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Self Protection Quotes

Browse 66 quotes about Self Protection.

Self Protection Quotes

“I'm no expert, but in my limited experience, women aren't born women. They start out as girls. And every girl, from the moment they can dream, imagines the rescue. The knight. The castle. Life in a fairy tale. If you don't believe me, watch boys and girls on a playground. No one teaches us to do this. The kid in us actually believes in things that are too good to be true. Before life convinces us we can't and they're not. Then life kicks in. Boys become men. Girls become women. For any number of reasons we are wounded and, sadly, wounded people wound people. So many of us grow into doubting, hopeless, callous adults protecting hardened hearts. Medicating the pain. Life isn't what we imagined. Nor are we. And we didn't start out trying to get there. Far from it. But it's who we've become. One day we turn around, and what we once dreamed or hoped is a distant echo. We've forgotten what it sounded like. Once pure and unadulterated, the voice of hope is now muted by all the stuff we've crammed on top of it. And we're okay with that. For some illogical reason, we stand atop the mine shaft of ourselves, shoving stuff into the pipe that is us, telling our very soul, 'Shut up. Not another word.' Why? Because the cry of our heart hurts when unanswered. And the longer it remains unanswered, the deeper the hurt. In self-protection we inhale resignation and exhale indifference. [Murphy Shepherd]”

Growing UpIndifferenceResignationDisillusionmentSelf ProtectionWoundednessBeing Wounded
Book:The Letter Keeper
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“If a child doesn't have a secure and stable relationship after a parent leaves, she keeps her feelings inside because it's not safe to put them out there. Later on the child thinks, 'I'm not going to trust you.' Her future attachments get compromised, because she never worked through the attachments she did have. All she had to do was protect herself, and part of that protection was not to attach to anyone.”

GriefRelationshipChildhoodSecurityTrustAttachmentStabilityInstabilitySelf Protection
Book:Treatment of Complicated Mourning
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“These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength. Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life—with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long—and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls. Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm. Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling. Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss.”

FeelingsStrongHealingStrengthSelf LoveEmotionsMessVulnerabilityFeelingSelf Protection
Author:Vironika Tugaleva
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“No one wants to occupy a black hole of sadness and despair or slip on the tight rope that separates sanity from insanity, and reside in a vortex devoid of reality. I entered the world as a freeman and desire to escape a state of existential vertigo. I yearn to discover a synthesizing spirit of my being and hold my head high, free of doubt, and devoid of fear. I wish to foment the cerebral energy to stave off premature destruction and forevermore blunt an intolerable state of anguish.”

SufferingSadnessSadDespairInsaneInsanityBlissSanityDesperationAnguishSelf PreservationSadness QuotesTransformation QuotesSelf ProtectionEnlightexistential Crisis
Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“I know a little something about fear, honey. I know what a relief it feels like to give into it at first. It’s not hard to persuade yourself that you’re doing the right thing—that you’re making the smart, safe decision. But fear is insidious. It takes anything you’re willing to give it, the parts of your life you don’t mind cutting out, but when you’re not looking, it takes anything else it damn well pleases, too.”

FearAnxietyPersuasionOvercoming FearSelf Protection
Book:Imaginary Things
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“The truth is, these parts of you are trying to help. They developed to protect you from pain, rejection, or uncertainty. But over time, their strategies may become outdated—like using dial-up internet in a fiber-optic world.”

WisdomGrowthPsychologyHuman NatureInsightfulSelf ProtectionSchemasInner PartsOutdated Patterns
Book:The Therapist's Handbook for Healing Your Simpsons Syndrome: Unhook from Your Inner Chaos Characters with CBT, ACT, and a Little Humor
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“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day. (p.28)”

LifeMindBodyDenialAvoidanceSelf PreservationHiddenSelf ProtectionVeilScreen
Book:The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness
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“Never allow yourself to become a choice in any relationship. The moment you do is when you have reduced your loved one's affections to a daily biological question: Should I take a dump here or wait till I get home?”

ChoicesRelationshipsHealingMarriageAwarenessConfidenceDignitySelf RespectWomen EmpowermentRelationship AdviceLife CoachSinglesRelationships 101Self ProtectionTough LoveCommonsenseSingle WomanDating 101Marital AdviceTidy Bowl
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“Being in a state of denial is a universally human response to situations which threaten to overwhelm. People who were abused as children sometimes carry their denial like precious cargo without a port of destination. It enabled us to survive our childhood experiences, and often we still live in survival mode decades beyond the actual abuse. We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.”

SecretPsychologySurvivalVictimTraumaProtectionDefenseDenialSurvivorChild AbuseRepressionSelf ProtectionAbuse SurvivorDefense MechanismTraumatic StressTraumatic MemoriesSecret History
Book:Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder
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“Suddenly finding myself imprisoned in the ruins of the fortresses I created, I realize that that which I built to protect me has now become a labyrinth that is set to destroy me. And laying spent in the rubble, I finally realize that there is only one fortress and I cannot create it because there is only one God.”

GodChristianJesusChristianityFailureProtectJesus ChristDestructionProtectionDefenseBoundariesFailDestroyFortressesRubbleSelf ProtectionDefense MechanismsBoundaryDefensiveCaptiveImprisonedFortress
Author:Craig D. Lounsbrough
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“Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing. So they fragment the memories into hundreds of shards, leaving only acceptable traces in their conscious minds. Rationalizations like "my childhood was rough," "he only did it to me once or twice," and "it wasn't so bad" are common, masking the fact that the abuse was devastating and chronic. But while the knowledge, body sensations, and feelings are shattered, they are not forgotten. They intrude in unexpected ways: through panic attacks and insomnia, through dreams and artwork, through seemingly inexplicable compulsions, and through the shadowy dread of the abusive parent. They live just outside of consciousness like noisy neighbors who bang on the pipes and occasionally show up at the door.”

HealingAbuseMental HealthAddictionMental IllnessDenialSurvivorChild AbuseDreadSubconsciousPtsdAlcoholismInsomniaAvoidanceDissociationAbuse SurvivorsNightmaresSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsFragmentedTraumatic ExperiencesChildhood AbuseConscious AwarenessRationalizationMental DisorderTraumatizedPanic AttacksDissociative DisorderAlcohol AddictionSelf ProtectionChild RapeDissociative AmnesiaHealing From AbuseMinimizingFlashbackAbusive ParentsHealing AbuseTrauma MemoryDefense MechanismFlashbacksParental AbuseEffects Of Child AbuseMinimizationDenial Of AbuseTrauma MemoriesDenial Of Child AbuseTraumatic MemoriesAbusive ParentIntrusiveSadistic AbuseDenial Of IncestIncestuousPsychological DefenceBad ChildhoodIrrational FearsAbusive ChildhoodIntrusionsMinimizing IssuesDissociated AmnesiaCompulsionsCompulsive EatingFear Of TruthBody MemoriesCompulsive BehaviorCompulsive OvereatingSeemingly Inexplicable BehaviorSex Addition
Book:The Couple Who Became Each Other: Stories of Healing and Transformation from a Leading Hypnotherapist
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“Boundaries define where ‘we’ end and ‘they’ begin, protecting our identity and preventing us from being overwhelmed by the imperatives of others. Properly utilized, silence can be an extraordinarily effective method for establishing and maintaining such boundaries.”

RelationshipsSilenceIdentityBalanceBoundariesSense Of SelfCenterednessSelf ProtectionPower Of SilencePersonal Boundaries
Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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“Other people’s reactions usually say more about their own inner weather report than they do about the magnificent (albeit occasionally messy) renovations happening in your Inner Springfield.”

WisdomRelationshipsPerspectiveEmpathyBoundariesInsightfulSelf ProtectionExternal Opinions
Book:The Therapist's Handbook for Healing Your Simpsons Syndrome: Unhook from Your Inner Chaos Characters with CBT, ACT, and a Little Humor
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“I am thinking of getting a conceal carry permit for my ‘Risky’ neighborhood walks. I was attacked by an aggressive dog in the street that bit my ankle. I was getting ready to give it a big kick to its head when it ran off. If I had a gun, I would have shot it. Now that dogs are killing people, it has elevated the need for self-protection.”

DogsSelf ProtectionKilling PeopleAggressive DogBig KickConceal Carry PermitI Was AttackedIf I Had A GunRan OffShot It
Author:Steven Magee
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“While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others.”

CultureFriendshipLossIsolationLanguage LearningWords Have PowerSelf ProtectionExpressing YourselfImmigration ExperienceHuman Instinct
Book:Farewell, My Orange
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“Andrew [Haswell Green]...thought of his impending travel on the brig. Of Samuel Tilden. Of why the friendship had vanished, the errors he must have made, too many signs of affection, or of desperation, neediness, the most appalling of all impressions to make on a fellow man. His only available course now was to put distance between his failures and his future, tighten the stranglehold on his feelings, and harden his heart protectively against the pain of further great mistakes.”

Self ProtectionLoss Of Friendship
Book:The Great Mistake
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“The anger response, like the fear response, is a frequent target for repression. Imagine a 6-year-old girl who is angry at her 10-year-old brother for teasing her. In response, she might make an angry face, yell at her brother, and strike out at him with her fists. It’s an instinctual, energizing reaction designed to protect her from danger. Someone is violating her sense of well-being, and she’s afraid that if she doesn’t stop the intruder, she’ll get hurt. “A wise parent would validate the girl’s anger — it’s infuriating to be teased — and help her find a verbal rather than a physical way to express it. ‘You are very mad at your brother for teasing you,’ says this model parent, ‘I would be, too. Tell him in words how angry you feel. He needs to know.’ This way, the girl can protect herself from her brother and purge herself of her anger without having to resort to physical violence. Her self-protective anger remains intact. It has simply been given a ore ‘civilized’ form of expression.”

AngerRepressionSelf DefenseSelf ProtectionAnger Repression
Book:The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life
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“Light filtered down through the water to the bed where the frilly pearl oysters lay fastened to the rub-bly bottom, a bottom strewn with shells of broken. opened oysters. This was the bed that had raised the King of Spain to be a great power in Europe in past years, had helped to pay for his wars, and had deco-rated the churches for his soul's sake. The gray oysters with ruffles like skirts on the shells, the barnacle. crusted oysters with little bits of weed clinging to the skirts and small crabs climbing over them. An acci dent could happen to these oysters, a grain of sand could lie in the folds of muscle and irritate the flesh until in self-protection the flesh coated the grain with a layer of smooth cement. But once started, the flesh continued to coat the foreign body until it fell free in some tidal flurry or until the oyster was destroyed. For centuries men had dived down and torn the oys-ters from the beds and ripped them open, looking for the coated grains of sand. Swarms of fish lived near the bed to live near the oysters thrown back by the searching men and to nibble at the shining inner shells. But the pearls were accidents, and the finding of one was luck, a little pat on the back by God or the gods or both.”

LightBeautyDreamsSelf ProtectionOyster
Book:The Pearl
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“The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment ... seems to result from a combination of causes our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by "the death of God" and of the subordinate god, Eros.”

WorldSelfSeemsSexCausesResultsDemocraticProtectionTendenciesCombinationAtmosphereCompanionRegimesSubordinatesErosSelf ProtectionDisenchantment
Book:Love and Friendship
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“Toddlers ask many questions, and so do school children - until about grade three. By that time, many of them have learned an unfortunate fact, that in school, it can be more important for self-protection to hide one's ignorance about a subject than to learn more about it, regardless of one's curiosity.”

ChildrenImportantSelfFactsSchoolThreeAsksSubjectsIgnoranceCuriosityProtectionGradesUnfortunateToddlerSelf Protection
Book:The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart
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“Man begins life helpless. The babe is in paroxysms of fear the moment its nurse leaves it alone, and it comes so slowly to any power of self-protection that mothers say the salvation of the life and health of a young child is a perpetual miracle.”

MenChildrenSelfMomentsYoungMotherFearMiracleSalvationProtectionNursePerpetualHelplessBabeYoung ChildrenSelf Protection
Book:The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude
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“Therefore, to teach them [women] at least an outline of economics and law is the first requirement after giving them a general education. Figuratively speaking, it will be like providing the women of civilized society with a pocket dagger for self-protection.”

GivingFirstsSelfLawTeachEconomicsProtectionPocketsCivilizedProvidingRequirementsOutlinesCivilized SocietyDaggersSelf ProtectionGeneral Education
Book:Fukuzawa Yukichi on Japanese women: selected works
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