Dysfunction Quotes

“A victim evokes sympathy, right? Victims are not responsible, right? Victims have the moral high ground… someone else is causing the misery, right? Victims can easily justify why they are right. Victims allow themselves to be stuck in the status quo and they excel at seeing the faults in others, ignoring their own re-sponsibility. They love to take others’ inventory of faults and are excellent at blaming. Victims become hypersensitive to real and perceived injustice, where any slight becomes a reason to reject. Victimization is the toxic wind blowing through families, fanning the fires of dysfunction.”
― David W. Earle, Love is Not Enough: Changing Dysfunctional Family Habits

“It is very difficult to develop a proper sense of self-esteem in a dysfunctional family. Having very little self-worth, looking at one’s own character defects becomes so overwhelming there is no room for inward focus. People so afflicted think: “I need to keep you from knowing me. I have already rejected me, but if you knew how flawed I am, you would also reject me…and since this is all I have, I could not stand any more rejection. I am not worthy of someone understanding me so you will not get the chance...so I must judge, reject, attack, and/or find fault with you. I don’t accept me so how can I accept you?”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“Children of narcissists learn that love is abuse. The narcissist teaches them that if someone displeases you, it is okay to harm them and call it love.”
― M. Wakefield, Narcissistic Family Dynamics: Collected Essays

“Boundaries represent awareness, knowing what the limits are and then respecting those limits.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“Last night I sat at dinner
And observed my family
Playing Hide and Seek all evening.
Today I woke and thought of you
About how real you’ve made my life…
The only condition? Love itself.
Tonight I weep
And think of how
I love and want and need you.
But I don't tell you. No.
I am too busy playing Hide and Seek
To let you know.”
― Kate McGahan

“No mean person is mean all the time. The whole point of being mean is to fluctuate so that you can hold out the hope for someone. So someone will hold out the hope that they're gonna catch you on the sunny side or that you're gonna be nice this time. The tyranny is inconsistency. Somebody thats consistently mean is something that is pretty easy to sort out. The reality is that the meanest people can be wonderful sometimes. That's the whole point of meanness because otherwise it's too obvious. It's the niceness that gets you trapped in the dysfunction. That is the problem and so the fact that you have this belief that there is hope in the relationship is foundational to the dysfunction.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.”
― Kathryn Hurn, HELL HEAVEN & IN-BETWEEN: One Woman's Journey to Finding Love

“He would have died rather quickly to not lose track of his wife in the afterlife.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“For the child of a pathological narcissist, love is having your personality rejected and replaced with one the narcissist prefers. Love is neglect, abandonment, tyranny, and subjugation.”
― M. Wakefield, Narcissistic Family Dynamics: Collected Essays

“To be exploited fundamentally means to be confused. When you're not confused you can't be exploited because you have clarity about the situation. To confuse people you must provide contradictory information. People who really want to do you harm will provide you confusing measures of good and bad feedback because that keeps you disorientated. Evil always want to camouflage itself as virtue witch means all the bad things that evil does is called justice against immorality. So they camouflage their brutality as a mask of virtue. Camouflage is so fundamentally an aspect of the predator-prey relationships.

The mugger does not camouflage himself but, that's because he can leave. He is gonna run off and you'll never find him or catch him or at least that's the goal or plan right? The relationships were you're supposed to stay and continue to provide resources are the ones were camouflage is the most essential because you're constantly looking at somebody who is a predator and that have to continually camouflage themselves as somebody who is not a predator. The most fundamental thing is the camouflage of non-empathy with empathy. This is why people who lack empathy always use the language of empathy and that's whats so confusing.

There are a lot of great antidotes to this. I mean, you just ask that person questions about yourself that they dont have any self interest in knowing and find out whether they know the answers. All the things personal to you that dont have any direct impact on the other person. It's a great way to find out whether they have empathy or curiosity about you or not.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE: I like dysfunction. Broken people who can't fix each other, but fit together because they're missing the same pieces.”
― Lime Craven

“AUTHOR'S GOODREADS PAGE: I love antiheroes. Female characters who don't just accept their faults, but downright exploit them.

No nice boys.
No shame.”
― Lime Craven

“Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“To enable is to kill.”
― D.C. Hyden, The Sober Addict

“Daddy is jive talking
and showering the stripper
Mommy is sleepwalking
while changing baby's diaper”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Swan Wreck

“We are in the era of dysfunctional relationships.”
― Steven Magee

“When you grow up in a home where dysfunction renders you invisible and silent, it can foster deep rage to come to school where this dysfunction is perpetuated by adult after adult who demands that you sit down, be quiet, and listen to what we have to say.”
― Shanna Peeples

“Love is intermittent reinforcement with spouses and children alike. The child is love-bombed when the narcissist feels the child reflects their false self. The moment the child fails to do so, the narcissistic parent blithely discards them.”
― M. Wakefield, Narcissistic Family Dynamics: Collected Essays

“COVID-19 is dividing the population into those with robust immune systems and those that have immune dysfunction.”
― Steven Magee

“Change is threatening to the status quo.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“She had gills while other people were breathing with lungs. There was, however, no point in dwelling on it, as it was too later to grow up differently.”
― Sonja Yoerg, The Middle of Somewhere

“Being loud after drinking wine doesn't help. Being silent after drinking wine doesn't help. Nothing really ever gets solved either way.”
― Mariel Hemingway, Invisible Girl

“A woman in Charlotte approached me and said that she’s tired of the dysfunction in my novels. I told her I was sorry, but that is how the world has presented itself to me throughout my life.”
― Pat Conroy, A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life

“You know when 1 in 2 marriages ends in divorce, 1 in 42 boys have Autism, and safety complaints from the majority of whistle-blower's are not being upheld, that you are living in a seriously dysfunctional society.”
― Steven Magee

“The family coil so twisted, tight and loose
anyone trying to leave
has to strafe the field
burn the premises down”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Swirling in a squirrel cage of perpetual motion, the head-committee meets, argues, votes out the guidance available from emotions, and successfully keeps serenity at bay and chaos close at hand.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“This is what we desire in intimate relationships but this deep connection is often so frightful that most do not take advantage of the opportunities presented for honesty.”
― David W. Earle LPC- Love is Not Enough

“Mindset will change your reality and destination. Are you ready? If yes, start THINKING victory. Trust me - you will win.”
― Bobby F. Kimbrough, Jr.

“At the age of 49, it had emerged that I had immune system dysfunction that was arising out of hormone damage from working in high altitude astronomy.”
― Steven Magee

“Workers compensation for occupational diseases is compensating so few damaged workers that it should probably be scrapped due to its dysfunction.”
― Steven Magee