Caring about people we love, feeling victimized when we’re betrayed, giving our all to people we love, or wanting to control people because we’re watching them destroy themselves and hurt us doesn’t mean we’re sick. These are natural reactions. Codependency is about normal behaviors taken too far. It’s about crossing lines.
— Melody Beattie, The New Codependency, p. 5
The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity. Part of the need arises as a defense against shame. As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain. And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, that we have our say. We have to nail them to their crimes, make them confess, make them feel bad and promise to be better. Only then can we finally have the satisfaction of being free of the denunciation we direct at ourselves….
Knowing oneself is integral to growing up. But, to the extent that we live in a blaming system, we do not want to know the truth about who we are and, therefore, resist growing up. We don’t want to know our own murderousness, selfishness, greed, envy, because all of these very human feeling states have been made a source of so much guilt and shame that they lead at once to total condemnation and self-rejection. We can’t know them, and we can’t know how we came to them. As a result, we miss out on the experience of self-empathy and self-care, which might be the basis for doing something new, for beginning to emerge from these things we don’t like in ourselves but which hold us prisoner.
Some of what we do is bad and should be changed — the way we bully, deny, manipulate, shirk, indict…. But if we make every misdeed or character orientation into a capital crime, into evidence that our very being is worthless, we will not be able to let ourselves know the full complexity of who we are. If there can be no mercy, no leniency, no understanding, no forgiveness, no simple tolerance for the magnificent complexity of being human — if we face every flaw or disliked quality as evidence that our blackened souls require rejection and banishment — we will not be captured by our own awareness and motivated to change. The blaming system, therefore, puts a brake on a fundamental area of growth….
Blame is very absorbent. It soaks up sadness. It dries the tears. It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss — whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony, or a war. Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself. Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 110-112
There are not two sides. Abuse is not a conflict. It is not a fight. . . .
When a child is molested or abused, there are not two sides. Similarly, when an adult is verbally abused and threatened, there are not two sides. One person is not attacking and the other counterattacking. On the contrary, one is trying to understand and not upset the other, whose behavior is directed toward maintaining control and dominance with overt or covert attacks.
— Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out, p. 98
Most couples believe there is a point when the situation becomes hopeless. But I am here to tell you it’s not true. Jesus promised that seeking reconciliation will bear fruit, so there is great hope that a marriage can be restored to a place beyond what a couple could even imagine.
— Cheryl & Jeff Scruggs, I Do Again, p. 164
Adopting the perspective of the Stargazer not only leads us toward our future best destinies but actually transmutes past unhappiness into treasure. This is because, in emotional terms, everything is made from its opposite. The raw material for joy is sorrow; the raw material for compassion is anger; the raw material for fearlessness is fear. This means that the very people who hurt you worst may turn out to have enriched you most. “Forgiveness” isn’t even an issue from the position of the Stargazer. Why would anyone bother to “forgive” someone who’d made them rich?
— Martha Beck, Steering by Starlight, p. 76
People say everything happens for a reason and God has a Plan for it all. I believe things do happen for a reason. And God does have a Plan. But if we don’t learn the lesson from the circumstance and let ourselves completely heal from it — whether it is in the past or today — the things that happen for a reason will just keep happening over and over again. And we’ll end up on a talk show talking about what keeps happening to us and wondering why.
— Melody Beattie, Playing It By Heart, p. 244-245
Sometimes, I forget things that I know. Sometimes I forget that letting go has more power than holding on, and then I forget to let go. Sometimes I get so focused on the other person and what they need and want that I forget how I feel, what’s important to me, and what I need and want too. Sometimes I forget that no matter what situation I find myself in, I do have powers available to me, even when I feel overpowered. I have the power to think, to feel, to pray for guidance, the power to let go, and take care of myself no matter what’s coming down on my head. And sometimes I forget that the temporary hit of power from drama addiction wanes in comparison to the real power we can connect to when we’re at peace with the world, and with ourselves.
— Melody Beattie, Playing It by Heart, p. 242-243
However God may choose to evaluate our lives, whatever memory of our past we shall have in heaven, we know this: It will only contribute to our joy. We will read our story by the light of redemption and see how God has used both the good and the bad, the sorrow and the gladness for our welfare and his glory. With the assurance of total forgiveness we will be free to know ourselves fully, walking again through the seasons of life to linger over the cherished moments and stand in awe at God’s grace for the moments we have tried so hard to forget. Our gratitude and awe will swell into worship of a Lover so strong and kind as to make us fully his own.
— Brent Curtis & John Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 190-191
We all have opinions on who was right and who was wrong according to our own perceptions, and we can all find ways to justify our feelings. We want to punish others for what they did to us; however, we are the ones running the story over and over in our own minds. It is foolish for us to punish ourselves in the present because someone hurt us in the past.
To release the past, we want to be willing to forgive, even if we don’t know how. Forgiveness means giving up our hurtful feelings and just letting the whole thing go. A state of nonforgiveness actually destroys something within ourselves.
No matter what avenue of spirituality you follow you will usually find that forgiveness is an enormous issue at any time, but most particularly when there is an illness. When we are ill we really need to look around and see who it is we need to forgive. And usually the very person who we think we will never forgive is the one we need to forgive the most. Not forgiving someone else doesn’t harm the person in the slightest, but it plays havoc with us. The issues aren’t theirs; the issues are ours.
The grudges and hurts you feel have to do with forgiving yourself, not someone else. Affirm that you are totally willing to forgive everyone. “I am willing to free myself from the past. I am willing to forgive all those who may have ever harmed me and I forgive myself for having harmed others.” If you think of anyone who may have harmed you in any way at any point in your life, bless that person with love and release him or her, then dismiss the thought….
If you feel ripped-off by another, know that nobody can take anything from you that is rightfully yours. If it belongs to you, it will return to you at the right time. If something doesn’t come back to you, it wasn’t meant to. You need to accept it and go on with your life.
— Louise L. Hay, The Power Is Within You, p. 89-91
Forgiveness about injuries this deep does not come easily or quickly. There can’t always be a moment of forgiveness, when suddenly our lives are transformed. We are human. We need time to process our experiences, to mourn, to separate, to grow. Forgiveness brews within us, expedited according to our own creative capacities, impeded by our conflicts, a mysterious product of the human spirit. The reclamation of love and of the forgiving self is an arduous and profound journey.
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, p. 60