Psychology Quotes

“Let me be absolutely clear on this matter: You are more than enough. You are perfect and complete exactly as you are. You are not flawed, broken, damaged, or irredeemable. Much of the suffering you experience is self-inflicted, and it can be traced back to believing the untruth that you’re not enough. This feeling of unworthiness is the primary reason you withhold unconditional love for yourself. The most effective thing you can do to bring about change in your life is to let this flawed idea go. Once this false idea is replaced with unconditional self-love and self-acceptance, the myth of scarcity crumbles, and comparison and competition with others ends its wake.”- Don Miguel Ruiz (THE MASTERY OF SELF)

"Most abusers do not have severe memory problems. He probably remembers exactly what he did, especially when only a short time has passed. He denies his actions to close off discussion because he doesn't want to answer for what he did, and perhaps he even wants you to feel frustrated and crazy. However, a small percentage of abusers- perhaps one in twelve- may have psychological conditions such as narcissistic or borderline personality disorder, in which they literally block any bad behavior from consciousness. One of the clues that your partner may have such a disturbance is if you notice him doing similar things to other people. If his denial and mind messing are restricted to you, or to situations that are only related to you, he is probably simply abusive."-Lundy Bancroft (WHY DOES HE DO THAT?- Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)


"Children are a tempting weapon for an abuser to use against the mother. Nothing inflicts more pain on a caring parent, male or female, than hurting one of his or her children or causing damage to the parent-child relationship. Many abusers sense that they can gain more power by using the children against their partners than by any method other than the most overtly terrorizing assaults or threats. To their destructive mindset, the children are just too tempting a tool of abuse to pass up."-Lundy Bancroft (WHY DOES HE DO THAT?- Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)


“This is what I’ve learned about recovery and surrender, one man told me. One day, my daughter got a silver in her finger. It really hurt and I had to take it out. But taking it out hurt too. I held my daughter on my lap. I talked to her softly. I tried to be gentle. But she kicked, screamed, and fought all the way. I tried to tell her that if she relaxed and stopped fighting, it wouldn’t hurt as much. I tried to tell her if she just trusted me, the pain would be gone before she knew it. But she was too scared to trust. When I got the silver out, she was so mad she just cried and beat on my arms. It hurt that she didn’t trust me. It hurt more that she had made her pain worse than it had to be.”- Melody Beattie (Beyond Codependency)

“Eighty percent of life is showing up. Day by day, year by year we were presented with choices and made them. We showed up. And up. And up. Some are paralyzed by choices. But there is much uncertainty about the decisions that start narrowing options, whether career options or love options. The twenty-fifth class reunion reports are full of our ‘mistakes’. Our lives are littered with mid-course corrections. A full half of us divorced. Many of the women have had career paths that look like games of Chutes and Ladders. We have changed directions and priorities again and again. But our ‘mistakes’ became crucial parts, sometimes the best parts, of the lives we have made. How do you make a life? Put one foot in front of the other. Make some choices. Take some chances. I know, I know. You don’t want to make the same mistakes again. You don’t want to lose yourself that much again. That’s a healthy fear, but don’t let it stop you from living and loving. You may have been burned from getting too close to the fire, but getting close to the fire is the only way to get warm. Surrender to the pain. Then learn to surrender to the good. It’s there and more is on the way. Love God. Love family. Love what you do. Love people, and learn to let them love you. And always keep loving yourself. No matter how good it gets, the best is yet to come.”- Melody Beattie (Beyond Codependency)

“Love comes when we least expect it, when we are not looking for it. Hunting for love never brings the right partner. It only creates longing and unhappiness. Love is never outside ourselves; love is within us. Don’t insist that love come immediately. Perhaps you are not ready for it, or you are not developed enough to attract the love you want. Don’t settle for anybody just to have someone. Set your standards. What kind of love do you attract? List the qualities in yourself, and you will attract the person who has them. You might examine what may be keeping love away. Could it be criticism? Feelings of unworthiness? Unreasonable standards? Movie star images? Fear of intimacy? A belief that you are unlovable? Be ready for love when it does come. Prepare the field and be ready to nourish love. Be loving, and you will be lovable. Be open and receptive to love.”- Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life)

“Part of self-acceptance is releasing other people’s opinions. If I were with you and kept telling you, ‘You are a purple pig, you are a purple pig.’ You would either laugh at me, or get annoyed with me and think I was crazy. It would be most unlikely that you would think it was true. Yet many of the things we have chosen to believe about ourselves are just as far out and untrue. To believe that your self-worth is dependent upon the shape of your body is your version of believing that ‘You are a purple pig.’ Often what we think of as the things ‘wrong’ with us are only our expressions of our own individuality. This is our uniqueness and what is special about us. Nature never repeats itself. Since time began on this planet, there have never been two snowflakes alike or two raindrops the same. And every daisy is different from every other daisy. Our fingerprints are different, and we are different. We are meant to be different. When we can accept this, then there is no competition and no comparison. To try to be like another is to shrivel our soul. We have come to this planet to express who we are. I didn’t even know I am until I began to learn to love myself as I am in this moment.”- Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life)

“There is an old Emmet Fox exercise for dissolving resentment that always works. He recommends that you sit quietly, close your eyes,and allow your mind and body to relax. Then, imagine yourself sitting in a darkened theater, and in front of you is a small stage. On that stage, place the person you resent the most. It could be someone in the past or present, living or dead. When you see this person clearly, visualize good things happening to this person- things that would be meaningful to him. See him smiling and happy. Hold this image for a few minutes, and then let it fade away. I like to add another step. As this person leaves the stage, put yourself up there. See good things happening to you. See yourself smiling and happy. Be aware that the abundance of the Universe is available to all of us.”- Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life)

“I have a client who will eat a pound of butter and everything else she can get ahold of when she cannot bear to be with her own negative thoughts. The next day she will be angry at her body for being heavy. When she was a little girl, she would walk around the family dinner table finishing off everyone’s leftovers and eating a whole stick of butter. The family would laugh and think it was cute. It was almost the only approval she got from her family. When you scold yourself, when you berate yourself, when you ‘beat yourself up’ who do you think you’re treating this way? Almost all of our programming, both negative and positive, was accepted by us by the time we were three years old. Our experiences since then are based upon what we accepted and believed about ourselves and about life at that time. The way we were treated when we were very little is usually the way we treat ourselves now. The person you are scolding is a three-year old child within you.  If you are a person who gets angry at yourself for being afraid and fearful, think of yourself as being three years old. If you had a little three year old child in front of you who was afraid, what would you do? Would you be angry at him, or would you reach out your arms and comfort the child until he felt safe and at ease? The adults around you when you were a child may not have known how to comfort you at that time. Now you are the adult in your life, and if you’re not comforting the child within you, then it is very sad indeed. What was done in the past is done, and it is over now. But this is present time, and you now have the opportunity to treat yourself the way you wish to be treated. A frightened child needs comforting, not scolding. Scolding yourself only makes you more frightened, and there is nowhere to turn. When the child within feels unsafe, it creates a lot of trouble. Remember how it felt to be belittled when you were young? It feels the same way now to that child within. Be kind to yourself. Begin to love and approve of yourself. That’s what that little child needs in order to express itself at its highest potential.”- Louise Hay (You Can Heal Your Life)