Healing
“Love is not about opening old wounds, it’s about healing them.”
— Leo Buscaglia, Born for Love, p. 157
Category: Healing
10 Posts
A More Compelling Right
You have an absolute right to be resentful and angry, but exercising that right will only keep the thorns in your heart. You have a more compelling right to heal the wounds you’ve suffered. You can heal with compassion for yourself, with sympathy for your own hurt, and with the motivation to heal and improve. Emotional healing is replacing your core hurts to your core value, so that you can realize your fullest potential as the loving, compassionate, competent, creative person you are meant to be.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 121
Choosing to Heal
If you choose to heal — and it is certainly your choice — you make the choice out of compassion for yourself, with awareness that your emotional health and well-being are more important than anyone else’s resentment, anger, or abuse.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 106
No Longer a Victim or even Survivor
The goal of healing is to have whatever harm you’ve suffered become the least important thing about you. Other people’s behavior is not about you at all. Only your core value is about you.
— Steven Stosny, You Don’t Have to Take It Anymore, p. 105
The Golden Rule of Self-Esteem
The road to psychological ruin begins with blame.
The road to psychological power begins with responsibility.
You cannot blame and find good solutions at the same time. You must choose between blame and making things better.
Blame is always about the past. Solutions must occur in the present and the future.
Blame focuses attention on damage, injury, defects, weakness — on what is wrong. Blame makes you feel like a powerless victim.
Responsibility focuses attention on strengths, resiliency, competence, growth, creativity, healing, and compassion, all of which are necessary for solving family problems.
— Steven Stosny, Manual of the Core Value Workshop, p. 44
Recovery
“In recovery, we stop enduring life and begin to live it…. We forego worrying and denial, and learn constructive problem solving skills…. We learn to value what we want and need; we stop punishing ourselves for other people’s problems, nonsense and insanity. We stop expecting ourselves to be perfect, and we stop expecting perfection of others…. We stop getting tangled up in craziness…. We stop compulsively taking care of other people and we take care of ourselves. We learn to be good to ourselves, to have fun, and to enjoy life. We learn to feel good about what we’ve accomplished. We stop focusing on what’s wrong and we notice what’s right.”
— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency:Â And Getting Better All the Time, p. 13.
Always Hope
“The comment, ‘You will never change,’ must delight the enemy trying to destroy your family.”
— Robert E. Steinkamp, The Prodigal’s Pen
The Purpose of Shame
“Shame never tells you you’re bad; it tells you that in your heart, you want to do better.”
— Steven Stosny, Compassion Power Boot Camp
Recovery
“Getting our balance and keeping it once we have found it is what recovery is all about. If that sounds like a big order, don’t worry. We can do it. We can learn to live again. We can learn to love again. We can even learn to have fun at the same time.”
— Melody Beattie, Codependent Do More, p. 214
Listening to Your Spirit
“My definition of guilt is quite simple: when you try to force yourself to do something you don’t really want to do…. Anytime you hear yourself say, ‘I should, I’m supposed to, I have to,’ you have ignored your spirit to please your tribe.
“Coming into harmony with your soul releases the tension in your body and eliminates the mental Ping-Pong. When you hear your spirit, there is a huge surge of energy with a wonderful feeling of relief. Suddenly you are awake, alert, and fully alive and ready to live.”
— Christel Nani, Sacred Choices, p. 49