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Dysfunctional Families Quotes

Browse 106 quotes about Dysfunctional Families.

Dysfunctional Families Quotes

“Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.”

FamilyIssuesTrustDenialSurvivorSexual AbuseRapeTriggersDisbeliefCopingChild Sexual AbuseIncestDisclosureDysfunctional FamilySociety DenialDysfunctional FamiliesChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorAbuse SurvivorMolestationMinimizationLack Of SupportPedophile ProtectorsMolestMolested
Book:Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
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“There was nothing ordinary about Ossie May. She was tall, sexy, smart, and pretty. Her looks and personality were her drawing cards. The flip side was her temperament. She was beauty and rage sandwiched together, and she must have invented cussing. She would unload swear word after swear word in rapid succession. There had to be a law against such offensive language.”

InspirationalTruthInspiringFamilyStruggleTouchingDysfunctional FamiliesFamily Humour
Book:Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar
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“I knew Dad was concerned about my past associations. I was from the Trash Alley. It was my community. I hung out with thugs from the Frog Bottom, the Burns Bottoms, the Red Line, the S-Curve, the Sandfield, the Morning Side, and a bunch of other places that shall remain nameless. I knew all of the “Legends of the Hood”: Sin Man, Swap, Boo Boo, Emp-Man, Cookie Man, Shank, Polar Bear, Bae Willy, Bae Bruh, Skullhead Ned, Pimp, Crunch, and Goat Turd (just to name a few). I thought maybe Dad had summoned me as a “show and tell” for the kids in his neighborhood—the hardliner to scare those wayward suburban brats back into reality.”

TruthLife LessonsFamilyStruggleChaosTraumaDysfunctional FamiliesDeeper UnderstandingFamily Humour
Book:Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar
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“The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”

Moving OnChild AbuseFear Of DeathAbandonmentChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsSelf SufficiencyIncestDysfunctional FamilyChildhood AbuseDysfunctional FamiliesAbusive ParentsChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorChildhood Sexual AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorsFear Of RejectionControlling ParentsAbuse DeniersTelling Your StoryAbandonment IssuesRevealing The TruthAbused ChildFear Of AbandonmentAbusive FamilyFamily AbuseAccepting The PastEscaping AbuseJust TellConsequences Of CrueltyTruth About AbuseDisclosing Abuse
Book:The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
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“At what point does the narcissism and cruelty of childhood stop being adorable and start being a possible symptom of a mental disorder? I cannot answer this question. I don't understand Lori, despite four decades of attempts. Seeking to understand Lori is a black hole that sucks up everything around it. I'm tired of that. It meant that through much of my life in my family, I didn't get to have a story. This led me to an obsession with trying to think about the people, places, and things we don't think about.”

Growing UpNarcissismDysfunctional Families
Book:My Life as a Goddess: A Memoir through (Un) Popular Culture
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“I used to joke that we had prepared ourselves for a time like this by living with Mother. The problem with such a state of affairs was not that you did not get to do what you wanted---sometimes you did---but the effort to appease or resist the reigning deities left you so exhausted that it prevented you from ever really having fun. To this day having fun, just plain enjoying myself, comes at the cost of a conviction that I have committed an undetected crime.”

Growing UpMothers And DaughtersDysfunctional Families
Book:Things I've Been Silent About
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“The teacher pulled out a pile of papers. They were Bennie’s tests and homework assignments. Mrs. Lewis said, “Ma’am, here is the proof that Bennie isn’t up to a fourth grade level. He has an F on several of these assignments. In fact, a zero grade is too high for some of Bennie’s work this last year.”

Life LessonsFamilyStruggleMemoirSchizophrenicDysfunctional FamiliesBulliesRawDeeper Understanding
Book:Surviving Chaos: How I Found Peace at A Beach Bar
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“I’ve written more about my parents than any writer in the history of the world, and I still return to their mysterious effigies as I try to figure out what it all means—some kind of annunciation or maybe even a summing-up They still exert immense control over me even though they’ve been dead for so long. But I can conjure up their images without exerting a thimbleful of effort.”

WritingParentsDysfunctional FamiliesPat Conroy
Book:A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life
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“After my parents were dead, I found in a box and in two chests of drawers nothing but hundreds of bright red Alpine caps, I said, nothing but bright red Alpine stockings. Every one of them knitted by my mother. My parents could have gone into the High Alps with these bright red caps and bright red stockings for thousands of years. I burnt every one of those bright red caps and bright red stockings, I said. I put on one of my mother's hundreds of bright red Alpine caps and in this costume burnt all the others, laughing, laughing, continuously laughing, I said. (Goethe Dies, p.65)”

HumourParentsDysfunctional FamiliesAlpsTrips
Book:Goethe schtirbt: Erzählungen
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“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.”

HealingInfluenceAbuseParentingParentsManipulationChild AbuseEmotional AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsDysfunctional FamiliesBelief SystemCore BeliefsChild Abuse Survivors
Book:Am I Bad? Recovering from Abuse
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“My only regret is that no one told me at the beginning of my journey what I'm telling you now: there will be an end to your pain. And once you've released all those pent-up emotions, you will experience a lightness and buoyancy you haven't felt since you were a very young child. The past will no longer feel like a lode of radioactive ore contaminating the present, and you will be able to respond appropriately to present-day events. You will feel angry when someone infringes on your territory, but you won't overreact. You will feel sad when something bad happens to you, but you won't sink into despair. You will feel joy when you have a good day, and your happiness won't be clouded with guilt. You, too, will have succeeded in making history, history.”

EmotionsRepressionHealing The PastDysfunctional FamiliesHealing The Emotional SelfHealing From AbuseHealing AbuseDysfunctional Relationships
Book:The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life
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“The CAS sent me to a therapist. He actually wasn’t half bad at first—real young, kinda cute, a bit stuck up with degrees in fancy IKEA frames all over his concrete walls and new-agey music playing. I mean, what kind of therapist has background music? Like was he going to massage my feet too? No doubt, he was making good money, though. To be honest, if he had made a move on me, I might have been okay with it.”

SacrificeParentingMotherhoodSocial WorkFiction NovelContemporary FictionFoster CareDysfunctional FamiliesIntergenerational Trauma
Book:The Family Code (206)
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“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?”

PsychologyTherapyDysfunctional Families
Book:Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy – A Therapist's Clinical Stories of Memorable Patients and Transformation
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“You can deny him, he thought, watching his father across the table. You can hate him, love him, pity him, never speak to or look at him in the eye again, never deign even to be in his crabbed and bitter presence, but you're still stuck with the son of a bitch. One way or another he'll always be your daddy, not even all-powerful death was going to change that.”

FamilyFathersInevitabilitySonsDysfunctional FamiliesAbusive Parents
Book:Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
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“In some instances, even when crisis intervention has been intensive and appropriate, the mother and daughter are already so deeply estranged at the time of disclosure that the bond between them seems irreparable. In this situation, no useful purpose is served by trying to separate the mother and father and keep the daughter at home. The daughter has already been emotionally expelled from her family; removing her to protective custody is simply the concrete expression of the family reality. These are the cases which many agencies call their “tragedies.” This report of a child protective worker illustrates a case where removing the child from the home was the only reasonable course of action: Division of Family and Children’s Services received an anonymous telephone call on Sept. 14 from a man who stated that he overheard Tracy W., age 8, of [address] tell his daughter of a forced oral-genital assault, allegedly perpetrated against this child by her mother’s boyfriend, one Raymond S. Two workers visited the W. home on Sept. 17. According to their report, Mrs. W. was heavily under the influence of alcohol at the time of the visit. Mrs. W. stated immediately that she was aware why the two workers wanted to see her, because Mr. S. had “hurt her little girl.” In the course of the interview, Mrs. W. acknowledged and described how Mr. S. had forced Tracy to have relations with him. Workers then interviewed Tracy and she verified what mother had stated. According to Mrs. W., Mr. S. admitted the sexual assault, claiming that he was drunk and not accountable for his actions. Mother then stated to workers that she banished Mr. S. from her home. I had my first contact with mother and child at their home on Sept. 20 and I subsequently saw this family once a week. Mother was usually intoxicated and drinking beer when I saw her. I met Mr. S. on my second visit. Mr. S. denied having had any sexual relations with Tracy. Mother explained that she had obtained a license and planned to marry Mr. S. On my third visit, Mrs. W. was again intoxicated and drinking despite my previous request that she not drink during my visit. Mother explained that Mr. S. had taken off to another state and she never wanted to see him again. On this visit mother demanded that Tracy tell me the details of her sexual involvement with Mr. S. On my fourth visit, Mr. S. and Mrs. S. were present. Mother explained that they had been married the previous Saturday. On my fifth visit, Mr. S. was not present. During our discussion, mother commented that “Bay was not the first one who had Tracy.” After exploring this statement with mother and Tracy, it became clear that Tracy had been sexually exploited in the same manner at age six by another of Mrs. S.'s previous boyfriends. On my sixth visit, Mrs. S. stated that she could accept Tracy’s being placed with another family as long as it did not appear to Tracy that it was her mother’s decision to give her up. Mother also commented, “I wish the fuck I never had her.” It appears that Mrs. S. has had a number of other children all of whom have lived with other relatives or were in foster care for part of their lives. Tracy herself lived with a paternal aunt from birth to age five.”

TragedyBetrayalChild AbuseAlcoholismChild Sexual AbuseDisclosureFoster CareDysfunctional FamiliesChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorAbusive MenChild ProtectionFamily SecretsBetrayal TraumaAbusive MotherChild NeglectFoster ChildAbusive ParentSocial WorkersChild RapistBad MotheringChild Sexual Abuse LiesBetrayal BondChild Protection Services
Book:Father-Daughter Incest
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“The utter atrocities of Nazism have shown us clearly what the inherent potential of destruction in the parenting rules we have been using for the last 150 years. These rules are non-democratic. They are based on inequality of power and unequal rights. They promote the use and ownership of some people by others and teach the denial and repression of emotional vitality and spontaneity. They glorify obedience, orderliness, logic, rationality, power and male supremacy. They are flagrantly anti-life.”

FamilyDemocracyParentingNazismNazisDysfunctional FamiliesDysfunctional
Book:Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem
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“Her family was at least as dysfunctional and peculiar as his own, riven with scenes that to other people might've been epoch defining—'it was a month before Daddy torched Mummy's portrait in the hall, and the paneling caught fire, and the fire brigade came, and we all had to be evacuated via the upstairs windows'—but to the Campbells were so normalized they seemed routine.”

AbuseChaoticDysfunctional FamiliesDysfunctionalFamily DysfunctionUnhappy Families
Book:Troubled Blood
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