Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People Quotes

“Your choice requires courage, determination, and commitment—and personal ownership.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Mature adults find ways to free themselves from exploding off irregular behavior. I try to change from being critical of the difficult person to feeling sorry for him. Isn’t it sad that someone you care about is limiting, possibly destroying, relationships by behavior that causes chaos? How awful to be so insecure, so cocksure, so caught in compulsive behaviors, so unwilling to change destructive patterns that a person stands as alone as an island, rather than joining hands in an alliance. Pity the person who drives others away by feigned illness, clinging dependency, fears, or efforts to control. Feeling sorrow instead of hurt turns angry fists into compassionate hands.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“One of the great moments of your life will be the first time you are able to maintain control of your own actions and responses when a difficult person is on the rampage. You can do it if you back off! Refuse to argue. Set your limits. Stand as an equal who has the upper hand. You can care about and feel pity for this person whose ugly behaviors cause such chaos, but you don’t have to let her control you.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“It takes only one person to change a relationship.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“The best advice for fighting with a screwed-up person is simple: don’t. You cannot be logical with an illogical person. The only way to win is to never, under any circumstances, get pulled into an argument. If you fight, you lose! Questioning choices questions integrity. Suggesting different ideas implies lack of intelligence. Seeking negotiation disputes power. Wanting compromise conveys weakness.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“You can be positive no matter who tries to bring you down.
You can stop being the victim of others and start loving in spite of them.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“You can’t protect everyone; you can’t stop all the wrong; you can’t control someone else.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“You are responsible for the way your life turns out, not chance, not someone else.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“What you believe will make a difference in the difference you make.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Prayer is a spiritual tool that shuts your mouth and opens your heart.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Healthy faith helps you find solutions and peace, even as you cope with difficult people.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“• Communication is a combination of right words and sensitive acts.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Unfortunately, in difficult relationships at least one person has her own agenda that precludes compromise. That agenda is expressed in “I can do it myself!” and “I want my way!”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Change what you can. Accept that which you cannot change. Forgive it all.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Accepting your reality is only possible when you see the possibilities and options that exist in the relationships that surround you.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Detachment is releasing someone to be responsible for himself and to bear the responsibility of his own actions.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Do some little, special thing for yourself each day. Put a candle on the table, set out a bowl of fruit, put a flower by your sink, look at the stars, take a walk, and so on.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Finding ways to handle the negative feelings requires conscious thought on your part.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“We are social creatures, and what others do affects us. It affects our emotions, and emotions are drivers of our health.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“The Foundation Blocks of Healthy Relationships 1. Respect 2. Accepting personal responsibility for one’s behavior 3. Allowing others to bear the consequences of their behavior 4. Caring without enabling”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“The closer we are to someone, the more we expect from him. We are disappointed, confused, angry, hurt, encouraged, happy, or ecstatic in our relationships according to how close our expectations meet reality. Realistic vision frees us to relate to those close to us with the same objectivity we are able to use with those who touch our life but are not intertwined with our needs.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“With new vision she would see not only the wrong actions on the part of the screwed-up mother who caused chaos in her life, but her own responses and actions that were adding to the problem. With aerial vision she would fly above the fray and see that it takes two people to keep conflict and control alive.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Prayer balances out the power struggle in difficult relationships, because when you have a relationship with God, you are no longer so vulnerable or reactive.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Mark I. Rosen writes, “We admire traits in others that we admire in ourselves; we denigrate others when their behavior doesn’t conform to our values. We find it almost impossible to climb inside someone else’s head and see the world through different eyes.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Interdependency is healthy; dependency is not.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Screwed-up people are ordinary people who cause hurricanes in your emotions.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Our compliance is our choice. No one can control someone else (unless the person being controlled allows it). No one controls you—unless you allow that control. Sure, she can put the screws to your head, but ultimately what you do within the circumstances of your life is dependent on what you allow and how much you are willing to sacrifice to have things your own way or to win approval.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Four ingredients help make self-control possible: humor, prayer, work, and friends.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Too often close relationships are better at causing demolition than building.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People

“Vision is the starting point of victory.”
― Elizabeth B. Brown, Living Successfully with Screwed-Up People