Healing the Child Within Quotes

“The observer self, a part of who we really are, is that part of us that is watching both our false self and our True Self. We might say that it even watches us when we watch. It is our Consciousness, it is the core experience of our Child Within. It thus cannot be watched—at least by anything or any being that we know of on this earth. It transcends our five senses, our co-dependent self and all other lower, though necessary parts, of us.
Adult children may confuse their observer self with a kind of defense they may have used to avoid their Real Self and all of its feelings. One might call this defense “false observer self” since its awareness is clouded. It is unfocused as it “spaces” or “numbs out.” It denies and distorts our Child Within, and is often judgmental.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“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

“Simos said, “Grief work must be shared. In sharing, however, there must be no impatience, censure or boredom with the repetition, because repetition is necessary for catharsis and internalization and eventual unconscious acceptance of the reality of the loss. The bereaved are sensitive to the feelings of others and will not only refrain from revealing feelings to those they consider unequal to the burden of sharing the grief but may even try to comfort the helpers.” (97)”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“The shame-based person is nearly always enmeshed in some way with one or more people. While we are in a dysfunctional, shame-based relationship, we may feel like we are losing our mind, going crazy. When we try to test reality, we are unable to trust our senses, our feelings and our reactions.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“From the recovery experience of hundreds of thousands of people, we know that there is an effective way out of this constricting and binding effect of shame: to tell the story of our suffering to safe and supportive others. (51)”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Gradually, as more and more of our needs are met, we discover a crucial truth: that we are the most influential, effective and powerful person who can help us get what we need. The more we realize this, the more we can seek out, ask for and actually realize our needs. As we do so, our Child Within begins to awaken and eventually to flourish, grow and create.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Shame is the uncomfortable or painful feeling that we experience when we realize that a part of us is defective, bad, incomplete, rotten, phony, inadequate or a failure. In contrast to guilt, where we feel bad from doing something wrong, we feel shame from being something wrong or bad. Thus guilt seems to be correctable or forgivable, whereas there seems to be no way out of shame.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“...in the lower self, love is neediness, “chemistry” or infatuation, possession, strong admiration, or even worship—in short, traditional romantic love. Many people who grew up in troubled homes and who experienced a stifling of their Child Within become stuck at these lower levels or ways of experiencing love.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“When this Child Within is not nurtured or allowed freedom of expression, a false or co-dependent self emerges. We begin to live our lives from a victim stance, and experience difficulties in resolving emotional traumas. The gradual accumulation of unfinished mental and emotional business can lead to chronic anxiety, fear, confusion, emptiness and unhappiness.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“We are going home (we are Home, already and always). Home on this earth is being all levels of our awareness or consciousness in our own unique fashion. (138)”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“The primary focus of psychotherapy involves the integration of feelings (affect) and thinking (cognition), resulting in personal growth.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“The emotional pain hurts so much that we defend against them by the various unhealthy ego defenses described in Chapter 8, thus shutting the feelings out, away from our awareness. Doing so allows us to survive, although at a price. We become progressively numb. Out of touch. False. When we are thus not our Real Self, we do not grow mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Not only do we feel stifled and un-alive, but we also often feel frustrated and confused. We are in a victim stance. We are unaware of our total self, and we feel as though others, “the system,” and the world are “doing it to us,” as if we are their victim, at their mercy. A way out of this victim stance and its pain is to begin to identify and to experience our feelings. An effective way to facilitate knowing and experiencing our feelings is to talk about them with safe and supportive people.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Many children from troubled families have difficulty relaxing and having fun. Ability to be spontaneous and to play is a need and a characteristic of our Child Within.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Some people who grew up in troubled or dysfunctional families found it difficult to complete a task or a project or to make decisions. This is because they did not practice doing so with the guidance and support of an important other. By contrast, others from dysfunctional families may be high achievers in some areas, such as education or work, but are repeatedly unable to achieve in other areas, such as intimate relationships.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Because it forgets our Oneness, it feels separate. It is our public self—who we think others and eventually even we think we should be. Most of the time, when we are in the role of our false self, we feel uncomfortable, numb, empty or in a contrived or contracted state. We do not feel real, complete, whole or sane. At one level or another, we sense that something is wrong, and that something is missing.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Our shame seems to come from what we do with the negative messages, negative affirmations, beliefs and rules that we hear as we grow up. We hear these from our parents, parent figures and other people in authority, such as teachers and clergy. These messages basically tell us that we are somehow not all right, not okay. That our feelings, our needs, our True Self, our Child Within is not acceptable.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“We can remove the blocks to realizing our Higher Power by experiencing (including living in the Now), remembering, forgiving and surrendering (these five realizations can be viewed as being ultimately the same). Regular spiritual practices help us with this realization. (138)”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Autobiography in Five Short Chapters 1) I walk, down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost . . . I am hopeless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out. 2) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in the same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out. 3) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in . . . it’s a habit. My eyes are open I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately. 4) I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it. 5) I walk down another street. © 1980, Portia Nelson”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Because they have not healed their Child Within, they are generally unable to be a part of the safe and supportive healing of another. However, we can learn to set limits with these people, so that they do not continue to mistreat us. We set limits both with firmness and with love. We do so not with aggressiveness, but with assertiveness.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“3) Exploring and Experiencing As we begin to know our True Self, we begin to explore and to experience our feelings at a deeper or “gut” level. Here we are able to tell others as feelings come up for us how we really feel. By doing so we can have much interpersonal interaction with people who are important to us and can experience our life more. We thereby grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually. When we reach this more efficient Third Level of our feelings, we know ourself better and are better able to experience intimacy with another.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Our Real Self feels both joy and pain. And it expresses and shares them with appropriate others. However, our false self tends to push us to feel mostly painful feelings and to withhold and not share them. For simplicity, we can describe these joyful and painful feelings across a spectrum, starting with the most joyous, going through the most painful, and ending with confusion and numbness, as follows: Viewing our feelings in this way, we see that our Real and True Self, our Child Within, is empowered with a wider range of possibilities than we might have believed. The maintenance and growth of our Child Within is associated with what psychotherapists and counselors call a “strong ego,” or sense of self i.e., a flexible and creative self that can “roll with the punches” of life. By contrast, the false self tends to be more limited, responding to mostly painful feelings—or no feeling at all, i.e., numbness. Our false self tends to be associated with a “weak ego” or self sense i.e., a less flexible, self-centered (negative or egocentric) and more rigid one. [Originally Freud and his followers used “ego” to mean what we now understand as being both our True Self and false self. But since about 1940, object relations and self psychologists have differentiated these and generally do not use the term “ego.” Today, more people equate ego with false self.] To cover up the pain we use relatively unhealthy defenses against pain which give us fewer possibilities and choices in our lives.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“We have two basic kinds of feelings or emotions—joyful and painful. Joyful feelings make us feel a sense of strength, well being and completion. Painful feelings interfere with our sense of well being, use up our energy and can leave us feeling drained, empty and alone. Yet even though they may be painful, they are often telling us something, a message to ourself that something important may be happening, something that may need our attention.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“The way out is to surrender, and then to become, gradually, a co-creator of life. This is where the spiritual aspect of recovery comes into play as a powerful aid. Attendance at and working 12 Step recovery programs such as Al-Anon, Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, ACA/ACoA, CoDA, and Overeaters Anonymous and others are helpful. Other spiritual paths may also be helpful.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Shame is the uncomfortable or painful feeling that we experience when we realize that a part of us is defective, bad, incomplete, rotten, phony, inadequate or a failure. In contrast to guilt, where we feel bad from doing something wrong, we feel shame from being something wrong or bad. Thus guilt seems to be correctable or forgivable, whereas there seems to be no way out of shame. Our Child Within or True Self feels the shame and can express it, in a healthy way, to safe and supportive people. Our false self, on the other hand, pretends not to have the shame, and would never tell anyone about it.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“What the child sees as reality is denied, and a new model, view or false belief system of reality is assumed as true by each family member. This fantasy often binds the family together in a further dysfunctional way. This denial and the new belief system stifle and retard the child’s development and growth in the crucial mental, emotional, and spiritual areas of their life (Brown 1986).”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“However, the nurturing person must be able to nurture and the person in need must be able to let go, to surrender, in order to be nurtured. In my observations of patients, their families, and of other people, this reciprocity is unusual in human interaction. It is not the child’s job to nurture their parent, and when this happens repeatedly, it is a subtle form of child abuse or neglect.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“A person cannot betray another person’s True Self for long without causing serious damage to the relationship. In order to grow, the Child Within should feel trusted and be able to trust others.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“At this point we understand that if the mother or other parent figure cannot provide these first few needs, the child’s physical, mental-emotional and spiritual growth would likely be stunted.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Virginia Satir has suggested that we need from four to twelve hugs a day as part of our health maintenance.”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families

“Infants deprived of touching fail to thrive and grow, even if they get proper food, nourishment and protection. Touching is most powerful by appropriate skin to skin contact. Experiments with rabbits fed atherosclerosis inducing diets show that those rabbits which are held and petted by the laboratory workers tend not to get atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries). Those rabbits which are not held and petted tend to get atherosclerosis (Dossey 1985).”
― Charles L. Whitfield, Healing the Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families