My Dysfunctional Family Quotes & Sayings

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to "being crazy" and having had abusive parents, clients will choose "crazy" most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy:
I hate it when we talk about my family as "dysfunctional" or "abusive." Think about what you are asking me to accept - that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil. — Lisa Ferentz

A lot of people feel like they're victims in life, and they'll often point to past events, perhaps growing up with an abusive parent or in a dysfunctional family. Most psychologists believe that about 85 percent of families are dysfunctional, so all of a sudden you're not so unique. My parents were alcoholics. My dad abused me. My mother divorced him when I was six ... I mean, that's almost everybody's story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don't want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears. (Jack Canfield) — Rhonda Byrne

Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other. — Lois McMaster Bujold

You know, my dad wasn't a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other. — Bruce Weber

I come from a dysfunctional family, so my views of parents and parenting used to be highly mixed. — Tamora Pierce

My brother and I had always been very close, especially living in such a dysfunctional family environment. My earliest memories were of my parents screaming and fighting, especially during the holidays. So, we'd weathered the storms together. In — Kristen Middleton

A lot can happen [ because of the dysfunctional family]. People don't look at that. They think, "Oh, my kids are going to be fine. My kids are resilient." But at a certain point, the damage starts. They start to feel pain - and when they feel bad, they start to take painkillers. We want to kill the pain. — Nikki Sixx

Rod Cockshutt, Professor Emeritus at N.C. State University called my book, Evidence of Insanity, "an extraordinary achievement" and told me to not change the last 10-15 pages no matter what. — Carol Piner

I was quite able at the insignificant work I did in MI6, but absolutely dysfunctional in my domestic life. I had no experience of fatherhood. I had no example of marital bliss or the family unit. — John Le Carre

Well, while I didn't have the more extreme experiences of some of my characters, I didn't exactly come from the most normal of households. Or rather, it was normal, in that dysfunctional families appear to be the norm. — Charles De Lint

In my family, as in all dysfunctional families, instead of parents who act as strong and nurturing role models for their children, you get these needy people who use their children. I was the kid who tried to take on the marriage. — John Bradshaw

As a parent who raised his children in dysfunction, I know the parental wounds my children received were not intentional; often they were my best expression of love, sometimes coming out sideways, not as I intended. — David W. Earle

It's the great surprise of my life that I ended up loving [my father] so much. — Pat Conroy

Don't know. Never let a wolf near my neck." He grinned and gave me a quick hug. "I love you, Essie. Before you came into my life, I had considered ending myself. Three hundred years is a long time to be alone. You've given me hope, a career as a drag queen and a dysfunctional family. I am supremely grateful. Bite me."
And because I trusted him ... I did. — Robyn Peterman

A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart. — Keri Hulme

I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair. — Jennifer McMahon

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation. — Mary Oliver

They're the perfect loving fam'ly, so adoring ...
And I love them ev'ry day of ev'ry week.
So my son's a little shit, my husband's boring,
And my daughter, though a genius, is a freak. — Brian Yorkey

I suppose it must be admitted that I was raised in a "dysfunctional" family, but in truth, I do not think I had any sense of that as I was growing up. Probably part of the reason was that all of my extended kin had families at least as dysfunctional as mine. Just to give a little of the flavor of it, my "Aunt Fern," who lived just across the street and was one of the most present and puissant female relatives in my life, was, to be genealogically precise, my mother's brother's, first wife's, second husband's, father's, 3rd, 4th, and 5th wife. (She married "Uncle Lew" three times in the course of her seven matrimonial ventures.) — Carlfred Broderick

And could you, from a place of love, actually stand up and, use force, to give someone back, the suffering, they were trying to put on you? Would I do it? Maybe it would even be, an act of fierce compassion, as Enso Roshi sometimes talked about, to not take it any more. To not cow down, anymore. To let my father know, the tyrant, the aggressor, that if he hits me, I'm going to hit back, and hard. — T. Scott McLeod

So much of great American drama has been about a certain kind of dysfunctional family, and maybe my interests are in the kind of strange dysfunction that exists even among deeply functional families. — Stephen Karam

i can't tell if my mother is
terrified or in love with
my father it all
looks the same

i flinch when you touch me
i fear it is him — Rupi Kaur

I love you, Essie. Before you came into my life, I had considered ending myself. Three hundred years is a long time to be alone. You've given me hope, a career as a drag queen and a dysfunctional family. I am supremely grateful. Bite me." And — Robyn Peterman

My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal. — Erin Merryn

See, I think there are roads that lead us to each other. But in my family, there were no roads - just underground tunnels. I think we all got lost in those underground tunnels. No, not lost. We just lived there. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Teenagers can spot hypocrisy a mile away and here I was telling them how to cope when they witnessed the shambles of my own life and how I was living. — David W. Earle

My dark comic edge is the end result of trying to use humor to maintain my sanity growing up in a dysfunctional family in Honolulu. — Kirby Wright

My family may be dysfunctional, but I think it's pretty functional in its dysfunction. — Amanda Torrey

I grew up very poor in a fractured family that was dysfunctional on both sides, but I sort of put up these reflectors to most of the negative things that have occurred in my life. I don't carry around much baggage. — Keith Stanfield

It doesn't matter whether you have the happiest upbringing ... the young Joe Scot had the most dysfunctional family there could be but it's still a family and it's a really good, strong family. But in spite of that he runs away from home. I relate to all of those things very directly. I hit 40 this year but I still think about being a teenager and hopefully I will for the rest of my life. They are important years. — Daniel Craig

I can't love him. I don't. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I've seen tear apart my family, writhing through heir hearts like worms through rotten apples. — Rosamund Hodge

As a child marooned in a post-war South London backwater with no ready cash and a bafflingly dysfunctional family, I had to glean my amusement wherever I could. — Christopher Fowler

When I was your age, I would go to plays all the time, just sit in the darkness and try to take it all in inside me. Contain everything in some corner of my heart so that when I had my shot, it could all come pouring out - all the lights and moments and colour. — Brenna Ehrlich

So," said Patrick, "how is my favorite dysfunctional family? Righteously fucked or fucking righteously? — David Dalglish