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Susan Forward

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Famous Susan Forward Quotes

“MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE: When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find “good reasons” to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with “good reasons” for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him. Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities: • He’s not the man I thought he was. • The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know what to do • The relationship may be over. Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.”

TrustLiesBetrayalDeceitLiarPathological LiarsCompulsive Liars
Book:When Your Lover Is a Liar: Healing the Wounds of Deception and Betrayal
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“Reality Check His lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your fault. Lying is his choice and his problem, and if he makes that choice with you, he will make it with any other woman he’s with. That doesn’t mean you’re an angel and he’s the devil. It does mean that if he doesn’t like certain things about you, he has many ways to address them besides lying. If there are sexual problems between you, there are many resources available to help you. Nothing can change until you hold him responsible and accountable for lying and stop blaming yourself. The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don’t feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to. Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection—and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can’t erase his lies, and as we’ll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt.”

TrustLiesDeceitLieLiarCognitive DissonanceRelationship ProblemsPathological LyingCompulsive Lying
Author:Susan Forward
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“Children need to make mistakes and discover that it's not the end of the world. That's how they gain the confidence to try new things in life. Toxic parents impose unobtainable goals, impossible expectations, and ever-changing rules on their children. They expect their children to respond with a degree of maturity that can come only from life experiences that are inaccessible to a child. Children are not miniature adults, but toxic parents expect them to act as if they were.”

ChildrenFamilyParentingParentsToxic Parenting
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“I also believe that forgiveness is appropriate only when parents do something to earn it. Toxic parents, especially the more abusive ones, need to acknowledge what happened, take responsibility, and show a willingness to make amends. If you unilaterally absolve parents who continue to treat you badly, who deny much of your reality and feelings, and who continue to project blame onto you, you may seriously impede the emotional work you need to do.”

ForgivenessAbuseParentsToxicAmends
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“Just as verbally and physically abused children internalize blame, so do incest victims. However, in incest, the blame is compounded by the shame. The belief that ‘it’s all my fault’ is never more intense than with the incest victim. This belief fosters strong feelings of self-loathing and shame. In addition to having somehow to cope with the actual incest, the victim must now guard against being caught and exposed as a ‘dirty, disgusting’ person”

ChildrenFeelingsBeliefHealingFamilyDepressionShameVictimMental HealthParentsAnxiousToxicFearfulIncestToxic Parents
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“Instead, incest occurs in families where there is a great deal of emotional isolation, secrecy, neediness, stress, and lack of respect. In many ways incest can be viewed as part of a total family breakdown. But it is the aggressor and the aggressor alone who commits the sexual violence.”

Child Sexual AbuseIncestFamily Dysfunction
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“Parents who feel good about themselves do not have to control their adult children. But [toxic parents] operate from a deep sense of dissatisfaction with their lives and a fear of abandonment. Their child's independence is like the loss of a limb to them. As the child grows older, it becomes ever more important for the parents to pull the strings that keep the child dependent. As long as toxic parents can make their son or daughter feel like a child, they can maintain control.”

ParentingControlInsecurityToxic Parents
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“In his psychoanalytic practice, Freud was getting so many reports of incest from the daughters of respected, middle-class Viennese families that he groundlessly decided they couldn’t all be true. To explain their frequency, he concluded that the events occurred primarily in his patients’ imaginations. The legacy of Freud’s error is that thousands, perhaps millions, of incest victims have been, and in some cases continue to be, denied the validation and support they need, even when they are able to muster the courage to seek professional help.”

IncestFreudChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorSigmund FreudFreudianSeduction Theory
Book:Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life
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“Abuse is defined as any behavior that is designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation and verbal or physical assaults. In other words, you don’t have to be hit to be abused. In physical battering the weapons are fists; in psychological battering the weapons are words. The only difference between the two is the choice of weapons.”

AbuseWeaponPhysicalPsychological AbuseBattering
Book:Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them: When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why
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“Love involves more than just feelings. It is also a way of behaving. When Sandy said, "My parents don't know how to love me," she was saying that they don't know how to behave in loving ways. If you were to ask Sandy's parents, or almost any other toxic parents, if they love their children, most of them would answer emphatically that they do. Yet, sadly, most of their children have always felt unloved. What toxic parents call "love" rarely translates into nourishing, comforting behavior.”

IfsKnowsWayChildrenSaidFeelingsAsksFeltParentAnswersHealingKnow HowBehaviorBehaveToxicTeensTranslateComfortingHow To LoveUnlovedSandy
Author:Susan Forward
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“Many toxic parents compare one sibling unfavorably with another to make the target child feel that he's not doing enough to gain parental affection. This motivates the child to do whatever the parents want in order to regain their favor. This divide-and-conquer technique is often unleashed against children who become a little too independent, threatening the balance of the family system.”

WantFeelsChildrenLittlesEnoughOrderParentBalanceGainsIndependentAffectionTechniqueFavorsConquerCompareTargetDividesToxicThreateningSiblingParentalUnleashedDivide And Conquer
Author:Susan Forward
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“Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. Many never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives.”

NeedsFeelsTryingChildrenParentDifficultResultsRiskMastersGuidanceMatureControlledAnxiousFearfulHelplessManipulateOngoingInadequateParentalParental Guidance
Author:Susan Forward
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“Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words “I love you” are not enough to make up for that. Don't kid yourself that they are.”

IfsMenEnoughFeelingsKidsRomanceLyingPassionLove IsLove YouBehaviorActiveOur RelationshipVerbsNounsLying MenBehaving Badly
Author:Susan Forward
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“Unhealthy families discourage individual expression. Everyone must conform to the thoughts and actions of the toxic parents. They promote fusion, a blurring of personal boundaries, a welding together of family members. On an unconscious level, it is hard for family members to know where one ends and another begins. In their efforts to be close, they often suffocate one another's individuality.”

KnowsEndsHardActionTogetherIndividualParentLevelsEffortExpressionMembersIndividualityBoundariesUnconsciousToxicConformDiscouragingUnhealthyFamily MembersFusionThoughts And ActionsWeldingIndividual Expression
Author:Susan Forward
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“If there is one sweeping generalization I can make without fear of contradiction, it is that 'change' is the scariest word in the English language Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.”

IfsFirstsPersonsI CanSelfLanguageUnderstandingStepsOur LivesBehaviorInsightContradictionFirst StepsEnglish LanguageSweepingGeneralizationPleadingNaggingNew RoadsUnderstanding Why
Author:Susan Forward
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