Toxic Secrets Quotes & Sayings

Family secrets can go back for generations. They can be about suicides, homicides, incest, abortions, addictions, public loss of face, financial disaster, etc. All the secrets get acted out. This is the power of toxic shame. The pain and suffering of shame generate automatic and unconscious defenses. Freud called these defenses by various names: denial, idealization of parents, repression of emotions and dissociation from emotions. What is important to note is that we can't know what we don't know. Denial, idealization, repression and dissociation are unconscious survival mechanisms. Because they are unconscious, we lose touch with the shame, hurt and pain they cover up. We cannot heal what we cannot feel. So without recovery, our toxic shame gets carried for generations. — John Bradshaw

Winners see what they want. Losers see what they don't want. Don't let the game eat you; you eat the game. — Moe Norman

meant us," she whispered. "I destroyed us." His fingers tightened against her cheek. "I'm not destroyed." Her breath stopped. "I'm scarred." He withdrew his hand and closed it carefully into a fist at his side. Again it slid in search of a pocket, but found none in which to bury itself. "I'm battered. But I'm still standing, Kai. — Laura Florand

There are some secrets so toxic you can't share. Especially if you love who it is you'd have to share with. — Joyce Carol Oates

If you want a senator who'll partner with the president to do what's best for the nation, I'm your guy. — Tim Kaine

The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections. We lie here in our hospital bed of the present (what nice clean sheets we get nowadays) with a bubble of daily news drip-fed into our arm. We think we know who we are, though we don't quite know why we're here, or how long we shall be forced to stay. And while we fret and write in bandaged uncertainty - are we a voluntary patient? - we fabulate. We make up a story to cover the facts we don't know or can't accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing fabulation; we call it history. — Julian Barnes

A secret that has been buried too long, eating a hole in me, worms its way to the surface, like a swimmer who can't hold his breath any longer. — Michael R. French

The greater number of men are merely corporals. — Henry David Thoreau

On the one hand, shopping is dependable: You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can return it; it's instant gratification and yet something you buy may well last for years. — Judith Krantz

It was from a very young age that I fell in love with this wonderful artifact
the turn of the first page is almost like a sacred ritual to me. Whenever I walk into a library, it is never without some degree of reverence. — Lang Leav

SHAME-BASED FAMILIES AND MULTIGENERATIONAL ILLNESS One of the devastating aspects of toxic shame is that it is multigenerational. The secret and hidden aspects of toxic shame form the wellsprings of its multigenerational life. Since it is kept hidden, it cannot be worked out. Families are as sick as their toxic shame secrets. — John Bradshaw

And in that moment he realised that even though the dreams they'd seen together, hoped for and believed in had come true, it wasn't enough. It was far from reality which was lonesome and woeful. And conceived that love had no lastingness, it was brief and momentary. It wasn't the cherishable sensation spoken of in movies and written in books, rather a delusion inclined on ruining the very spirit, giving way to mournfulness and disappointment. — Chirag Tulsiani

I've ripped so many shameful secrets from my belly, held them out, covered in toxic grime for his inspection, but there's no reciprocity. — Lia Riley

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it 'Le Milieu Divin,' but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

There is a theme that runs through my work, and that is: the toxic property of keeping secrets. — Joyce Maynard

Matthew Henry wrote, "The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks."2 — Tullian Tchividjian