I can't love him. I don't. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I've seen tear apart my family, writhing through heir hearts like worms through rotten apples.
Rosamund Hodge
#55. ...the state of perfection is an elusive goal; demanding something so obscure as almost unattainable and can become a compulsive, crazy making squirrel-on-a-wheel way of living.
David W. Earle
#56. Black and white thinking limits understanding and feedback, two necessary ingredients for successful resolution in creative conflict and successful understanding.
David W. Earle
#57. You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem.
Henry Cloud
#58. If you are looking for love under rocks or bringing home water moccasins, you might be confusing love and pain.
David W. Earle
#59. All people cross the line from childhood to adulthood with a secondhand opinion of who they are. Without any questioning, we take as truth whatever our parents and other influentials have said about us during our childhood, whether these messages are communicated verbally, physically, or silently.
Heyward Bruce Ewart III
#60. Honoring your word is the fiber from which trust is built.
David W. Earle
#61. People pay a dear price when not dealing with the powerful emotions.
David W. Earle
#62. Being judgmental is a form of attack keeping others off balance.
David W. Earle
#63. When one person attempts to "fix it" for the other person, the connection of acceptance is snapped and the sender and receiver miss an opportunity for understanding.
David W. Earle
#64. It's the great surprise of my life that I ended up loving [my father] so much.
Pat Conroy
#65. The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city school and broken black families.
Star Parker
#66. I was wrong last night. Kyler isn't just trouble. He's an apocalypse-level disaster waiting to happen. I need to find some fallout shelter to hide in. And quick.
Siobhan Davis
#67. If we want to improve, first we have to recognize our own maladaptive coping skills, called codependency, then change.
David W. Earle
#68. Codependency is a learned set of behaviors, thought processes, and habits. When combined together, they fit a very loose definition. All people exhibit these traits to some degree, but some of us allow them to dictate our relationships with others and ourselves.
David W. Earle
#69. As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended.
David W. Earle
#70. What are humans meant to do; why are we here? Are we a mutation on the earth destroying its host? Are we a cancer destined to kill what supports us? I think not. So exploring this question is a powerful exercise in meaning; what is the meaning of human existence?
David W. Earle
#72. When you journey inwardly exploring yourself, a sense of personal trust begins.
David W. Earle
#73. Awkward silences rule the world. People are so terrified of awkward silences that they will literally go to war rather than face an awkward silence.
Stefan Molyneux
#74. So much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families.
Stephen Karam
#75. Being able to say, "No," is a necessary ingredient in a healthy lifestyle.
David W. Earle
#76. Wounded parents often unintentionally inflict pain and suffering on their children and these childhood wounds causes a laundry list of maladaptive behaviors commonly called codependency. These habits restrict people to love-limiting relationships causing much unhappiness and distress.
David W. Earle
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