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Creating Love: The Next Great Stage of Growth
“Why are so many of us at times completely baffled by a relationship?
How can we think we know someone so well and admit in the end that we hardly knew that person at all?
Why do many people who work diligently and strenuously to gain wholeness and balance still feel so frustrated about having a fulfilling relationship?
Why have so many people given up on love?” —from the Prologue
John Bradshaw’s bestselling books and compelling PBS series have touched and changed millions of lives. Now, in Creating Love , he offers us a new way to understand our most crucial relationships—with our romantic partners and spouses, with our parents and children, with friends and co-workers, with ourselves, and with God.
Bradshaw’s compassionate approach shows that many of us have been literally “entranced” by past experiences of counterfeit love, so we unknowingly re-create patterns that can never fulfill us. Here he provides both the insights and the precise tools we need to keep those destructive patterns from repeating in the present. And then he shows how we can open ourselves to the soul-building work of real love—and create healthy, loving relationships where we can be fully ourselves in every part of our lives.
How can we think we know someone so well and admit in the end that we hardly knew that person at all?
Why do many people who work diligently and strenuously to gain wholeness and balance still feel so frustrated about having a fulfilling relationship?
Why have so many people given up on love?” —from the Prologue
John Bradshaw’s bestselling books and compelling PBS series have touched and changed millions of lives. Now, in Creating Love , he offers us a new way to understand our most crucial relationships—with our romantic partners and spouses, with our parents and children, with friends and co-workers, with ourselves, and with God.
Bradshaw’s compassionate approach shows that many of us have been literally “entranced” by past experiences of counterfeit love, so we unknowingly re-create patterns that can never fulfill us. Here he provides both the insights and the precise tools we need to keep those destructive patterns from repeating in the present. And then he shows how we can open ourselves to the soul-building work of real love—and create healthy, loving relationships where we can be fully ourselves in every part of our lives.
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
73 people are currently reading
2949 people want to read
About the author
John Bradshaw
258 books364 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert." The author of five New York Times bestsellers, Bradshaw On: The Family, Healing the Shame That Binds You, Homecoming, Creating Love, and Family Secrets. He created and hosted four nationally broadcast PBS television series based on his best-selling books. John pioneered the concept of the "Inner Child" and brought the term "dysfunctional family" into the mainstream. He has touched and changed millions of lives through his books, television series, and his lectures and workshops around the country.
During the past twenty-five years he has worked as a counselor, theologian, management consultant, and public speaker, becoming one of the primary figures in the contemporary self-help movement.
John Bradshaw has been called "America's leading personal growth expert." The author of five New York Times bestsellers, Bradshaw On: The Family, Healing the Shame That Binds You, Homecoming, Creating Love, and Family Secrets. He created and hosted four nationally broadcast PBS television series based on his best-selling books. John pioneered the concept of the "Inner Child" and brought the term "dysfunctional family" into the mainstream. He has touched and changed millions of lives through his books, television series, and his lectures and workshops around the country.
During the past twenty-five years he has worked as a counselor, theologian, management consultant, and public speaker, becoming one of the primary figures in the contemporary self-help movement.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 19, 2022
eh i started this book because bell hooks mentioned it in Communion. it started good with the idea of demystification but lost me towards the end
August 3, 2011
Many people measure "love" by how much they sacrifice for the other(s), how much crap they put up with, how many hideous chores and favors they do for the person. Bradshaw points out that this measuring stick is all wrong. The title of this book makes me wince in its schmaltziness. I would never have read it, except that a friend's mom gave it to me and insisted I do so. I thought it was a really insightful read, if you enjoy reading about psychology and relationships of all kinds (social, parental, romantic, work, etc.).
July 21, 2022
I learned about this book from bell hooks's book all about love: new visions. So I decided to read it. After reading The Road Less Traveled I found the writing sometimes threw me off, but there's some important stuff in here. I looked more closely at myself and how my wounded inner child might come out in relationships sometimes and how I still re-enact some stuff from the past with my parents currently. It's annoying to me and I think the point is to have compassion for myself instead of be annoyed that I can still react in unproductive ways. So I'm working on it. I question whether I have the desire to make things better or to let things be as they are. I know that the "easy" way is to let things be as they are. But maybe I don't have the desire or need to improve things, and am less inclined to put the energy and work into it.
“I learned two important things in Peck’s book that confronted my family of origin teachings. I learned that love cannot happen unless I am willing to commit myself to making it happen. And I learned that love is a process that requires hard work and courage.” pg. xv
“[Ronald] Laing spent his life exposing the destructive identity confusion that results when we become acceptable to others only by denying our own truth. He called this identity confusion mystification.” pg. xvi
“She learned it in her family and church. Love means completely giving up your own needs, feelings, and wants. Love is complete self-negation and sacrifice.” pg. 12
“The most powerful and dramatic way of leaving one’s family of origin is to do what has been called original pain work. Original pain refers to the early childhood feelings one had to repress either because of the severity of the trauma or because expressing these feelings was dangerous. These repressed emotions keep us bonded to the family’s emotional climate, which is made up mostly of our mother and father’s emotions. But if we can feel our own hurt and anger, we become reconciled with ourselves. Feeling our own feelings is the way we break away from the emotional climate of the family.” pg. 24
“[Joel] Covitz writes, ‘She learned, to her dismay, that she only felt loved when she wasn’t being herself.’” pg. 29
“Whenever a child is not loved and valued for the very unique being he or she is, that child is violated. Violation says, ‘The way you are is not okay. Your right and need to be you is not okay. What you feel, want, need, imagine, think, is not okay.’” pg. 46
“As children, we needed to weep and express anger. When we are forced to repress our sadness and anger, we leave our hurts imprinted in our neurological system. We have automatic responses to safeguard us. These responses are the defenses that allowed us to survive. Unfortunately, these defenses leave us frozen in past time. The state of frozen and unresolved hurt is the state of mystification.” pg. 57
“People who are well entrenched in the victim role make extensive use of both positive and negative hallucinations.” pg. 78
“The trance state for dissociation, in contrast, functions automatically. The range of this trance state is enormous, moving from dissociation from a feeling to the ability to have several distinct personalities living within one’s body. In the case of multiple personalities, the dissociations can be so complete that the person’s physical body actually undergoes measurable changes as the distinct personalities come and go. For example, allergies, shoe size, and eye color may be different in each personality.” pg. 79
“The shaming of our relationship dependency needs is a mortal blow to our ability to establish a balanced dependency in later life. The shame scenes with our significant others stay riveted in our psyche. Later, as we go through the stages of a new relationship, these old scenes play like broken records.
These frozen governing scenes contaminate our relational life. The scenes are frozen because they are unresolved. Their nonresolution is due to the defenses we erected in order to avoid feeling the pain that the shaming inflicted. The defensive strategies, too, still remain. They are the various ways we got out of the living vivd present moment. When we were children, they were our salvation. When we are adults, they keep us frozen in the past.” pg. 85-86
“We get more and more confused about who we really are and what is really going on around us. In the beginning of our lives we know nothing. We are totally dependent on our survival figures to teach us and guide us. As children we need lots of security in order to learn about ourselves and our world. We needed a safe, trustworthy environment. A child’s basic role is to be curious, to explore and learn. That’s a very tough job when one lives in a state of constant worry and threat. When a child’s environment is dangerous, they must be constantly on guard. They cannot explore and learn who they are. The can only hope to defend themselves and survive.” pg. 86
“The inner core of shame gives the child a sense of being flawed and defective. The flaw is felt as coming not from doing but from being. In other words, it’s not just that I make mistakes or do ‘bad’ things. The way I am, my very beingness, is defective.” pg. 89
“At work he [Joseph K.] lives in his false self—prepared, guarded, and in control.
I understand this perfectly. I lived much of my life by staying so busy I had no time to reflect on the chronic low-grade depression that I felt. Only late at night or on days off like Sundays, when I had no way left to distract myself, did I feel the sharp pain of self-criticism and lonely shame.
As far as I know, no one has ever described the darkness of the mystified false self any better than Franz Kafka. The feeling that I’ve done something wrong, that I really don’t know what it is, that there’s something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone’s love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to become someone else—someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.” pg. 90
“When we accept things as they are, we accept all of reality. Reality is polarity. Healthy shame grounds us in polarity. There is no sound without silence, no light without darkness, no life without suffering and death, no one who has no faults. All human behavior is a possibility. There is a potential Hitler and a potential Mother Teresa in us all. Polarity keeps us from polarization. It says that there is value in both sides of the coin. When we magnify one side of the coin, we go to one extreme and reject the other. This is polarization. Awareness of polarity keeps us from rigidity and absolutes.
We need to be conscious of polarity both in others and in ourselves. Jung called the opposite that everyone possesses their shadow side. Shadow work and shadow awareness is an important operation of soulfulness. Our own shadow is often the richest and most profound part of ourselves.” pg. 126-127
“It is a mark of soulfulness to be present in the here and now. When we are present, we are not fabricating inner movies. We are seeing what is before us. We are not making up stories in our head about other things or persons, we are hearing what others are saying and the way they are saying it. When we respond, we do so in a congruent way. Congruence means that the content (the words we say) is consistent with the process (the way we say the words, our tone of voice, facial expression, body posture, etc.). Congruence allows for real contact. Mystified people tend to be either confused with others or in conflict with them. Soulfulness leads to contact with reality.” pg. 127
“Love As Process.
Love involves passion, hard work, and courage. It is a process, and it is often ambiguous and stormy.
Love is constantly developing and deepening. Expansion is its very nature. There is no ‘happily ever after,’ because soulful love is always adjusting and balancing itself. It is never arrived at and finished once and for all.
Soulful love has polarity in it. It involves not only ecstasy, but also duration. Ecstasy alone will not build a solid foundation of love.
Soulful love fosters emotive warmth, but also the capacity for conflict. Without conflict, real differences cannot be negotiated and worked out.
To love soulfully we need to be accountable. That means we need to be responsible to our partner. At the same time we need to have the possibility of negotiating our own needs.
Love seldom works out exactly as we imagined it. It has its fateful twists and turns, its unexpected moments of neglect, its betrayals and painful periods of growth.” pg. 128-129
“The Five Freedoms.
The great family therapist Virginia Satir used to say that when people are highly functional they have five freedoms available to them. They have the freedom to:
- See and hear what they see and hear rather than what they are supposed to see and hear
- Think what they think rather than what they are supposed to think
- Feel what they feel rather than what they are supposed to feel
- Want what they want rather than what they are supposed to want
- Imagine what they imagine rather than what they are supposed to imagine.” pg. 132
“And we imagine our own possibilities rather than always playing out our rigid role.” pg. 132
“Crisis is one of the major ways that demystification takes place. Crisis causes pattern interruption. The habituated way we are behaving clearly isn’t working anymore! A new way of behaving must be sought. The new way requires imagination. It demands that we look at other possibilities and other points of view. The imagining activity is a function of freedom. Imagining creates the context for new choices.” pg. 133
“To be soulful we also need to be free. Mystification is rigid and unfree. When we are awakened, we have new flexibility and creativity. Imagination makes creative choices possible. Love will demand that we negotiate and choose new ways of behaving. To truly love we must be conscious and free. Freedom uses imagination as its eyes. Seeing alternatives allows us to choose. Without the ability to imagine new ways of being and behaving, we would have no choice.” pg. 145
“Such fantasy bonding is a true bondage. It causes a kind of imaginative closure. By that I mean the imagination loses contact with the real images of lived experience and turns in on itself. Rather than finding images related to real things that offer new possibilities of action, the fantastic imagination just imagines in a vacuum and creates inhuman images, which crush human possibility, creating a sense of hopelessness. It was Martin Buber who termed this kind of imagination the ‘fantastic imagination.’” pg. 148
“We need social support in doing this grief work. When we incurred our wounds in childhood, we had to bear them alone. The hard-and-fast condition of childhood abandonment and abuse is loneliness. To reexperience the feelings of that lonely, hurt child is very scary.” pg. 153
“If you can’t observe a feeling, you might ask,’ How was that for you then or how are you feeling now?’ Or you might just check out what you imagine is going on with the person. An example would be a statement like ‘My fantasy is that you are sad (angry, afraid). Is that right?’ If they answer yes, you can ask, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ You might solicit their feelings by asking, ‘How was that for you?’
Questions to avoid are questions that force the person to think. Examples of this are ‘Why do you think your mother did this to you?’ and ‘What do you think your father was so angry about?’
A good support person nurtures their partner in ways that allow the partner to have their own feeling reality.” pg. 158
“We need passion if we want to affect our internal images. We want to interrupt the governing scenes. I often suggest that the person say to the source figure, ‘I’m angry at you and I’m giving you back your pain, loneliness, anger, unresolved sexual issues, disappointments, your marriage, and all your shame.’ I encourage the person’s inner child to say: ‘I’m angry at you for dumping your pain and shame on me. I will not carry your pain and shame for you any longer. I’m not responsible for your disappointing life. I have my own life to lead.’” pg. 164
“Resentment is a chronic state in which the person refeels the negative feelings. Resentment is also a way for the person to stay attached to their mother. For no matter how much conscious hatred is engendered, the wounded and mystified inner child magically believes that leaving the mother would mean death. To chronically cycle waves of hatred is a negative way to stay attached. As Fritz Perls said, so long as we hold on to the resentment for our parents, we never grow up. Resentment is the classic example of unfinished business. Resentment keeps us as bonded to our survival figures as idealization does. Both resentment and idealization keep us from finishing the past. Either extreme keeps the wounded inner child frozen in mystification.” pg. 166
“What I hope you will grasp from the third part of this book is that you already have what you want and what you need. You could not even think about seeking something if you had no awareness of it or familiarity with it. It would be too foreign. You seek because something in you has been touched. You are attracted to someone because you already have within you what you are attracted to.” pg. 188
“I was committed and sincere as a parent. The problem was that as a mystified person I was confused about my identity. No matter how much you know about parenting, you need to have some sense of your real self in order to have a healthy parental relationship with your children.” pg. 190
“One of [Thomas] Gordon’s major tenets is that parents should use ‘I messages.’ I messages are self-responsible statements that express what one sees and hears, how one interprets what one sees and hears, how one feels on the basis of that interpretation, and what one wants. An example would be: ‘I saw you take your brother’s candy. I think that is unfair, I feel angry that you did that, and I want you to give it back to him.’ The goal in this model of communication is to avoid shaming and judgment.” pg. 194
“I learned to check my first reaction to my children. I literally counted to ten, questioned my response, and asked myself to imagine another response. This worked well for me a lot of the time. I used it often during my children’s teenage years. My first urge was to accuse them and tell them how bad I had it when I was their age! I came to realize how ineffective that kind of response was. If you were bleeding, it would not help you for me to tell you how badly I bled in the past.” pg. 195
“The nurse finally couldn’t stand it anymore and came over and stopped the child, taking it on herself to publicly correct her. The child was frightened, shamed, and then angry (a common sequence). The mother mirrored the child with her body and said, ‘It seemed like you were having fun changing the magazines and now you are angry.’ The child looked down (another flash of shame) and then looked at her mom and said, ‘I didn’t want to come to this stupid doctor anyway.’ The mom said: ‘You wanted to stay home and you feel angry because we’re here. Is that right?’ The child timidly poked her mom and said, ‘I’m angry at you.’ The mom said, ‘I hear that you are angry at me, and I can see it on your face.’ Then the little girl began to play with her shoe. Shortly the doctor came to get her.
This mom was superb. She stayed in her own boundaries and served her child in a valuable way. She validated her child’s feelings. The child felt safe enough to tell her mother that she was angry at her. The mother acknowledged her anger, nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t bribe her or try to change her anger. She didn’t threaten to punish or scold her. She had to bring her child to the doctor. The child didn’t like it, she was afraid and angry. That’s it. A real typical human situation. One of the unpleasant ones that we have to face in life as responsible parents.” pg. 197-198
“Setting limits means that you must do some blocking. What I urge is that you minimize shaming. To tell a child ‘I’m angry, I’m trying to read and you keep interrupting me. I want you to play with your toys and be quiet’ will certainly not always work. But it lessens the risk of shaming and mystification. To tell a child ‘You’re being a brat; stop being so selfish. One more sound and I’ll spank you’ might not be disastrous. But it greatly increases the risk of shame binding your child.” pg. 208
“Well-defined little choices in the beginning will lead to the habit of making more important choices later on. Just having a choice and exercising it is the beginning of responsibility and freedom.” pg. 212
“Faith is a love commitment that cannot be made on the basis of intellect alone. Faith without doubt is not faith but knowledge. For faith to be faith, it cannot have self-evident certainty at its root. Otherwise, what would be the value in believing? Where would one find the need for risk or courage? It is the commitment in the face of doubt that makes believing a morally courageous act.” pg. 225
“The Blessed did not know that in their deep human caring, they were loving God. This is the paradox of soulful love! I think this is one meaning of this passage. Those who love God soulfully are not worried about whether they are saved. The soulful are busy with life. They are living life to the full. They are loving with all their hearts. Their love is expansive and reaches out to others. Because it encompasses the breadth and depth of life, it is unselfconscious.” pg. 243
“Soulful love of God embraces both poles of opposites and synthesizes them in a balanced way. This synthesis creates a new level of depth, often revealing something that expands our imagination and opens up new possibilities.
By synthesis, I do not mean compromise. Compromise involves placing opposites side by side and giving up a part of each. Compromise is veiled conflict and diminishes the unique power of each polar opposite. Soulful love of God is not a compromise.” pg. 245
“We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were. - Mort Sahl” pg. 308
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
“I learned two important things in Peck’s book that confronted my family of origin teachings. I learned that love cannot happen unless I am willing to commit myself to making it happen. And I learned that love is a process that requires hard work and courage.” pg. xv
“[Ronald] Laing spent his life exposing the destructive identity confusion that results when we become acceptable to others only by denying our own truth. He called this identity confusion mystification.” pg. xvi
“She learned it in her family and church. Love means completely giving up your own needs, feelings, and wants. Love is complete self-negation and sacrifice.” pg. 12
“The most powerful and dramatic way of leaving one’s family of origin is to do what has been called original pain work. Original pain refers to the early childhood feelings one had to repress either because of the severity of the trauma or because expressing these feelings was dangerous. These repressed emotions keep us bonded to the family’s emotional climate, which is made up mostly of our mother and father’s emotions. But if we can feel our own hurt and anger, we become reconciled with ourselves. Feeling our own feelings is the way we break away from the emotional climate of the family.” pg. 24
“[Joel] Covitz writes, ‘She learned, to her dismay, that she only felt loved when she wasn’t being herself.’” pg. 29
“Whenever a child is not loved and valued for the very unique being he or she is, that child is violated. Violation says, ‘The way you are is not okay. Your right and need to be you is not okay. What you feel, want, need, imagine, think, is not okay.’” pg. 46
“As children, we needed to weep and express anger. When we are forced to repress our sadness and anger, we leave our hurts imprinted in our neurological system. We have automatic responses to safeguard us. These responses are the defenses that allowed us to survive. Unfortunately, these defenses leave us frozen in past time. The state of frozen and unresolved hurt is the state of mystification.” pg. 57
“People who are well entrenched in the victim role make extensive use of both positive and negative hallucinations.” pg. 78
“The trance state for dissociation, in contrast, functions automatically. The range of this trance state is enormous, moving from dissociation from a feeling to the ability to have several distinct personalities living within one’s body. In the case of multiple personalities, the dissociations can be so complete that the person’s physical body actually undergoes measurable changes as the distinct personalities come and go. For example, allergies, shoe size, and eye color may be different in each personality.” pg. 79
“The shaming of our relationship dependency needs is a mortal blow to our ability to establish a balanced dependency in later life. The shame scenes with our significant others stay riveted in our psyche. Later, as we go through the stages of a new relationship, these old scenes play like broken records.
These frozen governing scenes contaminate our relational life. The scenes are frozen because they are unresolved. Their nonresolution is due to the defenses we erected in order to avoid feeling the pain that the shaming inflicted. The defensive strategies, too, still remain. They are the various ways we got out of the living vivd present moment. When we were children, they were our salvation. When we are adults, they keep us frozen in the past.” pg. 85-86
“We get more and more confused about who we really are and what is really going on around us. In the beginning of our lives we know nothing. We are totally dependent on our survival figures to teach us and guide us. As children we need lots of security in order to learn about ourselves and our world. We needed a safe, trustworthy environment. A child’s basic role is to be curious, to explore and learn. That’s a very tough job when one lives in a state of constant worry and threat. When a child’s environment is dangerous, they must be constantly on guard. They cannot explore and learn who they are. The can only hope to defend themselves and survive.” pg. 86
“The inner core of shame gives the child a sense of being flawed and defective. The flaw is felt as coming not from doing but from being. In other words, it’s not just that I make mistakes or do ‘bad’ things. The way I am, my very beingness, is defective.” pg. 89
“At work he [Joseph K.] lives in his false self—prepared, guarded, and in control.
I understand this perfectly. I lived much of my life by staying so busy I had no time to reflect on the chronic low-grade depression that I felt. Only late at night or on days off like Sundays, when I had no way left to distract myself, did I feel the sharp pain of self-criticism and lonely shame.
As far as I know, no one has ever described the darkness of the mystified false self any better than Franz Kafka. The feeling that I’ve done something wrong, that I really don’t know what it is, that there’s something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone’s love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to become someone else—someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me.” pg. 90
“When we accept things as they are, we accept all of reality. Reality is polarity. Healthy shame grounds us in polarity. There is no sound without silence, no light without darkness, no life without suffering and death, no one who has no faults. All human behavior is a possibility. There is a potential Hitler and a potential Mother Teresa in us all. Polarity keeps us from polarization. It says that there is value in both sides of the coin. When we magnify one side of the coin, we go to one extreme and reject the other. This is polarization. Awareness of polarity keeps us from rigidity and absolutes.
We need to be conscious of polarity both in others and in ourselves. Jung called the opposite that everyone possesses their shadow side. Shadow work and shadow awareness is an important operation of soulfulness. Our own shadow is often the richest and most profound part of ourselves.” pg. 126-127
“It is a mark of soulfulness to be present in the here and now. When we are present, we are not fabricating inner movies. We are seeing what is before us. We are not making up stories in our head about other things or persons, we are hearing what others are saying and the way they are saying it. When we respond, we do so in a congruent way. Congruence means that the content (the words we say) is consistent with the process (the way we say the words, our tone of voice, facial expression, body posture, etc.). Congruence allows for real contact. Mystified people tend to be either confused with others or in conflict with them. Soulfulness leads to contact with reality.” pg. 127
“Love As Process.
Love involves passion, hard work, and courage. It is a process, and it is often ambiguous and stormy.
Love is constantly developing and deepening. Expansion is its very nature. There is no ‘happily ever after,’ because soulful love is always adjusting and balancing itself. It is never arrived at and finished once and for all.
Soulful love has polarity in it. It involves not only ecstasy, but also duration. Ecstasy alone will not build a solid foundation of love.
Soulful love fosters emotive warmth, but also the capacity for conflict. Without conflict, real differences cannot be negotiated and worked out.
To love soulfully we need to be accountable. That means we need to be responsible to our partner. At the same time we need to have the possibility of negotiating our own needs.
Love seldom works out exactly as we imagined it. It has its fateful twists and turns, its unexpected moments of neglect, its betrayals and painful periods of growth.” pg. 128-129
“The Five Freedoms.
The great family therapist Virginia Satir used to say that when people are highly functional they have five freedoms available to them. They have the freedom to:
- See and hear what they see and hear rather than what they are supposed to see and hear
- Think what they think rather than what they are supposed to think
- Feel what they feel rather than what they are supposed to feel
- Want what they want rather than what they are supposed to want
- Imagine what they imagine rather than what they are supposed to imagine.” pg. 132
“And we imagine our own possibilities rather than always playing out our rigid role.” pg. 132
“Crisis is one of the major ways that demystification takes place. Crisis causes pattern interruption. The habituated way we are behaving clearly isn’t working anymore! A new way of behaving must be sought. The new way requires imagination. It demands that we look at other possibilities and other points of view. The imagining activity is a function of freedom. Imagining creates the context for new choices.” pg. 133
“To be soulful we also need to be free. Mystification is rigid and unfree. When we are awakened, we have new flexibility and creativity. Imagination makes creative choices possible. Love will demand that we negotiate and choose new ways of behaving. To truly love we must be conscious and free. Freedom uses imagination as its eyes. Seeing alternatives allows us to choose. Without the ability to imagine new ways of being and behaving, we would have no choice.” pg. 145
“Such fantasy bonding is a true bondage. It causes a kind of imaginative closure. By that I mean the imagination loses contact with the real images of lived experience and turns in on itself. Rather than finding images related to real things that offer new possibilities of action, the fantastic imagination just imagines in a vacuum and creates inhuman images, which crush human possibility, creating a sense of hopelessness. It was Martin Buber who termed this kind of imagination the ‘fantastic imagination.’” pg. 148
“We need social support in doing this grief work. When we incurred our wounds in childhood, we had to bear them alone. The hard-and-fast condition of childhood abandonment and abuse is loneliness. To reexperience the feelings of that lonely, hurt child is very scary.” pg. 153
“If you can’t observe a feeling, you might ask,’ How was that for you then or how are you feeling now?’ Or you might just check out what you imagine is going on with the person. An example would be a statement like ‘My fantasy is that you are sad (angry, afraid). Is that right?’ If they answer yes, you can ask, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ You might solicit their feelings by asking, ‘How was that for you?’
Questions to avoid are questions that force the person to think. Examples of this are ‘Why do you think your mother did this to you?’ and ‘What do you think your father was so angry about?’
A good support person nurtures their partner in ways that allow the partner to have their own feeling reality.” pg. 158
“We need passion if we want to affect our internal images. We want to interrupt the governing scenes. I often suggest that the person say to the source figure, ‘I’m angry at you and I’m giving you back your pain, loneliness, anger, unresolved sexual issues, disappointments, your marriage, and all your shame.’ I encourage the person’s inner child to say: ‘I’m angry at you for dumping your pain and shame on me. I will not carry your pain and shame for you any longer. I’m not responsible for your disappointing life. I have my own life to lead.’” pg. 164
“Resentment is a chronic state in which the person refeels the negative feelings. Resentment is also a way for the person to stay attached to their mother. For no matter how much conscious hatred is engendered, the wounded and mystified inner child magically believes that leaving the mother would mean death. To chronically cycle waves of hatred is a negative way to stay attached. As Fritz Perls said, so long as we hold on to the resentment for our parents, we never grow up. Resentment is the classic example of unfinished business. Resentment keeps us as bonded to our survival figures as idealization does. Both resentment and idealization keep us from finishing the past. Either extreme keeps the wounded inner child frozen in mystification.” pg. 166
“What I hope you will grasp from the third part of this book is that you already have what you want and what you need. You could not even think about seeking something if you had no awareness of it or familiarity with it. It would be too foreign. You seek because something in you has been touched. You are attracted to someone because you already have within you what you are attracted to.” pg. 188
“I was committed and sincere as a parent. The problem was that as a mystified person I was confused about my identity. No matter how much you know about parenting, you need to have some sense of your real self in order to have a healthy parental relationship with your children.” pg. 190
“One of [Thomas] Gordon’s major tenets is that parents should use ‘I messages.’ I messages are self-responsible statements that express what one sees and hears, how one interprets what one sees and hears, how one feels on the basis of that interpretation, and what one wants. An example would be: ‘I saw you take your brother’s candy. I think that is unfair, I feel angry that you did that, and I want you to give it back to him.’ The goal in this model of communication is to avoid shaming and judgment.” pg. 194
“I learned to check my first reaction to my children. I literally counted to ten, questioned my response, and asked myself to imagine another response. This worked well for me a lot of the time. I used it often during my children’s teenage years. My first urge was to accuse them and tell them how bad I had it when I was their age! I came to realize how ineffective that kind of response was. If you were bleeding, it would not help you for me to tell you how badly I bled in the past.” pg. 195
“The nurse finally couldn’t stand it anymore and came over and stopped the child, taking it on herself to publicly correct her. The child was frightened, shamed, and then angry (a common sequence). The mother mirrored the child with her body and said, ‘It seemed like you were having fun changing the magazines and now you are angry.’ The child looked down (another flash of shame) and then looked at her mom and said, ‘I didn’t want to come to this stupid doctor anyway.’ The mom said: ‘You wanted to stay home and you feel angry because we’re here. Is that right?’ The child timidly poked her mom and said, ‘I’m angry at you.’ The mom said, ‘I hear that you are angry at me, and I can see it on your face.’ Then the little girl began to play with her shoe. Shortly the doctor came to get her.
This mom was superb. She stayed in her own boundaries and served her child in a valuable way. She validated her child’s feelings. The child felt safe enough to tell her mother that she was angry at her. The mother acknowledged her anger, nothing more, nothing less. She didn’t bribe her or try to change her anger. She didn’t threaten to punish or scold her. She had to bring her child to the doctor. The child didn’t like it, she was afraid and angry. That’s it. A real typical human situation. One of the unpleasant ones that we have to face in life as responsible parents.” pg. 197-198
“Setting limits means that you must do some blocking. What I urge is that you minimize shaming. To tell a child ‘I’m angry, I’m trying to read and you keep interrupting me. I want you to play with your toys and be quiet’ will certainly not always work. But it lessens the risk of shaming and mystification. To tell a child ‘You’re being a brat; stop being so selfish. One more sound and I’ll spank you’ might not be disastrous. But it greatly increases the risk of shame binding your child.” pg. 208
“Well-defined little choices in the beginning will lead to the habit of making more important choices later on. Just having a choice and exercising it is the beginning of responsibility and freedom.” pg. 212
“Faith is a love commitment that cannot be made on the basis of intellect alone. Faith without doubt is not faith but knowledge. For faith to be faith, it cannot have self-evident certainty at its root. Otherwise, what would be the value in believing? Where would one find the need for risk or courage? It is the commitment in the face of doubt that makes believing a morally courageous act.” pg. 225
“The Blessed did not know that in their deep human caring, they were loving God. This is the paradox of soulful love! I think this is one meaning of this passage. Those who love God soulfully are not worried about whether they are saved. The soulful are busy with life. They are living life to the full. They are loving with all their hearts. Their love is expansive and reaches out to others. Because it encompasses the breadth and depth of life, it is unselfconscious.” pg. 243
“Soulful love of God embraces both poles of opposites and synthesizes them in a balanced way. This synthesis creates a new level of depth, often revealing something that expands our imagination and opens up new possibilities.
By synthesis, I do not mean compromise. Compromise involves placing opposites side by side and giving up a part of each. Compromise is veiled conflict and diminishes the unique power of each polar opposite. Soulful love of God is not a compromise.” pg. 245
“We would have broken up except for the children. Who were the children? Well, she and I were. - Mort Sahl” pg. 308
Book: borrowed from SSF Main Library.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 3, 2012
John Bradshaw showed me a "new" way to love someone. The unconditional way to love someone vs the power struggle and manipulative way I used to "love"
Want to read
May 17, 2024ملاحظة لي - لم اقرا الكتاب بعد
عن الذكورية والابوية وكيف انهما يدمران المحبة والعلااقات السوية
احد الكتب المفضلة لــ bell hooks
عن الذكورية والابوية وكيف انهما يدمران المحبة والعلااقات السوية
احد الكتب المفضلة لــ bell hooks
February 3, 2025
BRADSHAW ENCOMPASSES ALL OF HIS PREVIOUS THEMES
John Elliot Bradshaw (born 1933) is a speaker and author who has hosted a number of PBS television programs on topics such as addiction, recovery, codependency and spirituality. He was preparing for the Catholic priesthood, but his alcoholism turned him away, and he found sobriety in a 12-Step group for alcoholics. He has written numerous other books, such as 'Bradshaw on the Family,' 'Healing the Shame That Binds You,' 'Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child,' 'Family Secrets - The Path to Self-Acceptance and Reunion,' 'Reclaiming Virtue,' etc.
He wrote in the Prologue to this 1992 book, "In what follows I will look at the creation of love in the four areas described by Genesis: I. Your relationship with a higher power... II. Your relationship with yourself... III. Your relationships with lovers, friends, and, if you've been married, your spouse or ex-spouse... IV. Your place in the world. Our life work can be mystified or soulful, and so can our relationship to the earth itself." (Pg. xxvii-xxviii)
He states, "All three types of dysfunctional families [Cultic; Chaotic; Corrupt] foster mystified love. There is always a covert rule of love and fidelity that all members are expected to follow... All types of dysfunctional families are held together by a 'groupthink' trancelike state of consciousness. The family spell is cast on each child in some way... Many dysfunctional families have elements of all three types." (Pg. 36) He adds, "Because of our narrow-minded trance state we cannot see the forest for the trees. We cannot know what happened to us. We cannot know the TRUTH of our childhood." (Pg. 64)
He asserts, "Soulfulness leads us to the realization that spirituality is our human destiny. To be fully human is to be fully spiritual. We are spiritual by nature. We are not material beings trying to become spiritual. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. Soul sees the depth of spirituality in everything and in everyone." (Pg. 130)
He says, "Forgiveness is a way to REFORM the past. Our pain needs to have meaning. Forgiveness allows us to redeem our pain. It allows us to release the energy we were using to hold the anger and resentment and to use it creatively to shape our future. Giving up our defensive anger permits us to access the goodness within ourselves." (Pg. 173)
He suggests, "The adult-child movement, with its discovery of childhood mystification, has been one of the great sources of new awareness in our time. I am committed to this movement with all my might. My self-love demands that I continue to join the many new voices and continue taking action to awaken people to the tragedy of mystification." (Pg. 278)
Bradshaw is not nearly as popular as he was back in the 1980s and 1990s; but all of his books still clearly show why he was such a well-loved figure in the Recovery movement.
John Elliot Bradshaw (born 1933) is a speaker and author who has hosted a number of PBS television programs on topics such as addiction, recovery, codependency and spirituality. He was preparing for the Catholic priesthood, but his alcoholism turned him away, and he found sobriety in a 12-Step group for alcoholics. He has written numerous other books, such as 'Bradshaw on the Family,' 'Healing the Shame That Binds You,' 'Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child,' 'Family Secrets - The Path to Self-Acceptance and Reunion,' 'Reclaiming Virtue,' etc.
He wrote in the Prologue to this 1992 book, "In what follows I will look at the creation of love in the four areas described by Genesis: I. Your relationship with a higher power... II. Your relationship with yourself... III. Your relationships with lovers, friends, and, if you've been married, your spouse or ex-spouse... IV. Your place in the world. Our life work can be mystified or soulful, and so can our relationship to the earth itself." (Pg. xxvii-xxviii)
He states, "All three types of dysfunctional families [Cultic; Chaotic; Corrupt] foster mystified love. There is always a covert rule of love and fidelity that all members are expected to follow... All types of dysfunctional families are held together by a 'groupthink' trancelike state of consciousness. The family spell is cast on each child in some way... Many dysfunctional families have elements of all three types." (Pg. 36) He adds, "Because of our narrow-minded trance state we cannot see the forest for the trees. We cannot know what happened to us. We cannot know the TRUTH of our childhood." (Pg. 64)
He asserts, "Soulfulness leads us to the realization that spirituality is our human destiny. To be fully human is to be fully spiritual. We are spiritual by nature. We are not material beings trying to become spiritual. We are spiritual beings on a human journey. Soul sees the depth of spirituality in everything and in everyone." (Pg. 130)
He says, "Forgiveness is a way to REFORM the past. Our pain needs to have meaning. Forgiveness allows us to redeem our pain. It allows us to release the energy we were using to hold the anger and resentment and to use it creatively to shape our future. Giving up our defensive anger permits us to access the goodness within ourselves." (Pg. 173)
He suggests, "The adult-child movement, with its discovery of childhood mystification, has been one of the great sources of new awareness in our time. I am committed to this movement with all my might. My self-love demands that I continue to join the many new voices and continue taking action to awaken people to the tragedy of mystification." (Pg. 278)
Bradshaw is not nearly as popular as he was back in the 1980s and 1990s; but all of his books still clearly show why he was such a well-loved figure in the Recovery movement.
July 29, 2021
I did not like this book. I felt it a little chauvinistic, and more like a 12 step meeting tying alcoholism and love.
Not what I was looking for.
Not what I was looking for.
December 4, 2024
There were a lot of things I didn't like about this book and some things I did. Too much of it focuses on what the author calls "Soulfulness." Having come from prescriptive religious backgrounds, "Soulfulness" rubs me the wrong way. I understand his intent, but also feel there are better ways to achieve love than through something that seems so rooted in Western Theology.
On the other hand, there are some things that I did like about this book. I'm weirdly and reluctantly glad I read it.
On the other hand, there are some things that I did like about this book. I'm weirdly and reluctantly glad I read it.
Want to read
February 24, 2023aus: ell hooks - all about love
March 25, 2024
Just dressed up traditional language for talking about the psyche in his own language and labeled it transformative
(Also, why is his face on the cover?)
(Also, why is his face on the cover?)
Want to read
May 20, 2025Bell hooks recommended this book in All about love so it's on my TBR
December 1, 2025
Bradshaw distinguishes between 'love' and 'fantasy bond.' It was a challenging read. It helped me see the intricacy of the sticky web of a compelling connection I was navigating. It planted a seed. It encouraged me to strive for a relationship based on reality and choice, rather than unmet childhood needs.
June 13, 2025
* This book poses interesting questions about how your childhood has informed your conception of love.
* It also claims the “most dominant characteristics of relationships is disappointment” says ideas to the contrary are mystified notions of love.
* There is a brilliant breakdown on what it means to love vs to be in love in chapter 5.
* The audiobook has a delightfully tinny recording quality. The way Bradshaw also pronounces the word “oceanic” is a joy to behold.
* It also claims the “most dominant characteristics of relationships is disappointment” says ideas to the contrary are mystified notions of love.
* There is a brilliant breakdown on what it means to love vs to be in love in chapter 5.
* The audiobook has a delightfully tinny recording quality. The way Bradshaw also pronounces the word “oceanic” is a joy to behold.
October 29, 2019
I'm not sure if this book makes me uncomfortable because its so formulaic to a narrow audience, or because since Brene Brown, everyone else's writing about shame has been put to shame.
But, lots of people claim to have been helped by the book and the author, so if it works for you, it works for you.
But, lots of people claim to have been helped by the book and the author, so if it works for you, it works for you.
May 9, 2013
Bradshaw central message is that real love is found and created when we meet others at their map of the world. So often we view the world with our map and we forget about how others few the world. Bradshaw uses many examples from his life and work to illustrate how to create real love.
July 17, 2008
Perspective changing experience
July 24, 2009
Got an autographed copy!!! He was such a nice guy to meet!!!
July 24, 2012
Lots of good stuff
July 24, 2012
Listened to the audio version. It wasn't a high quality recording, but worthwhile for the content.
July 10, 2018
I love John Bradshaw. That is all.
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