John Bradshaw

Notes from: John Bradshaw: The Family. A revolutionary way of self-discovery

<We must always look at emotional illness as a social crisis. Everyone in the family is involved. I like that. It puts responsibility on everyone but eliminates blame.> p.vii

<While only 35 years old, the concept of understanding families as systems is a new and effective approach to the understanding not only of oneself but of major social problems as well.> p.viii

<I'm convinced that unless I know and understand the family system from which I came, I can't understand my true self and the society I live in. What has been said about cultural history is true of individuals: If we do not know our familial history, we are most likely to repeat it.> p. viii, ix

<What parents believe about human life and human fulfillment govern their ways of raising children.> p. 1

<Children are any culture's greatest natural resource. The future of the world depends on our children's conceptions of themselves. All their choices depend on their view of themselves.> p. 1

<Shame is a being wound and differs greatly from the feeling of guilt. Guilt says I've DONE something wrong; shame says there IS something wrong with me. Guilt says I've MADE a mistake; shame says I AM a mistake. Guilt says what I DID was not good; shame says I AM not good. The difference makes a profound difference.> p. 2

<Since one's inner self is flawed by shame, the experience of self is painful. To compensate, one develops a FALSE SELF in order to survive. The false self forms a defensive mask which distracts from the pain and the inner loneliness of the true self. After years of acting, performing and pretending - one loses contact with who one really is. One's true self is numbed out.> p. 3+4

<The crises is not just about how we raise our children; it's about a hundred million people who look like adults, talk and dress like adults, but are actually adult children. These adult children run our schools, our churches and our government. They also create our families.> p. 4

SPH note: no, it is worse than that, because children would do a much betger job of running our schools and government. And I doubt they would have churches at all!

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This is from one of his tapes. I think it was called "Shame"

2 ways of transferring shame to kids:

1. How to be more than human: righteous, critical, judgmental, playing God, controlling, over-achieving. This explains why super-moms which others think are "saints" create screwed-up kids. Note: in the Family Ties book, they point out that if parents do too much for the kid, the kid doesn't learn how to make decisions.

Em-bare-assed: caught with your pants down.

2. Less than human: disparaging, incest, abuse, demeaning, beating. This likely produces even more dysfunction than the being righteous etc.

[So I, SPH, have mom on one side, being more than human and dad, being frightening on the other.]

Abandonment: physical, emotional. Emot. is the worse. "No healthy mirroring" which kids need.

[I am thinking how important it is for every child, as they reach adulthood (whenever that is), to study himself in relation to others and their family. Everyone should know why they are the way they are. Maybe the name of a course or group or business should be insight, because that is what a lot of this is about.]

Anyhow: He likes Alice Miller's book "The problem of the Gifted Child". He says every child needs unconditional love for 15 months. They need a magic mirror in which every time they look they get a positive reflection. He also says we all need a very best friend that no matter what happens, they will accept you. Like the old expression "let it all hang out" sph. Unconditional love/acceptance. After we have found this person [and if we don't have someone,it will have to be us], we can work on character defects: blame, judging, ridicule, etc; what he calls transferring the shame to another.

He says you either talk it out work it out or act it out. Or you project it out (but it doesn't leave this way- sph).

He says a counselor can not take some one where the counselor has not been. Example inner child work, if the patient started to talk about it, Bradshaw would change subject because it was too painful. What he calls original pain.

** Emotionally narcissistic parents make sure they get from their kids the love they didn't get from their parents. He calls it a "heinous multi-generational illness". I believe he is right. He says the child becomes the object of narcissistic gratification.

** He says that our acceptance by our parents is based on our performance, ie we do what they think we should do. We then become human "doings" rather than human beings. We become caretakers for our parents.

[March 98 notes - now I see how bad it is when parents invalidate child's feelings. Parents and preachers are trying to completely control kids, not just their behavior and beliefs, but feelings too.]

He says people can cry when they talk about others but not when they talk about themselves. Because the brain cuts off the feeling part (3 parts: visceral/habit/instinct, thinking and feeling). So our feelings are literally shut down or cut off. But the experience stays with us, that is how it may come back later or make us sick in the stomach when someone touches it off.

He says the brain produces endorphins to deal with stress and actually creates cells differently than with no stress. Cat brains show stress, for example. He also says that this endorphin stuff is forty times more potent than morphine. And then there is Dinorphins which are two hundred times more potent than m. These act as tranquilizers. But even with all of these (found in depressed and suicidal people) they still need to drink or "mood alter". So they must have been in a huge amount of pain.

He says we can become great spies since we learn to hide and disguise our emotions and feelings (not to mention manipulate). Which helps explain the Russian since her mother was always trying to control her and was said to be alcoholic.

He also talks about compulsiveness and says that there is usually more than one compulsion (as did Peck) and that if we give up one we usually just get another. Was mine chasing women? Perfection? Control?

Dostoyevsky's father was a drunk whose servants killed him when D was 16. He talks about how many of the great writers never had satisfactory relationships with women. Kafka in "the trial" says he was arrested and he didn't even know why. Thus the feeling of shame.

Shame vs guilt. Guilt is: I made a mistake. Shame is: I am a mistake. In the first case I can correct it. But in the second case, what do I do?

He silences the audience by saying that we were shamed whenever we had needs. "And I bet that you were the most shamed when you had the most need."

** Because the parent is angry at you since you are not taking care of their need, rather you are making demands on them, which is what their parents did and, of course, they didn't like it. [And probably left the home at an early age and got married and started their own family. sph]

[March 98- Parents have unmet emotional needs (UEN's) and are using kids to fill them, when kids have needs, as expressed by their feelings, parents feel jealous, impatient, blamed, burdened, inadequate, powerless, etc.]

Then he talks about not having a self since it is never well defined.

[March 98- if you aren't allowed to express your needs, you never learn what they are so you never get to know your true self.]

** You only exist for others, like the animal who is hyper- vigilant, always looking around.

He says how can you have a relationship if you don't have a self? Who are you going to relate to? And who is the other going to relate to?

[sph-> thus the expressions: I don't know you anymore; or, he seems like a different person since I married him, (like Benjamin Franklin said, it is wise to be yourself before marriage). This is surely the case. The pitiful person has the personality of a weather vane.]

Bradshaw says you must first find yourself, then you can use the cognitive techniques. [for me I think I started with the cognitive by reading the power of pos. thinking and dyer at any rate, I agree they both are keys to inner peace.] He talks about the misleading saying 'your better half/your other half'. He jokes that he was always looking for his other half. At a party he would say there she is. No, there she is; no, there she is.

He says addictions are mood altering. Emotional illnesses. He likes a book by John and Laura Wyss? Called 'Recovery from codependence'.

Importance of several relationships man with self, brother and world. [how about with father/mother/partner?]