Alice8

“Core needs for children include, but are not limited to, receiving adequate levels of time, love, and attention, along with meeting their needs to feel heard, validated, and understood. When these needs aren’t met, there is no way to rewind to the beginning of life in a way that enables any outside love relationship to heal or meet your core needs. Research naively suggests we seek other relationships outside our family to supply our basic needs of love, acceptance, and emotional support. Although other love relationships are fundamental, necessary, and important to our overall well-being, I believe it is not only inappropriate for us to put this type of pressure on others to fill the needs our family neglected, but this request is also impossible to satisfy. It is unwise and emotionally dangerous to assume anyone could meet the core needs that can be met only by the family we were born into. The unfortunate message from this type of information is that other people can heal our wounds and meet our core needs when, ultimately, we need to learn to heal our own wounds and meet our own needs.”
― Sherrie Campbell, Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut

“Toxic people do not think, operate, or play by the same rules we do, and our failing to recognize this sets us up by default for manipulation and unhappiness.”
― Sherrie Campbell, But It's Your Family . . .: Cutting Ties with Toxic Family Members and Loving Yourself in the Aftermath

“Love yourself as if you were your own child.”
― Sherrie Campbell, Adult Survivors of Toxic Family Members: Tools to Maintain Boundaries, Deal with Criticism, and Heal from Shame After Ties Have Been Cut

“When you let go of revenge and constantly mulling over the hurt someone has caused you, you can commit to your own path and happiness. Part of things coming around is you committing to being happy with or without people and their approval. So mark your path. Make it happen. Be a stellar person, and do what you need to do to carry on. Life will gift you because you have acted with integrity. And you won’t waste anymore of your invaluable time and energy on a past you can’t change anyway.”
― Sherrie Campbell, Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself