Those of us who have suffered from extreme physical, sexual, and emotional abuse have a big challenge trying to create a loving Inner Adult.

All Quotes

Those of us who have suffered from extreme physical, sexual, and emotional abuse have a big challenge trying to create a loving Inner Adult.

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Quotes

All Quotes

Those of us who have suffered from extreme physical, sexual, and emotional abuse have a big challenge trying to create a loving Inner Adult.

— Margaret Paul

More Quotes

"Repentance is the nourisher of piety, the procurer of mercy."

— Thomas Watson

"The two great graces essential to a saint in this life, are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven."

— Thomas Watson

"Committed action refers to purposeful behavior change in the service of chosen values, with a willingness to experience the thoughts, feelings, and reactions that show up in the process of moving forward."

— Jill A. Stoddard and Niloofar Afari

"Radical openness assumes that we don’t see things as they are but rather as we are."

— Thomas R. Lynch

"Self-care is central to life itself."

— Paul Gilbert

"Just as too much physical force can break a child’s bones, too much control can break a child’s spirit and fracture his psyche. It can cause a splintering of self, causing a child to disown some parts of himself and to inflate others."

— Beverly Engel

"When people start to love themselves more each day, it is amazing how their lives get better."

— Louise Hay

"After years of individual counseling with clients, and conducting hundreds of workshops and intensive training programs… I find that there is only one thing that seems to heal every problem, and that is to love yourself."

— Louise Hay

"One must have a chaos inside oneself to give birth to a dancing star."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering."

— Peter A. Levine PhD

"… what doesn’t destroy me makes me stronger."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"The person … in the grip of an old distress says things that are not pertinent, does things that don’t work, fails to cope with the situation, and endures terrible feelings that have nothing to do with the present."

— Harvey Jackins

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."

— Ernest Hemingway

"Just as too much physical force can break a child’s bones, too much control can break a child’s spirit and fracture his psyche. It can cause a splintering of self, causing a child to disown some parts of himself and to inflate others."

— Beverly Engel

"Compassion involves developing the courage to be open to our anger and rage, not some kind of ‘soothing it away’. Indeed, to say it again, soothing is useful to act like a safe haven but also in preparation to courageously engage with what we need to."

— Paul Gilbert

"If we have not experienced ourselves as unconditional love, we have more work to do, because that is who we really are."

— Father Thomas Keating

"Our sense of self-worth is much less easily shaken if it is derived from a deeply held sense of self-compassion and self-respect, rather than being contingent on fulfilling certain ideals."

— Erin Olivo

"We know how to be kind and compassionate to others when they’re feeling bad about themselves or are suffering in some way. We know what to say and do. We just have to remember to do it for ourselves."

— Kristen Neff

"The loving Adult is both father and mother to the Inner Child, regardless of whether we are a man or a woman."

— Margaret Paul

"All of us face the job of becoming a loving mother and father to our Inner Child."

— Margaret Paul

"… caring for the self means learning to regulate our emotions when we can through our rhetoric; and, when we cannot, learning to let our emotions wash over us without allowing them to dictate our words and control our behavior."

— Jeremy David Engels

"… trauma, undigested and locked in our body, randomly breaks through into consciousness. For years after the actual danger is past, a person who has been traumatized may relive an event as if it were continually occurring in the present."

— Tara Brach

"Perhaps the biggest tragedy in our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns. Entangled in the trance of unworthiness, we grow accustomed to caging ourselves in with self-judgment and anxiety, with restlessness and dissatisfaction."

— Tara Brach

"Unfinished business is the biggest problem in life…. the more lessons we learn the more business we finish, and the more fully we live, really live life."

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life."

— John O’Donohue

"Make… soul care a way of life, and you may discover what the Greeks called eudaimonia—a good spirit, or, in the deepest sense, happiness."

— Thomas Moore

"When one is at home in oneself, one is integrated and enjoys a sense of balance and poise. In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is: the art of homecoming."

— John O’Donohue

"May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within."

— John O’Donohue

"Traumas can be defined as experiences that cause people to develop erroneous beliefs about themselves or the world which keep them from living to their full potential and causing them suffering."

— Laurel Parnell

"… being fully present with ourselves overcomes the inner war, at least for a moment, between self and Other, between “me” and “my experience.” And from there, everything looks and feels different."

— John Welwood

"It takes time and practice to develop the ongoing consciousness: “Am I being a Loving Adult to my Inner Child?”"

— Margaret Paul, PhD

"If we do not accept the responsibility of being both the father and mother to our Inner Child, then our Child will seek elsewhere for someone to do it."

— Margaret Paul, PhD

"By reparenting our Inner Child, we can release and heal the pain from the past."

— Margaret Paul, PhD

— Stan Tatkin

"It is only when we are willing to do our own inner work and take full responsibility for our own Inner Child that we can change the dysfunctional, codependent parenting that dominates our society. As we become healthy, so will our children and their children, leading to a healthy society."

— Margaret Paul

"Even when we try hard to be good parents, when we are not being loving to our own Inner Child, we are teaching our children to be unloving to themselves."

— Margaret Paul

"For a strong and lasting partnership, both of us must be connected to our own inner feelings, as well willing to be open to learning about the other’s."

— Margaret Paul

"The most important thing we can learn about loving each other is the paradox that we must learn to love ourselves first."

— Margaret Paul