Whole Again Quotes

“Carl Jung wrote: “The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“You’re essentially sitting with years or decades of ignored emotions. All you need to do is listen and respond only with kindness. You do not need to judge or analyze what’s going on. Instead, simply welcome these feelings. Let them in.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“It’s not your job to manage the emotions of others.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“codependents stay in toxic relationships for far longer than any other person would. Your intuition is actually really good—the problem is, you doubt it. You’re so preoccupied with trying to make sure you’re reasonable and seeing all perspectives that you fail to throw in the towel when people are blatantly mistreating you. Oftentimes you notice something seems “off” for the longest time, but you feel guilty and dismiss it because the person is nice to you, or because they aren’t rejecting you.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“When we stay with shame, we are learning how to tolerate pain. The more we can do this, the more our bodies will reveal their truth to us. Instead of instinctually avoiding pain, we can meet it with kindness and curiosity. We can ask it questions and learn about it, without being consumed by it.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“As we learn that we’re responsible for our own emotions, we become more comfortable with the idea that others are responsible for their own emotions too. With this mind-set, we can finally relax—and begin to heal.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“You can break this cycle by meeting your own internal pain with self-love and a heartfelt understanding that this experience truly was not your fault. Whatever happened to them to cause this disorder was likely not their fault either, but now you see that your love cannot possibly break that psychological barrier. Your first priority is to turn your focus inward, allowing yourself to feel the emotions you were told were wrong.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“It is recognizing and accepting the full extent of the damage this person caused, and choosing not to carry it as your own damage anymore. It means you can walk away much faster the next time.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Recovery comes from experiencing the pain fully,”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Spirituality makes a really nice companion to therapy, because it provides love and warmth that you can tap into any time.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“C-PTSD sufferers who experienced abuse may engage in mental arguments with their abusers long after the abuse has ended. Most people with C-PTSD experienced ongoing abuse from someone (or multiple people) who repeatedly betrayed their trust, and blamed them for this betrayal. They were made the scapegoat of someone else’s shame, which eventually caused them to absorb this shame themselves.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“People cannot go from abusing and manipulating you one day, to magically being healed a week later. This is simply impossible. Especially when this change occurs as a response to possible abandonment or rejection, there’s just no chance this is authentic change.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“If at any point your forgiveness process convinces you to invite an abuser back into your life (or even talk to them), this is not the kind of forgiveness we’re looking for. It will actually impede your own progress.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Something really important to understand about the protective self is that you didn’t ask for it. Repeat that in your mind a few times: You didn’t ask for the protective self to take over. This was a physiological response from your own body, tensing or blocking or numbing to protect you. You didn’t go through a trauma and say, “Okay, body, numb me out now!” Decisions were made without your approval or awareness.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Toxic shame is the feeling that we are somehow inherently defective, that something is wrong with our being. Guilt is “I made a mistake, I did something wrong.” Shame is “I’m a mistake, something is wrong with me.” At the core of our wounding is the unbearable emotional pain resulting from having internalized the false message that we are not loved because we are personally defective and shameful. —ROBERT BURNEY”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“People pleasers often have no idea what they want, what their needs are, or what their boundaries look like. Everything is just about making sure others are happy. They can view any issue from another person’s perspective, making excuses for others while offering themselves none of the same flexibility.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Their partner can say and do unacceptable things on a daily basis, which the codependent will try to explain and understand (“they had a difficult childhood!”). But the moment codependents make a single mistake, they berate themselves for it, obsess over it, and wonder if they’re crazy. For this reason, they come up short in relationships, over and over again. Because they’re unable to recognize that the balance is skewed, and unable to recognize that they’re not getting what they deserve from a healthy relationship. Their self-doubt keeps things forever skewed in their partner’s favor.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“You practically need resentment for survival. But when you truly love and care for yourself, you do not need resentment to leave a toxic situation. Self-love is a far greater (and more pleasant) motivator.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Codependent forgiveness is this fantasized tear-filled beautiful reconciliation where everything is magically cured by love and compassion. As with most codependent issues, it’s focused on other people. Their problems. Their childhood. Their past. You think you understand them so much, maybe even more than they understand themselves! You make up excuses and reasons for them, your heart melts, you take them back, and then they hurt you again.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Triggers are our key back to the core wound.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“It would be nearly impossible not to be resentful about this, so please don’t feel any shame or guilt for having a completely normal human reaction to psychological abuse.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“How to Win Against an Abuser? I get this question all the time, and my answer is always the same: Don’t try to win. As soon as we engage in this win/lose mentality, we abandon our hearts and forget what’s really important: vulnerability and love. Yes, absolutely you should remove toxic people from your life, but it should be from the perspective of self-love, not “winning.” As long as we maintain this false illusion of control, we’re still connected to the person in our psyches. A hallmark of C-PTSD is fantasizing about gaining some power over an otherwise powerless situation.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“You’re afraid that you’re ruining relationships by acknowledging reality. As if it’s your responsibility to hide or enable another person’s unacceptable behavior in order to keep your relationship afloat.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“So much of what we learn about love is taught by people who never really loved us. —R. H. SIN”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“When you stop avoiding and resisting that truth, you can finally acknowledge and heal it. Life becomes so much calmer. It is no longer a manic search for meaning, filled with shaky declarations of personality and passions. Your identity is no longer a never-ending quest to prove “I am,” but rather an exploration into your suffering so that you can let go of what you “are not.” Once you do that, your true self comes rushing back in at last.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“It also makes them vulnerable to more gaslighting, because their defenses have weakened, and the best gaslighting victims are those who doubt themselves.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“This doesn’t happen on purpose, it’s just a coping mechanism when a trusted loved one rejects or harms us in a very confusing way. Even if we point our fingers and say, “No, you’re bad!” the damage is already done.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“As you develop the unconditional love, what you’re essentially looking for is where your body or mind resists this love. One of the most persistent and difficult “resisters” is toxic shame. We finally stop running.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“We can always restore that part of ourselves, but we can’t do it when we’re focusing all our energy on the person who abused us. As long as we believe a part of us has been “stolen,” we are distracted from the very tools needed to heal it.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse

“Core Wound: People with BPD tend to be suffering from a deep wound of rejection or abandonment, which has planted an idea of inner defectiveness in them. This causes them to believe they are inherently worthless and unlovable—that they cannot be themselves, because no one will ever want that person. Note: People with BPD often think “being themselves” equates to being extremely emotional and sobbing, or being clingy and jealous, or manic and impulsive. So the protective self is on its best behavior (idealization period) until it feels safe, and then exposes these more and more dramatic qualities, until eventually people leave. But neither of these sides is who you truly are. They are both the protective self, one “perfect” and another “broken.” The protective self creates an infinite loop to keep you trapped and justify its own existence.”
― Jackson MacKenzie, Whole Again: Healing Your Heart and Rediscovering Your True Self After Toxic Relationships and Emotional Abuse