Sandra

“As much as we want to improve our relationships with our fathers or mothers, if your father, for example, hasn’t changed, he’ll probably hurt you again. His response is saying that he can’t handle more intimacy with you. Repeated efforts on your part won’t change this. No matter how much we love someone, they have the choice of holding to their limits. I have a certain relative I love very much. I’ve poured my heart out telling of my wish that we might be closer. I’ve been hurt a hundred times. So I finally got it. No matter how much I want to be closer to my relative, I can’t make him take his barrier away. He has a right to keep it. But I can protect myself from being hurt again. I can stop banging my head on his barrier.”
― Anne Katherine, Boundaries Where You End And I Begin: How To Recognize And Set Healthy Boundaries

“For certain fortunate people there is something which transcends all classifications of behaviour, and that is awareness; something which rises above the programming of the past, and that is spontaneity; and something that is more rewarding than games, and that is intimacy.”
― Eric Berne, Games People Play

“That was how I'd always imagined the surface of my heart -- smooth, slick, unattached. Nothing to grab on to. Unscored. No one could attach to me once the inevitable heat of life bore down.”
― Christie Tate, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life

“If you're serious about getting into intimate relationships - becoming a real person, as you said - you need to feel every feeling you've been stifling since you were a kid. The loneliness, the anxiety, the anger, the terror.”
― Christie Tate, Group: How One Therapist and a Circle of Strangers Saved My Life