Stand Your Ground Quotes

“Remember that you can’t fix other people’s problems.  Nothing you do will remove the misery they feel, if they don’t want to let go of it.  Being a scapegoat or whipping post for someone else’s anger, frustration, grief, or misery is really only enabling them to stay in the same old patterns.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with removing yourself from a difficult situation and getting on with your life. I wish you peace and healing.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“We can only become enlightened by acknowledging and releasing what weighs us down:  the shadow aspect of the psyche that carries the burden of the past.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Most people in the world will not treat you the same way your dysfunctional family did.  It takes a while to begin to see that the world is different than the family atmosphere.  The more time you can spend thinking about what you want, noticing what situations in the present remind you of the past and releasing the related emotions, and encouraging yourself in what you most want to do, the more quickly you can heal from the past.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“There are always options in life—and you may not have been aware of that up until now, because there often are not a lot of options in a dysfunctional family.  Be open to other options and new possibilities as much as you can, and know that you can trust yourself to handle whatever comes up.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“After so many years of belittling and mistreatment in a dysfunctional family, you might find yourself drinking up the encouragement like nectar from heaven. In fact, the pictures you show yourself in your mind can be even more powerful in their influence of your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors.  When you’re doing simple tasks like washing dishes or cleaning, try to notice what kinds of pictures go through your mind—especially the pictures that are related to problematic issues in your life.  With some attention and practice, you can change the pictures in your mind to images that are much more conducive to creating the life you want to live.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“In functional families, children are encouraged by parents, and as they become adults, they internalize those supportive voices so that the positive messages are with them for their entire lives.  In the same way, those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families internalized the negative, critical voices, which haunt us until we decide we’re not going to listen to them any more.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“You might also try making a list of your parents’ values and beliefs, and follow the above procedure, making a list of your own values and beliefs to compare.  If your parents valued a spotless house, do you truly value the same thing, or do you have a different value?  Maybe you’d rather meet your friends and have fun, and clean once a month instead of once a week.  That’s perfectly fine—everyone has different values.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“As an adult, that child may believe that being depressed is just part of who he or she is, when in fact it could have just been a coping mechanism learned in order to get along, because it was hard to share excitement about something good when someone else was despondent.  When we’re in frequent contact with someone who’s depressed and miserable (or angry, or frustrated), it’s difficult not to pick up their mood, even if it’s not truly a part of who we are. Children may adopt all kinds of character qualities and aspects of their parents’ personalities when they’re not allowed to develop in their own authentic way.  They mimic responses to life situations (one of the ways the “drama addiction” becomes a habit), handling situations in ways that are similar to the way their parents responded.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Everyone in the family knows the “invisible” rules, and the behavior of all family members is based on them.  But taking those unspoken rules into adulthood can create misunderstandings and misinterpretations when communicating with anyone who is not part of the family.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Unspoken rules can go even deeper:  if a child is rarely touched with affection and gentleness, she’ll probably grow up feeling unworthy of affection, and may have difficulty as an adult responding to her own or others’ feelings with kindness and concern. Because those qualities were never demonstrated, they’re not part of her repertoire. Or if a child is not treated with respect, and allowed to express ideas and emotions, he’ll grow up feeling as if he doesn’t really matter, except in terms of how well he can follow the rules and “produce” what’s expected.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“When a child carries unspoken rules into adulthood, he or she may try to determine what others are thinking based on their behavior rather than their words, and because behavior can be based on a variety of motivations, this can cause blocks in communication.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“As an adult, you have enough knowledge and life experience to take good care of yourself, and you don’t need to blindly follow childhood rules any longer in order to keep yourself safe.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Children have no frame of reference with which to understand that those rules are simply choices that his parents have made, and that other families and communities will have different styles of relating and behaving.  His focus becomes narrow, he becomes less flexible, and may have trouble as an adult operating outside of the rules set for him by his parents.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“You were born with an incredible ability to learn and grow, to develop into a uniquely gifted human being, to fulfill your potential as a distinct and creative individual.  But the beliefs and behavior patterns you learned throughout your childhood years can be holding you back from being the best that you can be, and from creating a fulfilling life for yourself.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“As you begin to see yourself, your family, and the old, outmoded behavior patterns that run your life with more clarity, you’re taking steps to live more deeply from your authentic self.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“When we don’t face our feelings and learn how to release them, each time a situation comes up that is similar to an experience that caused strong feelings in the past, we become “triggered” by all of the old, unresolved feelings, and we have a tendency to respond in a knee-jerk habitual fashion to the new situation instead of finding innovative, healthier ways to respond.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“The only way to truly recover from a dysfunctional childhood and create an authentic life is to face your feelings, acknowledge them, express them freely, and let them go.  Feelings are a normal part of being human, and they’re meant to be fully expressed.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Usually this is a result of having had to be hypervigilant as a child—especially if your family situation was chaotic or frightening—and consequently developing a habit of trying to see problems before they even show up.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Denying so much repressed rage requires tremendous energy—energy that could be used to create an authentic and exciting life.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“If a small child’s needs are not met with at least some regularity, there is a tremendous sense of frustration, of powerlessness to get anything that he or she needs.  Over time, as the frustration builds up and is repressed again and again, it becomes too painful to face, and a sense of futility develops.  If it isn’t acknowledged and allowed expression, the frustration will continue to hide under the surface and grow into a feeling of futility.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Experiencing a sense of futility can be a way of denying an immense and terrifying buildup of frustration—a well of distress and disappointment at having needs ignored or belittled time after time after time—and it can affect an adult’s relationships, career, and deepest sense of self.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“We can’t begin to free ourselves from a trap of seeing life in a certain way or believing certain things unless we realize that we’re in a trap.  Only then can we begin to break free.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Criticism is really nothing but one person’s opinion raised to the level of “the way it is.”  It’s designed to control, either through making the criticized person conform, or by making them feel guilty or ashamed.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“The discovery that some of the behaviors in your family that you thought and felt were wrong or abnormal actually were abnormal is tremendously freeing and validating, and helps you learn to trust yourself.  Don’t be afraid to ask if something seems normal to someone else.  Even though dysfunctional family dynamics are usually well-hidden behind the closed doors of many families, almost everyone experiences them.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Reality checks” are an extremely important tool for people who struggle with dysfunctional family dynamics.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“1.  If all of your time was your own, and you could choose what to do with your hours and days, what are some of the things you’d like to do? 2.  Are there people you spend time with that you would like to leave forever? 3.  Would you like to socialize more in your life?  Less? 4.  If you could have any job you wanted, what would it be? 5.  If you could dress any way you wanted, what would that be? 6.  Do you have a dream of who you really are inside?  If so, what is it, and how would that self express itself?  How would that self live your life? 7.  If you could do anything you wanted to right now, what would it be?”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“Here are some questions to help you find out whether you might be making life choices based on the false self rather than your own true needs and desires. 1.  Do you sometimes wonder after you do something why you did it? 2. Do you often have trouble making decisions—as if there are always two (or more) parts of you wanting different things? 3. Have you ever made a choice, only to discover down the road that it wasn’t really what you wanted? 4. Do you feel able to let others know when you need something? 5. Is it easy, difficult, or impossible for you to ask for help when you need it? 6. Are you in a job, relationship, or other situation that feels like it’s not a good “match” for who you are? 7. Are you able to work toward achieving your deepest dreams and desires, even if you’re going slowly? 8. Do you feel like your life is in your hands, or in someone else’s?”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“The question to ask yourself is, Do you always or never do that?  Or is it only once in a while?  One of the favorite tricks of family bullies is to make criticisms global (blowing them out of proportion) so they seem much more important.  Another favorite manipulation is to place a label on you, as in “Too bad you’re not a better mother.”  How would someone know, since they don’t see how you are with your kids day in and day out—only on special occasions?”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“In dysfunctional families, people overfocus on problems—even very small ones—without allowing any focus on the innumerable ways a child does things well.  This is one of the primary causes of low self-esteem.  A child can do ten, fifty, a hundred things right in a day, but an overly critical parent will pick out the one thing that doesn’t go well, and harp on it over and over.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma

“If a child grows to adulthood without examining the view of life, self, and the world he or she grew up with, it’s likely that quite a bit of this early “programming” will still affect the adult’s opinion of self and the way in which he or she sees and interacts with the world.  This can sometimes place limitations on how well the person copes with life and what they can accomplish.”
― Katherine Mayfield, Stand Your Ground: How to Cope with a Dysfunctional Family and Recover from Trauma