Charles L. Whitfield

“By choosing recovery and risking to be real, we set the healthy boundaries that say, "I am in charge of my recovery and my life, and no one else on this Earth is.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Boundaires and Relationships, Knowing, Protecting and Enjoying the Self

“Cermak said, “Those therapists who work successfully with this population have learned to honor the client’s need to keep a lid on his or her feelings. The most effective therapeutic process involves swinging back and forth between uncovering feelings and covering them again, and it is precisely this ability to modulate their feelings that PTSD clients have lost. They must feel secure that their ability to close their emotions down will never be taken away from them, but instead will be honored as an important tool for living. The initial goal of therapy here is to help clients move more freely into their feelings with the assurance that they can find distance from them again if they begin to be overwhelmed. Once children from chemically dependent homes, adult children of alcoholics, and other PTSD clients become confident that you are not going to strip them of their survival mechanisms, they are more likely to allow their feelings to emerge, if only for a moment. And that moment will be a start.” (58)”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families